Grad Students: Conference Etiquette

Last week, I posted on Engineer Blogs how I was thankful for conferences. Ok, I know it was cheesy but I was going to post about conferences anyway. Rather than harp more on conferences, I thought I would give out some tips to graduate students/postdocs and what they should do at conferences. For more senior grad students, who've been to several (many?) conferences, this should be a no brainer, but for first-timers, conferences can be an eye opening experience.

This year, to show of my new tenure track hotness, I decided to take a few students with me. I did this for mainly three reasons. 1) I'm taken more seriously now that I have a TT position and am managing a group (personal benefit). 2) The students can really get a feel for what is relevant in the field and what sort of problems need solutions. This is something that is difficult to describe in meetings/discussions on campus but is in plain sight at conferences. 3) Students can use conferences to get new ideas, get added motivation to do good research, and can meet potential employers. There's also another added bonus for me which is once I take a few students, the next year, those students can show the new students the ropes. That ends up freeing my time because I don't have to introduce them to everyone.

Aside from that, there's other things that students should know before entering the conference arena. I'm just going to list a few main ones that come to mind.

1. Be approachable and outgoing: At many conferences, you have people that tend to be high up in a particular field. Make sure your initial impression to someone else is that you're approachable (and outgoing if you have that personality). You never know if that someone is the head of R&D of [insert large company] or CEO of [insert company]. It's ok to be shy if you're not the outgoing type and the easiest thing to mention is that you're new to the field and that this is your first conference. That's generally a good ice breaker statement. Presumably, if you're talking to a more established person, they're going to more easy going and friendly if you mention you're new.
2. Be excited to talk about your work: This should be a no-brainer but if you're excited and enthusiastic about your work, it will show. And like #1 says, you might be bending the ear of the head of R&D. However, if you're concerned about IP stuff with your work, make sure to ask your prof what you can and cannot say. The prof should know this but it will help you play your cards closer to your chest.
3. Sit with different people: At conferences, there's going to be coffee breaks, lunches, dinners, and cocktail hours. Make sure to make the rounds and sit with different people at different tables. This is a surefire way to meet new people. If you have the opportunity to go out with other people than from your lab, make sure to do so. You don't have to drink (I think GMP wrote a good blog post about this but I could be wrong) if you're not a drinker. But going out with people is better than sitting in your hotel room. Trust me. I have been out with many well respected people in the field that do not drink and that's fine. Going out with people shows that you're social and you have a life outside of work.
4. Accept the free drinks/food: Often, senior people in the field (or your prof) will pay for your drinks and/or food at a conference. Unless your university/lab has a policy against it, say thank you and accept it. If you're out in a group, someone may be able to count the meal as "business dinner" and get compensated for it. Other times, it's simply the older crowd being nice to the younger crowd. They remember what it's like to work for peanuts as a graduate student and they know conferences are expensive. If they feel like paying, let them. Your time to pay will come in a few years when you're making a real income with a real job and you're on the opposite side of the table with the new group of grad students.
5. Find the other grad students: If you want to be active in the field, get to know the other grad students. As time goes on, these people will be your peers and can help you get a job (or find out who's hiring). If you become active in the society, they will be in planning meetings with you and it's better to be friends than mortal enemies.
6. Take Notes on every talk and poster. Learn to know what each company is doing. Learn to know who are the higher-ups at each company. This will serve you well when you're hunting for ideas or what to talk to someone knowledgeable about a problem you're seeing.
7. Find the universities in the area: Presumably, you're going to a conference not next door. If that's the case, search the local university's website to see who is working in a related field. If you find someone, ask your prof if they know that person (or anyone else). If you're at the point where you are presenting posters and give talks, this is a prime opportunity to resume pad. Contact that prof at the local Uni and say "i'm in town for this conference and I've never been to this town/city. I'm working in [closely related field], is it possible to get a tour of your group and see what you are doing?" Chances are, that prof will say "sure. Do you want to give a talk about your research?". And your response should be "That would be fantastic". And Boom! you've just added an invited talk to your resume. This is a great way to see how other groups operate, get new ideas, get more exposure, and those other Uni's are always looking for potential candidates. If you give a great talk, chances are you might get to come back for an interview if they're hiring in your area.

That's all of the things that I can think of at this time. Any more that I'm missing?

Midterm Self-Assessment

As we roll in to the middle of the semester, I'm starting to get a clearer picture of the hard data (grades) from what I have observed via anecdotal evidence. There's a clear Gaussian distribution of students of what I would call the average 70%, with 15% on either tail, making up the very good and very poor students. So far, I'm very pleased with this for a number of reasons.

