Journeys of an Academic

Update: RBOC Style

2009-07-09T16:46:00.002-04:00

So I've actually never written a post full of random updates but I have an odd assortment of things on the mind:

Getting away from the computer is easier said than done.
My camera viewfinder lenses are frightfully dirty.
Walking is infinitely more enjoyable along running water with great views. It also helps to be somewhere pedestrian friendly.
Many a cat find themselves to approve of my ability to serve as cat staff.
I found a perfect place to spend the night in a tent but it's less than commonly accessible.
A remarkable number of people have multiple personas dependent on the context.
You never know who you might run into on a train.
I need to get back into shape.
Watching a technophobe interact with a GPS system is amusing.
I am also missing getting comments on the blog. Don't know if I've lost the magic comment inducing elixir or what might be up.

Hope all are well!

An Open Letter to Engineering Professors

2009-07-06T19:23:00.002-04:00

Have you noticed the students in front of you to the point of seeing them? Do you see students catching onto material quicker than you expected? What about students who seem to be always ahead of you in your notes? Do you have students asking questions about applications, extensions, or unexpected combinations regarding the topics at hand? Are there students who ask such pointed questions that you hesitate to call on them in class? Do you have students argue intensely with you while at the same time catching the nuances of your jokes? Do you have students who pull in information from their other classes to make connections, independent of how relevant the other material seems at first glance? These students bring abilities, passions, skills and gifts that we should utilize. Moreover, teaching these students demands that we use different strategies in order to help these students become the catalysts of the future.

First, our teaching techniques should honor the tendency to seek the big picture. Beginning with the big picture allows students to move their readily held pieces of knowledge into place while simultaneously realizing the gaps in their existing knowledge base. Providing our students with a broader sense of the landscape encourages them to explore the terrain while looking for new possibilities. Showing the students the big picture of engineering early and often allows them to reflect critically and propose shifts in this big picture and actively shape how future generations see engineering. As engineers, we realize the unprecedented scale of the National Academy of Engineering’s Grand Challenges; as educators, we should support our students as they begin to propose solutions.

Second, our teaching techniques should match the diversity of today’s opportunities for engineers with the intrinsic interests of our students. Creative solutions come when people use strategies and techniques that allow for each individual to bring himself or herself into the process. Moreover, creative solutions leverage the resources of the context to produce tangible outcomes. People do the hard work involved in creative work primarily because they find the process fun. All students need opportunities to make real choices regarding tasks at hand. By inviting students to choose from an array of relevant open-ended tasks, we as educators may have the privilege of seeing our students come alive. When we as faculty learn to value the full array of complex questions that our students ask and answer, we construct an environment where everyone can contribute.

Third, our teaching techniques should accommodate students who learn quickly. Many of our students can master information quickly when given the chance. They arrive with strong skills because earlier teachers recognized these students’ strengths in math and science. Yet so often, we can fail to present information to students in a way that they can take it and run. Can we streamline the background information, work with students who need topics reinforced, and empower students who understand to demonstrate that knowledge through application?

We have students in our classrooms with sparks of insight that have the power to become creative flames of the future. Noting the presence of these students, we can empower them in a myriad of ways. Let us use teaching techniques that focus on the big picture, match the diversity of today’s opportunities for engineers with the intrinsic interests of our students, and accommodate students who learn quickly. Only when we let our students show us what they can do can we be amazed by their achievements.

Be kind to your four-footed friends!

2009-07-04T22:55:00.002-04:00

Happy Fourth of July everyone. I hope you had a good time doing whatever you were doing.

Today I hung out mostly indoors because it was raining. My friends and I are animal lovers so I got to see many animals weathering the holiday. One poor dog had to be tied to the door so he wouldn't get into anything that could hurt him because he was freaking out with all the fireworks. And the neighbors launched nothing but loud, loud, loud airborne fireworks in a condensed urban neighborhood for FOUR hours! Seriously people? I know the holiday is a big deal, but is it impossible to be sensitive to your neighbors?

Then I got home and felt bad because I've been terrorizing my cat with my vaccuum cleaner as I work to deep clean my house now that I have some time for this particular task.

And I've decided that driving home on 4 July feels infinitely safer than walking home.

The Stuff Dreams are Made Of

2009-06-29T09:08:00.002-04:00

Patchi at the Middle Years is hosting Scientiae this month. Her theme is "Mirror, mirror on the wall" which almost served as the title to this post, but I thought I might try for something original.

The last year or so has involved rediscovering my dreams. I have some dreams where people consistently told me that I had no business having them. These dreams are too directly personal to blog, but they shape what I do. These dreams shape my understanding of myself and my understanding of my work. In a word, my dreams are missional. And they're back.

It is interesting to watch in the mirror when people tell you have no business dreaming your dreams. The spark once in your eyes fades, and you collapse into a sea of dullness, a sea of apathy. It is uncomfortable to be in your own skin as you think you're a freak for wanting the things that you want. The mirror becomes a painful place as you know that you're selling yourself out in the interest of keeping the peace with the important players around you.

But occasionally, major players in your life start asking you what you want. Sometimes these people even care about how you answer. And what is even rarer is when these people pledge their support. Perhaps you have gotten better at describing your dream to someone else, or perhaps the people looking at you see the spark return to your eyes when they ask their first question.

Going after one's dreams is different than simply following one's heart. A true dream provides an energy of its own and invites you to run, to run for all your worth and try to pursue the dream as closely as possible. A true dream gets you out of bed in the morning and invites you to live your life just a little bit differently than everyone else. A true dream allows you to be yourself. A dream has a crazy power of its own. Connecting with a dream seems to connect you with the divine.

