National Student Exchange

Fort Lewis College has recently re-joined the National Student Exchange, a program that allows students at many colleges and universities in the US and Canada to study at another institution in North America. Geology students usually get to study in another part of the continent (or sometimes the world) during field camp, but NSE makes it possible to spend an entire year in another geologic setting.

Most of the schools that participate are public colleges and universities. There's a complete list on NSE's web page. If anyone is interested in coming to Durango for a year and wants information about how the geology courses at Fort Lewis would fit into their home institution's major, please feel free to contact me. (shearsensibility AT gmail DOT com, or in comments, or by googling my name and sending me an e-mail at work).

How important are GRE scores for geoscience grad school?

I took the GREs twenty years ago this month. Twenty years! I spent an entire day of my Christmas break in a big lecture hall at the University of Maine, filling in bubbles with my #2 pencil.

The world has changed in the past twenty years. GREs are taken on computers these days, and the bizarre but fascinating logic problems are gone. ("Jenny likes cabbage, but Fred is allergic to horseradish. Who is seated beside Louise?") There's a new writing section, along with the verbal and math sections. And there's no longer a geology subject test. So I've become less and less capable of giving any kind of reasonable advice to students about how to prepare for it. And because I don't read grad student applications, I don't have any idea how grad schools look at the current version of the test.

When I started grad school, I got the impression that the GREs weren't particularly important for anything except competing for NSF graduate fellowships. Research is not a multiple choice exam, and the ability to fill in little bubbles (or whatever mouse-click has replaced it) is no substitute for creativity, perserverence, and the ability to take a lot of criticism. I've gotten the impression that the things that matter for a graduate application are 1) a coherent statement of purpose that fits with the research interests of a faculty member; 2) good grades in relevant coursework (maybe geo, maybe math or chemistry or physics); 3) strong letters of recommendation; and 4) maybe research experience, although it's become common enough at the undergraduate level that it might not mean as much these days unless it's incorporated into the statement of purpose. The GREs - well, the general test is taken by everyone, from physicists to literary scholars, and it would be hard to come up with a test that could identify people who would be skilled at both subjects. I remember the verbal section as being essentially the SATs with longer words (but not geology jargon), and the math section as being algebra. I took it, I sent off the scores, and I never thought about the test again*. Until students came to me worrying about it.

So here's my question to the rest of the world. Based on your experience, do GRE scores matter? Do some schools put more weight on them than others? Is there a minimum cutoff score for some schools, or are they used as a tie-breaker between otherwise similar applications? Or are they a form of practice at jumping through hoops, preparation for things like dissertation formatting instructions?

*Well, other than to score geek points against my soon-to-be-ex college boyfriend. But once I got to grad school, I didn't think about the scores.

Got a new science building? Want to tell me about it?

The science departments here are in a building phase. Chemistry got a new building a few years ago, biology is getting a new building right now... and just this morning, we learned that physics, engineering, and the geosciences have the go-ahead to start really planning a new building ourselves.

So now we want to know what cool things other institutions have done recently. If you know of a new science building (and especially a new geology, physics, and/or engineering building) from the past ten years, especially one that uses green building standards, make innovative pedagogy possible, or facilitates undergraduate research*, we'd like to talk to you (and maybe visit your building). (Has anyone taught with a Geowall, or learned with a Geowall? How about the new microscopy labs with digital cameras and computers, which make collaborative learning possible in optical mineralogy and petrology? Those are a few things that I know about, but I would like to know about what things are so new that I haven't heard about them, as well.)

You can contact me at my work e-mail (just google me - you'll find it) or at shearsensibility AT gmail DOT com.

*The president is interested in knowing what research universities do as well as knowing what undergrad institutions do. He wants to make sure we're thinking for the future, which is a good thing, since that's what planning's supposed to involve.

Yes, Virginia, there is life after tenure denial

Over at ScienceBlogs, DrugMonkey has a post about a former ScienceBlogger who left academia when it was clear that he wouldn't receive tenure. The blogger has moved to a non-academic job, and both misses and doesn't miss academia.

But that's not what I want to respond to. One of the commenters asked about other possible outcomes beyond leaving academia or being hired with tenure someplace else:

Can someone start over at the Assistant Professor level somewhere else?

Yes, it is possible. I did it.

When I was coming up for tenure, I figured that the world just ends if you're denied tenure. When it happened to me, I thought about switching to a more lucrative version of geology, or maybe getting pregnant and becoming a stay-at-home mom. But I also read job ads and saw three jobs that fit my interests (teaching-oriented institutions, looking for my specialty, in places where I wouldn't mind living). I applied for them and headed to the west coast for a week for a family vacation and exploration of other career ideas.

