Lab Karma

The San Jose Mercury News is carrying an article today about what has to be one of those stories that will become lab lore for a generation.  Far be it from me to not do my part to spread the story.

Apparently, a "laboratory assistant" at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, in an effort to reverse her "bad karma", pulled $500,000 worth of protein crystal samples from cryogenic storage and deliberately left them out on a counter to thaw over the weekend, destroying the samples.  She even left a couple of smiley face containing notes.

Faced with some extended bad lab mojo I have resorted to discarding previously made starting materials and beginning again from scratch, but never anything that would be difficult to replace.  This actually worked for me a month or so ago after I wasted six weeks trying to get some material, made by one of my students, to work in my current chemistry.

I once got into a argument with my postdoc mentor over a project I had worked on for a year.  He was calling me to task over my inability to make the chemistry happen even though he was sure it would work.  I was the sixth person on the project which he had once described as "consuming" the first five.  As the comments about my future got more pointed I angrily observed that in science when a hypothesis "consumes" five people one must ask if the problem is the hypothesis or the people.  I walked out and went back to the lab and back to work.  After a month of being ignored I was summoned to my mentor's office and given a new project.  He noted that every other student would have disappeared after our previous meeting for at least a week, yet I was continuing to try new ideas.  To which I could only reply that Thomas Jefferson is quoted as saying, "I am a great believer in luck.  The harder I work, the more of it I have."  The new project was finished in short order and resulted in my only postdoc pub.  

How we face frustration is one of the telling qualities of developing research scientists.  Clearly the SLAC case is an extreme one.  

T.S. Hall

Summing Up, Part 1

As I begin my last week of sabbatical I thought I should start to wrap up some of the many lose ends of this blog.

California Budget: The State of California is in the final stages of setting up the smoke and mirrors that they call a budget. In about three months the crisis will begin again. All those furloughed employees will be making less resulting in less income tax receipts. The cut backs will result in less income for businesses that provide materials and services to the State, so their tax contributions will be less. Everybody making less money will result in people spending less, driving more businesses under and lowering tax receipts further. With less money coming in mortgage defaults will increase putting pressure on the banks and increasing demand for State services. Come October the State leaders will wake up to the budget hole and start on the new budget to address the problem. Having sold off everything of value and crippled the public sector, the next round of cuts should finish off any pretense of the State acting in the future best interest of the citizens.

Furloughs at the State Universities: The California State University faculty (8,800 of the 22,000) voted 54% to 46% to enter into discussions on furloughs. This does not mean that there will be furloughs, but the time is getting short to finalize the issue. The faculty have not been told as yet how furloughs would work, but most expect that workloads will increase and pay will decrease. The CSU folks I know are hunkering down for even more cuts next year. The resumes are being polished.

Next week I will focus on wrapping more local things and happier thoughts.

T.S. Hall

Recruiting research students

One of the most important tasks for a research mentor at a PUI or MCU is selecting research students. Sure, it's important at RO1s, but there your graduate students have been vetted to ensure that they have some ability in the lab. In the undergraduate ranks faculty have little choice but to take unskilled people and make them able. As stated here before, this is part of the research productivity problem. When the only product that counts is papers, faculty can't afford to burn time and lab resources on training students who lack hands, brains or hands and brains. While I have been fortunate to stumble upon some truly gifted research students I can't afford to put my research program in the hands of fate.

Just because a student is good in class does not promise that they will have hands or brains in the lab. Fortunately for me, I get to teach lab. There I get to see if a student can follow instructions, can think their way out of a problem, can keep a notebook, can work independently, is willing to ask questions, asks good questions, etc. All those things are good predictors, but what works best for me in finding students is to recruit unexpected competence.

Some of my best lab students have been B/C students in lecture before joining the group. Some have tattoos, piercings, unusual hairdos, etc. While ignored by most faculty they have talents that surface in the lab. Once recognized, pointing their skills out to them can be the inspiration they need to transition to A/B or A status. Having been B/C students they tend to be less convinced of their own ability and deal with the bad days in the lab by looking both within and without to solve problems. They work harder, because they have always had to in order to succeed.

And, while it can't be documented in a list of pubs or in grant applications, with these students you get to change lives. These students often find that being good at something is all the inspiration needed to propel them in the direction of their dream career. For some that will be graduate school, for others into a pharma career. Some of you will think this a silly point, but for me developing the student is why the PUI and MCU schools exist, and why I do this work.

Don't get me wrong, I take any A student who wants to work with me, but in the final analysis I have got more bang for the investment out of B and C students. Truly gifted A students will succeed no mater where they are. They can be a joy to have in the lab. But, it's the unexpectedly competent student who benefits most from our time, and pays back more in the end.