Dreaming dreams like these is hard work. All around us we find people who would rather we live according to the status quo. And a dream does not have to be wackily non-traditional in order to be a true dream. One of my best friends is living her dream right now as she raises her family (she had her first child in February). I know she is living her dream because I see the spark behind her eyes. And who am I to try to extinguish that spark?

When I look in the mirror and see the own spark in my eyes, I know I am on the right track.

scientiae-carnival

Can We Speak of Communities?

2009-06-27T16:16:00.002-04:00

A commenter asked me if we can speak of such thing as a community. It's a decent question because more than anything, we encounter boundaries. For instance, can we speak of the academic community? Of course we can because we do, but what assumptions do we make? At least from how I have caught the parlance, the academic community typically involves the PhD holders and pursuers doing research to add to the corporate body of knowledge. Yet, this statement reflects both a broad and narrow definition. For instance, this definition excludes undergraduate students, even if these students participate in undergraduate research. Moreover, this definition also excludes PhD holders working outside of research&development. However, these features of exclusion speak to the reality of the academic community; without such features, it would be difficult to theorize of the academic pipeline as leakage represents a key feature of this image.

On one level communities make sense, but something as broadly configured as the "academic community" does not offer enough description for significant utility. For instance, STEM communities differ from your humanities communities. Within STEM, you have science, technology, engineering and mathematics communities. The gradation continues to the point of sub-sub-sub-sub-fields to the point where individuals can make a difference. So while we can be in error to unilaterally ascribe features to an entire community, boundaries help us understand the rules of the game. Within several academic communities, one must hold an advanced degree in order to participate fully. While particulars vary within various sub-groupings, generalities help us help one another.

To be sure, much of human activity relates to categorizing and ascribing labels. We can debate the particulars of who can employ what labels to describe themselves and others.

Where is the Summer Going?

2009-06-26T09:03:00.002-04:00

I cannot believe that June ends next week. Like many other people, I made my list of what I want to accomplish in the summer, but now I realize how unrealistic the goals are. Granted, six projects are non-negotiable, but I only had one additional project of my own choosing. More than anything else this summer challenges me to streamline my processes. Currently I am one week in to a two week project where the two week project could very easily be a semester project. I need to work much more efficiently, but I thought I would share my exasperation with the blogosphere. Anyone else with me on these feelings?

There's More than One Way to be Something

2009-06-24T21:53:00.004-04:00

This post represents a departure from my typical schtick on the blog, but I do hope that my regular readers can see connections as I attempt to make them.

Today, 24 June, is New Directions' Synchroblog where authors from widely variant perspectives attempt to weigh in on the cultural divide between the gay community and the Christian community. Over the course of my entire blog here at Academic Crossroads, I have attempted to describe an academic's life course even through places of uncomfortable dissonance, whether that dissonance exists within a person, within a person's community, or within a person's wider social context (hence the large number of posts here tagged as "cultural insanity"). The gay-Christian debate represents another flashpoint in society that can be just as charged as the creation-evolution debate, the Republican-Democrat debate, or even the women-in-science debate. Culturally, we exist in a sea of flash points characterized by either/ors; and logically, the insistence of these absolute zones of no-overlap do not and cannot exist through looking at the lives of people who try to live in the non-existent middle ground.

You cannot be a scientist if you are a woman is just as repugnant as you cannot be a Christian if you are gay.

I always laugh when people ask me about my "gay lifestyle" because I wonder what everyone thinks I am doing. I'm quite happily single (intending on remaining that way too), and I cannot stand going to bars. I'm a graduate-level academic trying to understand what it means to write in such a fashion where I can publish, and I spend my time thinking big thoughts about life, the universe, and everything. I prioritize my Christian spirituality as it helps ground me in the midst of an incredibly crazy world and invites me to come and rest. When I look at the so-called "gay agenda" I am supposed to be propagating and recruiting, I see very limited overlap. With regard to GLBT issues, I tend not to be political with the exception of asking people to consider that GLBT persons exist.

To be sure, I am in no way, shape, or form perfect at what I do. But I am comfortable in my own skin...most of the time. I try to let my "Yes" be "Yes" and my "No" be "No" even when the hectic tenor of the academic world incites me to burn out because I tend to say "Yes" to too many projects. I struggle to live within my moral compass, but I think moral compasses tend to be a bit like the gimbal in the famous Apollo 13 burn: dancing around between idealism and pragmatism.

For me, being gay is more about the pragmatic consideration about how to get my family to back off about me finding "the perfect guy" and about realizing that I have to live in my own skin today. I do not consider this to be the "ideal" life configuration, but the perfect ideal situation does not exist in the world marked by tensions of all sort.

I have been involved in all sides of the gay-Christian conversation. For a while, I thought people could change because I knew some people who would describe themselves that way; for a while, I thought being gay meant pursuing gay relationships apart from any sort of Christian community; and for a while I thought one could pursue gay relationships in a Christian community. But now I rest in the tension between my pragmatism and my idealism, wishing that people did not force the issue through mouthpieces that suggest that people like me are out to destroy the fabric of society as we know it.

Yes, there is more than one way to be gay just as there is more than one way to be straight. You can be single, you can be married. You can live by yourself, you can live with a roommate. You can have a rich community, you can isolate yourself from everyone around save a few choice people you let close. You can investigate your own life and see what fits within the identity matrix you choose to accept. As people we have so many choices that extend into every reach of our personhood. And the only thing we have to do is live within the consequences of our choices.

