Helping the Minoritized Achieve in Academic Science

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Women’s Issues: VPL

Warning: This post is meant to be funny, so don’t take it too seriously. We all need a laugh every now and then.

Illustration of string underwear with V inters...

Illustration of string underwear with V intersection at the back and strap sides (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

On the subject of what not to wear, how do people feel about VPL? What is VPL? Visible Panty Lines. This subject is strictly women-only. I don’t think there is a man alive who thinks about or cares about VPLs. If I look at my husband, he doesn’t even care when half his boxers are hanging out at the top of his pants. Sorry, honey, but it’s true.

So here is my dilemma. What do I wear when I am teaching? I like to wear dress slacks, and those are the worst for VPL. I spend a lot of time standing in front of a class. If I write on the chalk board, my back is facing the audience. So, I think a lot about what my butt looks like. I feel even more pressure when the class is mostly men.

Some might say to wear underwear that do not have panty lines – like a thong. Here is the problem with that. If I had on a thong, I would want to pick it out all during class. And, it would be annoying and worse than having VPL. So a thong is out.

So, I wear regular underwear and have VPL. That might seem bad, but then I feel like, maybe I want people to know I wear underwear. Is that weird? Like, because what kind of scientist doesn’t wear underwear? This kinda relates to the last post. I have this inside feeling that WomenOfScience can’t be pretty or sexy. And thongs are sexy, so I should wear granny panties, because that is what WomenOfScience wear. By Robin Sellinger is right. WomenOfScience can be sexy. And funny, and cute, and wear high heels, and bright colors!

Of course, all this is moot, because I end up wearing jeans to teach, and you can’t see VPLs through stiff materials.

So, what do you think? Have something funny to say or share? Comment or guest post!

Category:

Teaching, WomenRock

Guest Post: Changing 20%

A couple weeks ago, I had a post that was related to teaching about how to better your teaching slowly, but making 20% Changes. From that post, I received this inspiring guest post on the topic of changing 20% from a PreTenure WomanOfScience, which I am posting here. She correctly realized that the 20% ChangeModel does not need to be limited to teaching or even to your career. I hope you enjoy it and remind you again that you can follow this blog by pressing the Follow Button, but you can also lead this blog, by guest posting or commenting. Consider doing both as we expand this blog over the next few years and hopefully open up a real dialogue to help women’s success in academic science. Here is the post:

The recent post on changing 20% in teaching inspired a sort of new year’s resolution list for me. The theme of the list is to change 20% in tasks in my work and life. Different from the usual new year’s resolutions that always seem to require drastic, or 100% changes, I am only aiming for small changes.

I am posting this because I feel that this is an entirely novel approach to self-improvement. It’s novel, because small changes are more doable. In some ways I suspect that we add extra pressure to ourselves to be perfect. The process of getting there can be overwhelming and stifling. I am convinced that this 20% change approach is not that different from laying out specific aims for the over-arching goal in a proposal.

Changing 20% in teaching:

  1. Use the half hour before each lecture as office hour.
  2. Use the last five minutes of each lecture as an open floor Q&A.

I teach a small class this semester, the students who take it are extremely motivated, because the class (new but super awesome) is not yet part of their graduation requirement. Even so, the first time I taught it, no one came to my office hour. Rather, I find them hanging out in the classroom for the half hour before class. So this year I will split my office hour into two half hour sections, held in the same classroom as the lecture. There is minimal effort required for either the students or me. We all have to go to class, and I have to hold office hours. I also find that not all students have the guts to ask questions after class. I speculate that designating 5 minutes of lecture time for open floor Q&A will force the students to verbalize questions that they might have. Both of my 20% changes probably only works for a small class, but that is okay.
Changing 20% in networking:

  1. Talk to 20% more people at a conference.
  2. Practice listening skills when talking to colleagues on campus.

This is a change that I have started to implement. Taking is incredibly difficult to me. It’s worse than squeezing that last dollop of toothpaste. (Awkward pause.) But, like most scientists, I’m obsessed about my project. So my change will focus on the science aspect. Instead of waiting passively for people to come to my poster at this conference, I identified and specifically invited those who will have important feedback to my work (not yet published). Everyone I reached out to came and I got a lot out of it. There was only one person who did not come by, but the invitation may have been better registered had it been a few beers earlier. The invitation process was pretty rocky for the most part: it’s odd to demand people’s time without giving a good reason. What seemed to work well, in particular for those who don’t know me, is to identify strange observations that they might care about in a quick sentence. Tying into project interest, my next goal is to practice listening skills when talking to colleagues on campus. Scientists are very specific and meticulous, if there is something they want to tell me, I want to stop being anxious and actually hear it.

Other: There are other tasks that no one will care about other than myself, such as folding 20% of my socks.

This post is obviously different, it’s more of a planned test run, rather than learned wisdom. The message that I want to send is not only that this blog impacts the reader (at least me), but also to verbalize that the pressure of being perfect or else is very annoying. Changing 20% at a time is much better!

Thanks so much for this post. I found it super inspirational. Hopefully, you will write again in a couple months to update your progress on this change model.

Do you have a story or anecdote you would like to share to help others? If so, please do guest post or comment.

Category:

Career, Networking, New Job, Self-Promotion, Teaching, TimeManagement, WomenRock

Your Packet: Teaching

At most schools, research is most important and teaching is a close second. So, you need to have a teaching statement in your packet. This should be familiar, since many schools and departments require a teaching statement in your application packet. When writing your application, it was probably not clear what that teaching statement was supposed to say, especially since most of us haven’t taught before going to their tenure track job. Well, it probably isn’t clear here either. Again, this is where some one else’s packet and teaching statement can help immensely.

