If we want to predict the final performance at the end of the season of a bunch of hitters, given information 1/2 the way through, we can do better than suggest that their batting average at the end of the season is likely to be the same as 1/2 way through. The James-Stein estimator often improves substantially improves your capacity to predict. For this example see Persi Diaconis in the Princeton Companion to Mathematics, using an example due to Bradley Efron.
Much the same would apply to third year review of probationary faculty. We might count the number of publications or some such for each faculty member, perhaps in all fields, divided by the years (3). You might want to adjust those numbers by some factor to take into account the different publication rates or article lengths in different fields, or maybe just count working papers or pages of a published book. In any case you could predict the amount published at tenure time by multiplying this rate by say 6. Surely people's performance is often speeded up as they come up for tenure--maybe fear, maybe the long time it takes to get an article accepted, maybe maturity of thought. (Baseball players have slumps, wear down, find their groove ....) So you might want to put in a nonlinear adjustment--although I am not sure this will work. In any case, using the James-Stein estimator for all your probationary faculty will provide a much better measure of their likely performance at the end of the probationary period ("the season") than would just their average annual performance so far. [I realize fully that a baseball player is not fully appreciated in terms of their batting average, and the same is the case for scholars and their publication performance in terms of numbers.]
Say you have p faculty, and a p-length vector of their article-numbers/year: A
Then the improved estimate in terms of the current rate, Aimproved= A times {1-((p-2)/|A|)}max of {} or zero
where |A| is length of the vector A. And the bracketed expression is a max of its value or 0 (to avoid negative values).
You could also do this at tenure time, to better predict whether your candidates will actually do well in the future.
Of course, you need to have reasons to believe that your information at the third year review or at tenure time is likely to be indicative of future performance. Such reason might be how they otherwise act, or your past assessment of other candidates. The assumption about hitters is perhaps more reliable than the ones about scholars.
----------------------------------------------------------------
I am revising a chapter in my Doing Mathematics and so I am rediscovering this stuff. In reading Diaconis (who is a great expositor, distinguished mathematician, and it seems a former magician), I came upon the stuff on batters, and thought of probationary faculty. I consider this a deformation professionel.
PLEASE GO TO https://martinkriegerthinking.blogspot.com FOR A CONTINUATION OF THIS BLOG.
Saturday, October 5, 2013
A Life of Learning
I've taken the title of this post from a wonderful essay by the political theorist Judith Shklar.
I am now preparing a second edition of my Doing Mathematics (2003, World Scientific). While eating lunch I started to look at the second edition of my Doing Physics (2012, originally 1992, Indiana University Press). And I realized that I had done enough coherent work in this area (with my Constitutions of Matter (1996, University of Chicago Press), and Marginalism and Discontinuity (1989, Russell Sage Foundation)) to have had a career in some field that studies science.
I am leaving out scholarly journal research articles.
But of course, there is more, as the TV salesman says. When I have been a faculty member, I have always been a professor of city planning. So I seem to have acquitted myself there: Advice and Planning (1982, Temple University Press), Entrepreneurial Vocations (1996, Scholars Press), What's Wrong With Plastic Trees? (2000, Praeger), and Urban Tomographies (2011, University of Pennsylvania Press).
I've even benefitted from serving on university committees! The Scholar's Survival Guide (2013, Indiana University Press) is just out.
It is not unusual for a senior faculty member to have lots of books and articles in the CV. Many have 10-20 books, and some have hundreds of substantial articles. And I am leaving out volumes they have edited or translated (one of the major tasks of scholarship). They have trained many doctoral students, who are now doing research and teaching elsewhere. They have won national awards and are members of academies specific to their discipline or the profession. I am much less accomplished than they are. They have been my colleagues at five universities, several academic research centers--often from fields different than my own, and often less awarded and recognized than they might be. (Keep in mind that honorary chairs in university are often given to the least-difficult qualified person, not to the strongest scholars--or so I have been assured by a very distinguished colleague who knows intimately of these matters. Eventually, the difficult distinguished get their rewards, but it is often later than their more mild-mannered colleagues. I make no claim to knowledge about these processes. Similarly, Nobel prizewinners are almost always deserving, but many who are as deserving do not receive such recognition.)