When I got back, two of the three places wanted to interview me. I flew out to Durango, interviewed, and was offered the job. I cancelled the other interview (because, really, what place can compete with Durango?) and, six months later, started a new job as an assistant professor. Again.

Why would anyone in her right mind start over as an assistant professor? Ummmm... well, there were a lot of reasons.

1) I loved teaching. The worst thing about leaving my first job was leaving my students. (I mean, they were writing letters to the school paper and crying in class and crying in my office... and those were the male students.) And I had a chance to do it again, in a school that had values similar to mine.

2) During the interview, the provost looked at my C.V. and said he couldn't believe that I hadn't gotten tenure. So I knew that I was capable of meeting the expectations here. To be pre-tenure without the fear deep in my gut... you know, working hard isn't bad. It's being afraid, worried that I would never be good enough... that's what was bad in the first job.

3) I got a job here. I still have people come up to me at conferences and tell me that they want my job. (I smile nicely and say: "NO.")

4) Did I mention that there are hot springs in this town? I had always wanted to live someplace with hot springs.

So... here I am. And I'm not the only person who has come out of tenure denial and walked into another academic job. (I can think of at least five other women geoscientists, some from research universities, some from liberal arts colleges... but all who were denied tenure and went on to have great careers at another institution.) It is definitely possible.

In my case, I was able to get interviews because 1) a lot of people thought that my first institution had made a major mistake, and 2) I applied to schools that valued my skills (and which were public, rather than private, so they didn't see hiring a reject as a mark against their reputations). And I made use of my outraged colleagues. I had something like nine people write recommendation letters for me. (My colleagues from the old institution, members of my dissertation committee, research collaborators, and... ummm... former undergraduate students. I don't generally think it's appropriate to ask students to write letters for me, but they were already in grad school and beyond my ability to help or hurt their careers.) If you've been denied tenure, it helps to have potential employers read glowing letters that talk about how stupid the administration of your previous institution was to let you go.

And I got the job offer because I was comfortable lecturing, and I was enthusiastic about the place. (And because they needed to hire a woman, but half the interviewees were women, so it wasn't as if I was the last female geologist in the universe and they were stuck with me.)

And now I'm tenured.

And did I mention that I live in Durango?

Question from a reader: Americans abroad?

I have another question from a reader, from the comments on another post:

Along the lines of advice...do you have any for a recent graduate looking for graduate schools and only finding schools in countries other than the U.S? I am interested in structural geology and tectonics and have a particular interest in the effect of past glaciers on pre-existing faults; more specifically how isostatic adjustment affects rates of faulting. I have found several researchers in Canada and was wondering if you knew anything in particular about Canadian graduate schools and/or funding?

One of my senior thesis students this year is going to grad school in Canada next year, for similar reasons: the best program for her interests was in Canada. I don't know the specifics of her funding, although I know she does have support lined up.

The nature of graduate programs varies between countries, but I've gotten the impression that the Canadian system is similar to universities in the US.

If you've got very specific research interests and have questions about any grad school (in the US or outside the US), I would suggest contacting the person with whom you want to work, and asking him or her*. They might not know (especially details about foreign student visas), but they might be able to direct you to someone who can answer the question. You also might find information on the university's web site. (For instance, I found this information by googling "university british columbia foreign student.)

*It's worth considering Female Science Professor's comments about e-mails from prospective grad students. If you've thought about your research interests, talk about them.

Any comments from readers? Advantages/disadvantages to doing a PhD in another country?

The academic job search... circa 1992

I've moved, I have internet access (and - gasp - TV), and I'm finally unpacking The Office. In the process, I found a box of Important Life Information that I accumulated between 1989 and 2000. Old credit card receipts (including one for slide film from 1994), information about an internship at the USGS, a letter welcoming me to my first graduate housing (received about a month before it was closed by the Loma Prieta earthquake)...

...and advice for getting an academic job, in the form of two brochures from Stanford's Career Planning and Placement Center (CPPC). (Yes, a photocopied brochure. What do you mean, didn't they have a web page?)

So I give you: the advice and the reality, circa 1992-1993. If you are currently freaking out about job searches, the take-home message is that advice is all well and good, but sometimes you've just got to make your own way.

The advice (mauve, because even in 1992 it was clear that jobs weren't as easy to get as the advice implied):

ONE YEAR BEFORE ACTIVE CANDIDACY

• ...Give a paper, poster session, or organize a panel at a national conference.
• Read job announcements in your field.
• Learn all the possible sources of job announcements.

