Tomorrow's Professor Listserver #1
MESSAGES 1-10
Message #1 ESTABLISHING YOUR ABSENCE
Message #2 QUICK STARTERS
Message #3 NSF NEW CENTURY SCHOLARS WORKSHOP
Message #4 FIRST THINGS FIRST
Message #5 TENURE TIPS
Message #6 WARM-UP TIME
Message #7 LEVERAGE - A KEY TO FACULTY EFFICIENCE
Message #8 CLASS PREPARATION TIME - CAN YOU OVERDO IT?
Message #9 HOW OUR STUDENTS SEE THE WORLD
Message #10 POTPOURRI
Folks:
Over the last six months I have received a number of messages from those of you who have read portions of my book, Tomorrow's Professor: Preparing for Academic Careers in Science and Engineering. Many of you have specifically referred to one or more of the 30 vignettes in the book, and in particular the ones in the section "Looking Ahead to Your First Years on the Job-Advice from the Field." These brief commentaries on the strategies faculty have used to be more successful in their academic careers whi le also seeking balance in their personal and profession lives, seem to have struck a cord with a number of people.
At the suggestion of some of you I have agreed to experiment with the establishment of a Listserver that would include brief, informal commentaries from subscribers regarding "strategies for success" that could be shared among all of us. As a start, I am proposing that you send your suggestions, insights, "lessons learned," and reactions to earlier postings, to me via e-mail with the understanding that I may then remail them to graduate students, postdocs, and faculty on the List. In general, message s should be under 350 words and those selected for posting may be edited for clarity. You may also be asked to expand or clarify your message before distribution to the List.
At this point I don't know the frequency at which messages will be distributed, it will depend on the number of messages I receive, but I think the effort is worth a try. To get things started, I am sending as the first message, an updated version fro m Allison Bridger of San Jose State University, of one of the most popular book vignettes: Establishing Your Absence. Her statement is quite informal and I hope that all our commentaries would be this way as well.
Please let me know your reactions to this approach and any other
comments you may have by sending mail to me at:
<reis@stanford.edu>
Note: If you are receiving this message directly, you are already on the Tomorrows-Professor listserve mailing list.
Note: Anyone can SUBSCRIBE to Tomorrows-Professor Listserver by sending the following e-mail message to: <Majordomo@lists.stanford.edu>
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Message # 1 ESTABLISHING YOUR ABSENCE
(2/24/98)
From Alison Bridger, Chair,
Meteorology Department,
San Jose State University
For me the real key to managing my time came when I realized the value of 'establishing my absence.' In the beginning, as a young assistant professor, I was mainly concerned with establishing my presence, of being seen on campus and in my office by my students, colleagues, and of course the administration. But then, during my first sabattical, I had an opportunity to spend some time at NASA and the contacts I made during this period led to my subsequently spending every Thursday at the Center. This w as a really lifesaver! I was amazed at how much I could accomplish. I could collaborate with my colleagues for periods of time that just weren't available to me back on campus.
At my kind of institution (Master's granting) you have to make research a priority at least some of the time every week, otherwise everything else will fill all your available time.. I began interacting with one NASA person on a project, then another and another to the point where I am now part of a whole research group. But this didn't happen overnight, it took a lot of work and regular meetings to get to this point."
The bottom line is that I find it really helps to go somewhere else to think and set up. This time away from campus enables me to work on important, non-urgent things I would otherwise ignore. Plus, my students and colleagues are now accustomed to the fact that at certain times during the week I will not be in my office.
Setting limits for myself this way also sets limits that others have for me. When all is said and done, I give my best effort and then I don't worry myself to death. The only way you can do everything everybody wants you to do is to overdo it and wor k all hours of the day. I believe this can do great damage to both your professional and your personal life. In academia there is a syndrome of workaholics whose marriages break up, and they die early. So it got to the point where I said, "This is what I can do, take it or leave it." All you can do is give a sustained, but realistic effort. It's worked for me and to a large extent it has helped me to have a successful academic career and a balanced and satisfying personal life.
