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.

I am totally bummed out - my experiment did not work. Again it is where a group that previously gave one result now was totally crap. I had an idea that this would happen (even noted the problem in my lab book) but do not have a clue as to why it should have happened.

Last week we had a reception for a member of our faculty who is moving into a top position with the administration for the University. It is so important for us to be involved with the governance of our University. Too often we cite our busy schedule and the importance of our research as reasons for not becoming involved with the governance. But when we do not participate we get people in these positions who may not understand our needs or indeed what is needed to be successful. This person is to be commended for moving on with her career in a way that will benefit many.

Comments on Michael Crichton's "Next"

I have started reading Next by Michael Crichton. I hated State of Fear and would not have read this one if someone had not given it to me to read. In the part I have just finished he paints the review process of failed because of the few cases of fraud such as the one by the the Korean group. A lot of his comments reflect the views of someone who does not understand the review process. One of the assumptions that must be made when you receive a paper for review is that the data is honestly presented. A person who would be reviewing a person is an active scientist and would not have the time to review the primary data in each case - for micrographs this means standing over the scope with the person. If one says why not use people who only review papers then you have to look at those who would be in these groups - people who could not sustain a research program. The one thing about science is that it does self correct. If something is published that is of interest others will try to replicate the work and extend it. Word gets out fast if work cannot be repeated. If one publishes fraudulent work in an obscure field where replication is less likely the question is why - no one cares about the work.

Today is going to be a long day in the lab. A problem with multi day experiments is the timing - started too late in the week means you either spend the weekend in the lab or spend some long days getting it done. Since my cells were only ready a day late it means today will be a 13 hour day in the lab.

Found out my latest grant application did not get funded. In fact it was a resubmission and did worse than last time. I thought I had addressed all the criticisms. I will have to wait until the comments are posted to see what the problems were.

This is one of the problems with research. You cannot do the work unless you have funding. To get the preliminary data to show that the work is feasible and you can do everything proposed you need money. It is chasing ones own tail.

A long time coworker is reaching a special age mark tomorrow. It got us talking (again) how it is so hard to imagine we are really as old as our drivers licenses say. We still visualize ourselves as 20-30 year olds. It is only when students indicate that we are in their parents age group that it hits we are much older. The common consensus is that we are always working with 20-30 year olds. We age but the group we work with does not. Therefore, we do not age.

To me the attraction of science was the experimental aspect - thinking of questions, figuring out experiments to address the questions and getting the experiments to work. I have always been happiest in the lab. To me it is unfortunate but if one is to really make it one has to spend less and less time in the lab - you are directing others, working on papers and grants to get the money to keep the enterprise going. I tried to grow at one time but was becoming more and more unhappy - is it worth it? Each person has to answer that question for themselves. I will never reach the pinnacle of success whatever that may be. But isn't it a reality that most of us are producing good work but the groundbreaking results are very few and far between.

Today was a students' midthesis seminar. In our program we require this seminar when the student is about 50% done with the research for their PhD. It is such a valuable experience for the student to have to get up as often as possible and present their findings in a seminar format. They have to get comfortable with this as it will be a big part of their professional life if they want to be successful.

Just came across an article on scientific blogs:

L. Bonetta (2007) Scientists enter the blogosphere. Cell 129:443-445

Forms, forms, forms. Seems like everyone wants you to fill in their form. One comes from the group writing a big grant for the NIH needing information on how my research fits into the translational framework. This is a really big thing in funding these days - how your research is translational. A second form concerned the vacation time I have take and my technician have taken over the last 3 months. Another form circulated requesting availability for meeting with the Department Head for the annual meeting.

For the first time in quite a while I had several students complain about the final. Part of the issue is that we give 3 section exams then give a comprehensive final which is worth 50% of the grade. A fair number of the students just work to memorize all the material then forget it the day after the exam so studying the material for the final is like learning it anew. The student who wrote felt the questions were not reflective of the material. For several reasons he is wrong. First the questions for the section exam and the final are put together at the same time with 70% of the questions coming from a pool of questions used in previous exams. It is hard to imagine that all the instructors in the course chose picky questions. The second is that the exam does not have to reflect all the material. It is to test the level of their knowledge. I would argue that the level of knowledge in part of the course would be reflective of the students level of knowledge in most of the course. In the past I have looked at the exam scores for the students. In general a student who does well on one exam will do well on all of them. In general a student who does poorly on one exam will do poorly on all of them. There are of course exceptions and basing the grade on 3 section exams and a final avoids some anomalies but in general it is true.

