Half Time
Today in Scientopia, I discuss a reader's question about whether science professors (and others) would be receptive to the idea of a half-time postdoc.
Taking Action
A postdoc wrote to me about her discomfort with the fact that her supervisor is "involved" with one of his own grad student advisees, a former undergrad who then became this professor's grad student. Not surprisingly, the situation makes everyone else in the research group uncomfortable.
I can relate to that. When I was a grad student, I was very uncomfortable with the fact that my advisor was having an affair with one of his own students. I had just started grad school when this going on, but some of the more senior students wondered how it would affect their letters of recommendation; they were applying for the same faculty jobs as this woman.
Irony (?): One of these advisees later lost a tenure-track position because he was "involved" with female students. He was in the wrong era and/or at the wrong institution to be able to emulate our ex-advisor without consequences.
Back then, we believed that there was nothing we could do about our disapproval of the advisor-advisee affair. Our choices were to try to ignore it or quit. There was no administrative office at the university for complaints about such things, and my department didn't even have a graduate program advisor. Every individual advisor had sole authority over their research group. My advisor wasn't the only professor in the department involved with a grad student.
That was then; this is now. These situations are much less common than they were, but obviously they still occur. What to do?
Take action. It is too bad that anyone's postdoctoral or graduate school time has to be consumed by any of this, but it is important to alert someone.
Today, in the 21st century, all (?most?) universities have at one administrator whose job it is to deal with these situations and who are also sensitive to the possible consequences for the other advisees and for the student involved in the relationship. Ideally, a group of concerned students, postdocs, and others will organize the complaint together.
Possibilities for people or offices to be alerted may include:
- a university-level ombudsman, or perhaps a graduate or postdoctoral program office that deals with personnel issues and conflicts;
- the department chair;
- for graduate students: a department- or program-level graduate director who oversees the graduate program; or
- for undergraduate students: an academic advisor or counselor.
If the department is well run and there is a culture of respect for students and postdocs, department-level administrators may be supportive, but it's also possible that these people will be reluctant to confront a colleague about a situation like this. It's likely that they are aware of the situation, but have done nothing about it.
Depending on the situation, it might be possible to discuss the situation informally with a faculty member in the department, just to get a sense for how well known the affair is and whether the department has any interest in taking the lead in dealing with it. If I were the department head, I would want to know about this.
If the department is aware but hasn't done anything about it, the most effective course of action is to alert someone outside the department.
Ideally, it will not be difficult to find the relevant person or office responsible for investigating complaints of improper advisor-advisee relationships, but it might take some searching, depending on the institution. I just did a few test-searches on the websites of randomly selected universities, and it wasn't too hard to locate a likely office or at least a list of resources by searching on a few obvious key words.
Some universities have a Women's Center that may have a list of resources. At others, the relevant information can be found in the "human resources" webpages for students and staff. Some universities have administrative staff devoted to postdoctoral concerns.
I don't think any of us faculty are eager for our colleagues to be punished -- even the colleagues we don't like -- but I think the vast majority of us would like ethical rules about advisor-advisee relationships to be taken seriously. Professor-student relationships can occur, but the professor cannot have any role in the student's academic program, and most certainly can't be the student's grad advisor.
Long after I finished graduate school, I learned that a professor in my old grad department was involved with a former undergrad who was now his graduate student. Soon after I learned about this, I was at a conference at which I talked to another professor I knew from that department. He said that he and his colleagues were living in fear that the upper administration would find out and would take a dim view of the situation and that everyone in the department would suffer as a result. I said to him "Just imagine if the administration finds out that you all knew about this and did nothing about it. Even if we ignore for a moment that this situation is TOTALLY WRONG, don't you want to be the kind of department that shows some initiative on things like this? Aren't you even concerned about the student?" No, he just wanted this old professor to retire as soon as possible so the problem would go away.
So I told an administrator about the situation. I happened to know this administrator, so that made it easier for me to bring it up. The result? I don't know what further conversations or actions took place, if any, but the professor retired the following year (without scandal).
All this makes me skeptical that departments are willing or able to take action in these situations, hence my recommendation that someone beyond the department be alerted first. I hope that readers with more experience in the inner workings of administration or with direct experience with this type of situation will weigh in with alternatives, more informed advice, or other support.