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Message # 2 QUICK STARTERS
(2/24/98)
Folks:
In response to the previous message containing Professor Alison Bridger’s comments on "establishing your absence," some of you made reference to Professor Robert Boice's, "Quick Starters," those faculty who had excelled at teaching, research, publ ishing, and networking. Boice's full study appears in his book, The New Faculty Member: Supporting and Fostering Professional Development, (Jossey-Bass, 1992). JoAnn Moody, vice president of the New England Board of Higher Education has also written abo ut Boice's quick starters in her "Demystifying the Profession: Helping Junior Faculty Succeed," (New Haven Press, 1997). Below is what Moody says about Boice's quick starters and their aim for balance in personal and professional activities.
What are your views on limited class preparation time?
How do you feel about the emphasis in competency over perfectionism?
I'd be glad to hear your thoughts on these and other matters via Reis@stanford.edu.
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Quick Starters (374 words) [1]
Quick starters aim for balance. New faculty typically have three major tasks to perform: teaching, doing research and writing, and acting "collegial." Most people think collegial means serving with colleagues on departmental and campus communities, a necessary and at times large part of being a "good citizen" and doing campus and departmental service. But collegial, according to Boice, Donald Jarvis, and others, must also mean building positive relationships with colleagues on one's own and other de partments, working up collaborative projects with colleagues next door or continents away, and expanding one's professional support system first begun perhaps in graduate school.
Balancing the functions of collaborative colleague, productive scholar, and effective teacher is extremely difficult, but quick starters work intensely on their coordination and timing. First, they pay close attention to how they organize their workwe ek; they make sure all three functions receive quality investment. No one function, such as research and writing, gets put on the back burner (unless research and writing are not viewed as essential for the professor, department, and / or campus). Quick starters try hard to prevent "negative spillover" of their professional duties into their family and private lives. Protection of their private personal space and commitments is very important. Rather than feeling overwhelmed and desperate, quick start ers try to stay calm and work for balance, much like performing tai chi. Balance is possible when one is striving for competency but probably never possible when one's hidden agenda is perfection. Striving for perfectionism can quickly cause an individ ual to become a frenetic workaholic and lose balance and perspective.
......
Quick starters in all disciplines say their real problem is not time management but task management. They learn they must limit the amount of time they spend on class preparation but the ALSO must limit the amount of time they spend on writing. They write in brief, non-fatiguing, daily sessions lasting about an hour, and the hardly ever write in the evenings and on weekends. They also devote about one hour each day to networking - such as phone calls, visits, e-mail - wherein they discuss, with coll eagues near and far, their teaching, their writing and research projects and idea as well as map out plans for future projects with other scholars.
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(1) Moody, Joan, "Visualizing yourself as a successful college teacher, writer, and colleague: pointers for graduate students, and college and university faculty," University of New Haven Press. © JoAnn Moody, 1997. Order by calling (203) 932-712 1 or send e-mail to (mharvey @charger.newhaven.edu).
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Message # 3 NSF NEW CENTURY SCHOLARS WORKSHOP
(2/26/98)
Folks:
Below is a message about an NSF sponsored workshop on teaching and learning for junior engineering faculty to be held this summer at Stanford University. You are encouraged to apply and/or share this announcement with colleagues who may find it if int erest.
---------------------------------- 207 words ---------------------------
Dear Colleagues:
This summer, Stanford University will offer an Engineering Education Scholars Workshop sponsored by the National Science Foundation - "New Century Scholars: Teaching, Learning, and Your Academic Career." The workshop will be held August 2-7, and is des igned for engineering faculty with 1-3 years of experience in their positions. Workshop activities will help faculty understand learning and teaching practices which support effective learning among all students, and will addresses the integration of thi s knowledge with other forms of scholarship, recognizing multiple demands for faculty productivity. Participants will work actively to re-design courses and instructional strategies, taking into consideration new information and research concerning teachi ng, learning, and academic careers.
Topics include: course design, elements of effective lecturing, project-based learning, technology in teaching, inclusive classroom learning, learning styles, time and stress management, developing a career strategy, and balance in personal and profes sional lives.