One of the more troubling aspects of the academic life is the more corporate aspects it is taking on. The newest proposal is to assign space to departments based on a money formula - the cost of the space depends on the quality of the space and its purpose. If a Department needs more space it has to come out of their budget (already stretched by cuts in state funding). But how is a Department head going to handle the space of a faculty member who is between grants. Remove his space to save the Department money? Right now they will at least wait a while to see if the funding returns.

Ah, a great way to start a new week. My cells are contaminated so I have to start growing them again pushing this experiment back a week. My understanding was that the coordinator of the first semester of our course had an agreement with one of the faculty in this two semester course to move the lectures they gave from the second to the first semester. Turns out this is not how the faculty member who gives the lectures sees things. They of course will not deem it their responsibility to contact the course director to iron out the issues but that the course director, who already apparently thinks the issues have been addressed, should be contacting them.

Just finished another frustrating conversation with a faculty member. I had given my own evaluation form to the students for the course I run rather than rely on the online form the college uses. The response rate on the colleges' form has been dismal for a number of years. To me the problem is the number of questions they ask about each instructor. It is not a problem when a very limited number of people teach a course but this course is team taught and has about 18 instructors in total. I know if I were faced with a lengthy form to fill out I would not do it. Anyway, the form I used had 1 as the best and 5 as the worst - one question per instructor with a place for comments. I then gave an average for each instructor. This person was really perturbed that I had not used 5 as the best and 1 as the worst - they would not be able to understand the numbers if 1 were the best. The 1 to 5 had been fine with the leaders of the other two sections of the course. They were also worried about using this number for promotions when the reverse is the school norm - I did not realize until after we stopped talking that all the faculty involved were full professors and promotion was no longer an issue.

I am just amazed (and alarmed) about the performance of students on my essay questions. I asked a very simple essay question for one of the courses I teach in. In fact I felt rather bad about the question afterwards because it was such an easy question - I thought most of the students would have it right. Boy was I surprised when I got the answers and found that over half of the class had failed my question. I actually had told them the answer in question in a way when I was going through my lecture.

Two different lectures today. Really does me in. But it is the end of the semester. Now all I have to do is write a test question and grade answers for this question and another one I wrote for a different class. But it does mark the end of the semester for us so now I hope the committee work does not start getting piled up on me again.

Am in full teaching mode this week. One thing I cannot get over is how many students choose not to attend class. They do get the notes either through the class pool (of mixed quality) and from the handouts we post on Blackboard. They also study on their own. It is just something that we did not do when I was in college and graduate school.

Yesterday afternoon spent an hour working with one of the undergrad students I advise on choosing which medical school acceptance to take. A nice problem for him. Both choices would be fine. Also talked to the materials transfer people about our ability to be compensated for the materials we supply to other investigators. This is a rather complicated issue. The bottom line is one is to supply other investigators which various raw materials (clones, cell lines, etc) on request. The problem in general is that there is a cost involved in making the material. Generally this is done as a courtesy. However, in our case we are an established core set up by a grant from the NIH. We are required by the terms of our grant to be compensated for the supplies and time of a technician. The materials transfer people actually understood exactly what we wanted to do and told us exactly how it could be done quite easily.

Just heard that one of the people who is a part of the research group I am involved in will be leaving. His move is an upward move but it creates a real hole in our program and in the Department he comes from. He is a clinician/scientist and it is hard to find these people - there is so much emphasis on clinical income in the clinical departments that there is a negative incentive to establish a research program. It is a real shame. We are an academic institution and I have this notion that we should not make financial considerations our driving force. This may be naive.

