Helping the Minoritized Achieve in Academic Science

Archive for the ‘Career’ Category

Small Changes for Big Impacts in Teaching

Going along with the 20% change rule, a couple PersonsOfScience who are CottrellScholars had some good things to say, so I am reposting them here. In case you are not aware, the Cottrell Scholars are a group of research faculty who take teaching very seriously. Their ideas and actions on good teaching practices are informed by education research literature. They know what they are talking about, but they don’t try to make you feel bad about what you don’t know yourself. Much like any good teacher, they are truly interested in educating people… about good teaching practices.

Andrew Feig says:

One of my favorite quick fixes is Just-In-Time Teaching. This is a method wherein you give a short assignment to the students typically due about 15 or 30 minutes prior to class. The assignment can be a warmup exercise based on the readings, it can recap something from the prior class or it can assess if students remember a foundational skill relevant to the topic of the day. The idea is to get the students engaged in the material prior to setting foot in class. You then browse the answers quickly immediately prior to starting class so that you can start the class with a comment based on how the class performed. If they did well, complement them and move on. If they could not do something that you expected them to be able to do (such as the foundational question or one that identifies a common misconception), then you had better stop and address the issue before moving onward with the new material. To make it work, you must be consistent and do it for every class and you must spend a minute or two at the start of class addressing the problem they did. It also helps to award a trivial number of points for completion. Grade on completion not correctness here. Remember, the goal is to judge if they can do an exercise and you don’t want them circumventing the challenge and copying from one another.

Many resources are available on line to learn more about JITT including:

http://webphysics.iupui.edu/jitt/what.html

http://www.pkal.org/documents/Vol4JiTT21stCenturyPedagogies.cfm

Sarah Keller says:

Here’s a quick one: Assign a homework problem requiring students to write an “exam question” that would be appropriate for a future students taking the final in the same class, along with the answer key. Students get a nice review of the course material while they are hunting for ideas. As a bonus they discover (and are usually surprised to find out) that writing a decent exam question is hard; they become more appreciative of good exams with interesting problems.

Some compiled hints are at: S.L. Keller and A.L. Smith, Advice for New Faculty Teaching Undergraduate Science J. Chem. Educ., 83, 401-406, 2006.

Thanks for the great ideas Cottrell Scholars!

Category:

Career, Mentoring, New Job, Teaching, TimeManagement

Changing 20%

In the last post, I described how I altered my office hours into homework session. It led to improved learning gains from my students and better evaluations for me. This was a specific example of how a small change of some specific things in my class greatly improved my course pedagogy.  There is a rule of thumb when making changes: only change the worst 20% at one time and keep the best 80%. Following this rule of thumb allows changes to be made a little at a time. It isn’t so daunting to make just a few changes to a few things.

For example, from year 1 to year 2 of teaching a particular course, I change my office hours to discussion sections, I added in small group work, and I started doing more computer demos as examples in class. I did not overhaul my lectures or completely change from a lecture style to an inverted classroom. For the following year, I made more changes to the course that included more student participation and active learning during class. If I could have taught the course for several more years, I would have eventually completely overhauled the course into an inverted classroom.

I want to point out: The additions and changes to my course did not require any extra time on my part. As anyone with any new course, I spent a lot of time the first offering coming up with the curriculum. Years 2 and 3 were a breeze compared to the effort of year 1, even with making important changes that greatly improved the course. The items that you change should strive to approach the scientifically documented best practices for scientific teaching. Honestly, my first year of teaching my course, I was struggling to get the material into lecture format in time for class. My teaching was not innovative or inspiring. Only the best students probably learned anything and they probably did not retain it. The blandness of my course was evident in my moderate evaluations of about 3.6 out of 5. The 20% changes I made were in the direction of best teaching practices. More student participation. More interaction with the teacher. More one-on-one time. My evaluations improved to a 4.2 in year 2 and a 4.9 in years 3 and 4 with students writing that I was the best professor they had in college and being nominated for university-wide teaching awards. I was able to make these improvements without a huge effort or commitment of time because I only changed 20% at a time.