I can relate to that. When I was a grad student, I was very uncomfortable with the fact that my advisor was having an affair with one of his own students. I had just started grad school when this going on, but some of the more senior students wondered how it would affect their letters of recommendation; they were applying for the same faculty jobs as this woman.
Irony (?): One of these advisees later lost a tenure-track position because he was "involved" with female students. He was in the wrong era and/or at the wrong institution to be able to emulate our ex-advisor without consequences.
Back then, we believed that there was nothing we could do about our disapproval of the advisor-advisee affair. Our choices were to try to ignore it or quit. There was no administrative office at the university for complaints about such things, and my department didn't even have a graduate program advisor. Every individual advisor had sole authority over their research group. My advisor wasn't the only professor in the department involved with a grad student.
That was then; this is now. These situations are much less common than they were, but obviously they still occur. What to do?
Take action. It is too bad that anyone's postdoctoral or graduate school time has to be consumed by any of this, but it is important to alert someone.
Today, in the 21st century, all (?most?) universities have at one administrator whose job it is to deal with these situations and who are also sensitive to the possible consequences for the other advisees and for the student involved in the relationship. Ideally, a group of concerned students, postdocs, and others will organize the complaint together.
Possibilities for people or offices to be alerted may include:
- a university-level ombudsman, or perhaps a graduate or postdoctoral program office that deals with personnel issues and conflicts;
- the department chair;
- for graduate students: a department- or program-level graduate director who oversees the graduate program; or
- for undergraduate students: an academic advisor or counselor.
If the department is well run and there is a culture of respect for students and postdocs, department-level administrators may be supportive, but it's also possible that these people will be reluctant to confront a colleague about a situation like this. It's likely that they are aware of the situation, but have done nothing about it.
Depending on the situation, it might be possible to discuss the situation informally with a faculty member in the department, just to get a sense for how well known the affair is and whether the department has any interest in taking the lead in dealing with it. If I were the department head, I would want to know about this.
If the department is aware but hasn't done anything about it, the most effective course of action is to alert someone outside the department.
Ideally, it will not be difficult to find the relevant person or office responsible for investigating complaints of improper advisor-advisee relationships, but it might take some searching, depending on the institution. I just did a few test-searches on the websites of randomly selected universities, and it wasn't too hard to locate a likely office or at least a list of resources by searching on a few obvious key words.
Some universities have a Women's Center that may have a list of resources. At others, the relevant information can be found in the "human resources" webpages for students and staff. Some universities have administrative staff devoted to postdoctoral concerns.
I don't think any of us faculty are eager for our colleagues to be punished -- even the colleagues we don't like -- but I think the vast majority of us would like ethical rules about advisor-advisee relationships to be taken seriously. Professor-student relationships can occur, but the professor cannot have any role in the student's academic program, and most certainly can't be the student's grad advisor.
Long after I finished graduate school, I learned that a professor in my old grad department was involved with a former undergrad who was now his graduate student. Soon after I learned about this, I was at a conference at which I talked to another professor I knew from that department. He said that he and his colleagues were living in fear that the upper administration would find out and would take a dim view of the situation and that everyone in the department would suffer as a result. I said to him "Just imagine if the administration finds out that you all knew about this and did nothing about it. Even if we ignore for a moment that this situation is TOTALLY WRONG, don't you want to be the kind of department that shows some initiative on things like this? Aren't you even concerned about the student?" No, he just wanted this old professor to retire as soon as possible so the problem would go away.
So I told an administrator about the situation. I happened to know this administrator, so that made it easier for me to bring it up. The result? I don't know what further conversations or actions took place, if any, but the professor retired the following year (without scandal).
All this makes me skeptical that departments are willing or able to take action in these situations, hence my recommendation that someone beyond the department be alerted first. I hope that readers with more experience in the inner workings of administration or with direct experience with this type of situation will weigh in with alternatives, more informed advice, or other support.
Teach It Again
Someone I know recently had the experience of a not-so-great second time teaching a class, even though the first time had gone really well. However difficult it is to teach (including TA) a course the first time, I think the second (or nineteenth) time can also be difficult.
Why?