One of the problems with being used to working in the lab is when you cannot (because of teaching, money issues, meetings) it is hard to judge your day. I actually finished the tasks I had in mind for the day and am kind of thinking what should I do for the next hour. I hate wasting the time but I am tired having read for most of the day, had one meeting, went to an equipment show. I would feel terribly guilty if I went home early so I will do some general stuff for a while to avoid getting down on myself.

Today students presented in the class I taught in last week. Tried to emphasize thinking - going for the concept of what is the question and how they tried to answer it rather than bog down in details. They semi got the concept although I think the larger question of what was the point of the papers was poorly presented.

This weekend was our faculty retreat. We have these about every 3 years. It is a time to discuss the major issues facing the department (budget, teaching, space) and how we should deal with them. As usual several members hijack the discussion and push their agenda. I just find that frustrating.

Today was one of those meetings where you do not think this is necessary but it is mandated by the federal government so you do it. I am in charge of the committee and try to make the meetings move along - if we have to be there I will make it as meaningful as I can. The problem is I am old enough to remember the time when the federal government did not regulate these matters. The vast majority of people of course did things in a moral manner but just enough bad things happened that we now have all kinds of regulations. Some of these are necessitated because the type of reasearch we a capable of doing puts things in a very different realm.

Today I was looking over the schedule for the rest of the term for the course I run and noticed that a couple of times seemed odd. Looking up the official calendar I found that somehow I had put the wrong times down for 3 lectures! Two of them are not a big deal but 1 error is really glaring. I am at a loss to explain how I made such a stupid mistake. It really pisses me off and I know the students will complain about it.

Sat on a students thesis proposal committee. This is when the student presents the work they plan to carry out for their PhD degree. As usual it is interesting to see what the student just does not know. We pointed out how important it was to know the basics of your project. I was supposed to be on another one tomorrow but the student on Friday contacted me and asked if they could first get the proposal to me on Monday leaving only 2 days to read it (since they tend to be 10 single spaced pages this is not possible with the other things I have to do). I told them it was not all right and unless they could get the proposal to me on Saturday they would have to postpone the meeting. They did not meet my Saturday deadline. Since the student set up the date they knew well in advance when the proposal had to be finished. It is important that students understand there are deadlines - we have them for grants, getting papers in, teaching.

Really got into it with another faculty member at a committee meeting today. They were going on and on about how the administration was spending our money and how we as faculty were weak since our sister institutions have blocked a specific program. I defended our faculty by pointing out her facts were wrong. This led to their assertion that my facts were wrong since they heard them at a meeting the other day. I am not sure what facts they heard but the University official web site supports my version as well as a newspaper report. The other issue was how the administration spends money. Before we start banging our chests that they are expanding we should see facts that indeed they are taking more money rather than rebudgeting what they have. They indeed may have too large a budget but my bet is they will show that their budget is actually smaller than in years past in which case we would look like fools.

I need to learn how not to get so worked up by what goes on at meetings. The one today was an important meeting but a lot of the time was spent with two members arguing over an issue that happened over a year ago. The unfortunate aspect was one member just could not understand how they could be wrong - they were asking for a payment in one form which simply cannot be done but could have been done in another way. They just refuse to believe that they cannot receive the payment in the way they want. Another issue was the look and feel of the web pages. They wanted to have all the faculty have a uniform format. When I brought up that this had lasted only a short while in an earlier incarnation of the Departmental web page they started talking about how primitive it had been (somewhat true since it was created long ago in a more primitive time). I did not bring up the fact that they were the ones to first move away from the agreed upon format.

Yesterday I had a 1.5 h lecture for a class. One of the big issues to me is the benefits/problems of team taught courses. In this particular course almost every lecture is given by a different faculty member. This course is among a number at the extreme end of the team taught course. The advantage is that each lecture is taught by someone who has more knowledge than when the same person has to cover a range of topics. The problem for the student is each lecturer has a different lecture style, a different emphasis, and different ideas of what types of information a student should learn. Not easy for the student.

Small victories. Figured out my computer problem.

Major defeats. Found out the grant I am part of was cut 17%. This is something probably not known outside academic circles. You get a grant from the NIH balancing the amount of work with the budget figuring on the number of people you are going to have to pay for then the agency cuts your budget (like I said 17%) and expect you to do the same work. With my very small budget this is a real problem. I have certain fixed costs - salaries or more truthfully the one salary on this grant. With the cut the vast majority of the budget is going to be devoted to that. How about supplies? Forget travel.