T.S. Hall

Low Tech Advantages

While automated technology has many advantages in protecting us from mundane time consuming tasks there are some advantages to the mindless activities such as collecting chromatography fractions. I was reminded of this this morning as I was collecting fractions and thinking about the confusion of a reaction that appears to have three mechanistic routes competing with each other. I have been thinking about this problem for a couple of weeks and suddenly out of nowhere Balwin's Rules came to mind. Immediately I realized that Balwin's Rules fit my data and could act as a linchpin to give a less confusing explanation of the issues at hand than the one I recently gave in a group meeting.

Perhaps the best scientists don't need to allow problems to percolate to find the answer coming to them in dreams or while collecting tubes, but it sure happens to me frequently. As automation takes away the mundane will science suffer from less fraction collection inspired ideas? Perhaps. Perhaps not.

T.S. Hall

Shoot the Laggards

Some days research at a PUI or MCU is sisyphean. I have received a series of e-mails from my home institution recently concerning research resources that the university will no longer support. The most recent is that solvents will no longer be provided. This was the last chemical support we had as the department cleared the storerooms of all chemicals not used in teaching labs already. The basic message is that if a faculty member is going to engage in research they must provide all their own resources. It presents an interesting problem since scholarly activity is a requirement of our contracts and students do pay a lab fee for research units.

I do recognize that RO1 faculty must provide all their own resources. The thing is that PUI and MCU faculty don't have the same ability to produce the kind of results that support the level of granting that RO1 faculty have access to. Also research is not our primary mission, so we need to serve our research programs as a secondary activity to teaching.

Ironically, as we are changing our Retention, Tenure, and Promotion requirements to increase research requirements we are eliminating support for research. A friend refers to this increasing scholarly activity by shooting the laggards.

You give some modest startup and tell the new faculty to get outside funding. If by the time the candidate reaches tenure evaluation they have gone through the startup and don't have outside support their program is dead, and so are they as far as tenure goes.

T.S. Hall

Allusions to "Lost" are Accidental

My sabbatical time is running short and I have yet to get a publication finished, which frustrates me. I am also getting daily requests from the home institution to come back to campus for meetings. I have a pile of committee work to do for the home campus too. This is part of the spinning plates problem where one can't focus too much on one thing or all the other things come crashing down. I sometime wonder who keeps starting new plates spinning. I try to keep a couple up and all the sudden I see a couple more are spinning behind me and there is nobody around.

Some colleagues suggest that to be a "successful" faculty member you must be selfish about your time and personal resources. That definition of successful appears to be exclusive to the individual faculty member reducing their teaching load and getting publications and grants so they can do less teaching and service. I have seen several PUI and MCU departments tear themselves apart as tensions build between camps of "self focused resource sponge faculty" and "non-productive teaching focused faculty" disrespect each other. This is where it is critically important that the administration of the department and college must act thoughtfully to mitigate the problem before it gets out of hand.

As individual faculty members each of us must prioritize our resources including time and lobby our Chairpersons and Deans to support our individual priorities. As supplies of all resources shrink it will be critically important that administrators communicate with the faculty about the level of available resources and how they will be distributed to the long term benefit the department as a whole. In tough times we must work together or all fail individually.

Of course none of this solves my paper or grant writing problem, so it's back to the hood for me.

T.S. Hall

Seed Corn: It's What's For Dinner

Those Libertarian and other readers who know Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, know all about "eat the seed corn", where in the face of disaster one consumes that which is needed to survive in the longer term. In my opinion the dismantling of publicly funded education to balance state budgets falls into this category. While I have focused in the past on California, many states and their higher education institutions are facing difficult times.

In keeping with the stated focus on RO1 vs. MCU and PUI institutions I note that Inside Higher Education is running a series this week on the California budget disaster and the effect on higher education. They begin today on the University of California system (the publicly funded RO1 system) and will cover the California State University system (the publicly funded MCU and PUI system) later in the week. I don't know what they will say, but I look forward to some informative reporting.

T.S. Hall

Teaching Philosophy Statements

One of the components of an application for a PUI or MCU position is the Statement of Teaching Philosophy. As with all components of the application it is used to look for candidates that fit or don't fit into the philosophy of the search committee members and the department as a whole.

In some cases this statement is a formality which might get little attention. Departments that value bench research above all will want to see the candidate show that they respect their teaching responsibility, but they don't want candidates who intend to pour their energy into teaching at the expense of "scholarly activity". PUIs and MCUs generally don't fall into this category.

I personally see research as a valuable component of a learning by doing philosophy that is sometimes referred to as a polytechnic training concept. Since I greatly value this, my philosophy statement includes some discussion of this concept and how I bring it into my classes and laboratory experiences. More research active PUIs and MCUs appear to have appreciated this attention in the teaching philosophy statement.

