Laws of Power - Laws of Productivity

As happens all too often I recently found myself in the middle of a petty power struggle.  The childishness of the actions and comments that were part of the debate made me wonder why anyone bothers to try to do anything for the good of the university, college, department, or the students.

In talking to someone outside the university about the events and results I was advised to read the "48 Laws of Power" so that I could avoid having my civic spirit crushed in the future, by crushing those that don't agree with me.  My advisor suggested that I was being too open, honest, and welcoming of the thoughts of others and that through the Laws of Power I could learn how to bend everyone before me to my will.

My first thought was that controlling people and crushing those who will not bend is not who I am.  On reading the Laws of Power I am sure of this.  I am not interested in power, I am interested in productivity.  I want my energy to go into making the department as a whole stronger rather than being wasted on positioning myself to keep others down.

I wonder if the pursuit of power for the sake of having power isn't a large part of the problem in many of the dysfunctional departments I have been associated with.  Would be chairs focused on accumulating power and crushing people with other ideas and the faculty members spent too much time counting heads and currying support over minor issues rather than joining together to raise everyone up and improve the entire department.  People interested in a department focus rather than the intestine wars within the department can never get traction in leadership votes because they avoid taking sides in the power plays and get crushed by the power players.

My department, the Statehouse, Washington, etc.  It does not matter where we look, power rules over productivity.  At least so long as we chose to allow it to.  If enough people opt out of the power plays but stay in the decision making process we could all avoid having to take sides in a destructive cold war with our departments.  The power players only have the power we give them.

T.S. Hall

The end of casual leafing

This morning I received the E-mail from the Organic Division of ACS informing the membership that we will no longer receive the annual Organic Synthesis paperback at part of our membership.  I knew it would happen sooner or later, but I still felt a sting.

No mater how hard we try, keeping up with the literature is always a challenge.  Each year when Org. Syn. would arrive I would put it on my "leafing pile".  This is a pile of stuff that I leaf through when I have a few moments to kill between meetings or that I take for plane trips.  Back in the olden days this pile included paper journals, but my access to those went digital long ago.

Leafing is a great education.  I would catch chemistries that helped in my research or gave me new research ideas.  It helped me recognize new conceptual and experimental trends in the science which I would then make a point to read about.  To the extent that I keep my knowledge of the latest organic science fresh I attribute a good bit to leafing through journals and looking at papers that I would never have looked at based on a title or graphical abstract.

I guess I need to find new ways to keep up and watch for trends.  Thankfully, in the mean time my annual copy of Annual Reports in Medicinal Chemistry arrived last week from the ACS Med. Chem. Division.

T.S. Hall

Research on a Budget

In addition to my unexplainable curiosity about mechano-chemistry (which includes sonochemistry and grinding or ball-mill reactions, none of which I do), papers that key on low cost research tend to catch my eye.  I suppose it's because my group runs on a shoestring.  With this in mind, I will draw attention to a recent Tetrahedron Letters paper on the use of animal bone meal (ABM) as a catalyst of the crossed-aldol condensation.  This is actually the second paper from this group, but I don't have access to Letters in Organic Chemistry papers, so I missed the original report.

In the recent paper, the authors did not go into the conceptual leap that inspired this research area, which I am curious about.  But, I do love how the mostly Moroccan authors spent no dollars, or dirham, with Aldrich or Acros for their catalyst.  They invest some column inches on how to prepare ABM and Na/ABM from animal bones "collected from nearby butcher shops." (Na/ABM is ABM impregnated with sodium nitrite.)  Now, that's research on a shoestring!

So, as you gaze upon the carcass of the once golden Tom Turkey upon your table give Thanks that the catalyst of a new research venture lies before you.  I can see the series of papers now; Turkey Bone Meal catalyzed . . ., Free Range Turkey Bone Meal catalyzed . . ., Wild Turkey catalyzed blog writing in organic chemistry, etc.

Happy Thanksgiving!

T.S. Hall

On-line Scandal to Come

I am currently working on creating an on-line Introduction to Regulatory Affairs course for our College of Continuing Education.  Aside from the course material itself, which I will go into at a later date, I have been assigned a minder to "help" ensure that all the university on-line content rules are followed.  In the course of my initial meeting with the continuing education folks a conversation on ensuring the security of courses ensued.

There are people who will take on-line courses for students and/or will take on-line examinations for the student.  With the increasing push toward on-line education educators need to get ahead of the future scandal when this issue comes before the public.  A widely publicized incident where a public figure or a group of pseudo-public figures are caught which unearned on-line credentials will cause a backlash that will have the public throwing out baby and bathwater.  This endangers what promise on-line education has.

One potential solution to the problem of credentialing the on-line student is to enforce identity checks in on-line testing.  This could be done through a little cooperation between institutions.  In a state like California where you can't spit without hitting a community college, Cal. State or Univ. of Cal campus there could be testing centers where the on-line student can come with their ID to take tests.  If we add in public libraries and public high schools this type of cooperative sharing of resources could actually facilitate the development of on-line education in a form where the credential actually has some value.

For those in the physical sphere of education, it should be pointed out that similar checks might be appropriate in your courses too.  As class sizes have grown, how many of us really know all our students.  I am reminded of a case from over a decade ago where a colleague discovered at the last exam of the semester that one student taking his organic course, and earning an A, was not in fact the student of record, but a family friend dentist who had been in the classroom and taking tests all semester.

I also have a colleague in the business college who checks photo ID at every exam.

I have stated it before; As the internet makes content freely available the job of institutions of higher education will increasingly become one of credentialing and training in technique where on-line learning is not sufficient.

T.S. Hall

The George Molecule

My undergraduate organic instructor and research mentor loved the nonstandard names given for organic molecules, including George, Housane, Pagodane, etc.  They bring a little whimsy into the subject.  In those days common nomenclature was the primary type of naming used in the course.  In the intervening decades IUPAC nomenclature appears to have taken the drivers seat in most texts.

This semester I have been teaching for the first time from the organic text by Jones and Fleming.  While the students really like the writing style, I have found that the use of common nomenclature is driving me to distraction.  IUPAC nomenclature is brought in, but common nomenclature is used the vast majority of the time.  One bit of irony for me is that the authors write about "bling" in talking about diamond, but still use amyl and appear to think that the name ethylene is IUPAC nomenclature.

While common nomenclature is necessary as it is still used, systematic nomenclature offers the opportunity to train the student's mind to build a body of rules that can be applied to systems they have yet to see.  It fits well into the idea of building the capability to predicting the products of reactions between reagents one has never seen.

One problem in the use of IUPAC nomenclature in text is that most of us don't know all the basic rules, so many text include errors in their IUPAC naming.  Taking a page from days gone by when there were texts on organic nomenclature, perhaps we need a primer on IUPAC nomenclature for organic faculty.  Something like a Oxford primer soft cover book.

T.S. Hall

Stop the Slaughter! Please! I'm begging here!

Perhaps I should not have given an exam the Friday before Halloween.  The students were in a particularly blood thirsty mood.  The wanton destruction put me in mind of Timur (Tamerlane) standing on a pile of the heads of his 100,000 captives during the conquest of Delhi.  It made no difference (to the students, not Timur) what Lewis acid was on the oxygen, the carbon-oxygen bond was almost always broken.

I warned the class several times about decapitation of alcohols and alkoxides, to no avail.  Appeals to consider electronegativity differences did not sway this group of students.  When asked, they remembered the picture of the decapitated alcohol, which they thought was funny.  To bad that they did not remember the concept behind it.

I often try to bring in analogies that will make them laugh to help them remember concepts, particularly those that they commonly trip up on.  The lesson, I suppose, is that being entertaining is not the same thing as educating.

So, back to the drawing board.

T.S. Hall

Hold your nose

Thank God the elections will be over in a couple of days.  If the campaigns have demonstrated anything, they have demonstrated that the nation is full of people who are diametrically opposed to working with anyone other than their clones.  This does not bode well for our future.