Please bring this workshop to the attention of any eligible faculty. Workshop costs are covered by NSF; participants require only travel monies from their home institutions. Priority for participation will go to pairs of engineering faculty members fr om the same institution. Applications, due April 1, and further information are available on the web site, http://www-ctl.stanford.edu/nsf/
We appreciate your help in alerting appropriate faculty to this opportunity.
Sincerely,
* Sheri Sheppard, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Mechanical Engineering, Stanford
* Richard M. Reis, Ph.D., Associate Director, Stanford Learning Lab
* Michele Marincovich, Ph.D., Director, Center for Teaching and Learning, Stanford
* Carol B. Muller, Ph.D., President, Blue Sky Consulting
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Message . #4 FIRST THINGS FIRST
(3/2/98)
Folks:
In response to earlier messages, Professor Kim Needy of the University of Pittsburgh points to the importance of setting aside blocks of time for long-term important things (proposal writing, developing a new course, and writing up your research result s). She, and others, point out our tendency to spend too much time on short-term urgent matters, even important ones, and leave little or no time for reflection and long-term thinking essential to personal and professional success.
Along a similar line, Harrianne Mills of Stanford University provides the following quote from, First Things First, by Steven R. Covey, A. Roger Merrill, and Rebecca R. Merrill, which I think captures the problem pretty well.
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319 words
"I attended a seminar once where the instructor was lecturing on time. At one point, he said, "Okay, it's time for a quiz." He reached under the table and pulled out a wide-mouth gallon jar. He set it on the table next to a platter with some fist-si zed rocks on it. "How many of these rocks do you think we can get in the jar?" he asked.
After we make our guess, he said, "Okay, let's find out." He set one rock in the jar...then another...then another. I don't remember how many he got in, but he got the jar full. Then he asked, "Is the jar full?"
Everybody looked at the rocks and said, "Yes."
The he said, "Ahh." He reached under the table and pulled out a bucket of gravel. Then he dumped some gravel in and shook the jar and the gravel went in all the little spaces left by the big rocks. Then he grinned and said once more, "Is the jar full?"
By this time we were on to him. "Probably not," we said.
"Good!" he replied. And he reached under the table and brought out a bucket of sand. He started dumping the sand in and it went in all the little spaces left by the rocks and gravel. Once more he looked at us and said, "Is the jar full?"
"No!" we all roared.
He said, "Good!" and he grabbed a pitcher of water and began to pour it in. He got something like a quart of water in that jar. Then he said, "Well, what's the point?"
Somebody said, "Well, there are gaps and if you really work at it, you can always fit more into your life."
"No," he said, "that's not the point. The point is this: if you hadn't put these big rocks in first, you would never have gotten any of them in?"
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S.R. Covey, A.R. Merrill, and R.R. Merrill, First Things First. New York: Simon & Shuster, 1994, pp. 88-89. Copyright © 1994, Simon & Shuster.
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As always, I look forward to your comments, stories, and any other matters you care to share with other science and engineering professors.
Rick Reis
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MESSAGE # 5 TENURE TIPS
(3/5/98)
Folks:
Susan Taylor, executive director of the Faculty Association of Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia reports that if left to their own devices, most faculty will NOT do an adequate job when it comes to finding out about promotion and ten ure.
Taylor is responsible for a program that takes some of the mystery out of the renewal, promotion and tenure process. The central element of the program is a day-long session at the beginning of the Fall semester for new and tenure-track faculty.
Below are the key points with respect to tenure process made by members of the Faculty Association’s panel at a recent information session.
------------------------------ 388 words -----------------------------
Tenure Tips
• Keep in mind that the university did hire you in the first place. They did so at a time when they were able to be pretty selective, so they most likely want to keep you.
• I kept hearing the research-teaching-service mantra. Let’s see, was it 40/40/20 or something else? Had I done enough on each every month? At some point you have to just stop worrying and say this is all you can do. But of course you ke ep worrying.
• Try to add something to your CV every month. Doing so forces you to think about what you have accomplished and to look at the kind of story you want to tell about your career.