The pressures to curve the class are non-existent. This is pretty important to me because that's a direct correlation to whether I have the class on the right trajectory. I feel like the average engineering student should be getting between an 80 and a 90 in a class, with the below average in the 70s and the above average in the 90s. If the entire class is in the 90s, then I'm not making the material difficult enough for the very good students and that's a disservice to them. If everyone is failing during the midterm, not only is there pressure to curve the class upward but it also drops morale, which can erode student confidence and evaluation scores.

Most students are pleased with the class, based on informal polling. I ask for feedback anonymously (or not if the student doesn't mind) after every large assignment. A handful of students use this to vent with things like "this assignment sucks" and "I didn't learn any of this crap". But the majority of the responses have been positive in the form of constructive criticism. Comments like "I think this aspect wasn't explained clearly and the notes were equally unclear. Can you give a better example next time?" are things that I can directly use during the next course to make improvements. Also, after these assignments, I do let students know about some of the changes for subsequent semesters so they know their comments haven't fallen on deaf ears. I'm thinking this could be a key part to get good evaluations which always looks better than bad evaluations.

I feel like I've covered more material and required more work from the students and they've responded positively. I've added some changes from previous semesters, beefed up the writing requirements, and had more lectures. Students have grumbled a little bit (who doesn't love more work) but most have grudgingly admitted it's been for their benefit. This also means I have a heavier time commitment for this class than previous semesters under different instructors but I think it's been positive for both the students and myself.

Now, with that said, there's definitely room for improvement. I've been waiting until the last minute to make up assignments and lab manuals, which is not a good trend to start. Also, there are a few more topics I should have covered during the lecture part of the course which would have benefited the students and probably saved me a few headaches. I've been late on getting information to the TAs but I don't require grading from the TAs so I don't think they're totally mad at me yet.

Overall, I'm fairly pleased so far. I only hope that I can keep this up for the rest of the semester and have the students be successful in the course.

The Economics of Academia (Part 1)

Today, over at Engineer Blogs, I discuss a reader's question on the economics of academia. Essentially, the reader asks why can't we have 20:1 class ratios and lecturers being paid $100/hr and not worry about bringing in research money.

It's not an easy question with a short answer so expect a few posts on this topic. I start out by comparing those constraints to a typical community college model.

Freshman Advising

One of my service tasks that I am scheduled to do this year is freshman advising. At SnowU, they take freshman advising very seriously, whereas I'm not so crazy about it. I mean, apart from the social transition (and that can be a bitch for many students), the actual academic advising portion should be straight forward.

In engineering, unlike the Arts, students have to take 96% of their classes within their major (or general engineering). In other majors, you could have as little as 30% of your classes within that major (think Anthropology, History, or Communications). The one think about Mechanical Engineering that is so nice is you have this great little chart that says "Oh look, these are the 4-5 mandatory courses you have to take. No room for electives." Your decision is already made for you.

As incoming freshman, they don't know this, which is where I guess I come in. And I know things can get more difficult when you factor in skipping classes for AP Calc and Phys, etc. but even then it's not that hard.

So all in all, this shouldn't be so hard. But if you dig a little deeper, there's definitely a flaw with me advising freshman students. It's the blind leading the blind! How am I supposed to advise them on a graduation track that I don't fully understand yet?!? Yes, I should be able to get up to speed very quickly and this will help me get used to the curriculum. But still, I feel like these freshman will be like "Oh yeah, well my advisor doesn't know shit because he just started working here."

Any thoughts/advice/words'o'wisdom for me?

Fantasy Curriculum: All out assault on Math!

A few weeks ago (7 eons in internet time...) I posted on Engineer Blogs a snippet of ideas for how I would change the mechanical engineering curriculum. This mainly focused around one thing: have all ME required courses taught by ME faculty. It's pretty simple. If you're a ME student, you probably have ~120 hours of ME degree courses that you need to take. If they're all not taught by ME faculty, you're getting shafted in your education. That's just my opinion. However, it seemed from the initial comments that there's bunch of people that would like that.

In my original post, I picked on a few non-ME courses that I would like to see changed. Today, I'm going to specifically discuss the Mathematics and Statistics curriculum parts of a typical ME program and how I'd like to change them. I realize I'm totally biased and haven't had a good math teacher in college but I'm also going to assume I'm not alone in this boat.

The biggest reason for swapping math profs for ME profs is the application of the math. When you're in a math class (even math for engineers) it's always math for the sake of math. I took a graduate math course called "Advanced Applied Engineering Mathematics". There was never any actual applying of the math. Engineers don't care about math just because it's math. They want to use it. If you don't have examples of it, you're talking to zombies. Math prof's don't give practical examples. However, ME profs can.

This brings me to the second biggest reason for changing profs. Math profs want to teach math students who think like them and approach problems like them. ME profs want to teach to ME students who think like them and approach problems like them. It's pretty simple and basic but it doesn't make sense. And ME profs are as qualified (if not more qualified) to teach engineering math courses because they use it on a regular basis.