Here is another issue: In order for this process of change to be effective, you need to teach the same course multiple years in a row. This is essential for any new faculty who is trying to get tenure. If your department will not let you teach the same course multiple times in a row, they are not being supportive and you absolutely need to demand it. They may tell you that they need you to teach something else for whatever reason, but really, they could do whatever they want. If teaching the same course multiple times in a row is not a regular thing in your new department, you need to put it in your contract or get a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the department chair. If you chair won’t do this for you, you need to go to the dean’s level to put pressure on the chair to ensure you can repeat the course. This is such a minor thing that most chairs will immediately agree, but you have to know to ask for it.  If they ask you to change the course you are teaching after only one time, simply refuse. Don’t be nice about this. This is your career, and it depends on you teaching relatively well (relative to your colleagues), so make a stink if they aren’t helping you.

Do others have examples of simple changes that can be made to improve teaching that don’t take a lot of time? Or examples of 20% changes you made that made a huge improvement to your teaching? Guest post or make a comment.

Category:

Career, New Job, Teaching, TimeManagement

More First Day Activities

Going through your syllabus is not the only first day of class activity that I do.  I spend the day setting up the class, giving them expectations, and orienting them in several ways. I do not “teach” in the traditional sense any material of the curriculum. Here are some first day activities I do. Anybody else with helpful first day activities to prepare your class for the semester, please comment or post a guest post.

  1. Who are you? There are a lot of getting to know you activities you can do. Some work better with big classes, some work better with small classes. One that I always do – no matter the size (although I haven’t yet taught 400 people) is to take the pictures of every single student, so I can learn their names. I bring them to the front of the class in groups of 4. Each student writes their name on the board above their heads (the name they prefer). I take a picture with my phone, and I promise not to share it. Since the students are older than 18, they can consent to having their pictures taken (or decline), so there is no FERPA issues. I don’t share it with them, but when they graduate, I send them the picture to give them a smile. The students love getting out of their chairs, and the activity gets them used to unusual activities in the class right from the start.
  2. How we teach science and why? Before I let the students leave, I take them through how and why we teach science the way we do. Specifically, I tell them where problem sets came from. In essence, people were not learning from lectures, so they hired tutors. The tutors had students do practice problems. Through the act of problem solving, the students learned the material and how to solve other problems. Further, I talk about the principles of the core curriculum of the department and the rationale for its execution. I talk about active learning, and the fact that they are ultimately responsible for what they learn. I am here to facilitate and help that process, but my “blah, blah, blah” cannot force knowledge and skills into their heads. The small group work and homework sessions (more to come on that) is where students will learn, and they will learn best by applying themselves and trying and failing, and trying again until they succeed. This pep talk goes a long way to setting up expectations. They know I am a hard ass who cares about them learning. I firmly believe that this orientation actually helps to give me better evaluations from the students, because it sets up the class. They know what to expect.

After this, I end the class – hopefully 5 minutes early. I set a timer to end the class everyday 5 minutes early to give time to ask questions or give other messages. I let the students know that I will try to end the class 5 minutes early, but if the timer goes off while we are in the middle of something, then we will take it to the end of class.

If anyone has other first day, class orientation suggestions, please comment or guest post!

Category:

Career, Teaching

Syllabus: Your Contract

As I thought about it, there is so much to talk about with teaching. Off the top of my head, I came up with over 10 topics in less than 10 minutes. So, where do we start? Let’s start at the beginning. What do you do on Day 1? Well, the first thing is to go through the syllabus. Many people simply pass out the syllabus and tell the students they can read it. That is because they do not see the potential of the syllabus. Your syllabus is your contract with your students about the policies of the class. It is where you set the expectations for the students, the standards and policies for the course. This is the written agreement about how the class will be conducted, so make sure all the important information is in the syllabus and you should go through the contract with your students on the first day. Once you go through the contract, I remind them that this is our binding contract. I tell them that we can make changes, but we should do it now. I ask if anyone wants to make changes, and we vote on approval of the syllabus. In my experience, students are generally happy with the syllabus and do not request changes. Mostly, I think they are so shocked that a professor takes this approach, that they sit in stunned silence.

