Science Professor

Answering the Mail

In an attempt to be less of a slacker at answering my FSP e-mails, today I am going to give quick replies to some that have been lingering in my mailbox for varying lengths of time. That way, I will feel more psychically prepared for 2011. My apologies to those who e-mailed me but did not get a reply, including in this post.

Because I am providing only brief responses here, feel free to leave a comment expressing interest in a future discussion involving a more detailed and thoughtful consideration of topics raised in the e-mails.

(Some of the questions below have been edited for length)

Question: What is your take on giving information about other grad schools one is applying to? Some schools make it mandatory, some make it optional. What is the purpose of that and does it work in the student's favor to list all other schools?

Answer: How can this possibly be mandatory? Perhaps I am showing my ignorance, but I was aware only that some graduate programs request information on the "competition", if applicants are willing to provide it. Others can comment based on greater knowledge of this practice, but I can't see how it would work for or against an applicant to list these (or not). Just because you apply to a place doesn't mean you will be accepted. I think many places just want to look for overall trends in the data of applicant pools, not track where any particular applicant has applied, but others should correct me if their program uses this information in a different way.

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Question: Is having an open laptop during a talk disrespectful to a speaker and distracting to an audience, or are laptops a useful way of taking notes during the talk?

Answer: My personal opinion is that laptops or other electronic note-taking devices are acceptable during a talk. It can be distracting sitting next to someone who is type-type-typing throughout a talk, but if the typing is confined to jotting relevant notes or questions, I can deal with it. As a speaker, I assume that the open laptops are being used for a relevant purpose, although this assumption is clearly deeply flawed, as some people keep their eyes glued to their laptop screen throughout a talk, and occasionally laugh or smile at the screen at a time unrelated to anything in my talk that could be considered amusing (I think). That is rude.

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Question (aggregate of a number of e-mails with different situations but similar themes): What do you do if you are a tenure-track professor and many of your colleagues, including your department chair, are jerks?

Answer: My advice, which is not that awesome or satisfying but is the best I can suggest for those in this difficult situation, is to do your work as best you can, don't let the jerks get to you or destroy your enjoyment of your job if at all possible, find as many non-jerk colleagues as you can (within or beyond your department and including administrators), protect your students from the jerks, build a strong record of teaching/research/service, and get tenure. Then you can decide what to do: leave or stay. If you stay, you can then decide whether to confront the jerks or just do your own thing, or take the long view and become a leader in your department so you can change things. Just don't become one of them.

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Question: What do you do when a student writes to you, begging for a higher grade because [insert desperate reason]?

Answer: I can tell you what I do in these situations: I write back a short, sympathetic e-mail saying that I cannot and will not change the student's grade or give them an extra credit assignment. It is very sad when there is something important at stake for the student (e.g., a scholarship, financial aid, a chance to get into a desired program), but I try to forestall such unhappy events by giving students feedback throughout the course so that they know where they stand. I will help them if I can, before the final grade is determined, not after. The important thing is to be consistent and fair.

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Question: I have been told that one should decline to write a letter of recommendation if that letter is going to be really negative, or at least tell the person requesting the letter that the letter will be negative, and give the person a chance to find someone else (or take their chances with your unflattering letter). Actually, I have two questions: (1) Should one decline to write a negative letter (might this not be important information?) or inform the applicant that your letter will be negative, and if so, (2) How negative is negative? What if my letter would have both positive and some negative things in it? How do I decide whether I am being unfair to the letter-requester if I don't tell them how negative my letter will be?

Answer: This is a complex question. For now I will just say that I think it's fine to write a 'balanced' letter (code for 'has some positive and negative things in it'). Ideally, the person requesting the letter has some idea about what you think of him/her, although I know that is really hard to determine because there are all sorts of complex issues and anxieties involved in that. Nevertheless, if you have provided critical input to someone (e.g., about their research abilities, writing skills, productivity), given them a not-so-good grade in a class, or otherwise given them an open assessment of their accomplishments and/or abilities, there is nothing sneaky about writing some critical comments in a reference letter. Those reading the letter will appreciate an honest and frank assessment, and, as long as your negative comments are written in a professional way and you believe the criticisms to be fair, you've done what you were asked to do.

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Question: I am a graduate student and I have a 3-month old infant. I am doing fine, keeping up with my research, caring for my baby, and basically managing things as well as I can, although I feel that I am pretty much at the limit of what I can reasonably deal with. One of my office mates keeps complaining to me about how much work it is for him to care for his exotic reptile pet, which he fortunately keeps at home. Can I kill him?

Answer: I think you should seriously consider it and even make elaborate plans (in your head), but this might be something you want to put off until later, given that your plate is already full.

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There are some other good topics for discussion in my inbox, and I hope to get to them.. next year.

Uninvited Speaker

Imagine this scenario:

You are organizing a conference session and thinking about possible invited speakers. You want a mix of old(er) superstars and dynamic early-career people.

One of the early-career candidates for an invited talk has told you that she plans to drop out of academia soon because she is moving to the city where her husband got a job. She might teach a bit but has no plans to continue as an active researcher, despite getting a PhD in a high-profile program and doing excellent and significant work.