What I am thinking about is how my life has been a life of learning, how fortunate I have been to have survived risks I ought not have taken, the kindness of strangers, the pleasures of hard work, the long gestation time until I found my rhythms, the fact that the world presents us with so many interesting problems and questions.
I am now preparing a second edition of my Doing Mathematics (2003, World Scientific). While eating lunch I started to look at the second edition of my Doing Physics (2012, originally 1992, Indiana University Press). And I realized that I had done enough coherent work in this area (with my Constitutions of Matter (1996, University of Chicago Press), and Marginalism and Discontinuity (1989, Russell Sage Foundation)) to have had a career in some field that studies science.
I am leaving out scholarly journal research articles.
But of course, there is more, as the TV salesman says. When I have been a faculty member, I have always been a professor of city planning. So I seem to have acquitted myself there: Advice and Planning (1982, Temple University Press), Entrepreneurial Vocations (1996, Scholars Press), What's Wrong With Plastic Trees? (2000, Praeger), and Urban Tomographies (2011, University of Pennsylvania Press).
I've even benefitted from serving on university committees! The Scholar's Survival Guide (2013, Indiana University Press) is just out.
It is not unusual for a senior faculty member to have lots of books and articles in the CV. Many have 10-20 books, and some have hundreds of substantial articles. And I am leaving out volumes they have edited or translated (one of the major tasks of scholarship). They have trained many doctoral students, who are now doing research and teaching elsewhere. They have won national awards and are members of academies specific to their discipline or the profession. I am much less accomplished than they are. They have been my colleagues at five universities, several academic research centers--often from fields different than my own, and often less awarded and recognized than they might be. (Keep in mind that honorary chairs in university are often given to the least-difficult qualified person, not to the strongest scholars--or so I have been assured by a very distinguished colleague who knows intimately of these matters. Eventually, the difficult distinguished get their rewards, but it is often later than their more mild-mannered colleagues. I make no claim to knowledge about these processes. Similarly, Nobel prizewinners are almost always deserving, but many who are as deserving do not receive such recognition.)
What I am thinking about is how my life has been a life of learning, how fortunate I have been to have survived risks I ought not have taken, the kindness of strangers, the pleasures of hard work, the long gestation time until I found my rhythms, the fact that the world presents us with so many interesting problems and questions.
Quick and Dirty Research: Wikipedia, Encyclopedias.. CORRUPTION TOO
1. For most of my career I have had to learn about subjects about which I have known little, and in general I have chosen research projects where my till-then intellectual assets are inadequate. I had to find my way quickly and reliably.
2. There was once a time when multivolume encyclopedias were available and used. These were in printed books, each volume large and formidable. I recall using the Encyclopedia of Social Science in the late 1960s, for example. In my home I have the 1910-1926 or so Eleventh/Thirteenth Edition of Encyclopedia Britannica, with its lengthy authoritative articles, with lots about WWI built into the 13th supplementary volumes.
By the way they are still available
3. When I was in school and college we were discouraged from using only the encyclopedia for our research, since they wanted us to look more widely. However, for many purposes that is where we started. If we went to the public library, that was surely the case. (We did not have such an encyclopedia in our home, despite the best efforts of door to door salesmen.) In university, we would be encouraged to go to the librarian for assistance and the card catalog. For some reason, when I was in high school, I went to the medical library of some organization in Brooklyn, where I came from. And of course the main branch of the public library was rich with goodies.
4. Nowadays, students think INTERNET, GOOGLE, and perhaps TERM PAPER SERVICE OR FRATERNITY FILE CABINET. I would not recommend the latter alternatives, you will be found out readily by Turnitin, and may well be sent away from your college. There are sites that provide solutions to homework problems, but your instructor is likely to know of them. If you collaborate, write up your work in your own terms. I have seen letters of reference for tenure for your professors, where several letters share paragraphs--meaning that the whole dossier of information is considered unreliable. [I have also seen professors make spectacular but misleading claims about the number of citations to their work. It does not work, since someone is bound to check.]