Free to Run

2009-06-20T20:18:00.002-04:00

I just discovered this fantastic article about what it means to be gifted in the sense of a global intellectual capability. The article, by Stephanie S. Tolan, makes an analogy to cheetahs.

Is it a Cheetah?

It's a tough time to raise, teach or be a highly gifted child. As the term "gifted" and the unusual intellectual capacity to which that term refers become more and more politically incorrect, the educational establishment changes terminology and focus.

Giftedness, a global, integrative mental capacity, may be dismissed, replaced by fragmented "talents" which seem less threatening and theoretically easier for schools to deal with. Instead of an internal developmental reality that affects every aspect of a child's life, "intellectual talent" is more and more perceived as synonymous with (and limited to) academic achievement.

The child who does well in school, gets good grades, wins awards, and "performs" beyond the norms for his or her age, is considered talented. The child who does not, no matter what his innate intellectual capacities or developmental level, is less and less likely to be identified, less and less likely to be served.

A cheetah metaphor can help us see the problem with achievement-oriented thinking. The cheetah is the fastest animal on earth. When we think of cheetahs we are likely to think first of their speed. It's flashy. It is impressive. It's unique. And it makes identification incredibly easy. Since cheetahs are the only animals that can run 70 mph, if you clock an animal running 70 mph, IT'S A CHEETAH!

But cheetahs are not always running. In fact, they are able to maintain top speed only for a limited time, after which they need a considerable period of rest.

It's not difficult to identify a cheetah when it isn't running, provided we know its other characteristics. It is gold with black spots, like a leopard, but it also has unique black "tear marks" beneath its eyes. Its head is small, its body lean, its legs unusually long -- all bodily characteristics critical to a runner. And the cheetah is the only member of the cat family that has non-retractable claws. Other cats retract their claws to keep them sharp, like carving knives kept in a sheath --the cheetah's claws are designed not for cutting but for traction. This is an animal biologically designed to run.

Its chief food is the antelope, itself a prodigious runner. The antelope is not large or heavy, so the cheetah does not need strength and bulk to overpower it. Only speed. On the open plains of its natural habitat the cheetah is capable of catching an antelope simply by running it down.

While body design in nature is utilitarian, it also creates a powerful internal drive. The cheetah needs to run!

Despite design and need however, certain conditions are necessary if it is to attain its famous 70 mph top speed. It must be fully grown. It must be healthy, fit and rested. It must have plenty of room to run. Besides that, it is best motivated to run all out when it is hungry and there are antelope to chase.

If a cheetah is confined to a 10 X 12 foot cage, though it may pace or fling itself against the bars in restless frustration, it won't run 70 mph.

IS IT STILL A CHEETAH?

If a cheetah has only 20 mph rabbits to chase for food, it won't run 70 mph while hunting. If it did, it would flash past its prey and go hungry! Though it might well run on its own for exercise, recreation, fulfillment of its internal drive, when given only rabbits to eat the hunting cheetah will run only fast enough to catch a rabbit.

IS IT STILL A CHEETAH?

If a cheetah is fed Zoo Chow it may not run at all.

IS IT STILL A CHEETAH?

If a cheetah is sick or if its legs have been broken, it won't even walk.

IS IT STILL A CHEETAH?

And finally, if the cheetah is only six weeks old, it can't yet run 70 mph.

IS IT, THEN, ONLY A *POTENTIAL* CHEETAH?

A school system that defines giftedness (or talent) as behavior, achievement and performance is as compromised in its ability to recognize its highly gifted students and to give them what they need as a zoo would be to recognize and provide for its cheetahs if it looked only for speed. When a cheetah does run 70 mph it isn't a particularly "achieving" cheetah. Though it is doing what no other cat can do, it is behaving normally for a cheetah.

To lions, tigers, leopards -- to any of the other big cats -- the cheetah's biological attributes would seem to be deformities. Far from the "best cat," the cheetah would seem to be barely a cat at all. It is not heavy enough to bring down a wildebeest; its non-retractable claws cannot be kept sharp enough to tear the wildebeest's thick hide. Given the cheetah's tendency to activity, cats who spend most of their time sleeping in the sun might well label the cheetah hyperactive.

Like cheetahs, highly gifted children can be easy to identify. If a child teaches herself Greek at age five, reads at the eighth grade level at age six or does algebra in second grade we can safely assume that child is a highly gifted child. Though the world may see these activities as "achievements," she is not an "achieving" child so much as a child who is operating normally according to her own biological design, her innate mental capacity. Such a child has clearly been given room to "run" and something to run for. She is healthy and fit and has not had her capacities crippled. It doesn't take great knowledge about the characteristics of highly gifted children to recognize this child.

However, schools are to extraordinarily intelligent children what zoos are to cheetahs. Many schools provide a 10 x 12 foot cage, giving the unusual mind no room to get up to speed. Many highly gifted children sit in the classroom the way big cats sit in their cages, dull-eyed and silent. Some, unable to resist the urge from inside even though they can't exercise it, pace the bars, snarl and lash out at their keepers, or throw themselves against the bars until they do themselves damage.

Even open and enlightened schools are likely to create an environment that, like the cheetah enclosures in enlightened zoos, allow some moderate running, but no room for the growing cheetah to develop the necessary muscles and stamina to become a 70 mph runner. Children in cages or enclosures, no matter how bright, are unlikely to appear highly gifted; kept from exercising their minds for too long, these children may never be able to reach the level of mental functioning they were designed for.