Some of the essential items I put in my syllabus include:

  1. Contact information. For yourself and the TA
  2. Textbook and curriculum information. What will be covered in the class?
  3. Pedagogy information. How are you going to teach the course? Making it clear how you are going to the teach the class will help to orient the students as to how the class will proceed. This is especially important if you are going to use modern pedagogical techniques, because students might be used to lecture style from your colleagues. It is also essential that you tell the students that the method you are choosing is what you think is best, because your biggest concern is if they learn the concepts.
  4. Homework policy. You need to tell the students how many homework sets you will have and when they are due. Is it online homework or long answer? Who will grade it? How much will it count for the final grade? What is your late homework policy? Will you accept late homework at all? Will you allow it to be one day late?
  5. Exam policy. How many exams will you have? When will the exams be? And what will they cover, exactly? Have the exams scheduled with the dates on the syllabus, so everyone can mark their calendars (make sure you have a room scheduled, if you do evening exams). How many points are they worth? And how much of the final grade? WHat is the format? Multiple choice? Conceptual? Long answer? How will you do make-up exams? Will you allow people to take the exam late? Or will you only allow early exams if there is a time conflict?
  6. Other grade issues. If you require participation or clicker grades, you need to specifically outline what will be grading, and how much of their final grade depends on it. If you are doing extra credit, say for attendance or clicker questions, make sure it is clear on the syllabus. I also usually outline how the points total to make the points for the class as a chart using either total point (say 1000 points total) or percentages.
  7. Class expectations. How do you expect your class to act? Do you expect them to engage and not sit like lumps? You can positively reinforce that with credit points for participation, but you should also say you expect it. Do you expect them to be respectful of you and the other students’ ideas. You need to specify other specific things such as if you allow computers in the room (presuming you aren’t using a team-based learning room that are built around computers). Do you expect students to work together on homework or independently?
  8. University policies on ethics. At the end, I always list the University’s ethical policy about plagiarism or anything else.

I am sure there are other items that belong on the syllabus, that I don’t include, so please comment and guest post.What do you include in your syllabus?

Category:

Career, New Job, Teaching

Teaching Well

Having just returned from a conference devoted to good teaching practices has got me thinking about the first time I taught and lessons to be passed along. So, the next couple posts will be devoted to teaching. There are a lot of good resources out there, and that is part of the issue. There are too many! How can you possible read them all the distill the best practices. Further, with all the other stuff as part of this job that you don’t know about, how can you get the biggest bang for your buck time-wise?

Luckily, there are a number of ways to do this. So, let’s start a dialog here for a couple posts. All the other educational sages out there, please comment and guest post!

Category:

Career, New Job, Teaching, TimeManagement

A Lab of One

So, you just started your new job. You have a new lab space with or without workstations or lab benches and equipment. But, at first, you have no students, technicians, postdocs. You are a lab of one. The people who will populate you lab are not just important to getting work done, they are also essential for keeping you in touch with science through regular conversations and working groups. What do you do to stay in contact with science during this short, but possibly debilitating time in your science career?

Build your network on campus. This is a good time to get to know the other people on campus who are doing work within and peripheral to your research. For people very near to your field, invite them to lunch to discuss your research plans and grant ideas. Ask them if they would be available to read a draft of your grants. For people more afar from your field, talk to them about what they are doing, get general advice about starting a lab, and time management, and maybe see if there are some collaboration possibilities.