5. HOWEVER... For preliminary work, to get a feel for a subject, you want to immediately turn to Wikipedia, to the online Encyclopedia Britannica, Oxford English Dictionary, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, the Encyclopedia of Social Science, etc. No, they are not usually the places you want to refer to in your papers, and in some fields you must go to archives. Moreover, what you are expected to do is to consult authoritative scholarly articles and books, perhaps found through Google Scholar etc. In general, you are most likely to find reliable sources if they are published in peer reviewed journals or by university presses. Your university spends a good fraction of its library budget making these diverse sources available to you online, including many specialized journals.
6. If you are in a field that is quite foreign to you, ask your teachers for some good places to start, some standard books or articles. Librarians may well be able to help. Go to a relevant library, and given some research in the card catalog, you will surely find some call numbers repeating and you might spend time scanning the shelves to see what is out there.
7. SAY YOUR ARE PRESSED FOR TIME, LAZY, DON'T CARE, ... Don't plagiarize. Nowadays, with Turnitin, you are likely to be caught and penalized heavily. Don't use a term paper service, since again it is likely the same paper or parts of it were submitted elsewhere and Turnitin will find it. Don't copy passages without quotation marks and references--mosaic plagiarism. Again Turnitin will find it.
[One person who gave me trouble about my concern about plagiarism turns out to have some mosaic plagiarism in their doctoral dissertation. It's not serious, but it should not be there. Students who tell me "I am not a plagiarist. I don't cheat." seem likely to be plagiarists, although they may not realize that is what they are doing. Other students seem to know the rules, precisely, and would never get in such trouble. Students who complain about their grades should have their work checked for plagiarism, since somehow they have gotten away with such in the past, received good grades, and do not realize they are in trouble. I was accused of retaliating against such students since they complained about their grades, but in fact I was protecting them from being kicked out of the university since the foundation for their previous strong grades may well have been sand. Of course, the complaint about retaliation was made by another plagiarist. It's awful to watch people trip over themselves.
[By the way, your reputation follows you. Mentioning your name will elicit lines like, "Don't ever talk to them." or "Let me tell you about what they pulled on me." If you have been a plagiarist, someone is going to tell someone else, and it will spread. If you have been unreliable, made false accusations, etc etc, someone is going to tell someone and it will spread. Email makes it even worse. The best you can do is to not repeat your mistakes. No one is trying to hurt you. But as we can see in the newspapers, secrecy and confidentiality are terms of art meaning that someone is bound to tell someone else, someone is bound to leave an email trail, someone is bound to leak the information. Not always, but almost always.]
SPEND AN HOUR OR TWO READING, CHECKING THINGS OUT ON THE INTERNET, AND THEN WRITE IN YOUR OWN WORDS. LIST SOURCES YOU HAVE USED, BUT NOT THOSE YOU HAVE NOT USED. YOUR GRADE MAY NOT BE TERRIFIC, BUT AT LEAST YOU WON'T BE KICKED OUT OF YOUR DREAM UNIVERSITY.
2. There was once a time when multivolume encyclopedias were available and used. These were in printed books, each volume large and formidable. I recall using the Encyclopedia of Social Science in the late 1960s, for example. In my home I have the 1910-1926 or so Eleventh/Thirteenth Edition of Encyclopedia Britannica, with its lengthy authoritative articles, with lots about WWI built into the 13th supplementary volumes.
By the way they are still available
3. When I was in school and college we were discouraged from using only the encyclopedia for our research, since they wanted us to look more widely. However, for many purposes that is where we started. If we went to the public library, that was surely the case. (We did not have such an encyclopedia in our home, despite the best efforts of door to door salesmen.) In university, we would be encouraged to go to the librarian for assistance and the card catalog. For some reason, when I was in high school, I went to the medical library of some organization in Brooklyn, where I came from. And of course the main branch of the public library was rich with goodies.