Similar kinds of self destructive things happen in our departments.  For instance, my department is currently discussing the prospects of writing a grant to replace our research NMR.  This will require all our NMR users to work together in the effort.  Some are withholding any activity toward the grant until the university promises to hire an NMR technician.  Do we need an NMR technician?  Perhaps, but holding up any progress toward resolving our NMR needs problem, which is real, does not serve the faculty members withholding their effort or the department.

A department needs to be a community working together for a common good.  Even with budget problems and administrators who care more about six year graduation rates than education and the careers of our graduates.  The department faculty need to work together to use with the budget they have and educate administrators and students alike.  Stamping our feet and saying, "It's our way or no way!" is never appropriate in an academic department or a state house or congress.  Our students deserve better, colleagues deserve better, our state deserves better, and our nation deserves better.

T.S. Hall

Celebrating Chemistry

In case you did not notice, last week was National Chemistry Week, and last Saturday was Mole Day.  If it slipped by without you contributing to the festivities don't worry, next year is the International Year of Chemistry.  The goals of the International Year are to spread the good news of chemistry to the citizenry.  Now is the time to start thinking about how you will contribute.

While I am thinking about how to celebrate chemistry I am also thinking about the all important Department Halloween Party.

I am thinking that this year I will really terrify and go as an Organic Exam.  Baby blue sheet enblazened with the text normally found on a Blue Book including the bar code on the back lower corner.  Make sure to fill in the student name and the all important course info.  You could have the family go as labware, but DO NOT suggest that your spouse go as a pear flask.  (You will get no treats.)  I recommend suggesting a stirring rod complete with a nice rubber policeman hat.  Better yet, a white sheet can become the organic exam questions.  Put questions on the front and back.

Just remember that celebrating is about having fun.

T.S. Hall

Our Ailing Infrastructure

My father and mother lived in a homeowners association once the chicks had left the nest.  One of the interesting things about homeowners association living is that while they are non-profit, associations they set up a "reserves account" to cover those non-annual costs.  Things like resealing the parking lot or replacing roofing.  The carried over reserve funds are not considered profit.  They are a sensible mode of covering costs that are not regular annual costs.  The association adds a basic level of funding to build the account each month.

What does this have to do with chemistry?  Repair or replacement of instruments has become an impossibility given the lean years we have faced and see into the future.  Immediate needs get covered in lean times and infrastructure can go to hell in the mean time.  Just look at the nations bridges.

Our institutions generally don't have anything resembling a reserve account for our infrastructure.  My department has not had a state funded operating account in years, so adding money to an infrastructure reserve is out of the quesiton.

Looking for another option, I have brought this issue up in our development committee only to meet with the response that donations for repair and replacement of infrastructure is not something people will donate to.  Scholarships, yes, instrumentation, no.  Is this a problem of not making a strong enough case?  Without the resources to train the students with modern functioning equipment, scholarships only support training graduate for jobs in the last century.  Hardly a value added degree.

And what of our institutions and our statehouses.  If we are supposed to be training the high tech employees of the future, how are we supposed to do it without of date and nonfunctioning equipment.  Yes, it will mean that the increase in costs of education will outstrip the rate of inflation.  But should we expect that the up-to-date technology will cost nothing.  This is how we get into an infrastructure hole that you can't get out of.

T.S.Hall

Billable Hour

In a few weeks the 2010 elections will be over, and the advertising for the 2012 elections will begin.  As part of the anti-intellectualism of today's political candidates, the faculty at institutions of higher education will be identified as welfare queens who only work 12 hours a week.  It's annoying and to the extent that it effects the resources we have to do our jobs, not to mention feed our families, it aggravating.

To address the issue and head off the politicos I suggest that we academics declare a "billable hours week".  The week of the elections would be good.  We can use technology to remind us every hour to assign the work of the previous hour to "accounts" that reflect our duties.

The accounts list might include the following.

In class work: teaching, class preparation, preparing assessment activities, grading assessment activities, office hours, E-mail and other student communication
Scholarly activities: grant writing, grant administration, supervision of students, writing papers, communicating with collaborators, your own lab work
Service: departmental meetings, college meetings, university meetings, meeting prep, servicing university facilities, reviewing grants and papers, department and student development

If the exercise does nothing else, it should help us individually determine where the hours go.  I know I have been wondering.

T.S. Hall

What to do when your magnet quenches

Yup, it happens!

My department's research NMR was installed in 1993 and the magnet has not be overhauled in all the years since.  Well, even borrowed time runs out.  For us this happened some time between Saturday night and Sunday afternoon.  The magnet quenched and this morning when I came in the top and bottom of the instrument were covered in frost ice.  After seeing if the magnet was gone I called the company that helps me with service.  Since I could not find this info on the web I offer this list of things to do if your magnet quenches if it is going to be a while until you can come up with the scratch to bring it back up.  (California still doesn't have a budget when the year started July 1.)

1. Shut down the console.

2. Pull the probe from the magnet if you can.  If it is frozen in place, don't force it.
One thing I should have thought about is that it would be freezing cold.  I darn near frozen my hand to the side of the probe when pulling it.

3. Pull the shim stack from the magnet.
I have pulled it before to clean the spin assembly.  There is a ring clamp that holds it at the bottom and three long screws that hold it from the top.  It has generally been pretty snug and required some pressure to pull it down.  Well, with everything frozen the bottom clamp does not hold it.  It almost dropped to the floor when I took out the three screws at the top of the magnet.  Fortunately I had someone there "just in case".

4. Last, I removed the upper stack.

Now, I need to find the money to replace the seals and bring back the magnet.

T.S. Hall

Education for all

In the first week of the semester a substantial part of my non-teaching time was spent in meetings and dealing with the overflow of students trying to get into one of my classes.

With the California budget over two months overdue the university based its fiscal planning for the fall semester on last year's budget.  Without the pay furloughs (there was no work furlough) we experienced last year the number of sections was cut as lecturers were let go.  Class sizes went up to the limit of the size of the room for this semester.  

On day-one of the semester my 8:00 AM organic lecture was already five percent oversubscribed since the classroom had that many more chairs than the course was designed for.  When I got to the classroom there were numerous students standing in the back and on the sides of the room.  If all students wanting to take the class were admitted the class would swell to one-third over the original design size.

In discussing the issue with my Chair and Associate Dean I was told that I needed to take the graduate students who need remediation since they would be held up in their graduate careers by not being able to remediate their deficiency.  I must take the transfer students since they might get off track to degrees if they have to wait until next semester to take the class.  I must take the second and third repeaters since they are already behind and holding them up further would slow their progress to a degree further.  (The university has set a priority on increasing the six-year graduation rate.)  Only I noted that increasing the class size by one-third would necessitate a change in my pedagogical plans for the semester as I am in the process of teaching.  Also, increasing the workload without additional resources is unfair to both me and to the students.  More students should necessitate more office hours to support the students, and I can't offer more office hours without shortchanging my other duties.  It took five days, but by week's end I was assigned a new room that will hold the larger size class and got no other resources to support the student's education or my work.

Routinely, when we complain about class sizes it is pointed out that at RO1s class sizes can be 500 students, as it to imply that we faculty are slackers.  We don't have classroom that will hold half that number on our campus, and one 500 student class many actually be the entire load of that RO1 faculty member.  We must remember though that the RO1s on this area have 500 student classes and a score of discussion sections run by graduate students.  The students get the opportunity to ask questions and get face time with an instructor in a small group setting.  Since my graduate students are taking the class for remediation that would be difficult here.  Also, the RO1s take the cream of the student population.  The public comprehensives and PUI's take the second tier students who are more likely to benefit from more one-on-one education.  This is why large classrooms were not built on our campuses.

I like teaching, but like most people I want a fair shot at being successful at what I do.  Without resources and with impossible demands a career that might be fulfilling becomes a life of futility leading to burnout.  I believe that this has a lot to do with the low retention rates in K-12 teaching and the frustrations and burnout of many PUI and MCU faculty trying to compete in laboratory research.

Anyway, got to go reorganize the pedagogy of my course.  Happy Labor Day!

T.S. Hall

Things to come

At last week’s university convocation the charges for the year where laid out.  The priorities for the 2010-11 academic year are increasing graduation rates and grant support. On a similar vein the nation’s politicos are pushing to increase graduation rates based on the presumed increased need for people with college degrees over the next 10-15 years.  The logic appears to be that by the 2020s almost no one in the US will make anything or do any physical labor and we will all be in the knowledge business.