Most universities have the math courses front-loaded before the ME courses. A better approach is to actually teach the math in the same course where it's applied. I'll give you an example. One of the basic things about derivatives (and 2nd derivatives) and integrals is the relationship between position, velocity, and acceleration. I don't ever remember hearing those three words in my basic calc classes. That's a shame. Probably these concept should be taught as part of the basic physics course.

Now, rather than rant forever, I'll try to discuss some constructive things. I'm going to assume a student needs the following math courses (some universities may vary)

Calc I

Calc II

Calc III

Diff Eq

Linear Algebra

Statistics

For Calc I and II, I'd combine those into one course called Engineering Calc. I would keep derivatives, integrals (only shorthand methods), partial derivatives, equations of motion, and complex numbers/conjugates. Everything else, deep six it. You're not going to remember it anyway and if you need it later, you can learn it later. Also, I would hack down Calc III and Linear Algebra and combine them into one class called Multivariable Calc. You can only take some much of vectors intercepting a plane is space for so long before you kill yourself. And when you're talking about multi-variable problems, it probably good to introduce some matrices.

Statistics, I would kill completely. Totally useless course except for the first 2 concepts you learn about standard deviations and distributions. Everything else in the course was of the theory of statistics persuasion which is useless for UG engineers. Instead, I would tack that on to a lab course. I'll go back over this when I talk about chemistry.

Lastly, Diff Eq. Wow, words cannot begin to express how much I disliked Diff Eq. However, it is needed for Fluids, Vibrations, and Heat Transfer so it has to stay. It depends on how the curriculum is set up, but I think most students take this during their Sophomore year. Instead, I would pick whichever class needs it and shows up first (say Fluids) and have it co-taught with that class. This way, you'd take 6 hours of Diff Eq and Fluids but the profs would have to work in tandem. I know it's tough but we're trying to get the students to learn more useful information.

I think the math curriculum can be trimmed from 18 hours to 9 hours with some supplemental stuff added to a few courses. That frees a lot of space for other courses. I'm slowly building to my complete Fantasy Curriculum. Over the next few days, I'll tackle some more subjects. Thoughts on my assault on math?

Abuse of Power

If you've been following my twitter account (@profgears), undoubtedly you've seen a flurry of tweets about student expectations, terrible advisors, and politics of publishing. This stemmed from GMP's post the other day over at Academic Jungle and DrugMonkey's post on the subject clearly in GMP's camp. DrugMonkey's post heading The Care and Feeding of your PI: a tip for grad students and postdocs should tell you all you need to know about their position on the matter.

I clearly disagree.

As a grad student, you're not there to serve a professor at their beck and call. As a professor, you're not there to wipe the nose of your students. Both should have expectations and duties that are clearly laid out. I've already discussed this a few weeks ago. The professor (or PI, or whatever you want to call them) is supposed to be the student's professional mentor. The prof is supposed to be the student's guidem helping transition from a student to being a autonomous researcher.

This clearly breaks down when there is a lack of communication between both parties. For instance, the prof expects the student to publish as many papers as they can before graduation. But you'd be surprised how many students don't know that and how many profs don't tell their students that. So you have a prof that's expecting paper drafts and a student wondering what to do with their data. The student tries to schedule meetings but the prof has little time to discuss it. Months go by. Still no paper. There is increasing frustration on both sides.

Inevitably, a downward spiral happens and things turn to shit. The prof did a bad job of mentoring their student, yet from the prof's perspective, their student is a slacker. The prof thinks their student isn't working enough and so the student gets even less time than the minuscule amount the prof already gives them. The student gets frustrated because their mentor and career guide doesn't respond back to them and now the student starts worrying about graduation deadlines and whether they are even going to get a recommendation.

At this point, both are in the wrong because they didn't communicate with each other. But the professor is always in the power position and it should never be abused. And it sure sounds like some Profs/PIs do abuse that power by holding graduation and recommendations over their students' heads. Those are the same Profs/PIs that are supposed to be mentoring their students. That's a terrible situation to be in if you're the student because the one person you're supposed to go to for advice is giving you shitty advice and guidance. In the odd chance that student makes it to the next level, how likely is it for them to mimic their advisor's behavior? I say that's highly likely and I sure as hell don't want to be that kind of prof.

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On the topic of publishing and who gets coauthorship, it's very hard to describe in 140 characters. My general feeling is this. Anyone who contributed to the writing, data gathering, interpretation, and oversight should be a coauthor. However, everyone one of those people should be capable of writing a significant chunk of the article. That doesn't mean only the person who wrote the article should be the sole author.

Here's how you test it. Ask each person if they could write the draft. If someone says they could probably get 60% of is done, that's fine (that's a significant chunk). If they said 10%, they don't belong as a coauthor. That's what the acknowledgements section is for.

