Category: Academia

Distilled Faculty Outrage

Via Inside Higher Ed this YouTube video is pretty much a distillation of faculty reaction nationwide to higher education’s response to the world economic crisis: The IHE link gives a little more context to the video, and some of the reaction to it. The arguments here are not all well-founded– science and engineering will necessarily… Continue reading Distilled Faculty Outrage

Real Math Doesn’t Use Calculators

The Dean Dad is worried about remedial math: In a discussion this week with someone who spends most of her time working with students who are struggling mightily in developmental math, I heard an argument I hadn’t given much thought previously: students who have passed algebra and even pre-calc in high school frequently crash and… Continue reading Real Math Doesn’t Use Calculators

Sex, Intuition, and Evidence in Science

Over at A Most Curious Planet, Alexandra Jellicoe offers a story with the provocative headline Is Science Sexist?, which spins off an anecdote from astronomy: I was listening to Radio 4 a few months ago and the discussion about gender intelligence lodged in the deeper recesses of my brain unthought-of until recently when I went… Continue reading Sex, Intuition, and Evidence in Science

How Do You Make People Care About Topological Insulators?

I had planned to spend some time this weekend trying to make sense of this new result on topological insulators, and maybe even write up the relevant paper for ResearchBlogging. Family life intervened, though, and I didn’t have the time. I get enough of it to understand the basics of what’s going on, but there’s… Continue reading How Do You Make People Care About Topological Insulators?

Two Cultures in Ducking Requirements

Back in one of the communications skills threads, Karen comments about science and humanities: It’s easy enough for a humanities major to avoid doing much science in school. The converse is not true. It strikes me that for those earlier scientists who attended univeristy, both their early education and university years were more suited to… Continue reading Two Cultures in Ducking Requirements

Presentation Style: Indoctrination or Selection?

we have a summer student seminar series, in which students who are doing summer research give 15-minute talks about their research. These are generally pretty good– our students are, by and large, very good public speakers. One thing that I always find interesting about this is how many of the students end up sounding just… Continue reading Presentation Style: Indoctrination or Selection?

What People Think “Outreach” Is

Yesterday’s poll about “outreach” activities drew 117 responses by this morning. Since PollDaddy stupidly calculates percentages for ticky-box polls based on the number of total selections, not the number of people who vote, the graph you get when you view the results is kind of useless. A better version, using the “CHECK THIS BOX” count,… Continue reading What People Think “Outreach” Is