The Emerging Scholars Blog

Are you a life sciences student or professional that loves the science, but doesn’t want to follow a traditional career? If so, this is the place for you. This site will cover alternative science career options for those obtaining or that already acquired a science degree, but first let me describe a bit about why this site is being started. … — Kristy Houck, About, Alternative Careers Resource:  Best Career Resource for Scientists Looking for Alternative Careers, December 16, 2009.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to connect with Kristy Houck.   She not only has a great basis for and inspiration behind the site (visit About), but also has lots of practical material/suggestions to share.  These broader themed posts particularly caught my attention:

1. Life Science Executives- New Trend?
2. Benefits of interning- particularly when pursuing alternative careers.
3. Top Ten Tips For Resume Writing
4. Breaking Into Freelance Medical Writing
5. “Alternative Careers in Science” Book

So if alternative science careers are of interest to you (or you’re engaged in one), I’d encourage you to take a few minutes to swing by the site.  In addition, if you know of other sites with similar resources (for those in the sciences and/or those in other disciplines), let us know by commenting or emailing.

Two recent articles on the profession of education worth consideration:

1. In Search of Education Leaders, by Bob Herbert, NY Times Op-Ed, December 4, 2009
2. The Ph.D. Problem: On the professionalization of faculty life, doctoral training, and the academy’s self-renewal, by Louis Menand, Harvard Magazine, November-December 2009.  HT: Miller.

Anyone willing to take a stab at why the educational system is so leaky and how we find/develop educational leaders which serve their department, discipline, campus, education in the United States/beyond?

Questions which come to mind with the Harvard degree program, topic of In Search of Education Leaders, “Will this program include the philosophy, purpose, and joy of education? Or are these unable to be expressed in the pragmatic, secular context of trying to keep up because we need to?”  With regard to ‘residency’ models, these already exist in education, e.g., the undergraduate student teacher model. Stronger cross-grade & inter-generational mentoring with the potential for long term relationships would profit the whole educational system.

HT:  Nick who responded to my Facebook musings by referring to Diane Rehm’s discussion of Women in Science with

1. Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn, Morris Hertzein Professor of Biology and Physiology at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Blackburn was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, along with Carol Greider and Jack W. Szostak.
2. Dr. Carol Greider, Daniel Nathans Professor of Molecular Biology & Genetics at The Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Greider was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, along with Elizabeth Blackburn and Jack W. Szostak.
3. Melody Barnes, director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, and special assistant to President Obama

Yes, higher education is leaky pipeline for women in the sciences.  Any responses by those part of the system?

According to Louis Menand in The Ph.D. Problem: On the professionalization of faculty life, doctoral training, and the academy’s self-renewal, the educational system is leaky in quite another way for the Humanities, but with a particular internal end in mind. Can/should higher education in the Humanities add practical skills and develop a specific graduation time line?  What about those who went through the system? Will they allow such changes (Note: Reminds me of the reduction of hours in medical training)?  Will the motivation for students in the Humanities become the pursuit and exploration of knowledge for the rich or those seeking direction later in life?  Even though the article seems focused upon the Humanities, especially English, does the article apply to all (or let’s say most) of higher education?

Some final thoughts on The Faculty of the Future:  Leaner, Meaner, More Innovative, Less Secure (Forum, Chronicle of Higher Education, 7/10/2009) from a friend who offers his gifts to Christ by serving as a business professor.  Do any readers have comments on technological determinism and/or the striving for organizational efficiency in higher education?

There are a few elements of the second commentary (TIMOTHY CARMODY) which make sense – but it reads to much like standard technological determinism predictions of “changes in technology change everything”. The model of a knowledgeable teach leading inquiry into a topic by providing information/explanation, prompting questions, and recognitions/correction of participant contribution is very old and has endured through many technology shifts (the distribution of print bibles does not eliminate the value of inductive bible studies with a leader who is at least minimally trained :-)).    So while some changes will happen are not likely to be the ones this author is predicting. …

The changes described by the 4th author (JOSEPH C. HERMANOWICZ) are already happening. There is a marked difference between how my senior colleagues and my junior colleagues see their career prospects and their role in the university.   One point I would make here:  I doubt the claim that this is an less expensive way to run a university.   Read the rest of this entry »

In the last Week in Review, I highlighted The Faculty of the Future:  Leaner, Meaner, More Innovative, Less Secure (Forum, Chronicle of Higher Education, 7/10/2009).  You may remember, I’ve asked a business professor to comment on the piece.  The faculty member graciously offered some time while writing a grant proposal, wrapping up a paper to be sent out (the 6th one of the summer), grading the exams and papers from an international class, summarizing of Business School IT/New Media innovation projects, handling some administrative issues for a conference, and briefly reflecting on how neither of us works as hard as our wives ;-)   For his thoughts on the material written by ANTHONY T. GRAFTON and PETER N. STEARNS visit Week in Review.  Next week we’ll conclude with TIMOTHY CARMODY and JOSEPH C. HERMANOWICZ.