In practice, most groups aren't that strict because everyone needs more papers to be considered successful. But if I adhered strictly to that, I'd be missing my prof on every paper. And for me, when I'm in that same situation, I want to be involved enough to always pass that test. Otherwise, I would and should expect my student to submit it without my name on it because I haven't contributed enough. But if it comes to that point, then there's obviously something else going on in our advisee-advisor relationship and there's a bigger problem at hand than coauthorship on a paper.

Independent Studies for One and All

I haven't blogged any this week because like anything that goes up, it must also come down. I finished last week on a decent high and Saturday was my birthday so I thought it was all going well. And then NanoGEARS caught some daycare baby plague and promptly passed it on to me. She seems to be fine now though, thanks for asking.

I'm somewhat disappointed that I didn't post earlier this week because writing usually clears my head and gives me some time to relax. And I know all of you were fretting that my daily post wasn't showing up in your RSS reader so I want to apologize to my ten(s) of fans out there.

Now, on to the topic at hand.

There was an Op/Ed in the New York Times on letting kids make up their own high school curriculum by Susan Engel that had some very interesting things in it. Essentially, 8 students who spanned the spectrum of high school success got to plan their own curriculum for a semester. It talked about the increased student motivation and how they set goals that were at least as high as a typical AP class. It's an interesting study and I think has some potential as an educational method.

One place that I would like to see this curriculum model applied to is at the graduate level. The reason I say this is because I took traditional courses (and wrote a MS thesis) at UGU whereas, at OldEuropeU there are no defined classes for your PhD. So I've seen both types of systems personally which both have some definite pros and cons. I'll tackle the traditional system first.

I ended up taking 8 classes at UGU during my MS work to satisfy the coursework part. Of those 8 courses, I only really learned anything in 3 of them and none of that stuff I learned is knowledge I really use now. I still remember the stuff from those 3 should I happen to need it but I really couldn't tell you what was useful in those other 5 classes. I remember doing work for them (and a lot of work for that one stupid graduate math course that was the biggest waste of....) and taking tests and getting good grades but nothing really stuck with me.

Taking 5 classes that were essentially useless for my previous research and my current research (I made a big left turn when starting my PhD) seems like a lot of wasted time and effort on my part and the part of those professors. It seems like going through the motions for the sake of going through the motions. I read all these blogs and hear all of these professors discuss how much work their doing for teaching, research, and proposals. Maybe not teaching unnecessary classes is the way to go.

On the contrary, at OldEuropeU, I didn't have any classes for my PhD work. This is a blessing and a curse. The good part about that is you don't have to take any unnecessary courses. You can spent all of your time doing research, which is what you and your advisors really want anyway. Without classes your first two years, you can really make headway on your research. This will hopefully translate to more papers, more conferences, and a competitive advantage for you when you finish your PhD. Also, you really focus on the things you need to learn for your research. You don't get sidetracked by "the new shiny" that occurs when you do take a class you like.

There are some extreme downsides too. You need to be 100% self motivated to learn something. Just going through the motions so you didn't ruin your graduate GPA isn't enough. You end up lacking in something. In some cases, this is diversity, i.e. you weren't exposed to different concepts and different ideas because you had to take new classes. In other cases, you lack a basic and fundamental understand of the field. This is where I lack because of not taking PhD classes. I started out with some basic assumptions which allowed me to skip over the whole fundamental background in the field where my PhD subject rests and now it's hard to go back over to learn that.

I think graduate classes should largely be based around independent studies in predominately your research field. For instance, I took a controls class that I couldn't tell you a thing from it. Yet, during both my MS and PhD work, I had to build working control systems. In both cases, I managed to get them working but that was mostly though trial and error. Rather than taking a book-heavy course on controls, it would have been much more useful for my class to be a study on this particular control system. In both cases, I didn't need an advanced understanding to get it working nor for papers and such, but it would have been to my betterment to gone through it more thoroughly. Once I had a real system that I was using, then I could apply all of those textbook things like loop shaping, and overshoot minimizing, etc etc. It wouldn't have been entirely necessary for my research but it would have expanded my actual knowledge in an area that I should have known something about.

I think most graduate students could pick about 4-6 topics in their research and do independent studies more thoroughly on the subject than if they took a class on it and just went over the theory.

What do you think? Would you rather have defined your own series of independent studies than taken classes? How many classes during your graduate work have been useful for you and your research?

Templates, Because MS Word Makes it Hard Enough (Part 1)

Yesterday, Cherish the Scientist (@mareserinitatis) was kind enough to indulge my twitter (@profgears) rant about how I hate MS Word. It all started when I had to review a paper for a conference proceedings and the only template they offered was either *.doc or *.docx. NewPhD, just starting out, has a brand new laptop with Office 2007 on it. Meanwhile, I have the 4 year old tank laptop with lowly 2003 on it.