I am somewhat skeptical of this.  As a society, we don’t appear to have realized yet that knowledge is fungible.  Of course those working in the pharmaceutical industry recognize this already.  The flat out replacement to a vertically integrated economy with monocultural knowledge economy has the potential to do the same thing for this country as happens in ecological monocultures.  Assault by a single contagion can bring down an entire monoculture ecosystem.  The closer we get to a pure knowledge economy the greater the peril we put our future in.

Aside from the idea that we will all be knowledge workers in another decade I am also concerned that in all the talk about granting more degrees and increasing graduation rates no speaker mentions educational quality.  When the politicians and the university administration tell faculty that the two things they care most about are the graduation rate and external funding many faculty will listen to the demands of the student evaluation and let the grade float up to where all those paying the bills are happy.

When the knowledge bubble deflates, in part because the knowledge is not there, there will be tearing of hair and a search for someone to blame.  So, in another ten years when the congressional hearings begin, someone please point out that we dug the holes our leaders demanded we dig.

T.S. Hall

More Miscellany

In today’s installment of my pre-semester desk cleaning of articles that looked like blog prompts we find a couple of cases of post graduation evaluations.

The first is actually about sociologists, but could apply to any of us.  According to the article in Inside Higher Ed, among the 2005 graduates in sociology 70 percent were satisfied with their major, and by 2009 only 40 percent of the same group was were satisfied.  Such satisfaction loses can result from many factors including poor job prospects that make one question the value of the degree.  From my minimal experience, sociology collects its share of premed types, so they have something in common with us chemistry folks.  Not getting into medical school could account for some of the satisfaction gap.  Particularly when one recognizes that very many of these graduates were unsatisfied by the level of career advising and graduate school advising.  

Many of our own departments are guilty of not paying enough attention to student career development.  Many of our programs are not flexible enough to change with the needs of the graduate schools and employers of our products.  With increasing attention to outcomes and the value of degrees we would be well served to consider the value of career development within departments.

The second article is from the NY Times.  It is a story about public institutions of higher education in New York City giving detailed reports to the local schools of who needed remedial courses when they got to college.  At a time when nearly every high school graduate is being pushed to college it would be a useful service to provide such information to our feeder schools.  Linked to standardized test scores and performance evaluations, such post graduation performance review could help high schools get past memorizing the material for the test and don’t worry about long-term education.

As I have written before, our primary product is our graduates.  Preparing them for the next steps in their careers should be a priority.

T.S. Hall

Prompt Miscellany

The blog prompts are starting to pile up, so let's clear a few from the list.

The high school in Mount Olive, New Jersey has declared itself a D-free zone.  On the logic that a D is really a failure, the school will only give A’s, B’s C’s and F’s.  To this logic I quote from Matthew B. Crawford’s book, “Shop Class as Soulcraft.”

Pedagogically, you might want to impress on a student the miserable state of his mind.  You might want to improve the students by first crushing him, as then you can recruit his pride to the love of learning.  You might want to reveal to him the chasm separating his level of understanding from the thinkers of the ages.  You do this not out of malice, but because you sense rare possibilities in him, and take your task to be that of cultivating in the young man or woman a taste for the most difficult studies.  Such studies are likely to embolden him against timid conventionality, and humble him against the self-satisfaction of the age, which he wears on his face.  These are the pedagogical uses of the “D.”

What’s a dedicated slacker to do?  Well, if figuring out if it is worth going to class taxes your brain a new website -- The Should I Skip Class Today? Calculator offers the solution.   Of course if you need a website to figure out if you should go to class, you should probably just go.

Of course if you have been skipping class pretty often, Ultrinsic is the new off campus betting parlor for academia.  Students can bet on their grades in individual courses or the semester GPA.  They can even buy grade insurance against receiving a lower grade than they bet on.  Apparently, education is not it’s own reward, and it takes too long to reap the benefit.  Today’s students need the nearer-term payback of a cash payday for grades.  Of course if you get the insurance maybe you don’t need the grades.

I wonder how not having a D option would effect Ultrinsic's business model.

T.S. Hall

An the Emmy Goes To

Last year, I reviewed script for an episode of the television series "Understanding Chemistry in Our World".  I also portrayed a talking head in the episode.  Well, the show has won an Emmy for Best Instructional Series, and about ninety of us get recognized as part of the team.  The Emmy statuette will look nice on top of my pile of questionable student evaluations.

T.S. Hall

Two weeks to the new year

One of my research students, BP, just dumped 200mL of silicone oil into the sink thinking that it was "cloudy water".  He did not even notice that it floated on top of the water in the sink.  It was only when I asked him why the oil bath reaction setup was missing the oil that he even knew he did anything wrong.  Perhaps, I should rephrase that since the he indicated that he doesn't think he did anything wrong.  From the look on his face he is quite puzzled by my cursing, which I generally don't do in front of students.  This is a student who I can't trust to do anything without my standing over him.  Several times I concluded that I might as well do the work myself, for the sake of the equipment, the environment, my budget, and everyone's safety, but I have continued to try to teach him.  To make matters worse, this student wants to teach chemistry in a high school setting.

BP has offered to leave the group.  To which I thought, "Gee thanks BP, but do you think you could clean up the mess you made before you go."  But then my conscience got me, which is why I am writing this rather than wishing young BP good riddance.

I see my job as educating, and while I have expressed disdain for those "students" who don't want to an education, I feel an obligation to those who actually want to learn.  The problem here is that I am not sure if BP can.  Here he is ready to graduate, as soon as he get his research credit, and he can't balance equations, calculate limiting reagents, differentiate silicone oil from water, etc.  He has been failed by the system that has allowed him to get this far.  And when he graduates and starts teaching chemistry he will fail a new generation of students.  If I let BP go to another lab my laboratory life will be easier, and I will feel that I failed as an educator.

With two weeks until the new academic year begins I find myself wondering how I can face another class of students when my goal is to prepare them to become contributing members of society and the new purpose of higher education is to provide degrees to as many students as possible in six years or less.  At least that's what the public and the politicians are telling me.  My friends and colleagues have been telling me for years that I should just teach my classes and seek positive affirmation in those students who are successful and in my research.  For the vast majority of students who don't care my peers suggest not wasting energy on them.  I have never been able to do this.  All I know is that with two weeks until classes start, I should not be wondering if I really belong in modern higher education.

T.S. Hall

Leisure College

According to the new "Leisure College, USA" study by the American Enterprise Institute, college students today spend only about fourteen hours per week studying, as opposed to twenty-four hours fifty years ago.  In case you forgot, the recommended number of hours of studying is thirty hours per week.

Looking at the usual suspects for decreased study time, the authors are able to discount a higher percentage of students working, gender demographics, differences in types of institutions (although I did notice that MCU students study the least) and improvements in teaching and information technology.  In the end they express concern that the decreasing level of rigor of college education connected to pressures related to the change to a student as customer mentality are to blame.

One factor that was not mentioned was college as lifestyle.  Look at every movie and television show about college.  In them college is publicly and/or parentally funded time of parties and irresponsibility.  Learning is something that gets in the way of these activities.  Students vote with their choice of college and their course/faculty evaluations.  Faculty and colleges that try to fight the trend only hurt themselves.  As stated in the report;

We are hard-pressed to name any reliable, noninternal reward that instructors receive for maintaining high standards—and the penalties for doing so are clear.

I am not sure if there is a way to turn back the clock on this issue.  Students have told me that because it is grades that matter to them they must avoid faculty who maintain high standards.  One must wonder what an educator dedicated to the mission of higher education is to do.

T.S. Hall

Piling on For-Profits

In the slow news time of August we have been treated to a series of reports of increased attention to community colleges and for-profit higher education on the grounds that the public is being ripped off.  The main charges against the for-profits are of enticing the public to sign up for student loans for high priced degrees (higher than the underfunded public sector) that are never finished or if they are, the career pay is not commiserate with the degree costs.  Students default on loans, hurting both the graduate and the public who guarrenteed the loans.

