Category: Academia

What Not to Say to a Pop-Science Author

(Note: This was not prompted by any particular comment. Just a slow accumulation of stuff, that turned into a blog post on this morning’s dog walk.) It’s been a couple of years now that I’ve been working on writing and promoting How to Teach Physics to Your Dog, so I’ve had a lot of conversations… Continue reading What Not to Say to a Pop-Science Author

What Advantage Do “Insiders” Offer?

Out in Minnesota, Melissa expresses some high-level confusion over the preference for people with a small-college background: In the past few months, I have been involved in several conversations where someone mentioned that a particular faculty member or administrator was or was not an alum of a small liberal arts college (SLAC) in a manner… Continue reading What Advantage Do “Insiders” Offer?

PNAS: SM, Canadian Grant Officer

(This post is part of the new round of interviews of non-academic scientists, giving the responses of S.M., a Canadian government employee who would prefer not to be identified by name. The goal is to provide some additional information for science students thinking about their fiuture careers, describing options beyond the assumed default Ph.D.–post-doc–academic-job track.)… Continue reading PNAS: SM, Canadian Grant Officer

PNAS: Brad Holden, Observatory Astronomer

p>(This post is part of the new round of interviews of non-academic scientists, giving the responses of Brad Holden, of the University of California Observatories (which, OK, is affiliated with an academic institution, but this is not a traditional faculty-type job). The goal is to provide some additional information for science students thinking about their… Continue reading PNAS: Brad Holden, Observatory Astronomer

I’ll Take “Hobbies Less Acceptable Than Blogging” for $1000, Alex

Via Inside Higher Ed, a professor in New Jersey took the whole social media thing to the next level: A Fairleigh Dickinson University physics professor is in custody for allegedly running a prostitution website involving about 200 women and more than 1,200 johns, police said Monday. David Flory of New York City, who teaches on… Continue reading I’ll Take “Hobbies Less Acceptable Than Blogging” for $1000, Alex

DAMOP Day 2

One of the odd things about going to conferences is the unpredictable difference between talks and papers. Sometimes, when you go to a talk, you just get an exact repetition of what’s in the paper; other times, you get a new angle on it, or some different visual representations that make something that previously seemed… Continue reading DAMOP Day 2

Graduation 2011

It was the sort of mid-June morning that global warming deniers dream of: cold and threatening rain. the rain held off until all the speakers had spoken, all the graduates had done their walk across the stage, and all the degrees had been passed out. That’s as much as you can ask for, really. through… Continue reading Graduation 2011

Practice Matters: “The effect of curriculum on Force Concept Inventory performance: A five thousand student study”

A few years ago, we switched to the Matter & Interactions curriculum for our introductory classes. This has not been without its hiccups, among them the fact that there has been a small decline in the conceptual learning gains measured by the Force Concept Inventory, the oldest and most widely used of the conceptual tests… Continue reading Practice Matters: “The effect of curriculum on Force Concept Inventory performance: A five thousand student study”

The Central Conundrum of Physics Education

Over at Dynamics of Cats, chief herding theorist Steinn has a post on what we know about how to teach physics: To teach physics well, you provide an intensive, mathematically rigorous in-sequence series of classes. You need at least two different parallel classes per term, each class a prerequisite for the succeeding class and coordinated… Continue reading The Central Conundrum of Physics Education