Test grading

I was disappointed in how the students performed on my question on the exam. I asked a question that I considered a gimme - it was on the major points of my lecture which were quite clear - both from the lecture and the handout. What was really weird was almost the same number of students received scores on the question of 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10. In other words no curve but flat. Some students did not even attempt to write anything down. Now if this were a course for Freshmen I could make an excuse that some of the students should not be here at this time but this is a Graduate course.

I did not realize that a month had passed since my last post. I do not mean to make it sound like each day is the same as the last cause they are not but it is just that not much worth blogging about or that I wish to blog about has occurred.

This morning the internet access on our floor was lost - it only goes to remind one how dependent we have become on it. What is really bad is that the school encourages us to use networked services for much of our critical software. When things are going well this is nice because you do not have to pay the big bill for the software, it is updated and maintained for you. The bad thing is that when the network is down you cannot do even the simplest of tasks. Fortunately I was not working on anything on the computer that was critical but if I was I would have been very upset. I must admit I have learned to save copies locally and I could have taken any number of files to other computers. But still we have become very dependent on something which may be a problem.

It is amazing how much time it takes to work on a lecture. I am getting a lecture ready now I have given the last couple of years. So far I have probably spent 20 hours working on this already completed lecture. Reading new reviews of the area to see if there was anything new that I should incorporate, see if any figures were better than the ones I was using etc. A big part of getting the lecture ready is to make sure it flows and is understandable.

Advising honors students

I serve as an adviser for a number of honors students. This is actually a pleasure since the students are always doing so well academically. They generally are quite interesting people and are quite willing to work very hard. And probably most importantly they are self motivated. Much of my advice is about preparing for the next step - yes for almost all the students I see they are thinking about the next step - graduate school or professional school (e.g. medical, pharmacy, dental). I am sure they faced the situation in school about other students asking them why they work so hard - well it is because they have lofty goals and that is the only way to reach them.

We had our reception for our new students yesterday. Time to show them they are special and important to us. Also a time to hit on them to work in your lab. The problem now is paying for the student. I appreciate that they have to be paid a living wage but when this is coming out of a grants budget it is hard to do the math between paying for a grad student who may take 3 or more years to get publications or a postdoc who may not be as talented and cost 50% more but who can be expected to turn out publications faster.

Just read a blurb that the Department of Defense wants to reduce the indirect costs rate for grants from the current 45-55% to 20%. For those not aware of it when we write a grant on top of the money we request is a percentage - the indirect costs. This is supposed to pay for things required by the university to keep the research enterprise going - lights, electricity, housekeeping, etc. What has happened is that the University has become dependent on that income stream to keep the operation afloat - including the operation of departments. With the budget cuts from our state to the university ALL the state money in our Department is for faculty and staff salaries. We live off the indirect costs our Department gets - when someone in our Department loses a grant it hurts us all as we lose that indirect cost money. Almost monthly we see how much grant money and indirect costs we bring back compared to all the other departments. Money, money, money.

Finished Michael Crichton's "Next". I hope that people who read this are not taking some of his statements as facts. Although it is true that the Congress has mandated that Universities try to patent things that the faculty develop it is also true that the companies will not try to develop things without patent protection. Why spend all the money on development when someone can jump on the bandwagon at the end. They need to recover some of their money - not all projects taken to the development stage work out. Now it is another matter for the price they set to recover their investment and make a profit but the scientist does not play a role in this in spite of the implication from the book. The other issue is how universities, especially public ones, are supported. For big research based universities the proportion of the budget that comes from the state is about 20%. In fact faculty are mandated even at public universities to bring in a significant proportion of their salary from outside sources (20% here). All the research is supported from outside sources - their is no money in the budget for the school to support research. Believe it or not the vast majority of scientists do not measure their success as the size of their compensation - their prestige with their colleagues is the driving force.