Because training and developing students is generally a key component in the mission of the PUI and MCU program evidence of what the candidate values in their teaching should be apparent in the Teaching Philosophy statement. Is the candidate enamored of technology, a devotee of assessment, passionate about integrated or discovery laboratories, etc. In some cases the department will not share the candidates interests. The committee must then determine if the candidate will represent "new blood" or "radical ideas".

As I have noted in earlier posts candidates should not shotgun out applications, but should target applications to school where they believe they can make a contribution. This demands that the candidate risk honestly stating a philosophy that may not fit the institution. Then again, it may also cause some institutions to look at the statement and find an excellent fit. Ultimately, there has to be a fit between the institution and candidate. The teaching philosophy statement is one of the tools to identify the fit.

T.S. Hall

Chained to the Bench

Many a faculty mentor has jokingly chided their students and postdocs about chaining them to the bench. This morning I read about UK universities requiring faculty to spend at least 35 hours a week on campus. One explanation being that they did not want to become a virtual university.

I know many an academic who works from home when they need to concentrate, as when they must grade exams or finish grants. For some it's the only way to work without constant interruptions. After all, being available to students is fine, but we do have other faculty member duties that require considerable concentration.

Since being at home results in me wandering into the kitchen or out into the garden were there are always more interesting things to do than grade, I tend to stay on campus and close my office door. My reputation for not tolerating interruptions when the door is closed enables me to get things done. The rest of the time my door is open and interruptions are welcome, or at least tolerated. I am not sure what the difference to the university is between me being in my office with the door closed and me being at home.

I know many faculty who complain about colleagues who are only on campus the hours they teach or have office hours or meetings. They demand all seminars, thesis defenses, and meetings be on Tuesday or Thursday between their class, so they don't need to come to campus more than twice a week. I think this goes a bit too far. At PUI and MCU campuses where being research active requires training your students yourself, I have marveled that colleagues can pull it off.

I see some irony it the pressure to become a more impersonal and virtual university, with fewer tenured and tenure track faculty, mega-lectures and on-line classes and labs while chaining the faculty to their offices. Perhaps the future of higher education will be at least partially defined by the type of faculty model the schools subscribes to.

T.S. Hall

Impediments to Change - The Biggest

In the past I have written about some of those institutional factors that keep us from changing the chemistry curriculum to something that better reflects the state of the science and the needs of the community. I did so as a response to those that blame the faculty for the failure of the system that they themselves administer. The truth is that, as provocateurs tend to do, I overstated my case.

The biggest impediment to any change is the people who measure the field and find that change will be too hard, costs too much, or any number of other euphemisms that really mean that they are unwilling to try. Too often it is precisely the people who recognize the need for change who have found these scapegoats to blame for their own feet of clay. In honesty, I most certainly include myself in the above assessment.

Having the ability to see opportunity, what we can or should be able to do, can also give one the ability to see the rocky shoals and hidden reefs along the way to were we want to be. Too often, instead of using our knowledge to chart a course we sit at anchor and curse the difficulty of the course an all those impediments on it.

I have been thinking a lot about grant writing lately. One of the things granting teaches us is to make your case for exploring or making the change envisioned by our hypothesis. If we fail to get funding it has much less to do with the malice of the review panel than our ability to make a case for the work. Similarly, if the administration or the faculty see problems in the academy we need to make our case to each other in a way that invites shared participation.

I believe we must change higher education not just to save the industry, but to provide the service that higher education can provide the community. I believe that there are many honest brokers who care deeply about the mission of higher education. The challenges are many, but if we join together and create a viable business plan I believe we can sell the idea to those capable of funding the plan and willing to make the long term investment to see a program through to becoming self sustaining.

Since I believe that all endeavors must begin with a mission that is served by all the activities of the enterprise, I ask for input on the mission for our new STEM focused university. My initial thoughts run to:

Teaching the scientific way of thinking

Teaching both basic and applied science

Teaching allied skills necessary for careers with a science base

Contributing through scholarly activity to the field of study by both basic and applied means

OK, that's the general start. Readers are welcome to weigh in on the general mission and perhaps if there are enough followers we can get to specifics in the future.

T.S. Hall

I Owe You One Blog Post

Due to the inability of the author to budget their word usage, the author regrets the necessity to issue this warrant good for one blog post plus six percent additional words to be paid in full by October 2009.

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When frustrated some people drink. I get sarcastic, which annoys most people I know. So I try to clamp it down, which frustrates me! To eliminate this spiral I have decided to limit sarcastic posting to Wednesdays. After all, what better day. You have had two days of work to build your frustration and the end of the week looks far away.

T.S. Hall