Do you invite her anyway because her research is interesting, or do you give the invited talk slot to someone whose career prospects would benefit from the invitation and visibility?

Should a person's stated lack of interest in a future career involving research be a factor in this decision, assuming that there are other possible candidates whose research is as interesting and as compatible with the theme of the conference session? Or is the only thing that matters the research topic (and maybe also the individual's speaking ability)?

I think I would invite the quitting-research person anyway if she is clearly the best person for the session, no matter what her stated career goals. Even if the invited talk slot wouldn't benefit her career, it might benefit others in the audience (e.g., students or others who would learn something from her talk) or it might benefit the session overall to have a diverse group of invited speakers ("diverse" could refer to research topic, methods, career stage, gender etc.).

If, however, there were other excellent candidates who would give a similarly excellent and useful talk and who would also personally benefit from the invitation, I might well tilt towards inviting one of them instead.

One of my colleagues has been in this decision-making situation recently, so I was thinking about this type of scenario.

What would you do? (and why?)

What Are You Saying?

Today's post, in response to a reader/professor who wrote to me when one of his international students complained that he (the professor) was hard to understand, is at Scientopia.

The Contest : 2010

Two years ago at about this time, some FSP readers submitted entries to the Statement of Purpose (SoP) contest. Last year, we did a Letter of Reference (LoR) contest. What shall it be this year?

I have contemplated various archetypal academic texts as the theme of the 2010 contest, but I eventually settled on this:

Write an e-mail message from a student to a professor explaining why you (the student) missed the final exam.

Although we all love and respect our students and appreciate the complexity of their lives, feel free to go a little crazy, make this a cathartic experience (if you need one), and convince me that there is or was no way you could make it to the final exam (but you need to pass this class and maybe even get an A).

It might be interesting if contest submissions are a mix of real e-mails and fabricated e-mails. I wonder if we will be able to tell the difference?

Send your submission to femalescienceprofessor@gmail.com, or leave it as a comment to this post and I will save it for when I post some or all of the results.

I am going to go on a blog-break next week, starting maybe Wednesday, but if you send me your submissions by Monday or Tuesday (12/21), I will try to get them compiled before I go off the grid.

Sabbatical Spouses

My experience with sabbaticals and spouses involves planning with a professor-spouse, so I don't have any personal advice for those with non-professor-spouses. I do know that my colleagues with non-professor-spouses have done one or more of the following: (1) not gone on sabbatical at all; (2) taken a sabbatical, but of the "staycation"/don't-leave-home sort; or (3) taken a sabbatical consisting of short trips or somewhat extended stays at other institutions, but not for a long time (max 3 months, typically less). One friend took the kids to Europe for a few months and left the lawyer spouse at home (though he visited).

Some of my colleagues with professor spouses in different fields or institutions have taken separate sabbaticals at different times or in different places, but few people I know have chosen to do this.

For 2-professor families who want to coordinate a sabbatical, there are some Issues that typically arise, such as:

- You have to coordinate things so that you both apply for, and are granted, sabbaticals at the same time.
- You both have to write grant proposals to raise $ for the missing 1/2 salaries you both won't be receiving.
- You have to agree on a place to go.

Each of these is a potential pitfall. For example, I had to wait more than 10 years for my first sabbatical because my husband was a few years behind me in seniority, and then we had to get our department chair to agree that we could both have a sabbatical in the same year.

The third item in the list, however, consumes most of our sabbatical discussions.

Agreeing on a place to go involves many complex factors. Although my husband and I are in the same general field, we are in different subfields, and different institutions may or may not have interesting (or any) colleagues in one of our subfields. So first we have to figure out all possible places that could conceivably host both of us, given our research interests.

Then we discuss which of those places we actually want to go. Although by this point the list of possible places has been significantly reduced, especially if we add the further constraint that we prefer to spend our sabbaticals outside the US, one or both of us may have different preferences and priorities.

For our last sabbatical, there was a very obvious place that had outstanding colleagues and facilities, was in an interesting place, and that had colleagues who wanted to host us. Also, the institution had money to pay visiting scholars, and that was quite a nice bonus to an already appealing option. So we went there.

That was great, but what about the next sabbatical? We have been discussing this and have pretty much settled on a place we think we would both like to be, and we have ascertained that there are colleagues there who would like to have us around for all or part of a year.

How did we ascertain that? For our last sabbatical, we both knew people at this institution, and it was not at all awkward to discuss our hopes for a visit. In fact, I think one or both of us may even have been invited. For the next sabbatical, one of us was approached by a professor at the university about visiting, and the other started e-mailing colleagues (some current collaborators, others known only from their research) to see what they thought of the idea. They liked the idea.

Although it is a bit disconcerting to cold-email someone and ask "Would you host me for my next sabbatical?", there's nothing too scary about asking someone if you can have a desk and be an interactive member of their research group for a while. Also, making these requests gets easier as you get older and more egotistical, and you count on the fact that people will either be enthusiastic or will at least make up something reasonably nice to discourage you if they don't want to be your host.