• Pay attention to the presentation of your CV as well as the content. Remember, it is going to be seen by people outside your field and it says something about how you are organized and how well you think.
• Explain to students at course evaluation time the significance of what they are about to do in your promotion and tenure process. You shouldn’t solicit support for your application for tenure, but it is important for students to realize that they are not writing private notes to you, that what they say can have a real impact on your future.
• You need to be seen as a good citizen of the department. Doing so means you are going to feel a tension between speaking up or going along. Many times you need to put your oar in the water with everyone else, but there are times when the cour age of your convictions, well presented, can add important dimension to your colleagues’ understanding of your contribution to the department.
• Do double-duty wherever possible. Combine your work with graduate students and directed studies courses, with the kind of research you are doing. Go to conferences and come out with names and research ideas. Bring speakers to campus; it gives both of you visibility and it gives you a good future contact.
• Find a mentor. Stay away from current chairs, they are too busy anyway. But an ex-chair is ideal.
• Take your holidays for Pete’s sake! Nobody notices if you don’t. But you will notice when everyone comes back rested and refreshed and you are ready to collapse!
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What are the experiences at your institution? Obviously every school, indeed every department is different. Loolking forward to hearing from you.
Rick Reis
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Message # 6 WARM-UP TIME
(3/9/98)
Folks:
Paul Humke, professor of mathematics at St. Olaf College in Northfield, MN talks about reducing warm-up time for important tasks by always keeping something on the burner. John Hennessy, dean of the School of Engineering at Stanford University offers a related suggestion that he has found particularly helpful.
--------------------Warm-up Time, 297 words ---------------------
According to Humke:
If I let my work lie dormant for a month or two, or in some cases even a week or two, my efficiency drops tremendously. When I get back to work, I find myself spending a great deal of time bringing myself up to speed with the work I did previously. T o put it in mathematical terms:
WUT = k exp(TL),
or warm-up time necessary to return to a problem increases exponentially with the time that has lapsed since I last worked on it.
My colleagues and I have also discovered that the value of "k" increases with chronological age. I have a friend, a very good professor, who noted that when he was young he'd spend five minutes "warming-up" and then he was ready to work. When he was a bit older, he had to spend twenty minutes warming up, and now he says he seems to spend all his time warming up!
To reduce my warm-up time I find that it is important to have a problem I can work on whenever I have a spare minute. I realize research often takes long periods of concentrated work, but I find it helps me a great deal to have some aspect of my probl em to think about when I have a free minute or two, when the party becomes dull, or my lunch date fails to show up.
According to Hennessy:
I need to keep my creativity cycles free, and the best way to do this is to have something to work on in my head when I am walking across campus, sitting in a dull meeting, and riding in a car. Doing so also keeps me from thinking about a lot of trivi al, negative stuff that isn't helpful anyway.
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What are your experiences with keeping your work going? Do you have any other suggestions to share with the rest of us?
Your thoughts, comments, and suggestions are most welcome.
Rick Reis
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Message # 7 LEVERAGE - A KEY TO FACULTY EFFICIENCE
(3/13/98)
-------------669 words--------------
Folks:
Some of you commented that because of the open-ended nature of faculty time commitments, a "price" professors pay for their considerable autonomy, finding ways to connect or leverage various activities is essential Leveraging enables us to become more efficient, that is to accomplish more in less time and in some cases to do a higher quality job. Leveraging can also help us develop new connections and create new opportunities in our teaching and other forms of scholarship.
There are many ways to leverage your teaching. Piggy backing, or using the same work several times, is an important efficiency tool. The most obvious application of this approach is the teaching of the same course several times since improving on wha t you have already taught is often easier than starting over from scratch. Eve Riskin, associate professor of electrical engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, says:
"I don't think you have to prove you can teach a different course each semester. In my first five years, I only taught three different courses. I'm still not tired of them and I
can't begin to tell you the time savings coming from such an
approach."