It appears that a large part of the problem many in Congress and in the public have with for-profit education is that it is capitalist.  In my duties as Devil's Advocate I have to point out that it is a bit ridiculous of us to get outraged about for-profit publicly traded companies doing everything legally allowed to maximize profit for their shareholders.  That's what you wanted when you were demanding a business model and saying that the private sector could do it better.  In defunding public education we are going back to the days of first century of this nation when most education was private and we had a pretty clear class system.  

While I do have my doubts about the ethics of some of the business models I have witnessed, I can't stand with the tar-and-feather crowd in the current instance of lumping all for-profits together as scheming evil-doers out to bilk students and the public out of their hard earned dollars.  As the pendlum swings we start by deciding that some previously public activity is costing more than we would like to pay.  The public then complains about inefficiency and "waste, fraud, and abuse" by public employees.  Then we complain that the public entity should be run more like a business.  Then we start turning it over to private business, followed by the complaints of "waste, fraud, and abuse" in the private sector, particularly that someone is making profit from something we see as a fundamental right.  In the end we try to close excess profit loopholes.  Eventually we notice that the costs really don't change that much from when we started and the quality of work is about the same, so we move to the next thing of outrage.

I can't defend the most outrageous money making conduct of some for-profits, but I can't find fault with the majority trying to be for-profits.  The common cause of outrage appears to be anyone making a good living at something the public sees as a right.  (Right to health care: doctors and pharmaceutical companies make too much money.  Right to higher education: faculty are paid too much and have too generous benefits, textbooks cost too much, organic is too hard.)  If freedom isn't free, neither are our other rights.  Our leaders need to remind us of this, but our elected officials only give voice to our childish demands for something for nothing.  If you don't want to pay taxes for public education, you will pay for private non-profit and for-profit education, as least until the public stops supporting education at all.  This may well bring us full circle back to the class systems of the founders.

Be it defense contractors or education businesses we must remember, caveat emptor.  It's what capitalism is all about.

And let's not forget that nobody is really looking at the value of non-profit degrees.  Not the earning power but the ability to generate value for a business or the community that the degree holder gained with the degree.

T.S. Hall

More medical school organic

The "newspaper of record" this morning has an article titled "Getting into Med School Without Hard Sciences" in which they report on an article from Academic Medicine.  The story is about a program that Mt Sinai has run for the last 20 years that offers slots in the medical school to students from the humanities who don't take organic, physics, or the MCAT.  Only the last six years of students are used in the analysis.

Well, actually if you read the Academic Medicine article they do take an eight week principles of organic and physics in medicine course at Mt. Sinai, the summer of their junior year.  The course get six units of credit for the organic part and two for the physics.  I would love to see the syllabus of the summer course to learn what topics they cover and to what depth.

The authors also write:

We acknowledge that these disciplines have educational value for future physicians and scientists, but we contend that admissions committees pay them too much attention and that far too much time is devoted to them in the undergraduate premed curriculum.

Of course the Times article does not mention the summer course or the acknowledgement that these courses have any value.  This abridged version of the article will no doubt be used to pressure changes in the programs at undergraduate institutions and at medical schools.

One thing that the articles and their authors don't address is the fate of students who don't get into medical school and took this limited curriculum.  One argument for breadth in an undergraduate curriculum is the recognition that those that fail to make it to medical, pharmacy, or dental school should still have skills to earn a living with their degree.  I would be very curious to see what happened to those who did not make the grade.

T.S. Hall

The endangered teacher-scholar

The International Changing Academic Professional study results were announced this month.  The study is really about the morale of the professorate and the life of academics world-wide as they see themselves.  In the brief report in Inside Higher Education the last line caught my eye.

Locke also highlighted an increasing "division of academic labor” and speculated that UK academics who undertake both research and teaching may now be in the minority, as they already are in the U.S.

The teacher-scholar model is the one that traditionally has been applied to MCU and many PUI faculty hires.  In recent years, I have noticed that faculty are being put into teaching slots or research slots with little or no room for the teacher-scholar.  Folks like me who went into the profession to be teacher-scholars find ourselves torn to pieces as we try to avoid being put into one slot or the other.

Teaching feeds my desire to help people achieve their dreams through thoughtful work and acquired skill.  Research feeds my desire to solve puzzles and add to the field of knowledge that I teach.  To the extent that teacher-scholars are being asked to choose, they are often being told to become teachers only in order to give limited research resources to the newly hired people in the research slots.  I know a number of teacher-scholar types who lament that they are no longer supported to be teacher-scholars and have become second class citizen in their own departments because their focus is not primarily research.  With the increase in lecturers on many campuses, particularly at public institutions, I wonder if we are headed the way of the RO1s where many undergraduate lectures are taught my lecturers with security and the tenured faculty are only the research faculty.

I do believe that teacher-scholars add something to the classroom, in that they bring in the scientific process of questioning assumptions and showing how our ideas are based on best evidence to date, but subject to new ideas.  Being engaged in research keeps these things in the front of your mind and brings the excitement of discovery and passion for moving the field into your face and talk.  Teachers who are disengaged for the processes of scholarship just can't do this as well.  Perhaps having more teacher-scholars would reignite some interest in science careers.

So, cheers to the teacher-scholar.  May your value be appreciated before you are gone.

T.S. Hall

MR5 - What Med Schools Want

I recently received the MR5 report from the American Association of Medical Schools showing the results of their study of what in the opinion of medical school faculty, residents, and medical students is of importance in the undergraduate courses.  Organic as a general topic falls in the category that is between "Somewhat" and "Moderately" important.  Physics, General Chemistry, and Biochemistry are all viewed as being of greater import.

The "organic" topics considered "very" to "extremely" important were Nucleic Acids, Lipids, Amino Acids and Proteins.  Between "Important" and "Very Important" are Carbohydrates and Phosphorous Compounds.  The next group of topics, in order of import, are Molecular Structure and Spectra, Covalent Bond, Carboxylic Acids, Alkanes, Alcohols, Amines, Acid Derivatives, Separations and Purifications, Aldehydes and Ketones, Sulfur Compounds, and Phenols.  Every other chapter in the organic book is on the low end of the "Somewhat Important" category.

Given that Biochemistry was the highest rated general topic (above both Biology and Cellular/Molecular Biology), it should be no surprise that the biochem topics at the end of the organic text are rated as being of the greatest import.  The thing is most of the faculty I know give cursory, at best, coverage of these topics.

There are three reasons commonly cited for this:

1) Just because some of the students are premed, does not mean that they or the rest of the class will make it to med school.  These folks may be glad to know the rest of the material.
2) It's an organic class, not a biochem class!  We are here to build the foundation, not the roof.
3) By the time we get through all the other material, there isn't much time left to do more that introduce these topics.

It will be interesting to see how this survey influences to the MCAT, organic textbooks, and our teaching.  The medical school bound have held the organic lectures hostage for some time.  Perhaps it's time to do as some neighboring institutions have done and split the pre-health professions majors off into their own bio-organic class.

T.S. Hall

Colorado leads the way down

The state of Colorado is about to put into law the most important legislation ever seen in our effort speed up the nation's educational race to the bottom.  The Colorado law will be copied by other states until we eradicate all thinking and science from the educational process.  The law will tie teacher pay and their continued employment to the progress of students on achievement tests.

Now, I am not against students making progress, but the achievement tests don't measure anything but short term memorization.  That's not educational progress!  So, my first issue is that the law is based on a false premise that the tests have actual value.

My second argument, and the basis of my belief that this is a significant step toward eliminating the type of education that will make America competitive in the world marketplace, is that if your pay and career are dependent on getting the kiddies to do well on the test you will teach the test only.  Hammer away at memorizing the material for the test and forget about teaching thinking, or science, or any of the other things that are not on the test.

It's call survival.  If you lose a job under this law, who will hire you.  Your career will be over.  You have to make sure you meet the numbers or you wasted all that time in college getting as education degree.

But I am open minded.  I will agree to support the bill with the amendment that members of the state legislature and the Governor be held to the same standard.  If the state does not make progress toward achieving utopia each year the elected officials pay will be cut and once their terms end they will be banned from participation in any elected office for life.