The student I was to talk to on Friday was late. Every time we have an appointment he is late and I have made it quite clear how pissed I get waiting. What I have taken to doing is leaving my office and not returning for a while - making him wait. I am constantly telling him I have other things to do than wait in my office for him to show up. Maybe because I am so compulsive about being on time I find people making me wait very distasteful. I also wonder if it is a power play - showing they are more important that me. A major pet peeve of mine.

Ah, the end of the week. Time to finish up the tasks for the week. Start getting stuff ready for the new week. Make sure teaching assignments are noted.

Will talk to my one of my advisees this afternoon. This is the student of mine who is having an awful problems passing exams. He has had to retake almost all the exams at least twice and he still goes on. I am afraid that I think the program should have dropped him but they find an excuse to keep him on.

Yesterday I received an e-mail from one of the instructors in the course I direct. They were complaining that the microphone was still not working. When it was mentioned that this was the first time mention was made that the microphone was not working the question immediately came up why didn't the person say something the first time they found it was not working rather than assuming someone else would magically know about it and take care of it.

The other amazing thing is that an instructor requested that someone be available to show slides for their talk. This raises several questions - the major one when is the last time the person modified their talk? It is actually quite difficult to find someone who can make slides for classes - everyone uses the computer.

One of the harder aspects of the nature of the research I am carrying out now is the length of time between the initiation of an experiment and the results. This is not all that bad when you know an approach is working and all you are doing is repeating experiments or just varying the conditions but the same techniques are involved. But when you are working out the bugs in a technique you have to wait until you have the results before you begin the next experiment so you can determine what conditions you have to vary next. That is the stage I am in now. With committees and teaching it is even harder.

Had a complaint from a student about my last exam. Basically that their performance was poor yet they have been doing so well up to this point so my exam must be bad. I will admit my exam questions are hard. I tell the students that a hard exam is really in their best interest. If they are a good student then they will do well and be differentiated from the poorer students. If they have been doing poorly a hard exam is the only way they can pull their grade up. If the exam were easy everyone will do well and they would remain at the bottom. The students never understand this.

Friday's seminar was one I took for the Department. I showed the flag, filled up the audience, etc. I really did not understand much of it. The speaker was good it was just the topic outside my interest by a mile and presented a very mathematical approach. In high school I thought I was really hot stuff in math because I could do algebra so well. When I got to college and took calculus (3 semesters because of my major) I really struggled. I still break out in a cold sweat when I see differential equations. From the title I knew this would happen but as a faculty member I feel it is important to be as seminars both to support the faculty who invited the person (nothing is worse than a small audience) and show the graduate students that the faculty do come to the seminars so they should also.

Yesterdays lecture was for a seminar series for the vet postdocs. The guy who was in charge of the series reminded me that I had been giving a lecture in this series on molecular biology for 16 years or so. I was amazed it had been that long.

Today is a memorial symposium for a colleague who died quite young. That is always shocking to me and forces me to focus on doing the things I want while I can. That includes both work and outside of work. A few years ago I had a close friend and colleague who was my age die suddenly - no warning. He had been looking forward to all the things he was going to be able to do as other aspects of his life were finally being handled. Then poof. One of his mantras had always been what are you waiting for when I would dither over some issue (usually the spending of money in my case).

Lecture day today. Yesterday I decided a slide was needed to illustrate a point. Went to the net found a site which had a picture of just what I wanted grabbed it and put in the new slide. It is so wonderful being able to make changes up to the end.

Got a request from a former student for a recommendation for an award. The only problem is the letter is required tomorrow. I will do it - partly because I know the student only recently learned of the potential to apply for it. I hate having to do these things at the last minute.

What to do? Faced with a student (considered to be a very good one) who has to write a paper to proceed in the program. The first iteration was not good. Several on the committee gave suggestions and the person was to redo the paper. It came back only marginally improved. Rather than rewrite it the person took the changes as being editorial in nature rather than substantive. Another person and I went over it again emphasizing to the person how it failed to meet our expectations and they were to redo it. Now got another version which again is basically only a minor improvement over the last version. This person has to pass this in order to proceed with the program. If they were to fail this they would be out. I do not know if I can hold my nose and pass the person or what.