You can also leverage your teaching with your research. One way is to teach a graduate class or seminar in your research area. You can use results from your research to present a more up to date course, and the work your students do in the course, li terature searches and summaries for example, can be a valuable learning experience for them, with an added benefit for you, i.e., using such reviews in your research proposals. Susan Taylor of the Faculty Association at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia puts it this way:
"Do double-duty wherever possible. Combine your work with graduate students and directed study courses, with the kind of research you are doing. Go to conferences, and come out with
names and research ideas. Bring speakers to campus, it gives
both of you visibility, and it gives you a good future contact."
There are other ways to leverage your research beyond connecting it with your teaching. One way is through a relationship with industry.
The Rochester Institute of Technology (R.I.T.) is on a year-round quarter system and for seven years Mark Hopkins spent every other quarter doing full-time research at the Xerox Wilson Center for Research and Technology in nearby Webster. The other tw o quarters were spent as a full-time professor at R.I.T., while also spending one day per week at Xerox. Throughout the year he averaged 60% time at Xerox and 40% time at R.I.T. According to Hopkins:
"Getting started well with your research not only depends on
your own interests and initiative, but also on the resources,
modes of operation, and expectations of the department and
institution to which you belong. Finding the combination that
works for you is the key, and this arrangement happened to be
what made sense for me." During the seven-year period with
Xerox and R.I.T., I received outstanding teaching evaluations,
published papers based on my research at Xerox, acquired two
patents, with one pending, and perhaps most importantly, I
obtained academic tenure."
"Originally some of my colleagues were skeptical and thought I had not spent enough time at R.I.T. to be awarded tenure in
the normal time period. But this arrangement was part of my original appointment and when they looked at the entire effort,
including my teaching record, they chose to award me tenure.
"When I applied to R.I.T. as an assistant professor, I had just finished going straight through from my bachelor's degree (Southern Illinois University at Carbondale) to my Ph.D.
(Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University) without
acquiring any industrial experience. I very much realized such
experience would be important in my teaching and research,
particularly at a school like R.I.T. When they suggested I
apply for the (Xerox) joint position, I jumped at it."
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I would very much like to hear from those of you who have made other attempts to leverage your teaching, research, and/or service. Let me know of your experiences, even if just in an informal note, and I'll compile what I receive for a further posting .
Regards,
Rick Reis
reis@stanford.edu
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Message # 8 CLASS PREPARATION TIME - CAN YOU OVERDO IT?
(3/16/98)
------------387 words ----------
In Message # 2, I mentioned Robert Boice's "Quick Starters," faculty who had excelled in teaching, research, publishing, and networking. One of Boice's more controversial conclusions was that quick starters were beginning faculty who had learned to pu t a limit on their class preparation time, usually no more than 1.5 hours for every class hour, by the end of the third semester of teaching. He said that too many beginning faculty:
"Over-prepared lectures and presented too much material too rapidly. taught defensively so as to avoid public criticism, and
had few plans to improve teaching beyond improving the
content of their lectures." [1]
How does this comment sit with you? Are you willing to go into class less than fully prepared? Is there a point where the 80/20 rule applies and the small added benefit is just not worth the effort? Remember you cannot do everything, please everyone , be available to everyone, and at the same time be the ideal teacher and scholar.
Alison Bridger, professor of meteorology at San Jose State University put it this way:
"You have to consider all the ways, big and small, that you spend your time. Student advising consumes a lot of time, as
does class preparation, all of which takes time away from your
research. While I always strive to give my best effort to
teaching, it is possible to overdue writing up lecture notes. I
was a perfectionist in my teaching, but if you let it, class
preparation can take all of your time."
Kim Needy, assistant professor of industrial engineering at the University of Pittsburgh, backs up Bridger by saying:
"Teaching preparation can be more like a gas than a liquid or a solid. In other words it will fill all the space available to it if
you let it. You can always add a case study, always improve
an overhead, and always revise a handout. At some point you
have to put a box around it and say, 'enough'."
What are some of the ways you have found to reduce lecture preparation time and still do the quality job you want to do? How about leveraging with your research, how about sharing material with other faculty? Please share your thoughts and suggestion s with us.