Hell, lets throw the parents into the amendment to.  Kids not up to snuff for a couple of years, we have to cut you off from having more kids.

(No budget in California by the constitutional deadline every year?  Banned from public office for life and cut of from having kids.)

What's that you say?  Elected officials can't control all the factors that might hinder the achievement of a Utopian society.  Parents don't have complete control over their kids development.  Well neither can teachers control all the factors that effect student progress.  Parents and state governments continue to dump more requirements on teachers and provide less resources, yet have the audacity to complain about the results they get.

One of our nation's biggest problems is our constant blaming of others, while we ignore our own complicity in the problem.  Another is that we want everything for no cost, but want to get paid richly.

T.S. Hall

Student Cheating

I have been reading a lot lately about plagiarism and student cheating and the extent to which campuses and faculty are going to identify and stop cheating.  Interestingly, some campuses and some faculty have come out against the routine use of programs that search submitted work of plagiarism, such as turn-it-in, on the basis that the use of these programs presumes that cheating is going on and treats the student as someone who can't be trusted.

First of all, over 60 percent of students admit to plagiarism at some point in their academic careers.  So, students are cheating!  To not look for it on the basis that doing so suggests that students can't be trusted is to deny reality.  Doing nothing also encourages the activity.  It's a wink and a nod.

I have previously pointed out that some of my local institutions that use on-line coursework do nothing to ensure that the students taking on-line tests are actually the students registered for the course or are not being helped my a battery of friends siting behind them as they take the test.

We need to recognize that our failure to ensure the quality of our product diminished the value of that product.  Ensuring the value of our course grades and degrees will cost us money, and may mean that not everyone gets a college degree, but having over half the students cheating also has a cost.  Can we accept the cost of lower productivity or incompetent action by people who passed classes and got degrees without having to master their field of study.  I think not.

T.S. Hall

Degree Economics

A colleague was lamenting today about the dearth of freshmen at new student orientation who have any interest in chemistry or biochemistry.  I am not talking about the entire university freshmen class.  I am talking about the chemistry and biochemistry majors.

Yes, when asked to raise their hands if they were interested in a career in chemistry or biochemistry, none of the future majors aired an armpit.  Digging deeper my colleague discovered that the students are not interested in science or a life of the mind.  They indicated that what they are interested in is MONEY.  They are only chemistry and biochemistry majors in order to gain access to pharmacy school, medical school, etc.

I don't blame them in this economic climate for being concerned about jobs and career security.  The lesson here is one for our political and scientific leaders.  If we believe that we will need more graduates in the sciences un order to remain competitive as an economy, we need to recognize that the current economics in our society don't send this message to our young scholars.

T.S. Hall

Thesis Reading: MS vs PhD

Recently I was reading thesis/dissertation chapters from both my own MS candidates and a PhD candidate from a local RO1.  The RO1 thesis chapter had previously been approved by the PhD mentor and the candidate was asking me to proofread and make sure the science was clear.  The differences between the two readings may say more about the individuals involved than the general differences between MCU's and RO1's, but they may be worth exploring.

The most striking thing I noted was a general tendency in masters thesis to place emphasis on how the study fits into the larger picture of the science, while the PhD dissertation writing assumed that the context within the field need not the elaborated upon and that the relevance would be clear to the reader.

Being in the midst of inviting speakers for the Fall seminar series on my campus this dichotomy in presentation style reminded me of the differences in presentations given by RO1 faculty and MCU and PUI faculty who come through my department.  Many RO1 faculty, including those coming through specifically on graduate student recruiting trips, blow the undergraduate and masters students away early in their presentations by not making the contextual issues clear or by coming back to the context during the lecture.  MCU and PUI folks generally show less of this tendency.  One could make the case that such differences owe something to the much greater focus on undergraduates that MCU and PUI faculty have in their day-to-day work.  These faculty have a better knowledge of were the audience is intellectually coming from.

I wonder if the difference may also owe something to the stage of science most MCU and PUI faculty are forced to practice by the resources at their disposal.  Given the difficulty in competing at the basis research level we tend to move toward application to justify our work in grants and to attract students into the lab.  Once indoctrinated into this way of thinking about our scholarship it begins to color all our output from how we present our own work to how we train our students to present their thesis.  I suppose that in a sense we are back to the hammer problem where our thinking becomes focused by the environment we are in, for good or ill.

As we extend and accept seminar invitations to/from our colleagues it would be good to keep in mind the environment in which the talk will be presented and the our goals in hearing or giving the talk.

T.S. Hall

Note from the ODA

As noted in my Defense of Marriage post, in my opinion bad arguments are the bane of good science and should be exposed to the light of day as part of creating a scientifically literate society.  At the same time I am hesitant to get on a soapbox that diverts attention from the purposes of this blog.  But, hey, it's my blog!  So, I will warn readers with the label "Office of the Devil's Advocate" when I venture into this territory.

What does the Devil's Advocate have to write about today?

In the last couple of weeks folks effected by the Gulf Coast oil spill have become more vocal about the perceived unfairness of the way BP funds will be distributed to compensate for lost income.  Specifically, these folks have noted that they have been deriving a large part of their incomes from cash business transaction for which they keep no records to avoid taxes.  There is even some talk about having congress change tax law so that these folks can get an amnesty from their tax law violation and make claim on the oil spill funds.

Lets see, people working in an underground economy, not paying taxes, demanding and getting government services, and asking for an amnesty from their illegal acts because "those were in the past" as one person stated in a radio interview I heard yesterday.

Does this mean that the Gulf Coast communities universally support immigration reforms that would give amnesty to all illegal immigrants currently in the country?  There certainly appear to be parallels.  I am sure the tea party movement and libertarian and conservative media will be all over this demanding these scofflaws be dealt with the same fervor they show for Arizona's ID check law.

We would all be well served to remember that our own illegal, immoral, or ethically questionable actions that we justify by saying that we are just ensuring that our families or businesses are able to make do are no more legal, moral, or ethical than those actions of others.  BP and company cut corners to save money or effort, which they thought was justifiable.  Fishermen and an apparent entire Gulf Coast community used a cash economy to avoid taxes to take care of their families and businesses.  Illegal immigrants cross the border for their families and quality of life.

T.S. Hall

Catfish a jumpin

Veteran academics, particularly we scientists at PUI/MCU institutions, know that it is best to avoid the neighbors during the summer.  I have even thought about having a red, white, and blue, flag emblazoned t-shirt made for the neighborhood 4th of July picnic that would carry the logo;

No! I work every day, all year! I just don't get paid in the summer.
Yes! I will take another beer!

The neighbors think that we have the summers off and envy our long "vacations".  We PUI/MCU faculty know that summer can be the best time to get research accomplished.  In synthetic labs where technique training is key, the summer with long uninterrupted days are ideal.  Since the new students need to be trained, it frequently falls to the faculty member to do this.  Since I am rebuilding my group, this summer is full of new students and devoid of continuing students to help out.  This means that all the training falls to me.  The month of June has been filled with twelve hour lab days, and evenings of SOP writing and analysis of data.  This explains why my blog prompts list is the longest it has ever been and the number of posting in June the lowest since starting this blog.

June may be the hardest summer month because the new students don't start getting results until the end of the month when their technique skills start to click.  With any luck July will bring armloads of data and a publication or two.

Since a research experience is central to the education of today's undergraduates perhaps colleges and universities should allow faculty and students to bank for use in the fall or spring semester of the following academic year three units of undergraduate research course training for every student working through ten or twelve 40 hour weeks.  At least then the students and faculty would get some credit/pay for their labor.

T.S. Hall

You Call That a Defense of Marriage?

Anyone how has taken a class from me knows that their arguments for anything will be parsed for quality.  Sloppy arguments come from sloppy thinking and sloppy thinkers make poor scientists, politicians, and citizens.  Sometimes I wonder where my students learned such sloppy thinking.

Today I heard a news report about the arguments being put forward before the court looking into the constitutionality of California's proposition 8 which is supposed to "defend marriage" by defining marriage as being between one man and one woman only.  My position on the issue does not matter as the point of today's blog is ineffectual (and unintentionally humorous) arguments.