The reality:

• Give a talk at a regional conference in which you work around to a conclusion that your data are really excruciatingly bad.
  

AUGUST UNTIL THE TIME YOU BEGIN TO APPLY

• ...Work on a draft of your CV and a basic letter of application.
• Think of who your good reference letter writers will be.
• Get employment file packet from the CPPC and set up a reference file if your department does not assist graduate students this way.
  

(Reality..)

• Spend late nights in the argon lab, trying to nail down some data that are actually worthwhile.
• Spend other late nights in the probe lab.
• Go to see the Grateful Dead at Shoreline.
• Start work on a paper for a special volume built around the session at the regional conference.

SEPTEMBER TO DECEMBER

• ...Start applying - you may need to request transcripts from the Registrar's office.
• Attend the CPPC programs on the academic job search or see videotapes of former programs at CPPC or check these out from the Center for Teaching and Learning.

NOVEMBER TO DECEMBER (OR LATER)

• Practice interviews with peers or faculty.
• ...Prepare and practice a job talk.
• ...Keep a list of questions by the phone to ask when you are called for an interview.

(Reality...)

• Decide with advisor that the one paper should be two papers.
• Submit abstract to an international meeting, in hopes of meeting people who might be good to know in a year or two.

FEBRUARY THROUGH SUMMER

• ...Don't immediately accept the first offer, unless you are sure it is the one you want most.
• Find out more about what to negotiate from your advisor or recently appointed faculty in your field.
• Don't despair if you don't get the offer you want - some tenure-track and one year positions come up late in the year.
• Talk with your advisor and CPPC counselors about best strategies for waiting until next year's job markt --
• OR accept the best offer and thank everyone who helped you!

(Reality...)

JANUARY

• Meet with committee to discuss progress. Tell them about paper #1 (submitted) and paper #2 (being revised). Ask for advice about what to do next. Be told to "finish."
• Freak out.
• Frantically flip through job ads listed on bulletin board. (I wasn't subscribed to EOS or Geotimes.)
  
• Find an ad for a temporary job at a private liberal arts college in a cool place. Apply.

MARCH

• Get a call from the chair of the search committee, saying that they only want to interview one person, and that person is you.
• Frantically prepare job talk. Hope that slides are readable on first try. (No powerpoint yet.)
• Buy dress suit. Find shopping at Macy's more traumatizing than anything in grad school so far.
  
• Go on interview.
• Totally blow interview. Be confused about what courses are involved, give an awkward talk, screw up a question that's personally important to the interviewer.

APRIL

• Begin to wonder what happened about that one-person interview thing.
• Get a call from assistant search chair, explaining that another person was hired, and suggesting that you apply for jobs at research universities, because you don't appear enthusiastic about teaching.
• Go into another grad student office and sob for a while. Get a very useful pep talk.
• Start looking through job postings again. Apply for three more jobs.

MAY

• See one more job ad that appears written with you in mind. Apply for it, remembering to express as much enthusiasm as possible without exclamation points.

JUNE

• Get a call from chair of the department from the last ad. Ask lots of questions about courses to be taught.
• Run into advisor who says "Department Chair X called and wants to know if you are going to finish this year." Ask advisor if she lied for you. (Advisor answered that she told the truth: I had two papers finished and could defend this summer.)
• Study the Geologic Map of Vermont instead of going to graduation.
  
• Go on interview. Ask lots of enthusiastic questions about roadcuts. Make a point to say "yes, I can do that" to all questions.
• Fly home. Answer phone before putting down suitcase. Accept job offer on the spot.

JULY THROUGH AUGUST

• Find one day in which all committee members will be in town.
• Revise tables.
• Try to get figures to print.
• Revise tables again.
• Kick printer.
• Go for run.
• Kick printer again.
  
• Defend.
• Deliver dissertation to Kinko's.
  
• Go to Phish show in Berkeley.
• Pack.
• Move.
• Prepare for classes with three days to go before term begins.

I wonder how much the advice and the reality have changed. Probably there's more advice to do post-docs before applying for jobs. And advice about checking out possible jobs via the web. I don't know whether the advice matches the reality any more than it did fifteen years ago, though.