Before turning to professor’s comments, I’d like to share that I’m not surprised that the research university model has taken us to a grant money approach (collective, entrepreneurial bureaucracy) where faculty/administrators must Show me the money.  It would seem to me that mentoring/discipling students in the ethics of securing/using such money would be of significant value and lead to the value of applying lessons learned from history, literature, philosophy, pyschology, sociology, etc.  But I went to a liberal arts college ;-)

In addition, the pressure to Show me the money is not just within the organization, but incoming students call for high job placement (undergraduate and graduate/professional schools).  Job acquisition and maintenance involves not just strong training in one’s field but also good communication skills, another humanities offering worth the investment. … All the more necessary in a difficult economic time such as we’re currently in/entering.  What do you think?  In the future, I’ll return to the history/philosophy of the research university.  But now let’s turn to a few insights offered by my faculty friend. … Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to this week’s Week in Review! If you have your own link or suggestion, please add it to the comments, or email it to Tom or Mike.

From Tom

Historic Bible pages put online (BBC News, July 6, 2009):  Check out “virtual re-unification” about 800 pages of the 1,600-year-old Codex Sinaiticus manuscript, i.e., the earliest surviving Christian Bible, at www.codexsinaiticus.org. Is it a The rival to the Bible (BBC News, Roger Bolton, October 6, 2008)?

Is Having More Than 2 Children an Unspoken Taboo? (Robin Wilson, Chronicle of Higher Education, 7/10/2009):   The article begins

By academic standards, Rebecca R. Richards-Kortum has it made. She is a full professor of bioengineering at Rice University, runs a thriving cancer-research laboratory, and is a member of the prestigious National Academy of Engineering.

But with four children at home, she sometimes feels like an academic outcast. In fact, Ms. Richards-Kortum says she is most comfortable in her dual roles as professor and mother during the research trips she takes several times a year to southern Africa.

“Here I’m this weird, freaky person because I have four kids,” she says in Houston. “There I can establish rapport and credibility with people because big families are much more common. It’s the only time I feel like it’s a real professional advantage.”

Ms. Richards-Kortum is one of a very small number of academic women with three, four, or more children. In academe, where having even one child can slow down success, trying to manage multiple kids can be a career-stopper.

The article ends with a number of tips on how to manage a big family and a big career. I asked a friend who has four kids and recently served as an adjunct professor at a major university for her thoughts on the topic.  Her comment, “Um, yes.  I don’t personally know anyone in academia with more than two children.”  How about you?  Do you know exceptions and if so, how do they navigate all the pressures and responsibilities of their position?

The Faculty of the Future:  Leaner, Meaner, More Innovative, Less Secure (Forum, Chronicle of Higher Education, 7/10/2009): demands more attention. I asked a business professor to comment on the Forum, below’s a glimpse.  Any first reactions?  More from my friend next week.

I have to agree with the third author (ANTHONY T. GRAFTON), unless there is a significant change in how knowledge is valued and expertise is assessed, the humanities are screwed.  However, it is possible that a collapsed job market will dissuade universities for focusing on “career value” (i.e. incremental salary increase in your next job) as their basis for why people should come to college.  If the focus moves back to education for the sake of being a better person, participant to society, better able to adapt to changes (i.e. long term) then there might be an increase recognition of the value of the humanities [but I wouldn't but your food money on this shift happening quickly].

PETER N. STEARNS says exactly what you would expect someone who has been a Full time Dean/Provost/Department Head for 20+ years to say.  (He was at CMU as Dean of H&SS in the mid-1990s).  The primary issue with his comments is the internal contradiction between saying that academic careers will be more home/family friendly and that there will be less facilities support for faculty (i.e. anyone who has tried to do writing or meetings from home know that this it is very difficult when there are children in the house), greater teaching loads at non-standard times (i.e. working two nights a week teaching an evening class – not so great for  family life), and a significantly greater emphasis on “productivity” (i.e. measurement of outcomes that an individual has only minimal control over – and hence a significant increase in uncertainty and stress – again, not so good for supporting family oriented folks).
Other than this he’s probably right…. :-)