Of course our daughter has been an important element in our sabbatical planning as well. She loved the sabbatical we took when she was in elementary school. It was an adventure, she learned a new language, and we did a lot of traveling. She missed her friends and cats, but she made new friends and we figured out where all the cats in the neighborhood lived, and went on frequent cat safaris to visit friendly felines. Not long ago we returned to our sabbatical city and followed our old cat safari route, and there was our favorite cat, sitting in her usual spot, as if she hadn't moved in years.

Now our daughter is looking forward to our next sabbatical in a different place, despite the disruptions it will cause to her schooling. Whether such disruptions are significant (so the sabbatical is not a realistic option) or not a big deal (so the sabbatical is worth it for all) will of course vary from family to family.

I am a big fan of sabbaticals for their recharging effects and for the opportunities they provide to meet and work with new people, live in a different culture, travel, think, and have fun. Even if I couldn't get enough grant money to replace my missing 1/2 salary, I would try to go anyway.

Sabbatical Scenarios

Last week I discussed Sabbatical Economics, and explained why paying a professor 1/2 of a 9-month salary every 7 years so they can focus on research or other creative endeavors can make both short- and long-term economic sense for an institution, not to mention for the individual on sabbatical.

Today I will discuss some another aspect of sabbaticals. Please write with questions or suggestions of sabbatical-themed topics I haven't covered.

Myth: Faculty on sabbatical abandon their students, occasionally checking in from the other side of the world (or country or town) just to make sure that everyone is working hard to keep the research machine ticking along while the absent faculty member does whatever it is professors do on sabbatical.

I certainly won't claim that no professors ever do this, but, from what I've seen, it isn't common.

When I was a graduate student and my adviser went on sabbatical, we kept in touch by e-mail, and this was fine with me. In fact, it was great because he had a rather large group of graduate students, most of them very assertive and verbally agile young men, and I never really felt like I had my adviser's attention to the extent that these guys did. In fact, these guys, who were my friends and mentors, were in some ways more aware of my research than my adviser was, although I typically talked to my adviser a few times a week to update him and ask questions.

The reason the sabbatical year was great for me was that I was better at sending frequent, articulate, informative e-mails than my fellow grad students were. I finally got my adviser's attention, and he later told me that he enjoyed these e-mails from me, and for the first time appreciated my work (and work ethic).

I have also enjoyed being a professor on sabbatical. On my last sabbatical, I went to Europe for most of an academic year, although I returned to the US once for some student preliminary exams. Everyone who needed to take their exam in a particular term and who needed/wanted me on their committee took their exams during the week I was back. It was an intense week, but it worked out well. And while I was away, my students were well taken care of by co-advisers or committee members or postdocs or each other, and we all kept in touch by e-mail etc. As far as I can tell, no one felt abandoned and no one's research progress suffered.

For my next sabbatical -- still a ways off but in the preparation stages -- I plan to have some research funds to pay for the travel of at least one graduate student to visit me to take advantage of the facilities and collaborations at the institute that has offered to host my sabbatical. There will also be other opportunities for travel home and abroad involving other colleagues and students (visits, conferences etc.), and, if all goes as planned, it's going to be very cool. I think my research group as a whole will benefit from my sabbatical, even if I'm the only one who will be jumping up and down chanting "No faculty meetings for a year, no faculty meetings for a year" with glee.

If a professor supervises a lab at their home institution, presumably they don't just leave untrained students to run around in it, tossing hazardous chemicals around and exposing themselves to radiation and carcinogens. Professors with labs like this typically have a supervising research scientist, highly trained technician, and/or colleagues who share the lab. Departments have safety officers, everyone in the lab should be trained in the relevant (and many irrelevant) safety issues, and there should be no problem if the supervising faculty member is not in residence for all or part of an academic year.

There are so many ways to stay connected these days, and so many interesting ways to involve students and postdocs in sabbatical-related research experiences, that a sabbatical can easily be an exciting opportunity, not as a selfish thing that faculty do if they don't care about their advisees.

In any case, sabbaticals are a normal part of academic life, and chances are that students and postdocs will be affected by the sabbatical or research leave of one or more faculty. It is therefore useful to discuss ways in which sabbaticals can be organized so that advisees are not inconvenienced or in any way harmed by an adviser's sabbatical.

Questions of the day:

If you have gone on sabbatical, how did you organize things to minimize disruptions for your research group?

If you are or have been a student or postdoc whose adviser/mentor went on sabbatical, how did you deal with the situation? Was it OK or a problem?

Which one do you like the best?
	1: ER excuse
	2: car, police excuse
	3: cat, laundry, friend etc. excuse
	4: grandmother excuse, passive-aggressive
	5: grandmother excuse. aggressive
	6: pathetic but brief excuse
	7: pot brownie excuse
	8: detailed medical excuse
	9: forgot exam excuse
	10: last-minute excuse
	11: illness, mom excuse
	12: mom excuse
	13: missing python excuse

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