A zoo, however much room it provides for its cheetahs, does not feed them antelope, challenging them either to run full out or go hungry. Schools similarly provide too little challenge for the development of extraordinary minds. Even a gifted program may provide only the intellectual equivalent of 20 mph rabbits (while sometimes labeling children suspected of extreme intelligence "underachievers" for NOT putting on top speed to catch those rabbits!) Without special programming, schools provide the academic equivalent of Zoo Chow, food that requires no effort whatsoever. Some children refuse to take in such uninteresting, dead nourishment at all.

To develop not just the physical ability but also the strategy to catch antelope in the wild, a cheetah must have antelopes to chase, room to chase them and a cheetah role model to show them how to do it. Without instruction and practice they are unlikely to be able to learn essential survival skills.

A recent nature documentary about cheetahs in lion country showed a curious fact of life in the wild. Lions kill cheetah cubs. They don't eat them, they just kill them. In fact, they appear to work rather hard to find them in order to kill them (though cheetahs can't possibly threaten the continued survival of lions). Is this maliciousness? Recreation? No one knows. We only know that lions do it. Cheetah mothers must hide their dens and go to great efforts to protect their cubs, coming and going from the den under deep cover or only in the dead of night or when lions are far away. Highly gifted children and their families often feel like cheetahs in lion country.

In some schools brilliant children are asked to do what they were never designed to do (like cheetahs asked to tear open a wildebeest hide with their claws -- after all, the lions can do it!) while the attributes that are a natural aspect of unusual mental capacity -- intensity, passion, high energy, independence, moral reasoning, curiosity, humor, unusual interests and insistence on truth and accuracy -- are considered problems that need fixing.

Brilliant children may feel surrounded by lions who make fun of or shun them for their differences, who may even break their legs or drug them to keep them moving more slowly, in time with the lions' pace. Is it any wonder they would try to escape; would put on a lion suit to keep from being noticed; would fight back?

This metaphor, like any metaphor, eventually breaks down. Highly gifted children don't have body markings and non-retractable claws by which to be identified when not performing. Furthermore, the cheetah's ability to run 70 mph is a single trait readily measured. Highly gifted children are very different from each other so there is no single ability to look for even when they are performing; besides that, a child's greatest gifts could be outside the academic world's definition of achievement and so go unrecognized altogether. While this truth can save some children from being wantonly killed by marauding lions, it also keeps them from being recognized for what they are -- children with deep and powerful innate differences as all-encompassing as the differences between cheetahs and other big cats.

That they may not be instantly recognizable does not mean that there is no means of identifying them. It means that more time and effort are required to do it. Educators can learn the attributes of unusual intelligence and observe closely enough to see those attributes in individual children. They can recognize not only that highly gifted children can do many things other children cannot, but that there are tasks other children can do that the highly gifted cannot.

Every organism has an internal drive to fulfill its biological design. The same is true for unusually bright children. From time to time the bars need be removed, the enclosures broadened. Zoo Chow, easy and cheap as it is, must give way, at least some of the time, to lively, challenging mental prey.

More than this, schools need to believe that it is important to make the effort, that these children not only have the needs of all other children to be protected and properly cared for, but that they have as much RIGHT as others to have their needs met.

Biodiversity is a fundamental principle of life on our planet. It allows life to adapt to change. In our culture highly gifted children, like cheetahs, are endangered. Like cheetahs, they are here for a reason; they fill a particular niche in the design of life. Zoos, whatever their limitations, may be critical to the continued survival of cheetahs; many are doing their best to offer their captives what they will need eventually to survive in the wild. Schools can do the same for their highly gifted children.

Unless we make a commitment to saving these children, we will continue to lose them and whatever unique benefit their existence might provide for the human species of which they are an essential part.

1 Pinch, 1 Chance

2009-06-13T11:55:00.003-04:00

Increasingly, I see things that speak to cultural insanity. Yet, one form of cultural insanity transcends national boundaries: the entrance exam as a mark of prestige. Today, the New York Times relayed a story about the Gao Kao, the SAT of China.'

More broadly speaking, we tend to value the expedient nature of single identification. If someone can do X (and really, only X), then that qualifies them to do alpha, beta, gamma and 7. Not only do these claims fly in the face of causal formal logic, single gateways deny equitable opportunity. When I speak of single gateways, I speak of admissions procedures that have only 1 form of evidence. By evaluating people only on one or two snapshots does not serve either the person being evaluated nor the entity doing the evaluating.

I find it unfortunate that the need for quick identification stems from the magnitude of the evaluative task. Any form of evaluation for entrance stems from making a judgment call regarding perceived trajectory after gathering a collection of some sort of snapshots taken over time. But people will always defy any sort of predictive power, especially when we ask them to be creative.

But how can evaluative behavior service creative individuals?

An Open Letter to Republicans...

2009-06-01T08:41:00.002-04:00

Dear Sir or Madam (but mostly Sir from what I can tell),

There are times that I want to like you. I even tend towards agreeing with you on a lot of things. I think that government is best accomplished on local levels where people can have a say in the various programs, needs, and activities that they live with on a day-to-day basis. Large federally-sponsored programs tend to be full of red tape and conditions that can block getting various jobs done. The national deficit is a huge issue, and it's unfortunate that our current economy demands war-zone style management owing to the financial instability of the government. If General Motors can't hack it as a company, I'm more than willing to see the giant fall and hope that more agile small businesses wind up in its place.

I can understand concerns about various pieces of legislation getting railroaded through Congress on the wings of the Democratic majority. I would like to see considerable more line crossings on behalf of both parties that would suggest you're casting the vote on the issues at hand and not merely voting with the party. Certain things, while arguably imperfect, are truly better than nothing and are called for at this time.

