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