4. Nowadays, students think INTERNET, GOOGLE, and perhaps TERM PAPER SERVICE OR FRATERNITY FILE CABINET. I would not recommend the latter alternatives, you will be found out readily by Turnitin, and may well be sent away from your college. There are sites that provide solutions to homework problems, but your instructor is likely to know of them. If you collaborate, write up your work in your own terms. I have seen letters of reference for tenure for your professors, where several letters share paragraphs--meaning that the whole dossier of information is considered unreliable. [I have also seen professors make spectacular but misleading claims about the number of citations to their work. It does not work, since someone is bound to check.]
5. HOWEVER... For preliminary work, to get a feel for a subject, you want to immediately turn to Wikipedia, to the online Encyclopedia Britannica, Oxford English Dictionary, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, the Encyclopedia of Social Science, etc. No, they are not usually the places you want to refer to in your papers, and in some fields you must go to archives. Moreover, what you are expected to do is to consult authoritative scholarly articles and books, perhaps found through Google Scholar etc. In general, you are most likely to find reliable sources if they are published in peer reviewed journals or by university presses. Your university spends a good fraction of its library budget making these diverse sources available to you online, including many specialized journals.
6. If you are in a field that is quite foreign to you, ask your teachers for some good places to start, some standard books or articles. Librarians may well be able to help. Go to a relevant library, and given some research in the card catalog, you will surely find some call numbers repeating and you might spend time scanning the shelves to see what is out there.
7. SAY YOUR ARE PRESSED FOR TIME, LAZY, DON'T CARE, ... Don't plagiarize. Nowadays, with Turnitin, you are likely to be caught and penalized heavily. Don't use a term paper service, since again it is likely the same paper or parts of it were submitted elsewhere and Turnitin will find it. Don't copy passages without quotation marks and references--mosaic plagiarism. Again Turnitin will find it.
[One person who gave me trouble about my concern about plagiarism turns out to have some mosaic plagiarism in their doctoral dissertation. It's not serious, but it should not be there. Students who tell me "I am not a plagiarist. I don't cheat." seem likely to be plagiarists, although they may not realize that is what they are doing. Other students seem to know the rules, precisely, and would never get in such trouble. Students who complain about their grades should have their work checked for plagiarism, since somehow they have gotten away with such in the past, received good grades, and do not realize they are in trouble. I was accused of retaliating against such students since they complained about their grades, but in fact I was protecting them from being kicked out of the university since the foundation for their previous strong grades may well have been sand. Of course, the complaint about retaliation was made by another plagiarist. It's awful to watch people trip over themselves.
[By the way, your reputation follows you. Mentioning your name will elicit lines like, "Don't ever talk to them." or "Let me tell you about what they pulled on me." If you have been a plagiarist, someone is going to tell someone else, and it will spread. If you have been unreliable, made false accusations, etc etc, someone is going to tell someone and it will spread. Email makes it even worse. The best you can do is to not repeat your mistakes. No one is trying to hurt you. But as we can see in the newspapers, secrecy and confidentiality are terms of art meaning that someone is bound to tell someone else, someone is bound to leave an email trail, someone is bound to leak the information. Not always, but almost always.]
SPEND AN HOUR OR TWO READING, CHECKING THINGS OUT ON THE INTERNET, AND THEN WRITE IN YOUR OWN WORDS. LIST SOURCES YOU HAVE USED, BUT NOT THOSE YOU HAVE NOT USED. YOUR GRADE MAY NOT BE TERRIFIC, BUT AT LEAST YOU WON'T BE KICKED OUT OF YOUR DREAM UNIVERSITY.
Monday, September 30, 2013
Dancing With the Stars--Showing Up!
Bill Nye had grievously hurt himself last week, yet he performed today on the show. They figured out a way of dancing that would work with his injury.
My point is that in show business and other such, the show goes on. You do what you can to perform, unless you are dead. It's not true among students and scholars, where excuses are a finely wrought art. You've got to deliver, show up, and reserve your excuses.
My point is that in show business and other such, the show goes on. You do what you can to perform, unless you are dead. It's not true among students and scholars, where excuses are a finely wrought art. You've got to deliver, show up, and reserve your excuses.
