I meant to follow up on some of the comments to my post calling for more science majors last week, but we had some Issues Thursday night, and I didn’t get to it on Friday. There were a number of people making negative comments about things that weren’t quite what I was saying, though, and… Continue reading Science Majors Follow-Up
Category: Academia
How to Get Tenure: Stop Worrying About Tenure
Your must-read academic link of the week is today’s Inside Higher Ed article by Gary Lewandoski, with the provocative title: Stop Trying to Get Tenure and Start Trying to Enjoy Yourself. His thesis is pretty much clear from the title: When I started my own tenure-track position I had the same questions. I perused published… Continue reading How to Get Tenure: Stop Worrying About Tenure
Science Majors vs. Scientists
I have often expressed a wish for there to be more physics majors, and more science majors in general. Given the demographic information in the previous post, is this just irresponsible feather-bedding on my part? I don’t think so, but that’s because I would make a distinction between science majors, at the undergraduate level, and… Continue reading Science Majors vs. Scientists
Science21: Supply and Demand, Booms and Busts
There’s an article in yesterday’s Inside Higher Ed about the supply of scientists and engineers, arguing that there is not, in fact, a shortage: Michael S. Teitelbaum, a demographer at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, looked at what he called five “mysteries” of the STEM work force issue. For example, why do employers claim a… Continue reading Science21: Supply and Demand, Booms and Busts
Science21: The Journal of Stuff I Like
Another thing I thought was intriguing that came up at the Science in the 21st Century meeting wasn’t from a formal talk, but rather a conversation over dinner with Garrett Lisi and Sabine Hossenfelder about the future of publishing. Garrett was suggesting a new model of publishing, based on pulling things from the arxiv (or… Continue reading Science21: The Journal of Stuff I Like
We Are Science
If you listen to people talking about (or read people blogging about) new ways of doing things, you’ll frequently hear references to Science or Academia as if they were vast but monolithic entities existing in their own right. Statements like “The culture of Science does not reward open access…” or “Modern Academia does not reward… Continue reading We Are Science
Reading On-Line and in College
The Chronicle of Higher Education has an article about online literacy this week (time-limited link, look quickly), and I’m sure you’ll be shocked to learn that the author is pessimistic. The article cites distressing findings from new research: In the eye-tracking test, only one in six subjects read Web pages linearly, sentence by sentence. The… Continue reading Reading On-Line and in College
Congratulations, Dr. Ken
… for a successful defense. And excellent taste in celebratory beer.
Micro-Blogging Conference Talks
I’ve seen a lot of neat stuff discussed at the Science in the 21st Century meeting, some of which I’ll talk about in more detail later, when I have more time to think. One of the most interesting experiences of the meeting, though, has been using FriendFeed to sort of collaboratively live-blog the talks, along… Continue reading Micro-Blogging Conference Talks
21st Century Video
The video from today’s talks at the Science in the 21st Century conference have been posted at the PIRSA collection, so if you want to see my talk, you can watch the video (a 110 MB WMV file), and/or look at the slides (a 2.7 MB PDF). I would also particularly recommend watching the video… Continue reading 21st Century Video