But I'm actually writing this letter with one request: stop pretending as though you own Jesus. Over a hundred years ago, we established that it is socially and morally unacceptable to own a person. Let Jesus do His own thing and be who He is. It's arguably the biggest turn-off to see social conservatives assert that Jesus would be a Republican. Such a mantra stops conversations about the real issues because I see people getting all riled up about things that, in my opinion, the government should never be involved with from the get-go. You also turn this rhetoric in a way that erects an ideological barrier for a lot of people to attend churches near them because you define a lot of "us/them" where it is much easier to be a "them" than an "us." I'm tired of seeing my friends hurt by such political posturing and unholy alliances so knock it off.

Sincerely,
Academic

Sometimes I do not want to pick up a newspaper

2009-05-28T09:16:00.003-04:00

I do not enjoy reading the newspapers when a big story exists regarding a negative assessment of one's race, class, or gender. Recently conservative pundits decry Judge Sotomayor as nothing more than an exercise of so-called "identity politics." The New York Times ran a pretty decent piece about the process today. But it is amazing to consider how the rhetoric changes when it looks as though a woman from an ethnic minority might be promoted.

President Obama indicated that diversity constituted an important criterion; he defined diversity to include experience, character, judgment, and points of view. He generated a short list of candidates that came from a wide range of professional backgrounds. From a list of 9, who passed through a process of a 10-page review and then a 60-70-page review, he interviewed 4.

What's rather amazing to me is that people are citing that he didn't interview any men in the in-person stage as evidence that the process reflects inherent bias. I have read so many results of search processes that insist that the reason why no women were invited to an interview was that no qualified woman could be found. Usually such rationale of only inviting the qualified to an interview withstands scrutiny. Granting 4 of 9 candidates on the short list an interview after vetting them through 70-80 pages of paper with conversations amongst a wide array of people seems like a pretty fair ratio to me.

I do not understand why people resort to language like "(Person) only got an interview because of diversity issues around race and gender." Such language, at best, is an act of bullying; at worst, it is an act of violence.

An Open Letter to My Friends

2009-05-25T12:00:00.003-04:00

To my friends,

May peace and tranquility surround you even amid the darkness many of you find yourselves.

I think about you all daily, wondering about how you are doing, where you are, and if you are safe. The last week has sharpened my remembrance as I have seen the flags go up, the makeshift memorials, and heard rumors of the three-day weekend. Driving around Bridge City, I saw a display of human-sized flags, standing upright at attention, in nearly perfect formation. You all taught me what various formations look like so I know that things were not quite right. With all the conflicts that have happened since we met, I know that one of these flags may be standing watch over you as you gave the ultimate sacrifice. I have rejoiced to find so many of you on Facebook in the past year, if for no other reason but to have a way of knowing that you are still alive.

You are the people who taught me so much about attention to detail, about getting things done, about knowing what matters first, second, and last. You decided to get involved and stay involved even though you knew you were headed into harms way. To be sure, some of you used the system to get ahead, putting only in what was required and no more. But so many more of you remain. I see your pictures, and I know you have traveled to more places in a wider array of circumstances than I could ever imagine. I see your face and still can separate your work from your play. The somber seriousness that marks your job requires a game face indeed.

So thank you my friends. Thank you for being willing to discipline yourselves to be at the front lines. Thank you for the courage to go after your dreams. Thank you for instilling in me the gravity of a bravo foxtrot. Thank you for calling me to be a person aware of the domino effect of my own actions. Thank you for your service.

May the memories of all of the fallen be eternal +
Academic

Bouncing Back

2009-05-23T23:09:00.002-04:00

Academic life can be brutal. Exploring new ideas in front of a community inevitably causes the ideas to be at risk of catastrophic failure and rejection.

Yet as someone just getting started, "peer review" scarcely seems fair. For some reason, I have an easier time parsing harsh criticisms when it comes to taking it from a journal audience as opposed to someone located within my in-person community. I know I should expect (and perhaps even demand) to have papers ripped to shreds, but I do not like being left to fall flat on my face when I actively seek assistance.

So, Internet friends, how do you do it? How do you build a network of people who can help you with exploring brand-new (to you) topics? More importantly, how do you bounce back from a particularly shredding feedback session?

What are degrees good for anyway?

2009-05-20T18:51:00.002-04:00

It's commencement; lots of people I know are commencing. It's been a busy week of attending, supporting, and cheering...and charting my own course. As the first round of senior graduate students move towards their post-PhD existences, I have been thinking about what I would like to accomplish with my years that remain as a PhD student. Spending this much time in reflective thought can be a decidedly mixed blessing, but every once in a while, a little navel inspection is in order.

I have been working on my Plan of Study. Well, more like I have been working on a plan that lets me plan to complete my Plan of Study...yeah, the planning stage twice-removed which sounds about as exciting as attending your third-cousin's wedding out of family obligation. The advanced planning comes from being in an interdisciplinary space, working with new research methods that I have never seen before, and pulling together a Plan of Study from the thin air of the course offerings list. Most of what I want to do has never been done before so I get to play my own guinea pig and navigate my way around experimental course numbers and far too many course offerings that strike me as either a) interesting, b) relevant, c) accessible with my current knowledge, or d) a combination of the above. I have spent some time scrounging around in the various department policies, trying to make heads or tails of things that just do not seem to be well-suited to my needs. And as I type this, I'm realizing that trying to figure out what fits is kind of like bra shopping...I'm never going to find one that really meets all of my needs. And I just stumbled across the quintessential engineering challenge knowing that my requirements exist as definite trade-offs. So, in the span of a couple of paragraphs, I have gone from talking about graduation, to course planning, to awkward family functions, to politics, to bra shopping, and wound up at engineering. Either I'm in a very strange head space that's okay or I should be concerned; I'm going with the latter.