There are many possible reasons, including:
Class dynamics can change a lot from year to year. This is particularly true of small classes, but also applies to even very large classes. A few students can influence the atmosphere of a class, for good or not. So, maybe the first time you teach a class you are lucky to have a really nice group of motivated, polite, and happy students. But another time.. you get some less happy students (maybe for reasons unrelated to the class and your teaching), and some of them are vocal about their unhappiness, or maybe they are quiet and sullen and stifle class discussions by their glowering hostility. Just when you were starting to feel more confident about teaching this class, you start to doubt how you are handling the class. This can be an issue no matter how many times you teach a class, but after many years, you may develop strategies for dealing with it.
Perhaps you spent so much time preparing for the class the first time that you thought you could spend much less time the second time around. In fact, you may well be able to spend a lot less prep time the second time around, but beware: you may think that a lecture or lab that you spent hours creating and organizing the first time is fresh in your mind, but then when you're standing in front of the class, you realize you should have spent more time thinking about how to explain the concepts, the logic of the order in which you present the concepts, and in-class questions/activities to engage the class in the lecture material. You likely don't have to spend as much time as you did when you first taught the class, but, for some people (i.e., me), it can still take a lot of preparation to teach something again. It's easy to underestimate the time required.
The first time you taught the class, your life was simpler. You did not have as many other courses to teach, you weren't on so many committees, you didn't have as many (or any) children or pets or research grants or graduate students or postdocs. Things have gotten more complicated and hectic, and you don't have as much time to devote to preparing for the class or to helping students. You don't feel as organized and coherent as you did when you had time to prepare and teach the course the first time. The students sense that you are extremely busy, and some interpret this to mean that you care more about other things than about them.
There are some courses that I have taught so many times and with a reasonable amount of success (based on teaching evaluations) that I wonder how I would recognize if I needed to make a major change in the course and how I teach it. For example, if there were more than a few unhappy students in one of these oft-taught courses, would I just think to myself "I've taught this course n > 10 times without these problems, it must be their fault, not mine"? Maybe I would. Maybe I would be right, but maybe I would be wrong.
Early in my career, I thought that when I had taught a course n > 5 (or 10) times, I would eventually find the "best" way to teach the course, and then I would teach it that way forever. Now I think that the best way for me to teach is to find a happy balance between being sufficiently prepared (but not obsessively so), confident (but not too confident), and alert to the need for adjustments in the course depending on changes in the student population, course material (new advances in Science), life, the universe, and everything and anything.
Why?
There are many possible reasons, including:
Class dynamics can change a lot from year to year. This is particularly true of small classes, but also applies to even very large classes. A few students can influence the atmosphere of a class, for good or not. So, maybe the first time you teach a class you are lucky to have a really nice group of motivated, polite, and happy students. But another time.. you get some less happy students (maybe for reasons unrelated to the class and your teaching), and some of them are vocal about their unhappiness, or maybe they are quiet and sullen and stifle class discussions by their glowering hostility. Just when you were starting to feel more confident about teaching this class, you start to doubt how you are handling the class. This can be an issue no matter how many times you teach a class, but after many years, you may develop strategies for dealing with it.
Perhaps you spent so much time preparing for the class the first time that you thought you could spend much less time the second time around. In fact, you may well be able to spend a lot less prep time the second time around, but beware: you may think that a lecture or lab that you spent hours creating and organizing the first time is fresh in your mind, but then when you're standing in front of the class, you realize you should have spent more time thinking about how to explain the concepts, the logic of the order in which you present the concepts, and in-class questions/activities to engage the class in the lecture material. You likely don't have to spend as much time as you did when you first taught the class, but, for some people (i.e., me), it can still take a lot of preparation to teach something again. It's easy to underestimate the time required.
The first time you taught the class, your life was simpler. You did not have as many other courses to teach, you weren't on so many committees, you didn't have as many (or any) children or pets or research grants or graduate students or postdocs. Things have gotten more complicated and hectic, and you don't have as much time to devote to preparing for the class or to helping students. You don't feel as organized and coherent as you did when you had time to prepare and teach the course the first time. The students sense that you are extremely busy, and some interpret this to mean that you care more about other things than about them.