Job opportunity: intro geology in Durango (adjunct)

Our longterm adjunct just got an offer he couldn't refuse to return to mining geology, so we're looking for someone to teach at Fort Lewis this academic year (fall and spring). He's currently scheduled to teach Earth Systems Science, Physical Geology, and an upper lever interdisciplinary general education course called Resources and the Environment during fall semester. (There's some flexibility in the courses - our Mineralogy prof is on sabbatical in the fall, so if you love to teach Mineralogy or into natural disasters for non-majors, mention it.) Our current adjunct has an M.S., so I think we would consider hiring people with M.S. degrees or higher. It will involve a lot of teaching, but could be a good job for a recent PhD who needs teaching experience, a recent M.S. who wants to check out academia, or anyone whose life goal is to live in Durango. (Ski! Snowboard! Kayak! Mountain bike! Rock climb! Soak in hot springs! Live surrounded by geology that looks like this and includes sedimentary rocks of all ages except Ordovician, old granites and gneisses, young volcanics, deformed metaconglomerates, gold, natural gas, coal, braided and meandering streams, several different types of mass movements, a couple glacial moraines... and that's only the stuff that we regularly use in teaching.)

If you're interested, send me an e-mail (shearsensibility AT gmail DOT com, or google my name and find my work e-mail), and I'll put you in touch with the department chair. (Adjunct hires generally don't involve formal job searches and ads, so we are searching our informal networks. And my informal network includes this blog.)

In which I fail at liveblogging

I'm at an NSF-NAGT-Cutting Edge workshop on Teaching Introductory Geoscience in the 21st Century, I've got wireless internet access, and I'm proving to be an utter failure at even attempting to liveblog anything.

So, more than two days into the workshop, let me try to summarize what's going on:

- On Monday, Barb Tewksbury led a brainstorming session about what long-term effects we wanted to achieve in our introductory courses. (That is, longterm beyond convincing poor unsuspecting students to major in geology.) The list is here. And then, of course, we were challenged to think about how to transform our courses to actually do these things.

- Yesterday, we talked about ways to design courses other than as a sequence of physical geology topics. Some of the examples were based around local geology, some were aimed at particular audiences (teachers, engineers, business students... depending on the institution). Some were based on particular topics, such as sustainability or the geology and human history of a particular place. I moderated a session about using long-term projects, though I felt like a bit of an imposter in the session - my course is a survey course, but I let a project get out of control.

In the afternoon, Anne Egger led a discussion about ways to show intro students how geologists do science. (It's complicated, because actually doing science doesn't feel much like the Scientific Method that gets taught in high school science books. Chris Rowan wrote a great post about it last year, but I think there's more to it than that. Someday, I swear, I will post about the role of models in hypothesis-testing in the Earth Sciences...) And then we were challenged to think about revising our courses. I confess that I wasn't very productive; I wasn't ready to throw out my existing course, and my tinkering started with looking at the timing of GSA and contemplating moving around topics. Not the point, perhaps, but I'm trying to teach a survey course more effectively, rather than re-think the existence of survey courses.*

- Today, we focused on specific activities. We spent the morning evaluating our own activities, and spent the afternoon hearing about good ideas from other people. (It made me wish I was teaching an intro course based around tectonics; I want to use GPS data with intro students.) I won't link to specific activities right now - we're supposed to be revising them, and some people talked about ways they were working on changing the activities they submitted. (And I decided to submit a topographic maps lab that I wanted to make better. I meant to work on it tonight, but I'm blogging instead.)

Tomorrow we're discussing some of the Big Things that we keep saying we want to work on in our classes - stuff we say we want to teach, like communication, reading, and other skills, and stuff we want to change, like student attitudes and misconceptions. (There's also discussion of assessment - how we know whether we've succeeded or not.)

And then we get our after-workshop homework.

It's exhausting. When I'm past "this is Wednesday so we must be re-writing our assignments," I'll try to synthesize it a bit more. In the meantime, presentations are being uploaded as the conference goes on - Tuesday's presentations are already online. (Not podcasts; just Powerpoints. We're still very Web 1.0.)

*It's funny that I'm playing a traditionalist. I never took a traditional Physical Geology course - I got sucked in by a topical course more than 20 years ago.

Links: Sichuan earthquake and age of geoscience profs

I don't have internet at the new house yet, I'm going into the field tomorrow, and I'm leaving Sunday for the Teaching Intro Geology workshop. So I won't be doing much blogging for a while (unless I end up trying to blog from the workshop).

In the meantime, some news that I wish I had time to say more about:

1) GSA Today has an article about the tectonics of the Sichuan earthquake, by Clark Burchfiel, Leigh Royden, and collaborators. It's open access, so you can see it for yourself. The article explains Burchfiel's comments that the earthquake was larger than he would have expected - both estimates of exhumation rates in the mountains and GPS measurements of active deformation suggest that earthquakes of that size occur only every 2000 to 10,000 years. In other words, although the earthquake makes sense in the broad context of plate tectonics, the techniques used to study active tectonics would not have predicted this to be an especially dangerous area.