And MS, in their infinite wisdom, decided to change their proprietary format, so converting back between *.docx and *.doc destroys any formatting you thought you might have done. Now, I'm not going to keep ranting about this (at least for this post), but rather, I'm going to spell out how students writing their first publication should approach things like pictures, figures, and graphs.

A few days ago, I post about Advisor-Advisee Expectations, which included things like making sure to communicate, to respond rapidly to emails, etc etc. One of the things I forgot to add for students to do is Learn Compatible Software and one of the things I will teach them is How to Make Templates. I'll tackle the software stuff first.

One of the best things I've learned during my PhD studies is "if it looks professional, people will treat it professionally". This is very important for two aspects, namely written work (thesis and papers) and for presentations. If you want to make professional documents, the best way to go IMHO is with LaTeX. Latex is an open source typesetting system for preparing professional documents. I use the MiKTeX distribution. It has a high learning curve but once you get the hang of it, it makes everything easier. LaTeX is something that I would strongly advise any student starting out to learn. I know it seems crazy with all the other stuff you have to do, but once you start, and your peers start, you'll be able to help each other and rapidly climb the learning curve.

For large documents, the content and the format are largely independent. For instance, once you make your thesis template, you'll never have to change it. If you add more content, you just recompile the document and it's done. And, most journals and universities have LaTeX templates for their publications. In those cases, you don't even have to make the template, you just add content. I watched DrWife bitch and moan about MSWord changing fonts, section headings, chapter spacings, you name it while she was writing her thesis. Everything in MSWord is linked and you have no control over that. In LaTeX, everything is still linked, but you have full control over it. Fonts and Sections headings don't change because of the moon rise. Also, the files are a lot smaller, so you don't have to worry about it crashing.

Another reason why LaTeX is great is because it gets you making *.EPS (encapsulated postscript) pictures. Just google vector graphics or check out the wikipedia page. This is the real reason why I wanted to use Latex. I wanted my figures to look professional and be resizable with issues. That's really useful for transferring journal figures into presentations, which need to be scaled larger.

Over the next few days, I'll talk about how I set up templates and what programs I work with to make figures and drawings for publications.

Advisor-Advisee Expectations

A few days ago, I posted about Submitting it Anyway, which was a dig at advisors who take forever to give comments on papers. Or in my case, take forever to the paper and say "I have no idea what's going on but it looks good. Submit it".

If I take a step back, that's a somewhat terrible relationship to have with your advisor. That's really good way to sow dissension amongst the minions. Students don't want to work for you. You appear (as their advisor) to not give a damn because you're some really uber busy professor. That's why when I posted about my research group and number of students, I didn't think having more than 4 or 5 students was worth it. With the downward spiraling of academic funding, I don't think it's easier to maintain more than that. You're too focused on funding rather than your students, your teaching, and your research.

Later tonight, I have a presentation over the interwebs for first year grad students at SnowU who are looking for an advisor. In this presentation (and in the future), I lay out what I expect from students and what they should expect from me. If there's a discord in the future, then we should both be adults about it and discuss it to make things right. Miss MSE's comment on my post that she had to involve her department chair and graduate coordinator in her advisor's lack of involvement is very unfortunate. I'm speculating (and you can tell me if I'm wrong) that if Miss MSE's advisor was approachable and available, that they could have discussed this issue to iron out some kinks.

Below are the main points that I want to get across to first year students looking for an advisor. They should know what their advisor expects from them right from the start and they should know what to expect from their advisor.

As a Grad Student, I expect you to...

• Show up, be diligent, be willing to try new/odd experiments, be creative
• Treat this like a job. When you have your PhD, you'll have to anyway
• Get comfortable in the lab, you'll be there often
• Write journal papers and attend conferences (it helps both of us)
• Present your research regularly, both internally and externally.
• Support your colleagues as needed
• Not be afraid to ask for help from myself or any of your colleagues. We should be willing to say I don't know

As a tradeoff, you will learn a ton of things along the way, such as...

• Lab Skillz. When you walk into any lab in the future, you will feel comfortable
• Multi-disciplinary approach to problem solving. See that soldering iron? It works for mechanical engineers, optical engineers, physicists, just about anyone.
• How to write and review journal papers, critique your work, write tactful answers to dumb reviewers
• To give presentations where no one will be asleep
• To be confident about your research and your abilities
• Enough knowledge to give you a sizable base for a career in _______

But you should have expectations from me. As your advisor, I will strive to...

• Answer your emails in a timely fashion
• Show up in the lab (frequently!, daily?!)
• Help you transition to be an autonomous researcher
• Work with you to achieve your career goals, whether they're in industry, academia, or national labs
• Get you connected in our greater research community
• Be available, approachable, and reasonable.

If, for any reason, neither of us are living up to this, then we should be able to discuss it like adults and come to a suitable conclusion.

To beard or not to beard?