Glom onto others. This is a bit silly, but what I mean is keep yourself in a lab culture of some sort by attending the group meetings of other people. When I started, I attended group meetings and had joint lab meeting with 3-4 different groups over the first couple years when we were still a very small group. Small groups can’t really have normal group meetings. If you rotate who is presenting, they end up presenting every-other-week! Combining with another smallish lab will give more lag time between presentations. Also, this gives you the ability to see how other people at your institution format their group meetings. You can choose your favorite method.

Join or start a journal club. Journal clubs are a good way to stay current with the latest in your field. Depending on the field, journal clubs are more or less prevalent, yet most people see the benefit of reading an article and discussing as a group. Joining an existing journal club or even starting a new one and including other professors and their students within your field is a great way to stay in touch with science and stay motivated while you start your new position. This piece of advice may seem really obvious and stupid, but when faced with so many new demands for your time, it is easy to decide to skip this practice that was a no-brainer as a graduate student or postdoc. All I am saying is, stick with it! Don’t give this up because it is a essential for when your science picks back up out of this temporary lull.

Build your network off campus. When you first start a lab, you may be tempted to stop going to conferences because you have to pay your own way and you don’t have anything new to present. Go anyway! Conferences are essential for keeping up your network of scientists and mentors. Don’t be embarrassed that you don’t have anything complete to present, discuss your plans with supportive mentors working in your field. Talk with them about grant writing strategies and see if they will read your proposals before you submit. In a couple years, you will have to go through the mini-tenure process and then the tenure process a few years later. Conferences are essential to build up your connections with potential letter writers. Even if you don’t talk to BigShotProfessor who will ultimately write your letter, if they see you across the hall talking science at a conference, they will assume all is well. Once you have anything even close to resembling results, submit an abstract to present. I recommend even submitting a late abstract if your results are late-breaking and after the normal deadline for abstracts. Tell people at the conference that you are presenting your new results and that they should stop by to see the poster or talk (shameless self-promotion is good, remember). Presenting new work early does two good things: (1) you are marking your territory on the project and (2) you are demonstrating your ability to create new science, fulfilling your promise as a young tenure track professor. Basically, use these conferences to see and be seen.

As your lab grows and you have students, these initial habits will pay off.

Any other suggestions for how to cope during this low time in the lab before you have people and perhaps even a lab at all? Please comment or guest post!

Category:

Career, New Job, Self-Promotion, TimeManagement

Hiring Woes

I found one of the most important, yet untaught skills, is assessing candidates to make hiring decisions. I am going to honestly say that I have not mastered this skill. Unfortunately, that means I sometimes bring people into my lab who do not work out for one reason or another. Hopefully some people who are better at this will comment and help out. Here, I will tell you about some mistakes I made in the hopes that others can learn from them.

The thing that everyone always says is, “Don’t hire the first person who comes to you.” Of course, I totally hired the first person who came to me. It is hard to avoid because you are just so desperate for people. I hired a graduate student who had been in the program longer than I have. This should have been a red flag. If a student ca not find an advisor by the time they are in their third year, there is something not quite right with the student. As perhaps expected, this student did not stay in my lab. Nor did the next 2-3 who randomly knocked on my door. Looking back, it was clear that these first students were aimless and had no real interest in my research. As a naturally curious person, I am excited by many parts of science. I hoped that my excitement about my science would entice them. It did not. This is when I realized that people need to be self-motivated to do science, and no matter how excited you are, that isn’t enough for anyone else. Happily, I was able to recruit two excellent graduate students who have been very productive. The first rotated during my second year and joined the lab official in year 3. She is getting ready to graduate soon, and I am super proud and excited! {I should note that I can take students from multiple departments. Some do rotations, and the student have to pick by a certain time. Others just have to try out advisors, and it is more like dating.}

I did hold off on hiring a postdoc. I felt that postdocs are a lot of responsibility because you are somewhat responsible for getting them a job. This was also a mistake. I wish I had hired a postdoc earlier. My first postdoc was first author of our first paper that was fully initiated, performed, and completed in my own lab. My first postdoc motivated the graduate students through his consistent presence – something that was impossible for me to accomplish with teaching and traveling. My first postdoc was essential to establishing the research program of my lab.  Two more postdocs later, my fears of mentoring and placing postdocs has been quelled since one postdoc successfully started a tenure-track job last year. Although I wish I had hired a postdoc sooner, I know other WomenOfScience who had very bad luck with postdocs, and it was a more expensive error than hiring the wrong graduate student.