2) AGI's Geoscience Currents series has just released the geoscience faculty age distribution for 2008. Fewer than 200 faculty members are younger than 36; the numbers of faculty become dominated by associate professors (rather than assistant professors) between age 41 and 45. The flyer states that "The low numbers of faculty under the age of 40 likely reflects the growing tendency for geoscientists to take post-doctoral fellowships prior to entering the faculty ranks." I suspect that cause and effect are switched here, and that many geoscience post-docs would happily trade their jobs for faculty positions if given the opportunity. (As an aside, when I got my Ph.D. at age 26, I told myself that I would give myself ten years to find a job, and if I wasn't employed by age 36, I would do something else with my life. I know I finished grad school at a frighteningly young age, but it's still disconcerting to see that my upper age limit is on the low end of the age range for new hires!)

The graph is also worrisome for young women who wish to be both geoscience professors and mothers - waiting until after tenure (as I tried to do my first time around) is not an option for most women, and that means dealing with a young child in the stressful, highly uncertain world of post-docs and visiting instructors and assistant professors. (Or not having kids at all. But nobody expects men to give up the possibility of kids in order to be scientists.)

Unfinished business

I've spent the last week rearranging numbers in Microsoft Excel.

This isn't the sort of thing that one tells people in order to sell the glamorous life of a geologist*. But it feels useful and productive. See, I should have done this seven years ago. Yes, that's right... I'm working on a draft of a paper that has languished for seven years.

Let me back up. My first teaching job involved many changes: I moved to a different coast, I went from a research fellowship to teaching five courses plus labs per year, and I started doing research in a new mountain belt (and a new metamorphic grade and tectonic setting). I figured that broad experience was good for someone who wanted to teach (and whose job involved a grand total of nine different new course preps in the first four years). I knew it would be difficult to find new research projects in a new field area, but I didn't realize how difficult it would be to earn the respect of the people already working in the area. I worked anyway, cobbling together money from small grants to pay undergrads for their field time, and collecting data with instruments at my institution. After seven years, I had started publishing in the new area, and I was trying to figure out how to get NSF funding for research with undergrads. I had tried three different programs as a PI without success, so I tried something new: I networked. There's a program called Research Opportunity Awards that allows professors at teaching-intensive colleges to get money tied to an existing, funded NSF grant. I found people from whom I wanted to learn, I contacted them, and I wrote a proposal.

And then I didn't get tenure.

Even though I landed another academic job within three months, I was faced with moving away from my field area and from my instruments, to a new place, with new preps and different expectations. I probably should have apologized to NSF and the PIs (and I did talk to the PIs about backing out), but the PIs thought I could pull it off. So I spent the summer between jobs doing lab work and modeling work at two different institutions.

And then I dropped the ball. Six courses a year, plus field camp, left me exhausted and ready to stare at some walls. Plus I wasn't teaching courses that related to my old research, and students wouldn't work with me in a field area on the other side of the country. There wasn't even that much pressure to publish for tenure here - publishing on pedagogy or as a third author on my old PhD work, and writing equipment grants with other members of my department, was fine for this job. And then I had a baby, and I had even more responsibilities here, and nothing forcing me to finish the old work.

And, to be honest, I couldn't face the Vermont research. It depressed me to even open the draft of the paper, or to look at the thin sections or the spread sheets. Research isn't just a matter of working hard - it involves inspiration, and although anger may be a useful emotion for some purposes, it doesn't lead to great research.

But I've been here for eight years now. I've got tenure. I know my courses. I've got local research projects with senior thesis students, and I've been developing local research projects for intro students, as well. And my son is five, and doesn't need me as constantly as he did as an infant and a toddler. And I got a tiny internal grant to get a little more microprobe data. And now... it's time to put it together, to finish writing the paper that's been sitting on my hard drive for seven years or more.

I've searched georef to see what's been done. The only things published in the past eight years were work that was in progress in 2000. (In fact, one is co-authored by one of my old academic advisees. Yay for her!) Perhaps it's a sign that my work was never cutting edge - but then it never aspired to be. Not all research needs to be published in Science or Nature - sometimes it is worthwhile to tell the world what one knows about an obscure, overgrown corner of the world.

And sometimes it is simply worthwhile to take care of unfinished business.