But I'm on a mission at the moment to figure out how to get the most out of my time here at Bridge University and get the biggest bang from my efforts. Because I look at so many classes across so many different departments, I have been toying with figuring out what is expected to earn a Master's Degree in my various fields of interest. So, the question becomes, why would anyone want a Master's Degree, or any other degree for that matter?

As I see it, each degree serves its own purpose. I'm definitely coming at this from an engineer's perspective so I think my comments below will be a little confined to STEM disciplines, but if anyone regards themselves as more of a humanities type, I would love to see how you parse it.

The first degree is the Bachelor's Degree. This degree is an orientation to the profession, a chance to try some ideas on and see what fits. Experiences help you target your life goal in some general direction, but a lot of uncertainty remains, particularly if you head off to graduate school.

The next degree is the Master's Degree. Here the degree seems all about gaining the tools to do research in the thing that you find to be interesting and fascinating, and in the words of Dr. Isis, way hot science. Course plans seem to be dominated by research methods and statistics required to make sense of whatever sort of messy data your science produces. You have an opportunity for a bit of a tease into a focus, but the Master's Degree is more about learning how to do research.

And then, as it would seem, the PhD is about doing that research. Inevitably, you realize that you still need some more theoretical help to do the things that you want to do so you could take a class or muck about in the literature and hope for the best. But what you are there to do, first and foremost, is taste the first-fruits of an incredibly publish-or-perish sort of life while actually having some people around you take a vested interest in what you are attempting to do.

I do have to say that I'm a little disappointed that Master's Degrees aren't more like "Course Catalog Roulette." If I am seeing 5-8 courses in a department that I want to take, then it seems like I would have a Master's Degree argument. But, alas and alack, most departments appear to be rather picky about what counts.

Why I find "Just Do Your Job" Rhetoric Repugnant

2009-05-19T10:03:00.003-04:00

Yes, a rant is coming, but it's worth ranting about so I'm going to go there.

With his speech at the University of Notre Dame, President Obama hit a flash point regarding the abortion rhetoric. I actually read his speech, and while I could not disagree more fully on his approach towards abortion, I found his speech to be well-tempered, even, and well-placed for changing the conversation regarding abortion to the issues that truly matter. Someone on a corner screaming "My body, my choice!" and another person screaming "You baby-killer!" are equally ill-positioned for thoughtful dialogue.

Yet, I know people who are incredibly conscious-bound to never participate in an abortion. I also know people who are incredibly conscious-bound to never participate in armed conflict. We have clauses that allow persons to be a conscientuous objector to armed conflict, but the only avenue people generally ascribe towards health-care providers that if someone is conscious-bound to never participate in an abortion, then they ought to find another job. After all, abortion is a part of a health-care providers job, so just do your job.

Just do your job.

These words make me wonder if someone has read the transcripts of the Numerburg trials. After all, they were soliders, following orders, just doing their job.

But more than that: implicitly within this rhetoric, we find a critical mass of assumptions. Two phrases come to mind that encapuslate these assumptions: "The customer is alway right" and "Father knows best."

So here we have our consumer-society shaping and calling the shots. If I want something in America, then I should be able to have it. That is, after all, the American way and look out world if I do not get what I want. As an engineer, I have to cry bullshit. Some things cannot be done sustainably, safely, or ethically.

And then we also have our politics, industry, or government calling the shots. If the government says something should be permitted or defensible, who am I to question it? Way to go Nancy Pelosi. If my industry is creating something, then who am I not to assist? Anyone want the latest in missile guidance technology?

People who stand within the gap with an ethically-attuned compass are professionals. To tell a professional "Just do your job." is to rob them of the very core about what it means to be a professional. When people refuse to "just do their job" and stand up for what is right, we applaud them. Now we can get into the grey area about what is right, and we do it all of the time, but for the love of every person and their humanity, "Just do your job." has to go.

Wisdom in a Comic Strip

2009-05-16T11:12:00.005-04:00

Over at PhD Comics, the humanities are on trial. Reading around higher education news, humanities appear to be getting even a shorter end of the stick than usual with the latest round of budget cuts. In today's strip, Gerard raises a good question.

All too often, I think we miss the philosophical, moral, and ethical implications of what we say and do. Within my work, I strive to consider these implications as it relates to understand what is required in order to be a socially-relevant engineer. I do not have illusions of grandeur or greatness that engineers represent the only needed profession (and yes, I know some people who think engineers make the best everything), but I do hope to improve on my corner of the world.

Yet it is amazing to me what happens within the construct and context of scientific inquiry as it subverts the role of philosophy. Just yesterday, I read that "It is not surprising that as we ride the crest of evolution we have taken over the title of creator" (Csikszentmihalyi, Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention, 1996). What we do, how we think, and what we value have an incredible power to restrict and confine us to ourselves.

A wise elder once told me, "Banish 'I, me, and my' from your vocabulary. When you use words like these, you become an individual, an atom standing alone. But when you ask another, 'How can I serve you today?' then you become a person."

Oh the challenges to become fully human. And as a person once penned in the second century, "The glory of God is a human fully alive." Really living and flourishing as a human being demands a struggle with all of the things that confront us.

Rather impressive

2009-05-15T23:26:00.004-04:00

So Alice over at ScienceWomen just posted this video. I have to say that I, too, want to be this kind of engineer.

