As noted in a previous post, I’m teaching the senior seminar this fall, which means I’ll be meeting weekly with our senior majors (13 of them!) to discuss topics of interest to them. Which will involve a fair amount of discussion of graduate school, because that’s one of the options, whether people think it’s a… Continue reading Audience Participation Friday: Rate Graduate Schools
Category: Academia
Wanted: Non-Academic Physics Types
The discussion surrounding the recent post about jobs continues to bubble along nicely, both in the original post, and the follow-up. I love it when a plan comes together. There’s been a lot of discussion of following the advice in the Katz letter and seeking non-academic careers, but Jeff F. (who I know from my… Continue reading Wanted: Non-Academic Physics Types
Important Note for My Students
A while back, I noted that one student wrote on the all-important course evaluation form “He should wear more pink.” I’m still not sure what that meant. Given that the second most ridiculous comment in that class was “[student name] is the worst Warcraft player ever,” I should probably point our majors to this interview… Continue reading Important Note for My Students
More Jobs in Science
The latest jobs in science post has prompted a lot of responses, several of them arguing that we need to expand the definition of acceptable careers for Ph.D. scientists. For example, there’s Nicholas Condon in comments: When I hear this incessant handwringing about jobs in “science,” it seems like it frequently comes from people with… Continue reading More Jobs in Science
Science Is A Scary Place to Work
Jonathan Katz’s “Don’t Become a Scientist” has bubbled to the surface again, turning up at P.P. Cook’s Tangent Space a few days ago. I can’t recall what, if anything, I said about this that last time it came around, but I’ll make a few comments here, in light of the recent discussions about jobs in… Continue reading Science Is A Scary Place to Work
Is Our Athletes Graduating?
Inside Higher Ed today offers another hand-wringing piece about the problem of college athletics, this time from the president of Augustana College in Illinois. It’s a particularly maddening example of the form, doing a lovely job of running down NCAA Division I schools in comparison to Division III: But I do worry that Division I… Continue reading Is Our Athletes Graduating?
Who Needs RateMyProfessors.com?
Written on the whiteboard in the student lounge (which has been serving as a convenient surface for student grafitti for the whole summer) last week: Little Known Fact: Prof. Orzel is actually an evil genius working on a gigantic laser which he plans to use to hold the world ransom for $1,000,000,000,000,000. Sadly, it was… Continue reading Who Needs RateMyProfessors.com?
Pre-College Advising
We’re still a month away from the start of classes at most schools, but over at Learning Curves, Becky Hirta has some advice for new students. Some of this is university-specific (“Dress in layers. The University Center is never above 70 degrees; the math building is never below 80 degrees.”), and other bits are matters… Continue reading Pre-College Advising
What Do Our Students Do After Graduation?
Continuing the recent “careers in science” theme, Inside Higher Ed has a story about what people with science degrees do with their lives, based on a new NSF report. From the Inside Higher Ed piece: Many science and engineering degree recipients continue to get use from their undergraduate studies even years after they’ve graduated, and… Continue reading What Do Our Students Do After Graduation?
What Is Our Students Learning?
The previous post reminded me of something I had marked as interesting: Technorati led me to ChemJerk, who pointed in turn to the Princton Review‘s list of Most Popular College Majors. In reverse order, with the top five below the fold, we have: 10) Political Science 9) Computer Science 8) Communications 7) English 6) Education