*I realize that it is unlikely that anyone would mistake me for "one of the coolest, sexiest men alive." However, I might be fun to have breakfast with, if you've got good enough coffee.

So you want to work with undergrads: II and a half. Industry experience?

First, Daniel Promislow from the University of Georgia sent me a link to a book he co-authored on getting an academic biology job. I haven't read it, but a book will probably have more carefully-thought-out advice than a blog post.

Second, Chuck brought up an interesting point in the comments to my previous post:

I think it is both amusing and sad that having any kind of work experience in the fields which your students can expect to be employed is completely absent from this list.

It's a good point. In the searches I participated in, some (but not all) of the applicants for the jobs had experience either in industry or in government, but I don't think the search committees explicitly looked for practical experience as a criteria for choosing members of a short list. This may have been unusual - the result of a combination of the positions in question, the institution (private SLAC in most of the searches), and the times (ten years or more after oil & gas stopped booming... last time). But it might also have been a pure academic's ivory tower bias.

I think we did consider professional experience as a plus when it provided evidence of the ability to teach certain subjects. But the experience alone wasn't enough - the applicant needed to put it in some kind of context and demonstrate that he or she had some idea of how to take that experience and translate it into effective teaching. ("My three years working for Big Oil Company on exploration of fractured shales allowed me to see the practical side of my training in rock mechanics. I have developed a lab exercise for Structural Geology that teaches the basics of rock fracture while showing the importance of fluid flow - both gas and water - through cracks in rock." - Not a real quote, btw - I haven't read any applications for structural geology positions.) Industry or government experience could be used to support statements in the cover letter, the statement of teaching interests, or the statement of research interests.

Different arguments are going to be effective for different positions. (If you're being asked to teach a course in Ore Deposits, it shouldn't be difficult to explain why industry experience is important. If you're being hired to teaching Mineralogy, Petrology, and additional advanced and introductory courses that fit your interests and the department's needs, you could still make the case, but it won't be as obvious. You would need to be explicit - talk about how your experience used the skills students need to learn to work on all sorts of different rocks, and how you can teach the fundamentals using ore deposits as an example.)

And different institutions have different attitudes toward vocational training. Private liberal arts colleges, in particular, see themselves as educating citizens, not training geologists. Most of my students at my previous institution aren't geologists now - there are doctors, lawyers, nurses, investment bankers, teachers, and at least one owner of a catering company/bed & breakfast. Students majored in geology because they liked it, not because the major would guarantee them a good job. And that attitude allowed the department (and similar departments) to survive in the 90's, when geology jobs were scarce and geology departments were being shut down for lack of students. And courses for non-majors are a significant portion of the teaching load at those schools - and from the administration's point of view, the non-majors courses may be the only really important ones. A career-oriented argument ("I know what students need when they graduate") probably wouldn't be very effective in that context. An argument about connecting textbook knowledge with important issues in the real world, on the other hand, might work.

Small public colleges, on the other hand, tend to be more practical. A connection to jobs (and the skills necessary to get and keep jobs) would probably be a better sell. (Public liberal arts colleges are a bit of a hybrid. My department thinks practical experience is important, despite having hired me. We've got several people in the department with varied experiences outside the Ivory Tower. But there are plenty of other faculty across campus who will argue that extreme focus on a career is not the purpose of the institution. Any prospective faculty member would need to remember that general education is a big part of our mission, too.)

In all cases, applicants for jobs at undergraduate institutions should remember that they'll be teaching a lot of non-geologists. I've seen a lot of applications that don't seem aware of just how important non-majors are.

So you want to work with undergrads: II. Job applications

So. You want a job, do you? At an undergraduate college? Ok, then. Let me tell you what I know.

(This is based on being on six different search committees at two different schools. However, I haven’t been part of a search in the past six years – my department has been successful at moving people from job candidate to tenured professor, so that’s no longer my biggest service obligation. So: the job market changes with time, and I may be out of touch.)

A job application is like any other piece of writing: to be effective, it needs to be pitched at the right audience. Except that goes triple (at least) for job applications. In the case of a search committee for a liberal arts college, that audience usually includes the entire department, the dean, other administrators, students (for parts of the application – not reference letters), and possibly a faculty member from another department.

So what does this audience want from the job search, anyway?

1) To find someone to teach certain classes. (Some of those classes will be within the major, and some classes will be part of the college’s general education program. All of them need to be taught. If the new hire can’t or won’t teach them, the other members of the department will have to.)

2) To hire a person who is good to work with. (Departments are small. Jerks are difficult to avoid in a small department.)