It appears from the radio news piece that the argument by the "defense of marriage" lawyers is that the purpose of marriage is to create children and raise them in a household containing a mother and father.  Ignoring the circular argument, this view also allows for the invalidation of numerous marriages between heterosexuals.

Based on this argument, people how can't have children for medical reasons can't married or are not married.  If one partner or the other has rendered themselves incapable of having children, they dissolved the marriage, with potential legal liability for breaking the marriage up.

Hey guys, wife reaches menopause and kids out of the house, you don't need to divorce.  If she can't have kids the "defense of marriage" folks have just dissolved your marriage.  Marry that 23-year old without alimony to the former wife.  You will be defending marriage because you can now start family 2.0.

Be it our national dialogues or our teaching of the next generation such obviously flawed arguments should not be allowed to stand, and should be ridiculed publicly.  If I were the judge I would have to find against the "defense of marriage" argument with the admonition that gay marriage has nothing to do with the decision.  If the "making babies" argument is the best argument they can come up with they should pay all the court costs for wasting the time and money involved in the case.

Getting back to the pedagogical point, in class this means that my students get one point for making an argument but don't get the rest, for making a logically invalid argument.

T.S. Hall

It's better to never leave

With the start of the summer many PUI and MCU faculty are welcoming new research students into the fold.  In my case, just as my new students are starting I need to go out of town to a conference.  This leaves me with a half-dozen new faces and only a couple of students with less than a year's experience to oversee them.  This will require that I organize and write out in detail everyone's training and research plan for the week before I go.  It's a bit daunting when the new students have not had technique training yet.  It is hard to do research this way.

I am not bringing this up to instigate a pity party.  I am lucky to have six new research students.  When discussing the issue of not wanting to leave so I can stay a train my students my RO1 friends laugh.  In general they have not worked in the lab in years.  The current PhD students and postdocs train the new students.  Leaving town has almost nothing to do with the schedules or training of student workers.  While there new students are being trained they are writing papers and grants.

I find that when the summer comes my days are no less busy that during the academic year.  In some ways they are more busy.  Maybe this is why I wanted to punch my neighbor in the nose yesterday when they asked me what I was going to do now that I am on vacation for the summer.

Thankfully, with skype and e-mail i can at least touch base with the students each day.

T.S. Hall

Undocumented Groundswell

While I have a longstanding interest in political issues, I generally try to avoid spouting off on subjects political that are outside research and academic funding.  That said, the issue of undocumented students is hitting me in the face these days.

Just after the Arizona undocumented alien issue hit the fan I was contacted by a prospective graduate student.  The student even came to campus to talk about my research.  His spoken and written English where not great, but in California that applies to many people born in US, and more than a couple of faculty members.  Interestingly, the prospective student told me that their family was paying for school and that he was not interested in being a TA or GA.  Of course the idea of an MS student who would actually spend all day in the lab had visions of publications dancing in my head.

Later when discussing the prospective student with the department's graduate advisor it was pointed out that the undocumented are not interested in being TA's because they would need to provide a social security number in order to get paid.  The student in question had indeed noted that they are undocumented on their application.

In the second slap, a regional community college has recently announced an endowed scholarship in the name of a student who was killed in an automobile accident.  The requirements of the scholarship are that recepients must be undocumented.  Rep. Dana Rohrabacher blasted the school for sending a message that encourages people to enter the country illegally.  He noted that they put their public funding at risk by such actions.

Putting these two things together with the mood of the community, I wonder how a faculty member dedicated to lifting people up though publically funded education should balance their responsibilities.  For me, living in California, I can't win.  No matter what I do, people will be upset and someone will not be served.  For me this brings home the need for some resolution of our immigration debate.

T.S. Hall

Getting Lost

Hi, I'm Thomas and I'm a "Lost" addict.

The show "Lost" reminds me of my research.  Just when I think I have locked down the variables and understand something, I am proven wrong.  And, the Smoke Monster has also made a few appearances with disastrous effect.

With the show coming to an end, I am going to go out on a limb and put forward my speculation on the putting things together.  You can all laugh a what complete crap this is on Sunday evening.  On Monday we can all go back to the lab were we belong.

I think the key is, "Live together, die alone."  The coming face off with the smoke monster will turn on the individual characters putting their own issues aside and coming together.  I think this is also the key to "getting of the island."

All the main characters arrived lost in the sense that they were all inside themselves.  Charlie, Sun, and Jin may have died on the island, but they all did so at the point when they let go of themselves and committed to another, or to each other in Sun and Jin's cases.  Remember, Juliet said "it worked" after her selfless act of setting the bomb off.  Sayid was even selfless in his last act.  Bernard and Rose have in a sense already escaped in that they found their peace in each other.

The man with no name (not the character played by Clint Eastwood in the Leone films), before he became the smoke monster expressed disgust with living with the other people on the island because they were venal and self absorbed.  I have speculated the Jacob was bringing other people to the island to prove to the smoke monster that people were capable of more.  The Darma communal project might have been such an attempt.  The monster has been trying to prove otherwise to Jacob by his interactions with people and his attempts to manipulate them to kill Jacob.

Desmond through his experiences with EM fields has recognized the need to connect the part of each character in the parallel "sideways flash" existence with themselves in on the island.  In a sense to reconnect them with their souls.  This is critical to getting them to come together to face the smoke monster.  Once the castaways have faced down the smoke monster, Desmond can be revealed as the name at 108 degrees, and as the replacement for Jacob.  Having put others ahead of themselves the Oceanic 815 folks who have stood together can leave to their sideways existence, now knowing how they are all connected and taking the lesson of "Live together, die alone".

OK, back to grading.

T.S. Hall

Stages of Science Evolution Part II

I wrote yesterday about Alexander Shneider's "Four stages of a scientific discipline;  four types of scientists" article.  Just as Shneider cautions us about the effects of mismatch in stage of scientist and stage of reviewer, should we not also consider the possible disconnection between the expectations of those who support our departments and the faculty that do the work of the department?

I have been thinking about my department's "Friends of the Chemistry and Biochemistry" group.  This group is made up of alumni and regional industry representatives who advise us on direction and curriculum.  Our friends of the department (FODs) group frequently chastises us for not training our students in the specific topics they feel students need to succeed in industry.  Many blogs written by industry types mirror the same sentiments.  If industry scientist are generally stage four types, while faculty are in stage one through three, the disconnect is understandable.

At RO1 institutions there is an expectation from those on the outside that faculty be at stage one, two or three, but at PUI and MCU campuses the expectations often differ.  In some cases, by State mandate MCU and PUI campuses are discouraged from research in the first three stages.  Our mission to train students to meet the needs of the community places emphasis on stage four thinking.  At the same time, the expectations of granting and publication activities overseen by stage three scientists demand that faculty be in the stage three.

In trying to envision how a forward looking university administration might deal with this problem the answer might be to develop faculty hiring to ensure that faculty who represent all stages of scientists are employed.  In this fashion there are representatives in the program for all constituencies.  Then one must encourage and enforce a collegial respect among the faculty at different stages so that they respect the value each person brings to the department as a whole.

I think I just went a bridge too far.  Perhaps I should have mentioned that I have been thinking about all of this while plowing though exam grading.  It makes one crazy.

T.S. Hall

Stages of Science Evolution Part I

I was giving a final exam in my graduate class yesterday and elected to use the time to clear up some of the items in my to-read pile.  Near the top was the May issue of "The Scientist".  The magazine is described as being for life scientist, but even an organic chemist like me can find in every issue at least one item of interest.  In the current issue there was an article titled, "Evolution of Science" about a 2009 article from Trends in Biochemical Sciences by Alexander Shneider.

Shneider's article is rather interesting.  It reminds one of Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions, which Shneider does make note of.  He builds an argument for there being four stages of development of a scientific discipline and four stages of scientists.  Mismatches of stages of scientist and science, or stages of grant or paper author and stage of reviewer can result in problems staying in the field or with getting funded or published.