A Go-Bag: Leaving Your Institution
At some point in your career you may be encouraged to separate from your institution, whether for good reason or not.* I leave it to your attorney and academic senate to give you advice. However, be sure that you could walk out of your office with just a USB drive having all your valuable files. Anything else that is crucial to your future work should be at home or elsewhere. My image is that my office incinerated itself, but what I had on my USB freed me from worry. Have a noninstitutional email account (say gmail.com), and it may be time to use it much more, especially if you are inundated with stuff from the institution on your institutional email. [See the previous post.]
----
*Red Scare as at universities in the 50s; allegations of misconduct; ... Also, now that our lifespans have increased and our healthy lifespan is also increased, what used to be 65 as the age when most retired is moving up, given the end of mandatory retirement. For some faculty, earlier than 65 retirement might be a good move. For others, their research and teaching are still strong, and they want to continue, and they will retire later. Very little has been invested in most universities is making it comfortable for senior faculty to retire but still be involved with their research and teaching careers (offices, etc.--space is a premium). At some point, a dean will see senior faculty as preventing them from hiring more junior faculty, and there are many apparently legal ways to make such senior faculty uncomfortable. (It helps if the stock market is doing well.)
----
*Red Scare as at universities in the 50s; allegations of misconduct; ... Also, now that our lifespans have increased and our healthy lifespan is also increased, what used to be 65 as the age when most retired is moving up, given the end of mandatory retirement. For some faculty, earlier than 65 retirement might be a good move. For others, their research and teaching are still strong, and they want to continue, and they will retire later. Very little has been invested in most universities is making it comfortable for senior faculty to retire but still be involved with their research and teaching careers (offices, etc.--space is a premium). At some point, a dean will see senior faculty as preventing them from hiring more junior faculty, and there are many apparently legal ways to make such senior faculty uncomfortable. (It helps if the stock market is doing well.)
Back Up Your Life: the Scholar's Go-Bag
Given some recent experience and stories I have heard, I realized once more the importance of backing up my files, contact lists, and other such valuables. Perhaps you know this, and do not need to be reminded. (I do need to be reminded.) But if not,... [Note that what I am saying is minimal, and would be looked on with horror by experts.] (See also the newer post before this one.]
1. A USB thumb drive, say 8GB, is likely to be enough to hold all your current writing projects, a copy of your contact list, and any other significant files. I know that you should have such backups in several places, formats, etc. But if you are not so perfect, at least once a month or two, back up what is important, even in one place. If there is important email, copy it too. Do not count on other servers to be available when you need them, even though their reliability may be very very high. My advice is based on the notion of a "go bag," the idea being that if the university and the servers disappeared, you would have on your person your most valuable stuff. In effect, institutions own your files, and could well discard them, so you want to have those files with you.
2. My Contact List on my smartphone (iPhone or Android devices), seems to have every address I have ever sent anything to (most of which I do not have in my formal address lists). I have the Exchange server as one of the email files, and somehow all is imported in. (I'm not sure what I did to make this happen.) There is a way to save Contact List to your PC or to the cloud or elsewhere.
3. If you have stuff on the university drives, and much of your stuff may be there (eg Documents,...) be sure you have copies on your USB. If they are outdated by a month, that is better than not having copies. I am told that my c: drive has the stuff that is really on my office physical computer, and again, you want to be sure that any relevant files are on your USB.
4. Your smartphone probably has enough memory to be another backup for your work files.
5. I have some digital files that add up to 100's of Gigabytes. I use an external hard drive, 500 GB, and also DVD's as storage. I suspect that those of with terrabytes of data have already implemented suitable backups.
Sunday, September 29, 2013
Provosts/Deans: Your Current Faculty is Your Major Asset
All of what follows is for a university where contributions to scholarship and the arts ("research") matters.
Not only is the current faculty your major asset, no matter what you do it will be your major asset during your term of office. Yes, you can make incremental changes, but if you want to make larger changes, you have to address the faculty you have.
There is much talk about faculty renewal, with "contracts" and deadlines, so that people begin again to make a contribution that is warranted. You could be like Larry Summers who asked Cornel West to get on with his "big" book--I believe West's leaving Harvard since he felt insulted by Summers is the usual sign of people not ready to face the music. If you've been promising a big book, it's fine for the university to ask you to focus on it.