Looking forward to hearing from you.
Rick Reis
(1) R. Boice, The New Faculty Member: Supporting and Fostering Professional Development, San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 1992.\
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Message # 9 HOW OUR STUDENTS SEE THE WORLD
(3/19/98)
------------------------ 254 words ----------------------
Folks:
Here is something to keep in mind as we look forward our undergraduate teaching in the coming year:
• The students who will be starting college this fall across
nation were born in 1980.
• They have no meaningful recollection of the Reagan era.
• They were prepubescent when the Persian Gulf War was
waged.
• Black Monday 1987 is as significant to them as the Great
Depression.
• Their world has always included AIDS.
• Atari predates them, as do vinyl albums and cassette
audiotapes; they may have heard of an 8-track, but
probably never actually seen (or heard) one.
• The digital Disc was presented to Wall street when they
were 1 year old.
• From their earliest years, a camera was something you
used once and threw away.
• As far as they know, stamps have always cost about 32
cents.
• Few, if any, have lived without an answering machine.
• Few have used a TV set with only 13 channels.
• Some use the word "clickers" for "remote control", yet
they do not know why they say it.
• They were born the year that Walkmen were introduced
by Sony.
• The expression "you sound like a broken record" means
nothing to them.
• They have no memory of American trips into space via anything
but the Space Shuttle.
• Manned flights to the moon are ancient history to them.
Would anyone care to add items to the list? Looking forward to hearing from you.
Rick Reis
reis@stanford.edu
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Message #10 POTPOURRI
(3/23/98)
Folks:
Here is a potpourri of comments from readers on some the earlier messages:
-------------------Potpourri - 527 words -----------------
• On, "The World of Our Students," (Msg # 9), Brandt Keho, interim associate provost at California State University, Fresno comments:
"One of the side effects of: " Manned flights to the moon are ancient history to them," and the familiarity of the space shuttle is the sense that there is no gravity away from the earth - students have seen things floating in the shutt le and if asked about an object released by an astronaut on the surface of the moon most, including students in physics classes, will predict that it floats. Have some of your colleagues test this at Stanford."
• On, "Class Preparation Time," (Msg. #8), Jami Shah, professor, Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering at Arizona State University writes:
"One point seems to have been missed. Lecture preparation depends on what subject you are teaching. If I was teaching thermodynamics or statics I would not need to spend much time updating my lectures. But I teach many computer related subjects. T he languages, tools, applications, techniques are constantly changing. Every year I teach these classes I have to update just about everything- including homeworks and projects. This is not a matter of choice- just a reflection of the pace of development. Personally, I find that I cannot go talk about something in class unless I have played around with it first hand. I have to try new programs, write code, etc. before I can include it in the lecture. This is VERY time consuming. And this is also where the re is some difference between research and teaching. In my research projects, my grad RAs write all the code- I only work with them on the approach and core issues."
• On "Leveraging," (Msg. #7), William Bickel, professor of physics at the University of Arizona notes:
"I taught the same course every fall semester for 31 years. To me it is still interesting. To the students it is still useful. During that time I have also taught other courses but regardless of what they were - or how many - I always taught that one."
Hau Lee, professor of Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management at Stanford University comments:
"You can also leverage your research through consulting, although this approach is usually best left for after you have tenure. I try to develop a teaching case or find other ways to integrate the material into my courses. Often I am able to wri te an application paper from the work I do, sometimes with a coauthorship from someone in industry. In addition, I can usually find ways to extend the work I did with industry and the data they provide me with, by stimulating doctoral students to work on such problems in their dissertation research."
Finally,
• With respect to "Warm-up Time", (Msg. #6) Al Kamil, of the University of Nebraska at Lincoln says:
"I find that another useful thing to do about the warm-up effect, especially with papers, is to leave the project at a point where the next step is easy rather then leaving it when stuck (which tends to be a hard point). This way, it is easier to get momentum when returning to the project."
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Please feel free to send your comments, suggestions, and ideas to me at: (Reis@stanford.edu). Looking forward to hearing from you soon.
Regards,
Rick Reis
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