Two-Day Furlough

OK, I am back from my travels.  In my mailbox today is a note about possible 2-day a month furlough's for California State University faculty.  

You have to give the State Administration it's due.  They need to cut budgets.  They don't want to cut services.  They don't want to be seen as cutting the already low pay of faculty (when one considers the cost of living in California).  So, we have the two day faculty furlough.

In my position I currently work on campus minimally 6:30 am - 5:30 pm, Monday through Saturday.  This is the only way I can maintain my research program and do all the other administrative, advising, and teaching stuff I do.  I don't get paid in the summer, but I am here working with my students in the lab for about 12 weeks.  If you take away two days pay a month will I work less?  No!  If you are thinking of me as an hourly employee, you don't pay me for half the work I do now.

The two-day furlough for faculty is a pay cut.  The State will still get the work out of the professionals, because professionals are not hourly workers attaching widgets.  Professionals have a job to do, and they do it without worrying about a time clock.  The State has found a near perfect way to cut costs and still get services.  Next in No-Cost Service will be the two-day a month furlough of doctor and nurses, which requires them to spend the days in the emergency room or clinic waiting room.

My objection is the dishonesty of the euphemism  of calling a pay cut a "Two-Day Furlough".  What are they afraid of, scaring people from applying for positions in California public higher education?  Does that matter when they may also put a hiring freeze in place?

The people of California voted down the budget proposals on the ballot in May to send a message to the states leaders to "stop playing games and treat us honestly".  The State could start by calling a pay cut a pay cut.

T.S. Hall

P.S.  Readers Vote:  Rant or Observation?

Notes from Camp-full-o-fun.

Well, actually its not camp.  I am in Seattle with the spouse checking out the Pacific Northwest.  Yesterday we took the opportunity to get a four hour lesson in glass working.  We made paperweights, apples, a blown sphere, and a blown bowl.  Not exactly an ashtray and a lanyard, but it was a bit like camp.  Having taken a scientific glassblowing class back in my undergrad days I thought I had some sense of how this work would be.  Well, torch work making condensers from pyrex tubing is nothing like pulling molten glass from a furnace and shaping it into something that resembles what you had in your mind.  I now have a better appreciation for why hand made glass objects cost what they do.

T.S. Hall  

Google Translate

This morning I was looking for a procedure and kept coming across papers that referenced the same 1959 Helvetica paper.  While I have no problem with older literature, reading experimental's written in German gives me nightmare flashbacks to my undergraduate days and the four semesters of German language study required to earn a chemistry degree.  (Six semesters in my case, but only four semesters of classes)  Just as German made me think about changing my major, the prospect of trying the navigate an experimental with my long lost Scientific German skills made me think about trying another method.  

Thankfully, just when I was about to put on my lederhosen and dig into the experimental one of my labmates suggested I try Google Translate.  A quick copy and paste, a few corrections of OCR errors, a bit of educated guessing, and some revision of wording later and I have a complete experimental in English.

It makes me wonder if I can get rid of my Fortran textbook and those spare punchcards.  (That's a joke.  If you kids don't know about Fortran or punchcards, GET OFF MY LAWN!)

T.S. Hall

Teach the children

I am involved in a grant that encourages and prepares students who are members of underrepresented groups to head into PhD degree programs in the physical and biological sciences.  For the record, (in case I get nominated to become the first scientist on the supreme court) I am committed to this effort.   

Some of the initiatives we try in our underrepresented minority student programs appear to work very well with respect to guiding them to completion of the degree and moving them to success graduate school.  Since the programs are for underrepresented students we do not invite the traditional students to participatge.  In terms of demonstrating success, and getting future funding, we are encouraged to show that the URM students are doing better than in the past.  One way to do this is to show better numbers than the with traditional students, as if our goal is have the URMs catchup.  If we were to transfer what works to all students (even if we had the money) we would hurt our bottom line since we might backslide in the percentage, although not the number, of URM students graduating from our program.

The thing that bother me is that it seems to many of my traditionally represented students that the only support available goes to underrepresented students.  All those grad school prep workshops are not for them.  I have begun to see signs that students in the groups that traditionally sought sciences degrees are feeling unwanted in the field.  At a time when overall numbers of science trained graduates is not keeping pace with the need we can not afford to be perceived as chasing any interested individuals from the field of play.  

If we believe in the power of science to move all people forward, we must encourage all people to pursue the scientific way of thinking.  Yes, we must make special efforts to bring those that have not embraced the life of science into the community, but we must not discourage others in the process.  Following up on what works should require that funding agencies support efforts to apply successful methods to all groups.

T.S. Hall

Blatant Bias

This will be a bit controversial, but I have wondered about it for years.

My understanding of employment law is that an employer may not require candidates to have a skill which is not required to fulfill the job responsibilities.

A PhD is a research degree.  Lecturers are not allowed to have research programs.  So how can we post an ad for a lecturer and give preference to the candidate who has a PhD?  For that matter, if a college or university does not support research programs of tenure and tenure track faculty, how can they require a PhD of T/TT candidates?

The course requirements for a MS and a PhD are essentially the same in the US, so if the faculty candidate is not going to engage in research, is there a difference that would hold up in court should a jilted candidate file papers?

T.S. Hall

Science Blog Award

Obviously I am a fan of science blogs.  If you are too, you might be interested in nominating your favorite blog entry from the last year for the science blog award being offered by 3 quarks daily.  The timeline is pretty short, so get to it today.

No, I don't consider this to be a science blog, so I am not looking to be nominated.  Now if there is a award for blogs about higher ed written by people who got a D in freshmen English, go ahead and nominate.

T.S. Hall

Teaching Science as Fact

Previously, I commented on the "Can a mechanism be known" issue.  Today I return to the topic of teaching science as a known.

Long ago when I was a graduate student I wrote a letter (Stamp and all.  It was that long ago.) to my Grandmother about what I was doing in the lab.  My grandmother wrote back that she found it interesting that I was trying to discover new things in chemistry.  She thought that earning the degree meant that I would memorized all the combinations of reagents and conditions to make everything.  She continued to explain that she thought we already knew everything there was to know.  I remember thinking that if her conception of science were true I would never have entered the field.  It is precisely the unknown, the puzzle, the opportunity to create new knowledge and advance the human condition that ignites the passion of many to become scientists. 

I always figured that this was the difference between the BA and BS in chemistry.  The BA focus on the known art and the BS on the science.  One is technical the other is the exploration of the frontier.  For me the teaching of science as fact is technical training, not a scientific training.  

Don't get me wrong here.  We need both!  Much of the world of chemistry is technical and many of our students will find themselves in a technical job, or in an allied chemistry or biochemistry field.

Much of the progress of any field comes from the person looking for the solution to a puzzle, pushing the envelope of the known.  My fear is that if we do not teach the idea of unknowns and the potential inherent in mastering of the unknown the science and associated technology will stagnate.  Fewer will enter the field in favor of careers where the passion to discover is still alive.

T.S. Hall