academic coach

How Blogawesome is This?

Geeky Mom is sharing some fascinating ideas about Blogistan:

"Blogs make up a complex network, a scale-free network, in fact, as described by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi in Linked. He and his team were actually looking at the web more generally, but since blogs are part of the web, they follow the same structure. Scale-free networks contain hubs that are more highly connected that other nodes. Think in terms of airport hubs. The power law phenomena can be observed in blog networks.

One thing I want to think about is the connected between the blog network and the people behind the blogs. What effect does a person's personality have on the likelihood that he/she will be linked to? Or are the connections simply following the laws of the network?"

What does this mean?  To show us, she provides Visuals, including two snapshots of her own Geeky Network:

Note the Cool Kids circling around our favorite Geeky Star...

There are many possibilities for visuals.  Geeky mom gives the example of the world of political blogging before the 2004 elections:

Geeky Mom explains: "The colors reflect political orientation,red for conservative, and blue for liberal. Orange links go from liberal to conservative, and purple ones from conservative to liberal. The size of each blog reflects the number of other blogs that link to it."

This is SOOOO gorgeous.  It is like one of the drinking bouts at Pilgim/Heretic's Bar taken to a new level.  (And speaking of P/H, did you wish her happy blogiversay?)

Dynamic, interconnected, scale-free solar systems of communicating friends: I'm intoxicated just pondering the possibilities.

And... it gives me a fund-raising idea:

Dear Geeky Mom,

Can I pay you a generous stipend to create my very own blog network picture? -- I would love to have a chart showing academic coach at the center of her very own academigosophere.  You could keep some of the money to fund your dissertation research (as a working mom I'm sure you would meet your May '06 deadline more easily if you could afford a couple of research assistants.)  And, you could send a portion of the proceeds to Annika's COTA fund. What do you think?

Please consider the offer and let me know what you think.

Anybody else want a Master of the Universe Chart?

(Bitch, (j)oe, Scrivener, Dean Dad and popular others have to pay extra because they would have such huge, complex networks of all the cool kids on the block.)

Making the World a Better Place...

Have you contributed to the world today?

Have you nominated our own Bitch, Ph.D. to be the next President of Harvard?  Be sure to suggest her for the position by adding your comment here at Iniside Higher Education.

Have you voted for Michael Berube in his quest to be the Most Dangerous Professor in America.  Go here to cast your ballot for our evil friend.

Most important, have you donated here to help with Annika's medical expenses?  To read more about her story, visit her mother's blog. You may also find other ways to help Annika, Moreena and the family at this site.

Go nominate, vote and donate. 

Then come on back and tell me how it feels to contibute to both light-hearted and life-saving causes.

Who Can Fill Larry's Shoes?

Scott Jaschik at IHE asked folks who should be hired to replace Larry Summers as Harvard's president.  The article appeared today.

As I told Scott, if the Harvard Board has any sense at all, they'll woo a woman scientist who has children.  I suggested Mary-Claire King, a professor of medicine and genome sciences at the University of Washington.  Last year she She was inducted into the National Academy of Science -- a big deal because only 187 out of 2,059 Academy members are women: less than 1%.  After all, Harvard usually likes people who are in the 99th percentile.

As I pointed out in "Breast Feeding Scientists" (my second blog post ever), one of the reasons I like Mary-Clare King was what she said when a reporter asked her what the largest barrier was to women in science.  She replied that “by far the biggest obstacle is how to have enough hours in the day to be the mother of a young child and do the work.”

King’s proposed solution to the difficulty of being a mother and being a laboratory scientist is the provision of excellent, on-site child care facilities.  King practices what she preaches (and sounds like an awesome mentor).  A year ago, she had three women working in her lab who were breast-feeding their infants.  She bought a breast milk pump (with NIH funds) and set up a special room in the lab where these scientist-mothers could go to pump and store their milk.  That way the women could keep breast-feeding after returning to work from maternity leave.

Sounds like she'd be a good Harvard President, right?

Please check out the IHE article and add your own nomination to the growing pool of candidates.  I'd love to see your additions to the growing list of suggestions from readers.  Please post your pick here as well so we can chuckle together...

Do you think that Bitch Ph.D. would be willing apply for the position?

B*** S***

It gives new meaning to the term B.S.

A Bachelor of Science is the degree - in theology and psychology - that the fired CEO of radio shack claimed on his resume.  But it was B.S.

In fact, Dave Edmondson only attended Pacific Coast Baptist College for two semesters.

A savvy reporter at the Fort Worth Star Telegram tracked down the story while checking out the news that Edmondson was going to court for his THIRD drunk driving charge.

You'll be glad to hear, I'm sure, that Edmondson's severance package will be kept under $1 million.

Email Abuse

There is a fun article in the NY Times today about students' use and abuse of email to professors.

I usually counsel profs not to respond immediately to student emails.  Wait a day or two, I advise.  This way you avoid teaching the students to expect instant gratification.

Oh What a Wonderful Blogroll...

If there is someone on your blogroll who makes your world a better place just because that person exists and who you would not have met (in real life or not) without the internet, then post this same sentence on your blog.

Musical Engagements

One of the professors I've coached, I'll call her Kate, started the first day of the new semester with a musical interlude.  I liked her anecdote so much that I asked her permission to share it with you.

A couple of weeks ago, on the first day of class, as Kate's students filed in and sat down, they did it to the music of "Our New Orleans", the fabulous collection of Big Easy hits put together by some of n'awlins greatest musicians to benefit the victims of Katrina. (All proceeds of the CD go to Habitat for Humanity's rebuilding efforts along the Gulf Coast.)