Another meeting today. Actually more like a symposium. I will pick and choose which sessions to attend and work from my office inbetween.

Got some paper forms I had to fill out. Do realize how hard it is to find a typewriter now?
We do have one in the front office but I do not feel like working on personal material in front of everyone. Decided to scan them and fill them in with my computer in Photoshop. Was doing it in Word but the spacing was harder to get right.

For all the complaining I do I should point out that I really enjoy what I do and look forward to each Monday! It is the start of a new week and new hope that I have figured things out. This week will be an office week as I again have meetings and am working on this lecture.

Lecturing has really changed. Not that long ago the debate was over how many slides to use and how often to go to the blackboard. I hated slides. It was a pain to get them made and then I would find a mistake and have to get them reshot or go with one I knew had an error. Then the next year I would have to sort through them all and figure out what I had and what I needed. Now we have PowerPoint. I can make all the changes I want and tweak slides until the minute I walk into class. I find that it really helps me get organized. I find that it is much easier for me to get a good flow to the lecture as I can move things around to fit. Anything that makes me more efficient is quite welcome.

I am a creature of routine. I learned a long time ago this made me more efficient. Rather than waste time flitting from one task to another I have certain routines. Fridays is Current Contents day. For those who do not know this is a weekly listing of the table of contents of journals. It saves time from having to leaf through the individual journals or going online and looking at them. I began with the print version while an undergraduate and have been making this a weekly ritual ever since. Now I read Current Contents on the computer. The other Friday task is to finish up all the things from the week that have been piling up.

Today we have a seminar. I try to go to all those in our department even when the topic is not in my area. I think this supports the department and shows the speaker there is an audience. Good pr for the department. As long as the speaker sticks to the hour format at worst I have only wasted 1 hour and even then if the seminar is really bad I can just think about other things.

At my meeting yesterday another of the things that annoy me happened. A member who had missed the meeting where we had discussed an issue brought it up again and proceeded to carry on a 30 minute monologue covering the very issues we had already discussed. If you are going to miss a meeting why do you think your opinions are so important that everyone must hear them at the next meeting without knowing that the same conclusion and decisions were already made.

Was supposed to have a meeting with a student to help her with the material I had covered in my lectures. She did not show and did not let me know she was not going to make it! Received an e-mail that she had forgotten! Must say I am not happy that I blew an hour because of that but did schedule her some time today.

Today another 2 meetings. At least this one has a defined time frame and actually makes policy decisions. I have less of a problem when a committee actually has a role - the defined time limits the agony since you know no matter what you will be done at a certain point.

Finished the 3 grant reviews. It is something that as part of the academic life we take on extra work (reviewing grants, reviewing papers, etc.) for no compensation. The whole system is based upon such volunteer efforts. Most of the people take it quite seriously. Especially with grants. You are deciding who will have the money to do the work and who will not. There are only a limited amount of funds. An awesome responsibility.

One of the aspects of the academic life I was unaware of as a student was the "meeting." It is amazing how these things eat up time - often way more than they have to. If you ever want to be disillusioned about professors go to a meeting! It seems some attendees at a meeting must show there dominance by taking over the discussion and going on and on only to reach the same conclusion that was there 20 minutes ago.

Speaking of meetings today I do not have any formal ones! Only 2 more grant reviews to finish, talk to my tech about the results of her most recent experiment, figure out why my experiment did not give me what I expected, and work on my new lecture.

Beginning

Well, this is my first post.

As an academic people have all kinds of false ideas of what we do. People think we sit around most of the day. At least in my case that is far from true. I would love to be able to spend more time in the lab working but take today:

8 am class
9 am review applicants
10 am graduate committee meeting
4 pm meet with student

Somewhere in this time I have to finish an experiment, finish the reviews of 3 grants, read four journals, talk to my tech, make sure our new incubator gets set up, talk the Department Head to tell him what went on at the meeting where I subbed for him.