DrWife and I have recently been having discussions about appropriate working attire and grooming for new faculty members. For the past few years, I have generally kept my hair from very short to none at all. While this is very easy from a maintenance perspective, DrWife says this could make me less approachable for students because I look more intimidating. So, I have somewhat agreed to at least start my new position with quasi-normal guy hair. While I am pretty much set on that, I am now in the process of asking myself the age old question which every male professor asks at some point.

To beard or not to beard?

Do I want to look like just another engineering prof? You know the look. Non-matching sport jackets and slacks. Terrible ties (if any). Short sleeve button down shirts. Unkempt hair. And, most importantly, a huge bushy beard?

Or should I go with the look of a modern engineering prof. Clean-cut, business casual attire (no pleats!). Rocks a nice tie when needed. Iphone in one hand to stay connected.

Ok, so it’s probably not as generic as that. And it’s not that I’m trying for some hipster or post modern look. I guess I’m basically asking a question that I’ve heard a lot from women in a similar situation. How should I appear where they will take me seriously but I can still be myself? Beard, no beard, hair, no hair, that makes no difference to me. Hell, I used to have a blue mohawk about 6 years ago. But should I appear as a prof to be taken seriously or should I appear modern to not get thrown into the “dinosaur” category.

I’m only a few years older than the new grad students. I don’t want to be mistaken as some kid in over their head (that discussion is for another day) but I also don’t consider myself in the dinosaur prof category either. Or am I just thinking about it too hard because the students don’t give a damn as long as they pass the class?

Submit it anyway

I’m tired of hearing about poor graduate students whose advisors don’t take the time look over their papers or don’t give timely comments on their work. If it’s about to be submitted for a journal, then it should be important for the advisor and they have an obligation to look at it and give extensive comments in a timely fashion. If your advisor is failing to do that, then they’re doing a bad job of advising in my opinion.

Contrary to anything you might hear otherwise, all authors on a paper are treated equally even though some think they only have "management/guidance" roles. All authors should know the research and should be willing to help. More importantly, all authors get the same amount of credit no matter how much work they individual contributed. So if you are working on a paper and feel like someone's not contributing their part, then say so. If you think you've got a good start, just say so. Publishing helps all authors equally so we, as co-authors, should be willing to write some of the work.

Let’s take a paper with 5 authors on it. The breakdown is usually as follows:

• Author 1: Main author, did most of the writing and research. Can explain the technical aspects, chug through math, models, data, etc, but has limited scope for the overall picture.
• Author 2: Generally the main author’s partner in the lab, immediate mentor, or fellow PhD student who helped gather/analyze data. Helped with some of the writing.
• Authors 3 & 4: These two Authors contributed some technical aspects and offered advice. If you’re ever looking for these two Authors, my money is on them not being in the lab.
• Author 5: Often the main advisor, grant getting, knows the overall plan for the project but (all too often) doesn’t know the technical details.

Officially though, everyone is equally counted as a co-author on the paper, and that’s the aspect that I disagree with. If Authors 3 and 4 only gave a little bit of advice, then thank them in the acknowledgements. If Authors 1 and 2 have kicked the paper around for a while, Author 5 should have the decency to comment within a few days. Otherwise remove their name! I think it’s fair for you (as the main author) to send the work and say I need comments within X number of days or a very good reason why you can’t do that, otherwise I’ll just remove your name and submit it anyway.

You may be a graduate student but this is why we have peer review. There’s no reason why you need a professor’s name on the paper to get it published. In certain instances it helps. But if your work is good enough, then go for it. If it passes peer review, then it’s good enough and then maybe your advisor will take notice that you’re not messing around and you’re not just a lab minion.

Quirky New Engineering Prof Seeks Passionate, Creative Student for a Professional Research Relationship

While I haven’t officially started at SnowU, I am essentially preparing when I do start. Aside from looking over class notes, preparing a new lecture, and lining up my proposal schedule, I need to find students. SnowU has been very good about identifying potential students for me and I will get a chance to pitch my research to new students before they generally make their decisions about a PhD advisor.

So this past weekend, I worked on a few advertisements about the first few projects I want to run. I initially started with the generic Background, Project Description, Responsibilities, etc. After writing a little bit, I took a break and then looked them over. There were two things that struck me upon rereading the advertisements: 1) these say nothing about my personality or about how I would run my group and 2) I certainly wouldn’t want to work for myself based on what I read.

I scrapped those and started over again. I started to go with ads that were essentially personals. One of the headlines for a laser project was Wanted: Cute Redheaded Laser seeks crafty Engineer for a Controlling Relationship”. I know it sounds cheesy but that’s certainly more eye catchy than Project Title: Control of Red HeNe Lasers. I thought those might get me into a little bit of trouble, so I started over again.