But faculty who have not lived up to expectations, or have become discouraged, or become enmeshed in activities that are not scholarly, ought to be given a chance to get back on track. Is there a medical or family reason? Have they lost touch with the field? Have they discovered they never should have become academics?
Ask: What do you need to get back on track in your scholarly career? Give it to them, and do this at least once more. If faculty indicate that they are unwilling to get back on track, help them find a job where their talents are better matched to the institution.
Most deans and provosts and even department chairs may not be good at this. But some faculty will be good at mentoring their colleagues. Encourage such mentoring, and pay for it. Pair up lost faculty with their productive colleagues in similar areas of interest.
As for sticks vs. carrots, the UC system has decelerated, vs. accelerated, promotion, leading to lowering one's "step" in the salary system. Ideally, what you do is find an attractive position elsewhere, and the person is encouraged to leave.
If faculty are focused on teaching or service, and nothing can be done to redirect them, their contributions here should be as substantial as the faculty focused on research and teaching and service. Raise their expectations of themselves--textbooks, more profound service contributions,...
Not only is the current faculty your major asset, no matter what you do it will be your major asset during your term of office. Yes, you can make incremental changes, but if you want to make larger changes, you have to address the faculty you have.
There is much talk about faculty renewal, with "contracts" and deadlines, so that people begin again to make a contribution that is warranted. You could be like Larry Summers who asked Cornel West to get on with his "big" book--I believe West's leaving Harvard since he felt insulted by Summers is the usual sign of people not ready to face the music. If you've been promising a big book, it's fine for the university to ask you to focus on it.
But faculty who have not lived up to expectations, or have become discouraged, or become enmeshed in activities that are not scholarly, ought to be given a chance to get back on track. Is there a medical or family reason? Have they lost touch with the field? Have they discovered they never should have become academics?
Ask: What do you need to get back on track in your scholarly career? Give it to them, and do this at least once more. If faculty indicate that they are unwilling to get back on track, help them find a job where their talents are better matched to the institution.
Most deans and provosts and even department chairs may not be good at this. But some faculty will be good at mentoring their colleagues. Encourage such mentoring, and pay for it. Pair up lost faculty with their productive colleagues in similar areas of interest.
As for sticks vs. carrots, the UC system has decelerated, vs. accelerated, promotion, leading to lowering one's "step" in the salary system. Ideally, what you do is find an attractive position elsewhere, and the person is encouraged to leave.
If faculty are focused on teaching or service, and nothing can be done to redirect them, their contributions here should be as substantial as the faculty focused on research and teaching and service. Raise their expectations of themselves--textbooks, more profound service contributions,...
Asking Questions at Seminars, Colloquia, ...
The best questions asked at seminars are pointed and clear, and focus on the work being presented. If you have comments, you can preface your remarks saying something like, I would like to add a comment, but do have a short question at the end. Don't go on very long, at all.
Technical questions about method must have real import for the work. That you can think of a hypothesis that was not tested is only interesting if the hypothesis is important and it is relevant to the work at hand. Asking about colinearity, or about some statistical technicality, should be about the work's consequences, not just a technical point.
Assume that your job is to make the work better. If it is awful, just walk out.
If you tend to wander in your questioning, it helps to write out your question before you speak.
Don't worry if your question is too simple. A good speaker knows how to make the answer interesting. Often, others in the audience want to ask the question, but are too shy.
In one seminar I go to, most of the questioners begin with, I thought this was a very interesting paper, and then they ask questions.
Rather than asking, Did you test for...., ask, What would be the effect of ....
There will be speakers who dismiss your question. There is nothing you can do then and there, but there is no reason not to write them a note afterward elaborating on your question.
In my experience there are what might be called devastating questions, where you have no response. If you don't, for whatever reason, promise to get back to the questioner later or right after the talk.
There will be speakers who dismiss your question. There is nothing you can do then and there, but there is no reason not to write them a note afterward elaborating on your question.
In my experience there are what might be called devastating questions, where you have no response. If you don't, for whatever reason, promise to get back to the questioner later or right after the talk.