There are some courses that I have taught so many times and with a reasonable amount of success (based on teaching evaluations) that I wonder how I would recognize if I needed to make a major change in the course and how I teach it. For example, if there were more than a few unhappy students in one of these oft-taught courses, would I just think to myself "I've taught this course n > 10 times without these problems, it must be their fault, not mine"? Maybe I would. Maybe I would be right, but maybe I would be wrong.
Early in my career, I thought that when I had taught a course n > 5 (or 10) times, I would eventually find the "best" way to teach the course, and then I would teach it that way forever. Now I think that the best way for me to teach is to find a happy balance between being sufficiently prepared (but not obsessively so), confident (but not too confident), and alert to the need for adjustments in the course depending on changes in the student population, course material (new advances in Science), life, the universe, and everything and anything.
Favorite Jerk
Last fall, I wrote about a student who was disrespectful to the TA of my course. I decided not to intervene unless the problem persisted. It did not. In the post, I specifically wondered whether I wanted to know the name of the disrespectful student (the TA did not provide the name in our initial conversation). I was concerned in part because I found that I was assuming it was a particular student, and maybe that wasn't fair -- maybe I was assuming the wrong person.
In any case, I did learn the identity of the obnoxious student, it was the one I assumed it was, and I ended up very much enjoying having this student in my class.
He had a gruff way of speaking and could be very abrupt, and even seemingly rude. He was often anxious. He worked very hard, was not exactly a 'traditional' student in some ways, and he did not always deal well with his stress.
He was unambiguously rude to the TA early in the term, but once the course was underway, he found that he was very interested in the subject. He asked lots of good questions (including some curiosity-driven questions that were only tangentially related to the course topic), and I even got him to laugh a few times. When he figured something out, he helped some of the other students. I found that I liked him. I would be happy to have him take one of my courses again.
I think it is important to have these reminders from time to time that negative first impressions of students can change into positive impressions with more interaction. Just as we hope our students will keep an open mind about us as professors (and people) and appreciate our hard work, so, too, can we enjoy teaching students who seem like jerks (at first).
In any case, I did learn the identity of the obnoxious student, it was the one I assumed it was, and I ended up very much enjoying having this student in my class.
He had a gruff way of speaking and could be very abrupt, and even seemingly rude. He was often anxious. He worked very hard, was not exactly a 'traditional' student in some ways, and he did not always deal well with his stress.
He was unambiguously rude to the TA early in the term, but once the course was underway, he found that he was very interested in the subject. He asked lots of good questions (including some curiosity-driven questions that were only tangentially related to the course topic), and I even got him to laugh a few times. When he figured something out, he helped some of the other students. I found that I liked him. I would be happy to have him take one of my courses again.
I think it is important to have these reminders from time to time that negative first impressions of students can change into positive impressions with more interaction. Just as we hope our students will keep an open mind about us as professors (and people) and appreciate our hard work, so, too, can we enjoy teaching students who seem like jerks (at first).
Walk on Eggshells, Please
Whenever I write about a topic that involves the possibility of sexism -- or even an unambiguous example such as the one I described in a Scientopia post a few weeks ago -- there is almost always at least one comment from a man who is worried about having to "walk on eggshells" all the time to avoid sexist speech or actions, or from someone who wonders whether some women are maybe just a little bit (over)sensitive and therefore too quick to (over)interpret a benign comment as sexist when no offense was intended.
Pretty much any statement can be interpreted in a benign way. Even a seemingly blunt statement like "Women are not as smart as men" could be ironic! Or maybe it is even backed up by data if you define smart in a certain way that can be measured by a certain test on a certain group of people and ignore all other data to the contrary. And then poof! No more sexism. So easy.
I have been thinking about this "walking on eggshells" speech issue lately, and last week I decided to keep my eye out for an example of a statement by someone who apparently did not intend to make a comment that was sexist, homophobic, racist etc., but that nevertheless was (in my opinion). It turned out to be extremely easy. This will not surprise some people.
In a recent post by Scientopian The Meandering Scholar, in an anecdote about evolution, genetics, primate behavior, and the passive-aggressive behavior of men in bars, TMS wrote (on a napkin to be passed to a guy who had been rude about TMS' geeky T-shirt):
..and like your mom they even practice lesbianism
That little phrase took me aback, and I quickly scrolled to the comments and was relieved to find, after a series of "You are so awesome!!!" comments, some criticism of the mom-lesbian quip by ecologist and Zuska, who noted that this statement (and a related one about incest and the rude guy's sister) were inappropriate as insults.