3) To avoid having to do this same search next year, or in four years, or in seven years. (The new hire should be someone who will be happy at the institution, and should be someone who will survive the tenure process and continue teaching important courses and being a pleasant department member until retirement.)

The administration may also have its own agenda – maybe to strengthen an interdisciplinary program, maybe to hire someone who can bring in grant money, maybe to straighten out a troubled program. (I wouldn’t want to be hired into the third situation, btw.) The students and the additional faculty are usually there to give a broader perspective – they don’t make or break a candidate’s case, in my experience.

The department members on the committee will probably divide up the application materials (cover letter, curriculum vitae, statements of teaching and research interest, letters of recommendation, and whatever else a candidate sends them) between them, and cull them down to a manageable pool (maybe 20 applications). Then the students and outside faculty and administrators join the process, and everyone narrows the field down to a short list, and then to a group of maybe three or four people to interview. Your application materials have to get you out of that pool of 100 (or more) files and into the interview stage.

So what makes a strong candidate versus a weak candidate?

There is one thing that is sure to eliminate a candidate from consideration: a lack of background in the subdisciplines to be taught. (Sometimes only one subdiscipline is absolutely necessary; in other cases, the list of courses is extensive.)

The other stuff can vary in importance, depending on the applicant pool. But, in general, the following things are good:

1) Teaching experience. (I know I said that research is an important part of the job. But teaching is the thing the department needs right away.)

2) Experience working with undergrads (as part of a mentoring program, or supervising undergrads in a Research Experiences for Undergraduates program, or supervising undergrads in a lab, for instance).

3) Enthusiasm about undergraduate education. (The cover letter is important here. Why do you want to teach at this place, anyway?)

4) Enthusiasm about research with undergraduates.

5) Demonstration of ways you would fit into the program. (Look at the web site. What courses are currently offered? Can you figure out who is leaving? Can you show that you can teach the things that the department needs to be taught?)

6) Knowledge about the institution. (What is the administration proud of, and how do they market the school? If you really don’t want the job, talk about all the graduate students you plan to attract to your research program, or leave another school’s name in the middle of the cover letter.)

7) For geoscientists especially, knowledge about the area around the school. (You will need to dive right in and lead local field trips. Do you have any idea what you’ll be able to do? Can you imagine undergrad research projects in the area?)

8) A PhD completed. (Once upon a time, assistant professors were hired before they had defended their dissertation. If industry starts hiring away a lot of geology PhDs, it’s possible that ABDs will be hired again. But I wouldn’t count on it. And that means you need to finish your dissertation. Are you writing? Huh? Huh?)

9) Publications. (Notice how low this is on the list – it’s still helpful to have published, but a small college is likely to hire people who they think will publish in the future, rather than the past. Existing publications, however, can provide evidence of your background to teach certain topics, and show that you can follow through on your research. And they impress administrators.)

10) Grants. (If you want tenure, you will need to do research, and that means finding money. If you’ve been successful at getting grants already, that’s impressive. Especially to administrators. But whether it’s critical will depend on how competitive the applicant pool is.)

If one of the other applicants is perfect – five years of experience teaching at another SLAC, a dozen first-authored publications, successful NSF grants, a record of sending senior research students to top graduate programs, stellar recommendation letters, clear enthusiasm about the position... well, you don’t have a chance. (Unless you are that perfect applicant. In which case, you probably aren’t looking for advice.)

But if you’re up against a lot of other people with a year of teaching experience, maybe a post-doc, maybe some papers in press... well, at that point, you can either stand out or disappear based on how you sell yourself. Use your statement of teaching interests to show that you are qualified to teach the courses listed in the job ad, and that you are a creative and enthusiastic instructor. If you have experience, talk about it; if you don’t have much experience, talk about what you plan to do. Use the statement of research interests to talk about how undergrads can get involved in your cutting-edge work. (And if you need to use instruments that aren’t available at the college, explain how you plan to manage collaborations that will allow you to both work with undergrads and do your cutting-edge stuff.) Arrange your C.V. so that your relevant experience is easy to find. Talk about undergrads in your cover letter, too. Make it clear that you understand the kind of school you’re applying to – if you sound like you belong at a research university, you probably won’t make the final cut.

And make sure your advisor and the other people writing letters for you understand that you’re applying to an undergrad institution. You can’t control what they write, but you can make sure that they understand your goals, and don’t write glowing letters about your future as a research scientist and mentor of graduate students.