Like many universities, we're in the Commencement mode at Bridge U. I've been thinking big thoughts even as I try to find the good in my last semester. This year, more than ever, I realize that we find commencement even when we're not looking for it. We retire projects that aren't going anywhere, we begin with new ideas, and we try to push everything to the next level.

But we like our class privilege!

2009-05-03T14:11:00.002-04:00

With that sort of blog title, you know a rant is coming.

Today, I am seriously thinking about how 4-year universities consider their role in society. Generally, I have accepted the common wisdom that it is challenging to get a job without a 4-year degree as "a politically reasonable talking point" as such talking points have been advanced to create a nation of young people geared towards college. "Politically reasonable" does not mean that such a view carries my endorsement; my own position sees the necessity of some sort of post-secondary training for most jobs.

So, this morning, I scanned the headlines from the NY Times and stumbled across an article entitled "Community Colleges Challenge Hierarchy with 4-Year Degrees" and proceeded to have my senses of social justice extremely irked.

In the interest of a bit of disclosure, I went to a Public School with some pretty progressive arrangements with Local Community College and Local University. I earned credits at both institutions of higher learning as a high school student. Because of the socioeconomic breakdowns in my town, several of my friends began study at Local Community College with various degrees of knowledge about how to concoct a plan of study that involved several transfer points.

Financially, community colleges make a lot of sense for a lot of people, particularly if they are first-generation college students, non-traditional students, women and/or people of color. Typically, if someone completes all of their education at a community college, one can expect to have a very career-based training. Community colleges generally offer solid preparation for jobs that both pay well and are hard to find a 4-year degree to complete (law enforcement, paralegal services, nursing, early childhood education, nursing, drafting and assorted engineering technologies all come to mind).

But what happens if a community college decides to offer a 4 year degree in something like teaching, nursing, or public safety management? The traditional system blows up in outrage.

Seriously people, what in the world is your problem? If someone has a baccalaureate degree in applied science of nursing, then it becomes much easier to navigate through the systems of promotion on the job. It helps educational programs differentiate between various nursing careers such as LPN and RN, where the RNs can gain an extra year. Moving to a 4-year model embeds some flexibility in a jam-packed pipeline. Granting baccalaureates increases the ability to recruit nurse educators as they are more likely to see the program as "authentic" over a program that can only grant an associate's degree. It allows current 3-year nursing programs with pre-requisite schooling to become a 4-year track for students.

Yet, you get accusations of "mission creep" and tell community colleges to "stick with the important work they do extremely well." Way to go political speech to say, "You aren't a real college of any weight to provide people needed education in the 21st century."

Continuation rates between community colleges and their 4-year counterparts are abysmal. Many 4-year programs refuse to identify the work that students have completed in community colleges, particularly if those 4-year programs have any status. Courses will count in a general credit sense, but not in terms of major fulfillment. To that, I have to say "Major FAIL" in the direction of 4-year programs.

Seriously, consider the nature of the degrees being offered at the community college. If they start going to the general scholarly model of offering programs indistinct from 4-year colleges, then I think the 4-year colleges may have a point. But that's not what we're seeing. The programs that are advancing through a 4-year degree model are high-need, high-skilled careers and professions that strive to meet the needs of the local community that surrounds the community college.

Telling someone that they can start in a 2-year environment at one cost, and then have that cost increase by at least one order of magnitude before they can finish their 4-year program does not serve many people all that well. By identifying critical career areas in their community, the community colleges can live into their mission of providing exceptional education for the local needs of local people.

Miami Dade College, keep up the good work. Way to strive to keep your doors open to the underfunded overachievers.

ACHOO! It's dusty around here!

2009-05-01T16:13:00.003-04:00

Sorry all for falling off the face of the blogosphere. I've had a fair share of things come across the realm of activity that have been completely unbloggable. It's also the end of the semester, so it's been crazy.

I finally got up the courage to log into my account today, and discovered an email telling me that I had been named one of the Top 50 Engineering Professor blogs. *falls over in shock* I'm in company with the likes of Candid Engineer, ScienceWomen, Zuska, and Dr. Isis among 45 other amazing blogs. Go check it out!

It seems like the end of the semester invites unbloggable activities. And the end of the semester always invites resolutions about how to avoid repeat at the end of the semester.

Some of my resolutions (in no particular order):

Place short books and edited volumes at the top of my reading list. I like feeling like I'm finishing reading something that's not for class. Putting a 700-pager on top can make one feel like an epic fail.
Itemize priority around areas of one's health (physical, mental, spiritual, relational, financial). Try to combine around things that you can. For instance, cooking for one's self instead of always eating out can help out both the physical and financial health.
Learn to say no and step back from things that are ballooning to fill way too much space in life.
Trust the people you find yourself around often; try to extend positive thoughts in their general direction as much as possible.
Carve out a space to do something intellectually different, but still interesting. When you work in a highly interdisciplinary field, you don't know what sort of combinations may present themselves.
And for the students...leverage your research credits.

So, hopefully I'll find some more time to be around these parts. I have a lot of things that I thought "OooooOOOoooooo, I should blog about that" even though I obviously did not.

Payback is Sweet

2009-04-06T19:31:00.002-04:00

So, today, I get an email from one of my professional friends asking me the name of my last place of work. Turns out that a friend of hers recently got offered a job at this school. She thought the name sounded familiar, and what do you know? She was right; my old place of employment. I quite enjoyed sumbitting a list of true experiences to argue against working there. Oddly enough, I could not think of one positive feature about this workplace, which says a lot about the situation.

I really hope to hear that the guy turns down the job offer.