Stage one is a conceptual idea stage where someone sees something not previously recognized and adds new objects or phenomena to the discipline.  In stage two, new methods and techniques are developed to move the new discipline forward.  Stage three is where most academic scientists reside and where new methods and techniques are applied to the new discipline to define and expand the discipline.  In stage four the science is institutionalized as the knowledge generated in the first three stages is applied and in many cases makes the science "real world".

In dealing with the STEM pipeline and retaining students one might consider the stage our students reside in.  As Shneider suggests, if a student is attracted to science by stage one ideas and is funneled into a stage three or four science career they will tend to become unhappy.  Students might be better served by recognizing the stage of evolution they are attracted to and guiding them to a field at a similar stage.

The thought I had on reading this is that many of today's students in my classes are really stage four folks, looking for careers and institutionalized knowledge rather than the stage one-three thinking of their faculty mentors.  In trying to make them into stage three scientists we may be contributing to the pipeline problem, by chasing these students out of the profession.  In a related fashion, much of our NIH and NSF STEM resources are focused on encouraging creation of stage three people.  Again, by placing emphases on a single stage of evolution we may chase those in the other stages away from the professions.

We might be better served by recognizing the value of having professionals of all stage types and encouraging the development of professionals of all stages.  Of course this will require that we faculty are open enough to appreciate those stages other than our own.

T.S. Hall

Seasonal Affected Disorder College Edition

Those from northern climates know that in the Winter the short days and dreary weather cause Seasonal Affected Disorder, also know as SAD.  It is characterized by depression, lethargy, and a longing for Spring as February drags into March.  In academia we feel it too, only just as Spring arrives the end of the semester and finals creep in to lay a blanket of overcast on us.  With this year's budget crisis, and furloughs combined with the national economy that leaves our students worried about what they will do after graduation it has been hard to find Spring.  But Spring will come in a few weeks after the finals end.

This year I find my students worn out long before the final exam.  They are a good group and I wish I could offer them some Spring.  While faculty may decry the sorry state of today's students and their poor work ethics, I was fortunate.  My students took the challenge I put before them to go beyond memorizing and master the logic of the science.

So for all those writing exams and those about to take them, keep your chin up, Spring will come.

T.S. Hall

Lower-Learning Skills

As I prepare to write and give final exams I have been thinking about the ACS Standardized Exams.  In my department, we give them to provide some assessment in our courses.  This means that my two semester organic class will take the ACS exam as their final.  The problem I have had with the ACS exams for organic majors courses and higher level courses is that they are multiple choice only.  Even Wikipedia recognizes the disadvantages of multiple choice exams the major of which is noted in the quote below.

Multiple choice tests are best adapted for testing well-defined or lower-order skills. Problem-solving and higher-order reasoning skills are better assessed through short-answer and essay tests.

As we are pushed to standardized assessments we move away from the very concept of "higher" education.  Multiple choice standardized exams are about lower order skills.  Most importantly we need to spread the word that these tests are not really appropriate by themselves for high school let alone college.

If we are going to train true scientists capable of addressing fundamental questions in graduate school or in careers as science professionals we need to get beyond the multiple choice exam.  The SAT, MCAT, and GRE exams all have non-multiple choice parts.  We could create our own non-multiple choice questions, but with the ACS exams coming in at 2 hours and the typical final exam time at 2 hours there is no time for the non-multiple choice exam component.  If the ACS exams were designed to be something more on the order of 75 minutes we would have the ability of go beyond lower order skills testing.

T.S. Hall

The Other Gulf Coast Oil Spill

At one point in my life I spent some time living at that avernal entrance to hell that is the northeast gulf coast of Texas.  During my time there I absorbed much butadiene into my lungs and some local history into my brain.  With the current oil well blowout in the gulf I have been thinking about one bit of largely forgotten history.

The gulf coast of Texas is prone to oil seeps where crude oil seeps up from the sea bed.  In many parts of the beaches you will find tar balls on the sand, which people often assume is pollution from the refineries, although at least part of it is from oil seeps.

Historically there was a "oil pond" off the coast west of the Sabine River estuary (The border of Texas and Louisiana).  I am talking about a major oil spill that lasted for centuries.  In the 1890s through 1910 it was described as being a mile wide and four miles long.  Dating back to spanish colonial days ships would shelter there during storms.

It "disappeared" in 1910.  Many people believe that this corresponded with the tapping of the salt dome that was the Spindletop oilfield.  Spindletop was the largest single oil producer in the world when it came in on 7 Jan. 1901.  (If memory serves, it produced something like ten percent of all the oil in the world that year.)  When oil was struck, the well blew out and the gusher of oil estimated at 70,000 to 100,000 barrels of oil a day for 9 days formed a lake of oil in the surrounding countryside before the workers invented the first device to cap a well blowout.  Imagine to pressure in that salt dome.  This well is responsible for the start of the Mobil, Gulf, and Texaco oil companies, and making Texas an oil state.  The salt dome oil fields also were a source of sulfur, which was produced by the Frasch process.

I have always wondered what we might learn about the effects of oil spills from this chronic spill and the recovery of the coast since the end of the oil pond.  Of course the presence of multiple oil refineries in the Sabine pass area would complicate any such research.

T.S. Hall

Journal Reviews

I have been reading some organocatalysis papers lately to try to get a better sense of the field.  The chemistry appeals to my generally poor background in organometallic chemistry and my interest in understanding how enzyme catalysis works.

Publications in the field of organocatalysis range over a wide range from the very concept-to-application publications of some of the founders of the field, (MacMillan, List, Jorgenson, etc.) to me-too chemistry where a known catalysts is applied to previously un-organocatalyzed systems or a small change is made to a know catalyst without any hypothesis development that moves the field forward.  It's a newer hot field so this range of application will work it self out.

Unfortunately, as in the case of other "buzzword" fields a lot of shaky stuff appears to be slipping through the cracks.  In the last couple of days I have seen two papers, one in Org. Lett. and one in Syn. Lett., that have such problems that I can't see how the reviewers did not send them back to the authors for at least a rewrite.  An example problem from one the papers is:



Sure organocatalysis has yet not matured enough to work out a consistent terminology (ie. what does "bifunctional catalysis" mean) but the basics of the science of organic chemistry must still apply.

T.S. Hall

Career Ready Course Work

I had an interesting conversation today with a student about the coverage in my major's organic lecture.  Specifically, we were discussing the relative coverage of synthesis verses mechanism in the course.  My friends at the local RO1 institution offer a very synthesis focused course, which is reflected in their exams which generally offer less opportunity for partial credit than my more mechanism focused exams.  Since graduate students grade the exams there is some value in being able to present reaction and synthesis questions which will have single correct answers rather than sorting through the mechanism arrows and rationalizations about relative reactivity.

Since I have been reading a lot of articles about demands for a more career-ready graduate from community colleges and four-year schools I have been thinking this afternoon about my course and the career readiness and biochemistry course readiness of my students.  The biochem issue comes up since this is the next course on the sequence to the degree.

An understanding of mechanism serves the student in moving on to graduate school, but does it have value in the career world?  Synthesis has value if you are working in organic synthesis and helps in the biochem cycles, but does it have value beyond that?  Lets face it, many of the reactions we cover in the one-year Organic are not used in the real world of chemistry.

Since the semester will be ending soon and I have the summer to reorganize for the Fall, and I am using a new text I will be reorganizing my course anyway.  So, I pose the question for the audience.  What should we cover in the majors one-year organic course lecture and lab?  Or, what knowledge should we impart on our students in such a course.

I am interested to know your thoughts.

T.S. Hall

Last-in-first-out

There have been a number of articles lately about the movement to eliminate seniority in education layoff policies.  This idea has been primarily focused on K-12 for now, but with higher education funding equally at risk it may not be long before it comes to higher ed.  For those out of the loop in this, traditionally, the most recent faculty hires are the first to get pink slips when funding gets tight.  When hiring back, those with seniority are the first brought back in.  Education administrators and politicians see the weaknesses of this system and some want to eliminate seniority rules.

Those in favor of eliminating seniority have argued that seniority rules ignore efforts to make teachers accountable for their student's grades.  Some have gone so far as to point out that newer teachers cost less, so getting rid of senior teachers would save money.