From Mike

So You Want My Job: College Professor – The Art of Manliness continues of a series about (supposedly) dream jobs with an interview of Hunter Baker, Director of Strategic Planning, Assistant Provost, and Adjunct Faculty member at Houston Baptist University. If you are already a faculty member, I don’t think Hunter shares anything you don’t already know, but undergraduates or mid-career professionals who think that academia might be a good career choice might get some useful insight. Hunter has some practical advice about finding a job:

The job prospects differ tremendously based on your field. I think those who get their doctorates in professional fields like business or public administration will typically have a very good opportunity. I also believe the scientific and technical fields have good outlooks. My area, which is in the social sciences or the humanities depending on how you see it, is very competitive. People who study things like political science or history do it because they love it. The one thing that protects you in the job market is that there are lots of people who get as far as the ABD (all but dissertation), but far less who actually grab the brass ring.

If you do it, get your degree from an established institution. I would not recommend getting an online Ph.D. and then trying to find work. That is going to be an uphill battle. The situation may change, but right now it is the reality.

Fast Tracking a PhD – Can you finish a PhD in 3 years? Judy Beth Morris did, with some very careful planning, lots of motivation, and some luck. She admits that it’s not possible in all disciplines, but she shares some good advice about dissertation strategy:

It’s essential to zero in on a dissertation topic as soon in the process as you can. I figured out pretty quickly what I wanted to do with my dissertation; I had the first chapter by the end of my first semester. The professor of the film history class I took that first semester assured me that it was a worthwhile dissertation topic: the “extended adolescence” of Mickey Rooney in the Andy Hardy films and how and why the films resonated with Depression-era audiences. I knew that I would have fun researching this topic, so getting it done was not going to be a problem. Thus, the “dissertation topic” piece fell into place for me.

Another crucial piece of the puzzle involves working on the dissertation as part of your coursework. I was able finish the bulk of the work while I was taking classes because I chose my classes with the end project in mind: my goal was to use class papers as eventual chapters in the dissertation. This worked much better than I could have hoped; I seemed to choose just the right seminar classes with research paper assignments that would allow me to cover the different facets of my topic.

Take a look at the article, and let us know what you think. How realistic is it to finish a PhD in 3 years?

Charity in Truth – Pope Benedict XVI has released a new encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, “Charity in Truth,” which offers a Christian perspective on economics and society. Here’s the NY Times’ article about it. I have not read the 144-page document, but I expect that there will many connections that one can make between Christians’ role in society and Christians’ role on campus, particularly in seeking the good of the campus and our local community. One passage jumped out as I skimmed the beginning:

To love someone is to desire that person’s good and to take effective steps to secure it. Besides the good of the individual, there is a good that is linked to living in society: the common good. It is the good of “all of us”, made up of individuals, families and intermediate groups who together constitute society. It is a good that is sought not for its own sake, but for the people who belong to the social community and who can only really and effectively pursue their good within it. To desire the common good and strive towards it is a requirement of justice and charity. To take a stand for the common good is on the one hand to be solicitous for, and on the other hand to avail oneself of, that complex of institutions that give structure to the life of society, juridically, civilly, politically and culturally, making it the pólis, or “city”. The more we strive to secure a common good corresponding to the real needs of our neighbours, the more effectively we love them.

Are there implications for our common life on campus?

From Tom

‘Angels & Demons’ May Help Physicists Explain What Matters.  Question:  Do you agree with Mr. Izen? 

“Life presents just a couple of these opportunities when the public is paying attention, really paying attention to science, and in this case it’s a movie which talks about antimatter and is set at CERN,” Mr. Izen says. The film is “a chance to tell our story.” 

A Marriage Made in History, a review of Eugene D. Genovese’s Miss Betsey: A Memoir of Marriage (ISI Books) for the Chronicle of Higher education, places this story of academics who find love and faith on my too read shelf.  Here’s a quote from Gene’s blind date with Elizabeth-Fox.  Beautiful.

“When I arrived at five p.m., Betsey looked terrible. At six or so, she wasn’t all that bad. At seven she had become sort of nice-looking. By eight, sitting across a table at Restaurant le Maître Jacques, she had blossomed into lovely. When I left her at one a.m., she was radiantly beautiful. Almost 40 years later, she was in immeasurably worse shape than when I first laid eyes on her. Physically broken and fighting for life, she was unable to get out of bed by herself; barely able to walk; wracked by relentless, searing pain. Still radiantly beautiful.”