Saturday, September 28, 2013
When the Deans are Afraid of the Faculty Members, THEN You Might Have a Strong University
In the strongest universities, the deans are respectful of the faculty members, and to some extent "fear" them. They want to keep the faculty, and they listen to them. At weaker universities, the faculty are treated as employees, the deans as their bosses, and the Industrial Relations are antediluvian. Even at weak universities there can be units which are protected and treasured by their deans, so that within that unit, whatever else happens in the university the faculty has that sense of respect.
Once the deans and provost think they are in any sense better than the faculty, the university is on a downward trajectory.
I have worked at both sorts of universities. What distinguishes the stronger institutions is their sense that the university is the faculty, and the job of administrators is to create an environment that allows the faculty to thrive and be in charge. Chairs of departments rotate among the faculty. And deans, when they end their terms, often return to the faculty.
None of this means that the faculty are allowed to be irresponsible or laggards or act out their prejudices.
You want a faculty that is hard to keep, since they get offers from elsewhere, but are easy to maintain, since they know what they want to do and do it.
Of course, there will always be problematic faculty and staff, perhaps even sociopaths and the like. They are never allowed to destroy the institution. See my earlier posting, with the summary of the "opera" La Devadora. And there will be bureaucratic actions that are unconscionable. The latter hurt the institution make it harder to keep good people.
Once the deans and provost think they are in any sense better than the faculty, the university is on a downward trajectory.
I have worked at both sorts of universities. What distinguishes the stronger institutions is their sense that the university is the faculty, and the job of administrators is to create an environment that allows the faculty to thrive and be in charge. Chairs of departments rotate among the faculty. And deans, when they end their terms, often return to the faculty.
None of this means that the faculty are allowed to be irresponsible or laggards or act out their prejudices.
You want a faculty that is hard to keep, since they get offers from elsewhere, but are easy to maintain, since they know what they want to do and do it.
Of course, there will always be problematic faculty and staff, perhaps even sociopaths and the like. They are never allowed to destroy the institution. See my earlier posting, with the summary of the "opera" La Devadora. And there will be bureaucratic actions that are unconscionable. The latter hurt the institution make it harder to keep good people.
Time--Doing My Work. A Nap Often Helps.
I like my work. I like to do my projects. Some of the time I am exhausted or lost, but most of the time I really do like my work. Teaching is fine, service is ok; students are good. But my work is interesting and engaging even if I also have lots of junk work to do.
Of course, your family comes first. That's never been an issue for me.
So I work lots. I may be a workaholic, but I feel more like I am pursuing projects that I really want to get done. I get paid to do what I really want to do.
Now I have limited energy or focus, so if I wake at 5 or earlier, and work til 12, I am usually not much use until later in the day. And I'm often saying to myself that "I am not smart enough" when I can't figure out some mathematics or some political/social/literary theory, or some philosophical analysis. A nap often helps.
Current projects:
Finish off my work in City Heights, and on lower level entrepreneurs.
Get the second edition of Doing Mathematics done.
Prepare a good DVD of my sound documentation, with lots of photographs from the photodocumentation of LA.
Future:
More fieldwork and documentation.
Second volume of Scholar's Survival Manual
Book of LA documentation images and sound: people, places
Maybe my work on Pollution
Maybe my poems written to accompany pictures.
Defense and Veterans, for teaching
Of course, your family comes first. That's never been an issue for me.
So I work lots. I may be a workaholic, but I feel more like I am pursuing projects that I really want to get done. I get paid to do what I really want to do.
Now I have limited energy or focus, so if I wake at 5 or earlier, and work til 12, I am usually not much use until later in the day. And I'm often saying to myself that "I am not smart enough" when I can't figure out some mathematics or some political/social/literary theory, or some philosophical analysis. A nap often helps.
Current projects:
Finish off my work in City Heights, and on lower level entrepreneurs.
Get the second edition of Doing Mathematics done.
Prepare a good DVD of my sound documentation, with lots of photographs from the photodocumentation of LA.
Future:
More fieldwork and documentation.
Second volume of Scholar's Survival Manual
Book of LA documentation images and sound: people, places
Maybe my work on Pollution
Maybe my poems written to accompany pictures.
Defense and Veterans, for teaching
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