After multiple fails, I started playing hard to get with certain graduate students {the ones who have to go through the dating route, but not rotations}. When I first started, I would pay them right away to show I was serious. Much like dating, this early commitment may have scared them away. Now, they have to do a training period without pay. If nothing else, it saves me money!

But, the worst part is that I still cannot tell, even after getting letters of recommendations and conducting interviews, who will be a good lab member and who will not. I have taken to calling letter writers to get more candid and truthful reviews of candidate lab members, such as postdocs and technicians. For graduate students, I have no clear cure. I have missed out on good students, and I have tried and given a lot of effort on terrible ones.

These difficulties are not limited to my own lab.  These issues also affect larger-scale hiring, such as search committees when hiring new faculty members. When I witness faculty hiring I still think, “How did I get hired?” and “I have no idea what I am looking for,” at the same time. Unfortunately, in these cases, the stakes are higher. If you hire the wrong lab member, the most you suffer is for 1-year, given the typical contract. If you hire the wrong colleague, it is at least 6 years until tenure, and who wants to deny tenure?

So, if anyone has any helpful strategies, please guest post or comment. We who do not know are waiting to hear from you.

Category:

Career, New Job

What do I do?

As described a couple posts ago, there is a lot to do in this job. In my experience, it doesn’t all come at you at full force right at the beginning. For instance, when I got to my new position, I didn’t have a lab. So, although I was stressed about teaching and other new things, I didn’t have any people to manage or a place work to on research yet. Instead of lamenting the lab, I decided to take advantage of the fact that I didn’t have a lab. My solution was to spend time just writing grant proposals for the first two semesters while my lab was getting together. After this, I realized that spending committed time focusing on just one aspect of the job allowed me to get really good at it, so that it became second nature. After that committed time, I didn’t have to focus on that thing as much, and could use my new skills to save time. This is just another testament to the idea that there is no such thing as multi-tasking. Since you cannot really multi-task, why not focus on one thing at a time and get it right?

When I started my tenure track job, it worked out best for me to focus on grant proposal writing for 1 year.  A lot of the grants I wrote were horrible, but I got feedback, and I got better with practice. After writing more than 10 proposals, I actually got one my first year!

The second year, I focused on making my teaching better. After my teaching went just OK the first year, I decided to focus on making it great the second year. I re-wrote my lectures, offered evening office hours, and really worked to learn the names of my students. In our department, they have a good policy that you get to teach the same courses three times in a row. This is great because a class is always the worst the first time around, but once you get the hang of the material, the second and third years can be great.

By year three, I finally had reliable people in my lab, I had some grant money to hire people to work on specific projects, and we were getting results. In year three, I finally came back to research, which was super fun after my hiatus. I spent significant time with my students, gave myself my own projects to get good preliminary data for new work, and we wrote our first papers.

Although this timeline for focusing on proposal writing first, teaching second, and research third worked well for me, it is highly personally dependent. If you step into a beautiful lab that is fully functional with people who can work on day 1, maybe work on getting papers out first. Some people I know had this, and they got their first papers out a year before me. Most people I know had to wait 1-2 years for their lab situation to get working well. Why waste time and energy working on something out of your control that you cannot fix? Instead, refocus on other things that you can succeed at first. Get those things taken care of, so you can focus on other aspects later. By the fourth or fifth year, all the important aspects of this job are under control – tackled one at a time.