Slump Revives Town-Gown Divide Across U.S.  Question:  How have the campuses with which you are connected tried to address these concerns? 

“As endowments everywhere sink with the economy, town-gown relationships, often carefully nurtured during the boom years as colleges and universities sought to expand, are fraying.”

The Two Sides of ‘Star Trek’  Question:  Is this how we approach higher education or do we address the big questions through our work in higher education?

“On the Starship Enterprise, men and women, blacks and whites, Americans, Russians and Asians — with names like Uhura, Chekov and Sulu — worked side by side, reflecting Mr. Roddenberry’s belief that ‘when human beings get over the silly little problems of racism and war, then we can tackle the big problems of exploring the universe,’ said David Gerrold, a writer for the original ‘Star Trek’ series.” 

When a Twittering College President Is Not Who He Seems. Question: How do we know what to trust in these new forms of communication? What mental and/or technological filters do you use? Note: I’m not going down the road of Terminator Salvation (2009) ;-)

From Mike

From Inside Higher Ed — Did appearances on The O’Reilly Factor cost a Syracuse professor tenure?

Gay in the Academy — Career advice from a gay faculty member at Inside Higher Ed. I found it instructive to hear from this perspective from another minority group (for example, good advice on being yourself during the interview process) and to remind myself that Christians have it easy in many ways (I don’t think I’ve ever been told that Christians on campus gather clandestinely in a secluded bathroom). [Please note: any comments about homosexuality that aren't on topic to this article will be deleted without exception.]

Blog-Based Peer Review — Noah Wardrip-Fruin allowed his book to be part of an experiment comparing traditional peer review with chapter-by-chapter review on his blog, Grand Text Auto. Here, he shares his experience and findings. For example, traditional peer review was better at following the overall argument of the book and comparing one section with another, but the blog comments were much more detailed and collaborative (e.g. commenters would affirm, correct, and nuance criticisms from others).

Questions inspired by and related to You’ve Read the Headlines. Now, Quick, Read the Book (by Motoko Rich, NY Times, 3/29/2009, posted at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/30/books/30quic.html)

Questions: 

1. How does this necessity/predisposition for more, deeper material ASAP affect popular writing by academics and academic publishing in cutting edge fields of technology?  
2. Are there particular topics, themes, fields which deserve (possibly even demand) a longer time frame for consideration during the writing process, the community of scholars, and the wider public? 

Quote from the article:

“People can’t wait a year to get timely information on critical subjects,” said Amy Neidlinger, associate publisher of FT Press. “Especially today it’s dated 10 minutes after you’ve just received the first installation.”

Of course many publishers and authors suggest that taking time to produce a reflective work is what books are about, and that they should not succumb to the pressures of the 24-hour news cycle.

Read the rest of this entry »

Some news related to Mike’s earlier post Hard Times, Come Again No More. … According to the Chronicle of Higher Education article For Some, Hard Times Make Hiring Easier:

some institutions are going against the grain of the poor economy and appointing new professors. This decision has given those campuses an edge, yielding top-quality candidates who might not have been within reach in a more-competitive job market. — by Robin Wilson, from the issue dated March 13, 2009.

Of course, the competition is high at these colleges and universities.  As such,

“This is an opportunity to find the very best people,” says Michael J. Chajes, dean of the University of Delaware’s College of Engineering — which had more than 500 applications each for two of its eight faculty job openings. — by Robin Wilson, For Some, Hard Times Make Hiring Easier, Chronicle of Higher Education, from the issue dated March 13, 2009.

Want to know the campus hiring the most?  Take a moment to guess before you look. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, the NY Times published a depressing story about the state of tenure-track jobs. This gives you feel for the article:

Fulltime faculty jobs have not been easy to come by in recent decades, but this year the new crop of Ph.D. candidates is finding the prospects worse than ever. Public universities are bracing for severe cuts as state legislatures grapple with yawning deficits. At the same time, even the wealthiest private colleges have seen their endowments sink and donations slacken since the financial crisis. So a chill has set in at many higher education institutions, where partial or full-fledge hiring freezes have been imposed.

Marc Bousquet, however, calls the whole thing a sham. The problem isn’t the economy, he argues, because this has been the trend for the past forty years. Bousquet’s position: Read the rest of this entry »

Tenure-track positions can be hard to find, and many universities are cutting back on hiring, but Colorado State is looking for a new Director for their School of Education.  I know there are many education scholars in ESN, so perhaps this is a perfect fit for someone.  The full position description can be downloaded as a PDF here.