In the end, I settled on a format that shows a little bit of personality, a little bit of my quirkiness, and tells a little bit about what I expect from students, while still mentioning the basics like project description, etc. These are much more to my liking, while still be on the good side of professional.

When you were a first year student roaming the halls, what caught your eye on the bulletin board? If you didn’t have a specific advisor in mind, would you take a chance on “The New Prof”? I tend to think (and did so for my MS) students prefer to work with a well established Prof because they think that will help them in the long run. For my PhD, I worked for a new Prof, was still successful, but was almost in spite of my Prof. Is that still the current sentiment? Would you work for a Prof whose position advertisements start with Quirky New Engineering Prof Seeks Passionate, Creative Student for a Professional Research Relationship?

Dual Advisor Conflicts

Currently, I’m in that grey area as far as my job/research is concerned. Mainly, I’m trying to finish a few more papers before I officially move on. One of my other tasks is mentor the next PhD student to continue this current research trend. So with NewGrad, I’m trying to get a few more experiments completely, enough for maybe 1-2 papers and we collectively have a few conference proceedings submitted/accepted.

Research with NewGrad is going well. I expect a lot from my mentees and I give them a lot of tasks, but I also support my mentees much more than other PhD/Postdoc students do for their mentees in my group.

But as I’m slowly faded out of the picture, it’s time for the real Advisor (also technically my advisor) to take over. Since I’ve been pretty autonomous as a researcher for the past ~2 years, I’ve had to set my own path for the research, so I know where it should go. Not to toot my own horn, but I have been pretty successful at doing so. Advisor does not have nearly as in depth knowledge about the research topic as I do and thus, Advisor doesn’t exactly know where it should go. And Advisor wants NewGrad to go in a different direction than the direction I’ve set forth. These are also the same wonky decisions Advisor steered me toward.

Concerning my future, I am not so worried. Once I have moved to SnowU, I will be guiding my own research, unless I get myself as a grad student. In general, I will be able to proceed down the path I want on this topic.

I am more concerned about NewGrad and how this will change NewGrad’s situation. There is clearly a disconnect between myself and Advisor and NewGrad is aware of that. Also, NewGrad knows that I’m leaving shortly and Advisor will be the main person to turn to for the rest of the PhD project. And NewGrad does not want to run the risk of alienating Advisor so early in the project.

I think it is a weird situation to be in for the both of us. What would you do if you were in NewGrad’s shoes? Have you been part of a supervising tandem where you had conflicts with the other supervisor? How did this affect your underlings? Thoughts? Comments?

How PowerPoint ruins America’s STEM Education

On Monday, I alluded to some things that could be changed about America’s Higher Education system, particularly focusing on STEM Education. One of those changes would be to wipe PowerPoint from every computer, in every university, and pass out some chalk.

Ok, well that’s not entirely fair. I do believe in fair arguments so there are times when PowerPoint is a great tool for teaching. PP is great when used as an accent. Having trouble describing a system on the chalk board? No problem. Show a picture of it in PP. Need to demonstrate a little gizmo? Build a small animation in PP. PP is also great for presentations. It’s the standard medium for most (all?) conferences. It helps keep you on track and gives your audience something to look at while you’re explaining how great you are.

The problem with PowerPoint is that it’s taken for granted. Everyone expects you to give a presentation and it is soooo common, that no one teaches you how to do it effectively. Luckily, at UGU, they stressed giving presentations so you learned how to convey your information in PP without getting lost in PP. I was one of the fortunate ones. A lot of people I talk with didn’t get that during their education. Making graphs? Be sure to change the axes and font sizes. That’s a common mistake that kills me every time I see it. You know when you’re standing in the audience that you hate not being able to read the labels, make sure to fix it for your own presentation. You spend more time trying to figure out if it’s “nm” or “mm”, rather than focusing on what’s important.

Equations + PowerPoint = Knife in my Temple. Sitting through PP lectures in STEM fields which rely heavily on math makes me want to kill myself. As the student, an equation *magically pops up and on the next slide, it’s *magically in the form you need it. Those 4 pages of derivation? Don’t worry about those. Most times math is presented in PP missing huge steps and little tricks/transformations/substitutions. That’s where some real learning occurs.

If you have the PP and the note, what’s the point of going to class? Read it on your own time. Students shouldn’t be reading the PP before the class. They should be reading the textbook, otherwise why assign it? It’s like looking at the Cliff’s Note before the class and saying you’ve read the book.

On the professor side of the equation (which I’ll have to deal with soon enough), I think PP makes you a less effective teacher. You are already stressed with proposals, papers, and students. Who has time for teaching? Oh, lecture at 1 pm today… hmmm.. there’s that presentation that I gave a few years ago… maybe that’ll work. That’s an unfair oversimplification but I think it gets my point across. Once you’ve made your PP slides and tweaked them after the first semester or two, you probably rarely go back and change them. And that leads into a downward spiral where you assume you’ll remember the lecture once you’ve seen the slides so you don’t need to prepare. I was the culprit for this once. I gave a guest lecture one year and was asked to give it again the following year. I assumed I’d remember the material once I saw it, but that wasn’t the case. It was one the worst presentations I’ve ever given.