TMS replied "That is neither what I said, what I implied or what I belive" [sic], a statement that seems to involve disputing the specific assertion that he equated incest with lesbianism.
OK, but it is unambiguous that adding the phrase "like your mom" to a statement meant to educate someone about the similarities between humans and primates was gratuitous and a very poor choice of words (even given the context). The phrase "like your mom" was meant to be offensive.
If that is the kind of thing someone is liable to say (or even write on a napkin in a bar), then I have no problem saying: "I think you should walk on eggshells" if that would help you avoid making statements like this.
Is anyone freaking out yet about this extreme opinion of mine? Gosh, I hope not. So let's try to explain it away so that we can all believe that, in fact, the mom-lesbian statement was not offensive to anyone. Perhaps it was even meant as a compliment!
A quick internet search confirms that certain primates, such as the bonobos, are known for their bisexual behavior, particularly the females. Surely this is why TMS made the statement, and perhaps even why he selected the lesbian mom wording instead of saying "and like your dad they even practice homosexuality" or something like that. Therefore, if we wanted to, we could assume that TMS was making a fact-based, educational statement rather than trying for the extra rhetorical punch of mentioning lesbian mom instead of gay dad.
And in fact that may well be the case, and this is another reason why this is such a great example. The statement was made to offend a guy in a bar (and his mom), not a general group of people. And yet.. it managed to do both.
So who cares if a bunch of guys scribble immature notes to each other in a bar? This is trivial. And that's exactly why I picked it as an example to discuss the question: Should people censor their informal speech to the extent of avoiding phrases like this one if at all possible? And my answer is: yes, please do.
Pretty much any statement can be interpreted in a benign way. Even a seemingly blunt statement like "Women are not as smart as men" could be ironic! Or maybe it is even backed up by data if you define smart in a certain way that can be measured by a certain test on a certain group of people and ignore all other data to the contrary. And then poof! No more sexism. So easy.
I have been thinking about this "walking on eggshells" speech issue lately, and last week I decided to keep my eye out for an example of a statement by someone who apparently did not intend to make a comment that was sexist, homophobic, racist etc., but that nevertheless was (in my opinion). It turned out to be extremely easy. This will not surprise some people.
In a recent post by Scientopian The Meandering Scholar, in an anecdote about evolution, genetics, primate behavior, and the passive-aggressive behavior of men in bars, TMS wrote (on a napkin to be passed to a guy who had been rude about TMS' geeky T-shirt):
..and like your mom they even practice lesbianism
That little phrase took me aback, and I quickly scrolled to the comments and was relieved to find, after a series of "You are so awesome!!!" comments, some criticism of the mom-lesbian quip by ecologist and Zuska, who noted that this statement (and a related one about incest and the rude guy's sister) were inappropriate as insults.
TMS replied "That is neither what I said, what I implied or what I belive" [sic], a statement that seems to involve disputing the specific assertion that he equated incest with lesbianism.
OK, but it is unambiguous that adding the phrase "like your mom" to a statement meant to educate someone about the similarities between humans and primates was gratuitous and a very poor choice of words (even given the context). The phrase "like your mom" was meant to be offensive.
If that is the kind of thing someone is liable to say (or even write on a napkin in a bar), then I have no problem saying: "I think you should walk on eggshells" if that would help you avoid making statements like this.
Is anyone freaking out yet about this extreme opinion of mine? Gosh, I hope not. So let's try to explain it away so that we can all believe that, in fact, the mom-lesbian statement was not offensive to anyone. Perhaps it was even meant as a compliment!
A quick internet search confirms that certain primates, such as the bonobos, are known for their bisexual behavior, particularly the females. Surely this is why TMS made the statement, and perhaps even why he selected the lesbian mom wording instead of saying "and like your dad they even practice homosexuality" or something like that. Therefore, if we wanted to, we could assume that TMS was making a fact-based, educational statement rather than trying for the extra rhetorical punch of mentioning lesbian mom instead of gay dad.