Another thing is that your CV now has a bunch of information about your teaching including a list of courses that you taught, a list of students you have mentored, and students’ committees. So, what needs to go here? This post includes some suggestions of topics you can include. I am sure there are other good things, so please comment or guest post. (Don’t forget to hit the follow button to be notified every time there is a new WomanOf Science post!)

Your point of view: People say you should discuss your vision for teaching. When applying, this was a daunting task. Never having taught meant that I had no idea how to teach poorly, let alone how I thought it should be done well. After a few years of teaching, and hopefully getting better at it, you might actually have a real vision of the best way to teach. Maybe you don’t have a “vision,” but you can say what things are important to you about teaching a class. Again, give them your take on things to orient them about your opinions on teaching.

Course development: This may or may not apply, but if you did develop a new course, you should describe what you did in your packet. This is similar to what you do in your research statement. Describe what you did. Use figures, including pictures of your class, if you have them. If you were funded to develop the new course, describe the grant. Play up the fact that you took a risk and did something innovative before tenure. Again, self-promote and sell it here.

Student mentoring: Part of your teaching includes the training of students in the laboratory. If you have specific means to mentor your students, describe them. I think it is easier to have a vision about how to mentor than how to teach because it is so closely aligned with research, which is the one thing you were trained to do. You probably had some idea of how you would train your graduate students and some ideal of what your graduate students would come out being able to do. Do you teach them specific skills? Then there are a whole bunch of other skills that we train our students in addition to the science, and most people have a good idea how they would ideally do that, too. For instance: Do you train them in writing? How? Do you educate them in presentation skills? In what way? Do you encourage them and send them to conferences to present their work? How is training a postdoc different from training a graduate student in your lab? How do you train undergraduates? Check with your institution if mentoring should go under teaching or research, but it usually is part of teaching.

Classroom teaching: Since your CV already has a list of courses, this section should include more information about how you went about teaching your assigned courses. You should emphasize innovative changes, those 20% changes that we talked about before, that made your class better. If your evaluations improved over time due to these changes, point it out.

More so than the research statement, the teaching statement has a lot of flexibility. You can quote student evaluations and even include scans of thank you letters from students – should you have them! Again, you are selling yourself so that you are sailing over the bar instead of just barely making it. I am sure there are a lot of other great suggestions, so hopefully some others will chime in!

Related articles

Category:

Career, Mentoring, Self-Promotion, Teaching, Tenure

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

Office Hours = Homework Sessions

My first semester of teaching, I had office hours at some time during the day that worked for me. A very few, dedicated students were able to come to the office hours. I got to know these students really well. I think many professors would say that they really get to know the students who frequent their office hours. And, I did too, but I was troubled by how few students were able to come to office hours. I realized that daytime office hours were difficult for students because many had classes at the same time.

I decided to make a significant change to my office hours in order to reach more students. I decided to have evening office hours that I called homework sessions, so that more students could attend. Instead of my small, camped office, I had a classroom assigned to me that could hold the entire class. The classroom had desks that were moveable, so that students could work in small groups. When students arrived, I asked them which problem they were working on. I put all the students working on the same problem together, so that they could problem-solve together and peer-educate each other. Plus, this allowed me to help several students at once. Often one student would get it, and then explain further to the rest of the students in their group in their own words.

This system worked better than expected in that more students were working together on their homework. Plus, I had more direct access to the students and their thought processes as they actively solved problems. When I taught, I was in a huge lecture hall with seats bolted to the floor in stadium seating. These homework sessions enabled me to meet, chat with, and directly educate many more students than my normal class periods. The students felt more comfortable with me, and were more open about what they didn’t know, also allowing me to teach them individually and better.

Here is a specific example: During one HW session, I was watching a student solve a problem, and I realized that the student was struggling with fractions. We talked about it, and the student was able to get extra tutoring.

I was able to directly mentor students on how to get into a research lab, what a science degree is supposed to teach you, how to get into graduate school, what graduate school in science was like and that it was free!, and many other topics. The students really liked the homework sessions. I was told that they continued to work in these groups through graduation, and that many of them had never worked in a group on homework before my course. They weren’t communicating with their peers about the course before this course!

One more thing. My homework problem sets were due on Fridays, so I made my homework sessions on Mondays and Tuesdays to encourage the students to start early. Some, very motivated students would come to the homework sessions with most problems started and many completed. Most other students would have nothing started, but, by coming to the homework sessions, they would start their homework on Mondays instead of Thursdays. Some students complained that they wanted the homework sessions on Thursdays. I would explain, as I explained the first day of class, that I had these homework sessions early to encourage students to start their homework assignments early, which they really needed to get into the habit of doing. Having them on Thursday would defeat the purpose of the session. By the end of the semester I would have 50 – 75% of the course attending one or both homework sessions each week! And, my evaluation scores went from 3.5 out of 5 to 4.9 out of 5!

I understand that evening office hours probably won’t work for everyone, but having them at a time that is better for students (afternoons, maybe) in a big classroom and not your office could be the key to unlocking your students’ learning gains. And getting better evaluations! Although it seemed like I was spending a lot more hours, it wasn’t any more than regular office hours. Further, these office hours were a time saver. I didn’t have to have special individual office hours for each student who couldn’t come to my normal office hours because they could all come to one or the other homework session.

So, this was one way to teach better through direct engagement with the students. Do you have other good or better ways to hold office hours? Share with a comment or guest post!

Category:

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

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

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