Another plug for building an honest professional network. Speaking of professional networks, Alice at ScienceWomen has some great thoughts about building a peer network.

I Want to Crawl Under a Rock...

2009-03-31T11:34:00.003-04:00

...or at the very least start this week with a do-over.

Really, it is only possible to work with a subset of divergent information. Things do not go so well when the places that historically garner quite stable information go way awry. I am finding it even more challenging when source of stable information is quite important to me personally. Moreover, experience suggests resolution exists, but I do not have time to consider the full magnitude of competing claims. The claims center on a decision from 1923 that probably has a long trail of social, cultural, and political implications; moreover, the said decision occurred much later than I had previously thought. Not to mention, said decision requires considerable analysis because it spirals into my understanding of current practices because of the social, cultural, and political implications. Taken by itself, the decision seems quite arbitrary; embedded in its historical context, the decision seems much more connected than I previously realized. At least I understand some of the controversy around this decision much more, but it seems sometimes ignorance is bliss.

And I really am not a fan that a rather random historical discrepancy has distracted otherwise brain cells that really need to be thinking good academic writing thoughts when my academic writing does not consider historical discrepancies of this type.

Bad timing for new things to enter my intellectual sphere as the end of the semester is rapidly approaching. Thinking the light at the end of the tunnel is a train.

For the comments, don't ask the nature of the historical event in 1923. Suffice it to say, it's exceptionally random and crowding out consideration of other more urgent academic thought.

Crackle Crackle

2009-03-22T20:55:00.001-04:00

Hey all,

I'm back from break but struggling to get the navigation system back online. I'll be in and out as I tumble through the challenges of getting back into the school mode; but I will not forget to tell you about the minivan named Bill.

Now Entering Radio Blackout

2009-03-12T16:49:00.002-04:00

One of the things that has always impressed me about lunar missions is the radio blackout when orbiting the moon. The astronauts on Apollo 8 took an amazing picture of Earthrise when crossing through the threshold of the first ever radio blackout.

Radio blackout owing to the assorted gravitational pulls of Spring Break will commence tomorrow; upon my return I hope to see a photogenic "attitude"rise. At the very least I'll fill you in on one of my favorite breaks from school where I got to meet a bunch of sheep and drive through the mountains of Colorado in a minivan named "Bill" with a colleague.

Hitting a Shifting Target

2009-03-11T16:11:00.003-04:00

Is it just me or do papers carry this amorphous quality where every time you sit to write them, you come out with a completely different paper? I have one of these exceptionally difficult to characterize buggers flying around my head right now. I went somewhere to talk about this paper for 30 minutes with someone who knows more about writing than I do only to discover that I have 3 potential papers within this idea. As I attempted to write the introduction, I found yet a fourth manifestation of said paper. I also realized that the fourth manifestation has a short form (10-12 page-ish) and a long form (25-45 page-ish). I'm hoping to hit the short form so I can submit to an upcoming CFP.

Speaking of CFPs, I submitted my first paper to a journal ever in January. And now I'm counting down the days until 3 months after the submit date to inquire about its status.

Apparently academic life is not for those folks who value instant gratification.

The Challenges of Being a Female Engineer

2009-03-09T08:40:00.002-04:00

So I have been putting off writing this entry a bit recently, but now two articles have crossed my internet searching about the challenges assorted to being a female engineer. One study is called Lifestyle choices steer women away from STEM careers and the other article is Despite academic draws, engineering turns girls off more than ever. Both of these studies leave me feeling a bit like we're singing the same old songs despite evidence that both of the articles point to different problems.

To begin with, the first article makes a claim that women do not enter STEM careers because they are math-intensive. Yet, the main point of the article that rests within a sea of discussion about sex-based differences is that STEM careers require maximum productivity at exactly the same time as the available window for child-rearing. Essentially the argument of the article is that STEM careers lack flexibility that undermine persons that cannot commit to the standard work pace of STEM careers full-time without any break.

The second article makes a claim that women do not become engineers because they want to help people. For my part, this claim makes it hard for any engineers who are trying to change the messages of engineering and continues to marginalize engineers who do work to help people. Also, the formal logic that underlies this sort of article is "IF you want to help people, THEN engineering is not an appropriate profession for you" and similarly "IF you are an engineer who wants to help people, THEN you are a woman."

Reading articles like these two hides important ideas affecting all people in engineering: STEM careers generally lack flexibility and an epistemological challenge within engineering that defines what problems count as engineering. Moreover, although women's experiences with child-bearing and socialization to be caring individuals bring these issues to the forefront, these issues affect all engineers. Instead of talking about what effect these issues have on the profession as a whole, these important professional issues become "women's" issues as if they are somehow ancillary.

/rant

Journeys of an Academic

Update: RBOC Style

An Open Letter to Engineering Professors

Be kind to your four-footed friends!

The Stuff Dreams are Made Of

Can We Speak of Communities?

Where is the Summer Going?

There's More than One Way to be Something

Free to Run

1 Pinch, 1 Chance

An Open Letter to Republicans...

Sometimes I do not want to pick up a newspaper

An Open Letter to My Friends

Bouncing Back

What are degrees good for anyway?

Why I find "Just Do Your Job" Rhetoric Repugnant

Wisdom in a Comic Strip

Rather impressive

But we like our class privilege!

ACHOO! It's dusty around here!

Payback is Sweet

I Want to Crawl Under a Rock...

*Crackle* *Crackle*

Now Entering Radio Blackout

Hitting a Shifting Target

The Challenges of Being a Female Engineer

Crackle Crackle