While students listened to "Yes We Can" by Allen Toussaint, Kate handed out the class syllabi.  They read the course requirements while tapping their feet to Edie Bo's version of "The Saints Go Marching In".  And they filled out brief "student profiles" while swaying to "Prayer to New Orleans" sung by Charlie Miller.

While still playing the CD softly in the background, Kate explained how the album had been produced and why she was playing it for this particular class.  She talked about ways the disaster and its aftermath provide examples of main themes of the course.  (Katrina provides an appropriate case study for Kate's class -- but for pseudonomy's sake, I'll skip details that would give away her field.)  The class spent much of the next hour discussing the effects of the Hurricane and how it related to themes they would be studying throughout the semester.

"The students got really involved in the topic," said Kate enthusiastically.  "It was probably the best 'first-day-of-class' discussion I've ever led."

Inspiring use of music, eh?

teaching carnival

Discouraging Stats

"(A) 1999 Modern Language Association survey found that only 37 percent of English faculty members were on tenure-track lines."

This quote is from today's IHE article, "Reading, Writing and Representing," by Frank Gaughan and Peter Khost.

The depressing statistic led me to read the MLA report on the study.

Now I'm really blue.  May I share some tidbits which amplified my malaise?

Among the institutions which responded to the survey, only 36.3% of the faculty teaching in the English departments were tenured or tenure track; 9.5% were full-time, non-tenure track; 31.9% were part time employees; and 22.2% were graduate student teaching assistants.

In Foreign Language departments the stats were just as discouraging: 35.5% of faculty were tenured or tenure track ; 12.4% were full-time, non-tenure track; 28.9% were part time; and 23.3% were graduate student TAs.

At institutions granting doctoral degrees, the bulk of the cheap labor was sucked out of graduate students -- 44.6% of the teaching staff in English departments and 47.9% in Foreign Language departments were grad student TAs.

At community colleges granting associate degrees, the bulk of the poorly paid staff were part-time adjuncts -- a whopping 61.8% in English departments and 68.8% in Foreign Language departments.

Sigh.

I wish that every person applying to English Masters and Doctoral programs had to read this report before starting graduate school.

Typing vs. Longhanding

"That's not writing, that's typing." -- Truman Capote dismissing Jack Kerouac's work

Do you prefer to write first drafts by hand or on the computer?

I ask that question every time I teach "Written Communication" at UNC (a course which should be titled "How to Get Yourself to Sit Down and Write the Damn Dissertation.")

Nowadays, most students report that they write almost exclusively by computer: although in almost every class there is a student or two who prefers writing first drafts with pen and paper.

In an IHE article on Jan 30th, Shari Wilson muses about her observation that several students each semester write much better in-class, timed, hand written assignments than out-of-class "computer-generated" papers.  She proposes theories for this difference.  In the comments that follow, some professors agree with her observation.  Others vigorously dispute her views.

Most interesting to me, Wilson cites “The Phenomenology of Writing by Hand,” by University of Wales professor Daniel Chandler.  This article, although highly academic in tone (and I don't mean this as a compliment) and enamored of categorization without reference to empirical data, includes some wonderful quotes from writers about their love of pen or pencil.

Here's a quote-choked paragraph by Chandler that I found fun:

"Many writers have alluded to the importance of handwriting in their thinking and writing. Discoverers see their thinking itself as tactile. Fay Weldon declared: 'I choose to believe that there is some kind of mystic connection between the brain and the actual act of writing in longhand' (Hammond, 1984). And Graham Greene commented that 'Some authors type their works, but I cannot do that. Writing is tied up with the hand, almost with a special nerve' (Hammond, 1984). The anthropologist Jack Goody (1987) wrote that 'Nothing surpasses pen and paper as being "good to think with"'. And Rebecca West reported that she used a pencil 'When anything important has to be written... I think your hand concentrates for you.' She also emphasized the importance of kinaesthetic memory: 'My memory is certainly in my hands. I can remember things only if I have a pencil and I can write with it and I can play with it' (Plimpton, 1985). John Barth favours the fountain pen, commenting that: 'there's something about the muscular movement of putting down script on the paper that gets [the] imagination back in the track where it was' (Plimpton, 1987). William Gass even identifies the literary text with its original written form (treating writing in this respect as akin to drawing or painting): 'It was very important for Rilke to send a copy of the finished poem in his beautiful hand to somebody, because that was the poem, not the printed imitation. Writing by hand, mouthing by mouth: in each case you get a very strong physical sense of the emergence of language - squeezed out like a well-formed stool - what satisfaction! what bliss!' (Plimpton, 1981)."

A well formed stool....hmmm.... sounds like some dissertations I've met.

I used to write drafts by hand -- I didn't learn to touch type comfortably until after college and in the era before personal computers correcting mistakes on a typed draft was a messy hassle.  Now I write almost everything on the computer.  When I do write a draft by hand, I notice differences in both the process and product.  In general, I think that my work comes faster and is better on the computer.  But a printed out version is always necessary for adequate editing. (One of the reason I make so many errors and post graceless sentences when I blog is that I see the words only on the screen.)

It does seem useful to be able to write longhand -- on a warm spring day I love to be able to sit on a park bench and sun myself as I write with a pen.  I'm not picky about the paper I write on, but I've never liked writing with pencils. 

Are these choices of medium a mere matter of habit or are there core personality traits being expressed?

Getting Started...

"No task is a long one but the task on which one dare not start: It becomes a nightmare."
– Charles Baudelaire

O.K., I've just set my kitchen timer for 10 minutes and am poised to press the countdown button.  A Tolerable Ten writing session on my long-delayed newsletter is about to begin.....