Two track mind

Me: I know what you are thinking, but I have a lot of work to do.

Dr. H: How is it you always know what I'm thinking?

Me: You are always thinking about the same thing.

Dr. H: Not true. Sometimes I get all distracted by an interesting statistics problem.

 

Two Institutions, Two Sets of Students

I decided during my senior year of college that I wanted to be a professor at a small liberal arts college. I expected to get married to another academic once I was settled into an academic job. I expected to have twins, a house near campus, and a dog, once I got that tenure thing out of the way.

Instead:
1) got TT job at regional master's level institution (loved it)
2) got cats after going to shelter "just to look around" (awesome, no regrets)
3) found a partner who was also an academic (in another city...oops)
4) got tenure (yea!)
5) got married (yea!) (also acquired 3rd cat by marriage)
6) took a leave and went into administration near husband's new TT job (missed teaching)
7) got a job at a small liberal arts college (same metropolitan area, woo hoo!)
8) bought a house (over 25 miles from both our colleges)
9) got another cat (yes, that is four for those keeping track)
10) had twins (Clomid)
11) got tenure (again!)

The first deviation from my original plan was taking a job at a regional master's level (public) institution. When I was considering my options in college, the truth is, I had no idea such institutions existed. In my world there were (1) larger public or private research universities (2) small private colleges and (3) community colleges. It was only in graduate school that I learned about M.S. granting mixed teaching/research institutions. A woman from one of these institutions was doing a sabbatical leave at my graduate school. She was asked to speak to a small group of grad students who were interested in teaching at primarily undergraduate institutions. She was shocked that "small group" turned out to be packed room of more than 20 (mostly women). I liked what I heard there. When applying for jobs, I found a job announcement at one such institution that seemed written for me. To make a long story short, I liked the place, they liked me, and I took the job.

It turned out to be a great fit, in ways that surprised me. The student body consisted of a wide range of students. Some were quite weak, coming in needing remedial work in math and writing. Some students were hard working, some were distracted with other responsibilities, many were both. A few were absolutely brilliant. (Really.) What was remarkable and rewarding about this job was that I made a difference. And moreover, I made a difference to all those groups of students. I developed teaching techniques that "raised up the bottom" while still challenging the top. I rarely had to fail students - yet students often reported my class was the hardest they'd ever taken. I sent students to excellent grad schools. I also got to teach graduate courses in my specialty areas more than occasionally.

Leaving was hard, especially after attaining tenure. I did so to solve my two-body problem. That is a whole bunch of other posts in itself - which I will save for another time.

Today, I find myself at a small, private, liberal arts college, just as I always imagined. My students at SLAC, on average, are much better students than my students were at Regional U. This is nice for a number of reasons. I have to worry less about compliance on homework and class attendance. I also have to spend a lot less time working on basic math skills. These are all good things that make my life easier. On the other hand, the range of abilities demonstrated by my students is considerably narrower when I compare them to the students I had at Regional U. Here's one issue: this means that I don't feel like I make that much of a difference. These students are reasonably good students who will do okay with or without me. I would not have thought I would miss weaker students, but there you go. Something else unexpected: the narrower distribution at SLAC also means that while I have many strong students, I have yet to encounter any truly brilliant students. Maybe Regional U. was an anomaly, but I had two students in my short time there who blew my mind. (Cleverly, I sent one to my undergraduate institution to do an REU, and sent the other to my grad school to get a Ph.D., thus instilling in my former mentors a deep belief in my sound judgment.) My explanation for this is that some really incredible students chose Regional U. because of financial concerns - not something that is going to get such students to choose my SLAC over, say, Prestigious SLAC or Ivy U.

On the other hand, at SLAC, my students are really nice and I have a lot of freedom within the classroom. The faculty is 1/5 the size of Regional U, and the student body is 1/8 the size, which (often) means less bureaucracy. I have a lot more freedom to schedule classes, design new courses, even to pick textbooks, than I ever had at Regional U. I also feel I can make a big difference on campus. Lots of things on my campus are changing right now, and I feel very involved. Usually, that is a good thing. This is a different sort of making a difference than I mentioned before, but one that I also enjoy.

The last big difference between the two institutions is in research support. I had much more research support (time, money and students) at Regional U and consequently was able to do more research. Happily, however, my SLAC has started to put more resources into undergraduate research. I may be in a position to help direct how that happens. This is the last piece of the puzzle for me.

Now, if I could just find a way to shorten my commute....


scientiae-carnival

File under not my job

We are having an important speaker come to campus Monday. Our chair has been involved in coordinating this at the college level. Today, this comes to my inbox:

To: twice@slac.edu
From: chair@slac.edu

T,

Could you get up some notices about the Mon talk? Inviting all science students.

The [physchembio] of [topic of current interest].

P.S. [secretary's name] will be here tomorrow (Fri) morning).

Thanks,
Chair

Hmm, perhaps he could have just sent the request to the secretary then?

Things I've learned in the last 24 hours

1. When the hard drive of a MacBook starts to go, it behaves just like a laptop running Windows.

2. Hard drive failures are a lot less stressful when the computer is still under warranty and there is just enough life left in the drive to do a full backup.

3. Watching a computer report that there are fewer and fewer files in a directory each time you click on it is somewhat disconcerting, item 2 (above) notwithstanding.

4. The order of priority of my electronic files appears to be: sabbatical research data, kid pictures, other documents. In fairness, the kid picture folder was 1 GB, the research folder was more like 10 MB.

5. To describe the same program, art faculty come up with entirely different graphics than science faculty do.

6. Other faculty members who want to needle you about how the upper division students in their class can't do stuff they should have learned in your class should first check to make sure said students have taken your class. While they are at it, perhaps it would be best if they recalled that they had in fact advised said students to wait to take your class until next year.

Two observations

1) Everything I know about civil infrastructure I've learned from Sim_City.

2) My poster tube is totally lame compared to those belonging to everyone else on the plane going to big conference city.