Be it resolved

I don't actually believe in New Year's Resolutions.  In a life focused on constant learning and teaching I figure we are always picking up new or improved ideas and methods and setting aside outdated and failed activities.  But, a little introspection could not hurt.

Research:
I was talking to one of my former students about their PhD work recently.  My alum indicated that their PhD mentor has a file of papers written that only lack the empirical data to make them publications.  While it makes me a bit uncomfortable to challenge the lab spirits in such a way, I see some value in this for my undergraduate and masters students and to my publication and granting record.  The research experience for my students could become more focused, and hopefully more productive.

Teaching:
I noticed this semester that my students don't know how to answer a question that requires justification.  Ask a student to pick between route A and route B and justify their choice and you get a mechanism for one route only.  As a class they don't understand how to support their answers.  I see this as a key skill for scientists, so I am going to spend some time on how to answer a question at the beginning of the semester and in our programs to help recruit and retain students in the sciences.

Service:
In bad economic times the service level of faculty increase more and more every day.  It's hard to say no to the needs of students and the university, but at some point you are spinning too many plates and all you are doing to running from plate to plate to keep them all spinning.  You need to determine which plates to let go of, finish the jobs that can be accomplished and not pick up new ones until your resources will allow you to.

If you don't have hope for the future academe is not the place for you.  The entire enterprise is about taking potential and making it into reality.

So, as we close out 2009, I wish all of you a better 2010 full of challenges and rewards.

T.S. Hall

One Last Rant for 2009

This the season of the year end review.  From the local paper to C&E News we are all taking a long look at our successes and failures in 2009, with an eye on 2010.  In academe it seems that this process in ongoing and unceasing.  We review our courses each semester/quarter, our research students and programs each quarter/semester and at the end of the summer.

In academics the 2009 calendar year was one were funding was front and center.  Actually, in higher education funding is always near the top issues every year.  The global financial crisis pushed the fiscal situation of universities to the breaking point.  Even at RO1 institutions money has become the major issue of concern.

I have always believed that when crisis comes we learn what really matters.  This year has shown the disconnect between the cost of a diploma and the cost of an education.  To the public, education has become the fundamental right to the receipt of a diploma, which magically imbues the recipient with career skills.  Our political leaders proclaim that everyone should be able to get a post-secondary degree and demand that institutions of higher education improve retention and degree completion without any connection to providing resources or ensuring educational quality.  Their theory appears to be that an educated populace is one where everyone has a diploma.  It then follows that all these diploma carrying voters will attract business into communities and create new businesses, filling the state house with tax money.  As in so many things in our society today, we no longer understand the difference between perception and reality. Indeed for most people perception is reality.

What of 2010 you ask?

Well, in 2010 the states will realize that since perception is reality the solution to the state's economic problem is to speed up reducing the cost of education to zero and still provide everyone with a diploma.  Starting in 2010, diplomas from public universities will be laminated onto the back of all drivers licenses.  Renew your license, get a degree.  High school diplomas will be printed on the back of all birth certificates.  With 100% college degree attainment the state will become the land of milk and honey (Our new motto in 2011).

T.S. Hall

P.S. You just got to clear this kind of stuff out of your head before the new year.

Race to the Bottom

Before I begin, I warn readers that this post is going to make some people see red.  I ask before you vent you spleen that you only do so if you are proposing an alternative that ensures that education is delivered with those grades and diplomas.

The Higher Education Commission of Indiana has recommended cutting funding to state colleges and universities at least partially based on what is euphemistically call "performance based funding."  By "performance" they mean retention and completion rates, not skill mastery, employability, etc.  Yes, you assume that retention and completion are welded to skill mastery and employability, but they are not in a academic community where student evaluations carry more weight than performance on standardized examinations.

The message of these types of actions, however well meaning, is that faculty challenge students at their own peril.  Students who face no real challenge to their intellect will be retained, give excellent course evaluations, and complete degrees.  Faculty will get tenure, schools will get money.  Well, at least until the realization hits that degree holders incapable of delivering goods or services that support the economy also don't fill state tax coffers.

I think the point of public education is to ensure that there is an educated populace capable of maintaining, and building an viable commonwealth by investing in the population of the state.  To succeed, education at all levels must challenge and measure.  Some will disappointed.  Some will fall behind and even fail.  If institutions of education can't be free to challenge and measure worthless diplomas will be awarded.  An unskilled populace incapable of meeting challenge will be reduced to the dole to live.

Surely, we must find ways to balance our state budgets, but printing diplomas on the back of birth certificates instead of funding education that educates only gets you a population with a high percentage of degree holders.

T.S. Hall

Public vs Private

From time-to-time I try to focus here on the differences between RO1 and PUI/MCU programs.  Today the NY Daily News brings us a story about the difference between public and private universities.  

It seems that the former NYU chemistry department budget coordinator had over a period of five years, submitted 13,000 receipts culled from the garbage of a local liquor store to support requests for petty cash.  The university forked over $409,000 to cover these bogus expenses until a student delivering the expense report paperwork questioned the deal.  Those of us at publics shake our heads as we stand in line at the local staple depot buying our own whiteboard pens out of our 10% lower paychecks so we can teach class.  

Public colleges and universities are so afraid of one penny being misspent that they spend large sums of money to make sure fraud does not occur.  I am sure some still does occur, but having no state funded department operating budget and needing all the dollars we can get in donations just to pay to operate the program keeps the amounts available for fraud pretty low.  Hell, $409,000 would cover our entire department operating budget for something over five years.  And at NYU it's part of the petty cash budget.

Oh yea!  And publics generally won't even let you use donations for liquor.

T.S. Hall

Year-End Giving

As I have spending all my time grading quizzes and labs, and writing and grading finals I have been listening to the local public radio station and checking e-mail to break the grading up.  In the course of this I keep hearing and reading multiple appeals for year-end giving.

A recent seminar speaker colleague from a California public university told of his university's plan to take $100 per key from the department for every key not returned by a student when they graduate.  Since the department has no state provided operating budget this means that the money will come from money brought in from summer offerings, grant overhead, and donations to the department.  While I encourage giving to your alma mater, you probably don't expect it to go to gauging by the campus key shop.

Particularly for those of us from PUI/MCU institutions we owe much to our alma maters.  So how do we give and make sure our giving goes to help bring up the next generation of chemists?

I suggest giving directly to the department of your choice, or to the faculty member of your choice by attaching a letter to your check which designates the uses to which the money may go.

When I give to my alma mater I designate that the funds must go to the corpus of the Synthetic Organic Chemistry Research fund they set up some years ago.  Giving to the corpus builds the perpetual nature of the fund, so my dollars continue to give long after I am gone.

If there was no fund I would do as the Friends of the Hall Group do and designate that the funds may be used to support the purchase of materials needed to advance the laboratory research and teaching program of a specific professor or group of professors.  In my case I use these funds to cover outside analysis costs, purchase of reagents, travel by students to present their work, printing of posters, student scholarships, and other such things.

So, as you plan your year end giving you might consider support the work of your mentor, who has seen support from the university for his research program slashed over the last couple of years.

T.S. Hall