I want to mention that at no time did I focus on service. My advice is to perform adequate, or just good enough, on service to your department and college. Doing a good job doesn’t buy you anything and is a big waste of time for the other stuff you have to do. Once my grants and research got going, I got asked to do more service to my scientific community, such as reviewing grants, reviewing papers, and organizing conferences. I did not say no to those opportunities, and I did a good job on them, because they helped my research. These opportunities led to more invited lectures for seminars and conferences.

Do you have some helpful information about what to focus on first when starting an academic job? If so comment or guest post!

Category:

Career, New Job, Service, Teaching, TimeManagement

You Belong Here

One major issue that many new faculty face is Impostor Syndrome. ImpostorSyndrome is the feeling that you are a fraud, that they made a mistake in hiring you into this position, and at any minute they are going to realize it. ImpostorSyndrome affects women and men, but can be especially stressful for those who are a minority in their field. Unfortunately, women are minorities in many fields of science at the professorial level.

Just to put your mind at ease: this is a common feeling, and you can’t always believe everything you think. ImpostorSyndrome can hit at any level: upon entering college, entering graduate school, starting a first postdoc, your first tenure track, after achieving tenure, after being admitted to the National Academy… the list goes on.

Remember: they hired you. They wanted you out of the 300 candidates that applied and the 6-12 that they interviewed. They negotiated and spent money on start-up for you. You proved yourself in your Ph.D. and your postdoc and your interview to earn a place to be there. You deserve to be here because you are awesome. Think positive.

My solution: “Fake It Until You Make It.” This means that you just act like you belong. Even though inside you feel weird, you just pretend that you know what you are doing, and everything is OK. In fact, you probably do know what you are doing, and everything will likely be OK. As part of FakeItUntilYouMakeIt, keep your eyes open and see what others are doing and act like them.

FakeItUntilYouMakeIt does not mean that you should bumble around doing things wrong time and time again pretending that they are right. People are sure to notice if you are confidently wrong all the time.

I recommend: if you are unsure about something specific, ask your NearPeers how they solved certain problems. NearPeers are people 1-2 years ahead of you who have already gone through the same stage. I actually went as far as to ask my SupportiveSeniorColleagues about how they solve certain matters. I stress Supportive. Since they were supportive, they saw this as WomanOfScience addressing problems quickly instead of WomanOfScience doesn’t know what she is doing.

Another good group to consult are AcademicDynastyPeers. AcademicDynastyPeers are peers who have an academic in their family, usually a parent. They grew up knowing academia from the inside, and they feel pretty comfortable with the process that you are undertaking. Most AcademicDynastyPeers are open about their ideas of the job, and willing to share if you just ask.

After a while of FakingIt, you will forget that you didn’t know how to do that thing, and you will have MadeIt.

Are there other solutions to ImpostorSyndrome that people want to share? Comment or make a guest post.

Category:

Career, New Job, Self-Promotion

Starting the Tenure Track

Starting up a new tenure track job is really, really hard. You are stepping into a new job that you were not trained to do. Up until now, your training was in research, and research is important (especially at research-intensive universities). In your new tenure track job, you will also have to teach (well), perform service work, mentor students and guide them, start a lab/research group from scratch, and manage people, manage budgets, manage your time. This job is not just one job, but several. The worst part is that you were supposed to have learned all these skills through osmosis somehow and observation. Unfortunately for many of us, our prior mentors were not good teachers, mentors, or managers. Or if they were, they did not share the secrets of their craft either through purposeful or accidental neglect. Thus, we are left to bumble through and figure things out on our own. 

Over the next few posts, I will be discussing some of the parts of starting a new job and some possible strategies for coping with myriad of new things you are now responsible for. In addition, the initial trial period before attaining tenure is prime time for fertility and trying to start a family and a life. Many women have babies in this time because it is now of never.  I hope the next several posts will help those entering and make those who somehow made it through feel better about how they did to get to the next stage. Please send guest posts and comments, especially those who just got tenure or are still pre-tenure and have specific questions.

Category:

Career, Mentoring, Service, Teaching, TimeManagement, WomenRock

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