My concern with regard to the "accountability" issue continues to be that the easiest way for a faculty member to give the perception of performance is to inflate grades and teach the test, and only the test.  Unfortunately, in my opinion, the tests we currently give don't measure the ability to think or come up with new ideas.  They are not about long term education.  If the point of education is to build for the future our current testing regime fails miserably.  Having little or no job security will mean less innovation and less education that last a lifetime, since faculty can't afford to have poor evaluations.  It's like those banks who were only looking at this quarter's results and not thinking about the long term consequences of their actions.  How did that work out for us?

For those looking only at the bottom line, I would point out that this can be seen as age discrimination under a euphemism.  The court cost could wipe out much of the savings.

Another "bottom line" issue is that tenure and seniority have a monetary value.  Eliminating these will require that you move that monetary value into the paycheck, again wiping out the savings.  Not being a stable career, will people really be interested in going into teaching?  If not, we will have to entice them with something, like perhaps money.

Opposing elimination of seniority are those who believe that just because someone has grey hair does not mean that they are not effective teachers.  They also worry that personal grudges will influence who gets the axe.

Having a few grey hairs myself, I am sympathetic to those fearing that they will be let go in those years when they are "too old" for professional positions outside teaching.  Having spent 20 years as a teacher will have some arguing that their background and skills in teaching "Watership Down" to 13 year olds don't really translate into anything but Walmart greeter positions.  This will be all the more reason to teach the test and give high grades.

Certainly there is deadwood in education.  We should have better means to remove the accumulating deadwood before the wildfire of poor performance burns down the entire school.  But, again, we need a better means of measuring performance than those we have now.  The deadwood is teaching the test and giving good grades.  They know how to game the system.

On the personal grudge issue, many times I have seen this payout, where sexual orientation, differing ideas about pedagogy, or a perception of an incorrect balance between teaching and scholarly activity were the underlying issues behind evaluations of poor faculty performance.  Yes, I know this happens in the non-academic world, but in our public entities our society has held itself to a higher standard.  As a community we tend to believe that if our public sector does not act fairly in its employment practice, how can we be assured that it will safeguard activities in the private sector.

In conclusion, there are pros and cons to seniority.  Just because we are in hard economic times today we should not rush into actions that will be counter productive to our longterm best interest.  There is a middle ground here and we must strive for that.

T.S. Hall

General Education Rigor

Last week, Inside Higher Education published an article on the case of a biology faculty member who was removed from teaching a non-majors class mid-semester for being too rigorous.  There is much to the story that did not make it into the article and it generated a tremendous amount of feedback.  I won't get into the case specifically, rather I will comment on some of the responses it engendered.

One of the issues raised was if the standards of a non-majors or general education course should be on par with those of a majors course.  An example of a comment is:

"In this case, however, the professor was teaching an introductory course for NON-MAJORS. Students take this type of course either because its required or because they want to sample an academic field for its own sake. Mastery of the body of knowledge is not--and shouldn't--be a goal. The point of such a course is to "taste" the material. And, yes, it should probably be possible to slide by with a "C" in such a course pretty easily." 

It does not matter if a course is required or taken to sample a field.  The point of a course is always to master a body of knowledge.  Certainly the level of mastery will differ between general education, lower division, and upper division courses, but the goal is still mastery at some level.  

The point of a grade is to provide some measure of the student's mastery relative to the required level of mastery.  If sliding by with a "C" is "easy", the value of the grade is pretty minimal.  Should such courses really receive the same weighting in the graduates grade point average as courses where a "C" grade is based on some less "easy" standard?  Should the "easy" courses get a lower unit load count than the "non-easy" courses?

There is a fairly commonly held belief among students that general education courses are not real courses, but are there for easy grades to boost GPAs.  To the extent that we faculty contribute to this mentality we undermine the benefit of a liberal arts education.  The next time we decry the scientific illiteracy of the general population we might ask ourselves if our own general education courses are "pretty easy Cs" or if they emphasize mastery that leads to a populace that has the ability understand the science upon which their lives depend.

T.S. Hall

Outside Class Time

I was just reading an article on course planning in which the authors indicated that one should plan their course to include the three hours of outside class time work your students will do for each hour of in-class work.  This three-to-one ratio is pretty commonly cited as the amount of out of class time students should spend for each in class hour.  Since studies in the University of California show that today's students report putting in about one hour of outside class work for each hour of in class work, what should one do in planning their course?

I alway thought there was some fantasy in the three hour number since our degree programs often require fifteen units per semester.  This would mean that a student taking a full lecture load would be studying 45 hours per week in addition to the fifteen hours of class time.  With the average student working about 20 hours per week, and allowing for travel time, eating, sleeping, etc one quickly runs out of time in the week.  Its no wonder students don't hold to the three-to-one ratio, particularly if they are going to work in a research lab.

Education folks advise that we should "teach the students we have, not the ones we wish we had".  If the ones we have only study one hour for each hour of class, should we back off on the idea that students should be putting in about nine hours per week of study time for each three unit organic lecture class?

I ask this because I increasingly hear from organic colleagues who have given up and are backing off on their course requirements "because the students just won't do the work".  These faculty fear their student evaluations and defend their behavior by saying they are teaching the students they have.

I don't have an answer to this issue, but I would be interested in hearing the opinions of readers.

T.S. Hall

Happy Birthday TJ

I have always been a fan of Thomas Jefferson and today is his Birthday.  So, I will offer up some words of wisdom from the founding father.

In arguing for a tax to support public education in a time when education was largely private and only available to the wealthy, Jefferson argued that public education would ensure that the upper classes would not overthrow American democracy and create a class system to the detriment of the working classes.  And so he wrote to a friend;

"If you think that education is expensive, try ignorance."

The issues today are different, but there is still a worthwhile warning in the statement.

T.S. Hall

Alternate Careers

Lately I have been barely keeping up with my many responsibilities, yet I did take a moment to read an article on time management and getting more done.  I was intreged to learn that there are folks out there who are professional naggers you can hire to call, e-mail, or put the kitchen garbage in front of the door to the garage to help you get past those things you are procrastinating about.  (Oh Wait!  That last thing is a service provided by semi-pro spousal naggers.)  It is amazing what services people need today.

I wonder if there is a place in the university to offer the service to students, and faculty (not to mention bloggers).  Tired of nagging your students about assignments, farm it out to the Office of Professional Educational Nagging (OPEN).  They will contact your students every day asking them if they did five organic problems, finished their lab report, and made progress in their research project.

I would write more, but I just got a text indicating that the next organocatalysis lecture is not going to prepare itself.

T.S. Hall

Jaime Escalante

Yesterday Jaime Escalante, who you may know as the teacher who's life and work were the basis of the movie "Stand and Deliver" passed away.    He was a proponent of seeing the potential in all students and helping students see the potential in themselves.  He also stressed to his students the import of something he called "ganas" which is something like "desire that makes a person take on the difficult challenge".  He inspired his students in ways all of us could should wish to emulate.

T.S. Hall

ACS Meeting Final

To wrap up on the Spring National ACS meeting (yes, it ended last Thursday), I will make some general comments.

I am not sure what the official attendance was, but I suspect that it was lower than usual.  Other than the first morning, the exhibit hall was not particularly crowded.  Even the book vendor booths were open compared to the usual crowds.  Of course the book vendors seemed to have brought less books than usual.  I also noticed that some vendors were gone Wednesday morning when I went through.

The talks I went to were generally very good.  There was only one where I could not understand the speakers accent to the point where I had to just go by the slides.  It was interesting that some groups appeared in force over the week.  I think the entire Smith group from St Andrews came from Scotland to present.  Over the course of the week I got a very clear picture of that group's work, which I found interesting.

I did find myself thinking that the organizers from each division might offer a service to the attendees by suggesting a pre-meeting reading list of articles that might bring those from the hinterlands up-to-date on the hot areas that will be covered at the meeting.  I certainly was glad that I have been reading a lot about organocatalysis lately and wondered if I would have found the meeting as enjoyable had I not.

An ACS meeting his like that old fashion activity of leafing through a paper journal.  I pick up new useful stuff and doodle about my own projects in the margins when something does not capture my attention.  I still find it a useful activity, luddite that I am.

T.S. Hall