When PP is not used as an accent and is the sole medium for conveying information, that’s when you have problems. And, as more and more distance learning/web learning is pushed at universities, you’re going to have more and more problems. Apparently, PP is a huge problem for the US military (albeit for different reasons). Let’s not make it a huge problem for education.

And so it begins...

In preparation for starting at my new position and university in a few months, the Chair was kind enough to pass along the specs for my new lab space and asked about my desired modifications. Additionally, I’ve agreed to teach the first year and take my free semester during year two. The first class I am teaching is a senior level laboratory class. I know Profs during my UG used to bitch about laboratory classes and the amount of workload. I’m not too worried (right now) because this University (BTW, I need a cool, recurring nickname…) is a lot smaller than my UG and by the time they are seniors, most of the weeding should be done. Also, as an experimentalist, laboratory classes are something that I should promote because I hated learning from people proclaiming their greatness in front of powerpoint. For instance, in Controls, we always started knowing the frequency response (or transfer function) of the plant. That’s a helluva lot harder to get in real life, and IMHO way more difficult than actually designing the control loop.

There is a point to all of this; I’m just taking my sweet time today. So in the spring, I have to teach another course, but this time a course of my choosing. Currently, I have two courses in mind. Course1 is a lecture-based course with some in-class demonstrations on a topic that I am very familiar with. During my PhD (and now in my short PD) I’ve taught at least 3 MS students and 4 UGs on this topic. Sure, I would need to make formal lectures and plan, etc etc, but it shouldn’t be any more different than a normal course.

Course2 is a laboratory-based course encompassing all of the Shit I Wish They Taught Me (SIWTTM). SIWTTM would be significantly more difficult to set up. I would need some financial support from the department(s) and I would probably have to beg companies for software/hardware donations. Also, it would require some teaching lab space and significantly more time from me to debug labs, write lab procedures, etc etc. I’ve pitched this idea to a few colleagues (not at the new University) and they have said this course is a good idea and it’s something they wish they had in the late UG or early MS.

So I’m in the process of writing a proposed syllabus for both classes, as well as descriptions for the labs. The Familiar Lecture syllabus was fairly simple to write because it’s a topic that I’d like to write a book on someday so I already have an outline of topics I want to cover. SIWTTM is a little more difficult but the more I think about, I think it’s a class that would be very rewarding to teach if successful. Plus, it resonates with my experimentalist side and will really test my skills as a teacher.

If you were a senior UG or an early MS student, would you rather take an elective lecture from a n00b prof or would you rather take an elective laboratory class? If you were Chair, and your newest prof hands you two proposals, one for a standard lecture and another for a laboratory class, which would you assign? Would the workload for the laboratory class (second lab class in a year) plus the startup inertia combined with all the trappings of a tenure track position mean this is career suicide from your newest prof? Or would you, as Chair, see this as a chance to add something to your curriculum that you probably have desired but cannot find anyone to champion?

Group Dynamics

Lately, I’ve been thinking student and research group managements. Given the dynamics of lab setup, startup money, and teaching responsibilities, I probably will have about 3 grad students for the first few years. Once I start building up resources from external funding sources, I might be fortunate enough to support 5+ students and maybe a postdoc. The question is, is that necessary to run an effective research group?

During my MSc work, I was in a smaller group (~4 grad students) and during my PhD, I was one of 8-12 PhD students and up to 3 Postdocs. With a group that large during my PhD, it was easier (and more productive) to essentially break off research with one of the postdocs and just work on our own stuff together. Basically we had our own “small group” within the large group.

The pros of that situation were obviously good and fruitful (otherwise I wouldn’t have the opportunity that I have now...). We were able to focus our research, crank out papers, attend a lot of conferences, and pool resources. At the same time, our interaction with the rest of the group dropped off and there were so many students, that keeping track of what we were doing was difficult for our advisors.

Twice, I have benefitted from a smaller group and clearly seen the ineffectiveness of a large group (although 1 data point doesn’t make a trend). At the same time, during interviews and discussions with other faculty, the general trend seems to say bigger is better. The break seems to be between 4/5 students and 5+ students. For the latter, a postdoc is necessary to help manage the group. At the same time, the amount of funding per year also jumps. More students/postdocs equals more papers (theoretically) which leads to a perception of a more “successful” research group. That should increase the amount of funding. At the same time, the amount of time in the lab decreases, you are spread thinner for your students, and you become less effective at pushing the research focus where needed.

So what is the ideal group size? How has a smaller(larger) research group benefitted you?