And in fact that may well be the case, and this is another reason why this is such a great example. The statement was made to offend a guy in a bar (and his mom), not a general group of people. And yet.. it managed to do both.
So who cares if a bunch of guys scribble immature notes to each other in a bar? This is trivial. And that's exactly why I picked it as an example to discuss the question: Should people censor their informal speech to the extent of avoiding phrases like this one if at all possible? And my answer is: yes, please do.
Grads Moving Midstream
For a continuation of the discussion of the general topic of mobile (or potentially mobile) academics, see this post at Scientopia for a focus on Moving Grads.
Do You Care?
Prof-Like Substance has compiled a handy list of what advisors can and cannot expect of their "trainees" (graduate students, postdocs). Among the items under the CAN'T EXPECT heading is this:
3) Trainees to care about your promotion and tenure.
Well, I can agree with that to some extent. We certainly can't (and shouldn't) expect our students and others to care as much as we do. And, although to some extent the promotion and tenure of the professor does depend on how well their research group functions, ultimately the responsibility of managing a functioning, productive research group is the tenure-track professor's.
BUT:
It is to the benefit of advisees if their advisor gets tenure for a number of reasons, including:
- A tenured advisor has a greater chance of staying around for the completion of graduate degrees and postdoctoral contracts.
- A tenured advisor's letter of reference for advisees might be more respected than a similar letter from a person who was denied tenure.
Those are practical reasons, but the most important one for me relates to my view of what a research group is: A research group is a community, and the various members of that community should help and respect each other. That includes everyone, from the PI to the new undergrad intern. Some have more responsibility than others, but the actions of each individual to some extent affect others.
I am not arguing against the essence of PLS's main point. Trainees can't really be expected to care about our promotion and tenure. I guess I hope that they care, in the sense of caring for the research team in general or even caring about how it affects their own careers in the near- or long-term.
It is time for a poll! Do you care?
Actually, the question is:
Do/did you care whether your advisor gets/got tenure and/or is/was promoted?
That's a lot of / options, but I am trying to be inclusive here. You can answer this question based on your current experience as the trainee of a tenure-track advisor or you can reminisce about how you felt in the past as the trainee of a tenure-track advisor. You can even answer if your advisor had tenure but an important committee member was tenure-track. Or, just so no one feels left out, not even postdocs, you can answer based on how you think you would feel if you were in the situation of having an advisor or mentor who was tenure-track, or if you weren't actually a cat.
And, if you are so moved, you can explain your vote in the comments.
3) Trainees to care about your promotion and tenure.
Well, I can agree with that to some extent. We certainly can't (and shouldn't) expect our students and others to care as much as we do. And, although to some extent the promotion and tenure of the professor does depend on how well their research group functions, ultimately the responsibility of managing a functioning, productive research group is the tenure-track professor's.
BUT:
It is to the benefit of advisees if their advisor gets tenure for a number of reasons, including:
- A tenured advisor has a greater chance of staying around for the completion of graduate degrees and postdoctoral contracts.
- A tenured advisor's letter of reference for advisees might be more respected than a similar letter from a person who was denied tenure.
Those are practical reasons, but the most important one for me relates to my view of what a research group is: A research group is a community, and the various members of that community should help and respect each other. That includes everyone, from the PI to the new undergrad intern. Some have more responsibility than others, but the actions of each individual to some extent affect others.
I am not arguing against the essence of PLS's main point. Trainees can't really be expected to care about our promotion and tenure. I guess I hope that they care, in the sense of caring for the research team in general or even caring about how it affects their own careers in the near- or long-term.
It is time for a poll! Do you care?
Actually, the question is:
Do/did you care whether your advisor gets/got tenure and/or is/was promoted?
That's a lot of / options, but I am trying to be inclusive here. You can answer this question based on your current experience as the trainee of a tenure-track advisor or you can reminisce about how you felt in the past as the trainee of a tenure-track advisor. You can even answer if your advisor had tenure but an important committee member was tenure-track. Or, just so no one feels left out, not even postdocs, you can answer based on how you think you would feel if you were in the situation of having an advisor or mentor who was tenure-track, or if you weren't actually a cat.
And, if you are so moved, you can explain your vote in the comments.
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