Finally, one last piece of advice. Don’t hint that you are applying to a SLAC job because you just couldn’t make it in the research university world. The private SLACs, in particular, consider themselves to be as good as a private research university. If you don’t think much of the type of institution, you probably shouldn’t work at one – they see themselves as communities, and even if your teaching and research are at the right level, you might be miserable dealing with the school’s sense of itself.

For more advice (from a wider variety of people), check out How to Get a Tenure-Track Job at a Primarily Undergraduate Institution, from the Council on Undergraduate Research. If you're serious about working at a PUI, you might want to join CUR and go to one of its meetings.

So you want to work with undergrads: I. Expectations

This post is partly inspired by a post in last month's Scientiae about doing research at small colleges. (And that post was partly inspired by a Chronicle of Higher Ed piece entitled Big Research, Small College.)

I've taught at two undergrad-only colleges: one private liberal arts college on the East Coast, and one public liberal arts college in the Rockies. (I was also a student at a private liberal arts college. That made me want to teach at one, but it didn't teach me much about surviving.) Everything I'm going to say is based on my experience. One person, limited in time and institutions. All schools have their quirks, and SLACs may have more than most. And institutions change through time - the expectations when I was hired had changed within seven years, in both places. But I'm teaching at one right now, and that gives me a different perspective from professors at research universities (who may have been students at SLACs, or who may have run away screaming after a temporary teaching position, or who may know of SLACs mostly via grad students who came from them).

Oh, and for non-USAians - I don't think this kind of institution exists outside the US. And these schools are different from community colleges, and from small universities with M.S. programs. I've never taught at either of those, so I don't know what the work is like.

So, with those caveats, I'm going to do three posts. The first is going to deal with expectations: what exactly is involved in teaching at a SLAC? The second is going to deal with getting a job, and the third is going to deal with getting tenure. (Or not.)

So. Expectations.

Research.

Umm. Kim? Shouldn't teaching be the first category? I mean, these are the jobs for people who love working with undergrads, right? I've read the catalogs. "Teaching is our mission." So what's the deal with research?

I'm putting research first for a reason. The Chronicle of Higher Ed piece makes it sound as if you can do research at an undergrad institution, but really, you must. Not as much as at a research university, it's true. But you have to do it. And it's hard to know exactly how much, and what quality. And the expectations may change.

There are a lot of good reasons for doing research at an undergrad institution. For one, it's a good way to stay in touch with the field - doing research also means writing grant proposals and knowing what topics are currently hot and reading the literature. For another, research experiences are good for students. Good undergrad research projects let students get a taste of how scientists work. And there's nothing like a research project to test a student's critical thinking skills.

And then there are other reasons. Scientific research means grants, and grants mean money (including indirect costs). With pressure to keep tuition down, and limited possibilities for state funding, grants look like a good source of money to public colleges, especially. And undergraduate research enhances the prestige of the institution. (I suspect this was important to the private SLACs in the late 80's/early 90's, when my Baby Bust generation was going to college, and the SLACs had to convince students that they were as good as Princeton or Stanford. Hey, it convinced me, at least.)

So you do research, and you publish papers. What kind depends on the institution. (How important is it to have undergrad co-authors on your papers? How important is it to get an equipment grant? How many papers, and in which journals? Do you need to be a first author for a paper to count? Does continuing your research from grad school/post-doc count? Do grants count? Do unsuccessful grant proposals count, as the Chronicle article implied? (Not in my experience, at least.) Do pedagogy grants and papers count?) I don't have a good answer - these are things that are different from institution to institution, and from administration to administration, and from candidate to candidate. (One paper in seven years probably is not enough, though it might still be at some institutions, for the right person. One paper a year is probably plenty. And between that... I don't know. I was denied tenure when I had four papers, one grey literature field trip guide, and a couple small grants; I got tenure when I had nothing but a pedagogy paper, a third-authored paper, and a co-PI'd NSF equipment grant... but that was in three years.)

But I know one thing: you can't publish too much.

Teaching.

You can't publish too much, but you can lose your job if your teaching isn't good enough. And you generally don't get out of teaching for doing research, unless you get a grant that pays your salary during the academic year.

How much teaching? It depends. At the private SLAC, I taught four to five courses per year, most with labs. (I also taught nine different courses - that's nine different preps - in my first four years. Eleven courses in seven years.) At my current public SLAC, I teach six courses a year, most with labs, plus I have taught summer field camp a few times. (But I've only taught seven different courses, including field camp. And I had taught versions of most of them before.) Other private colleges have smaller teaching loads, depending on how they give credit for labs. Some also give new faculty a break.

And how good do you have to be? Ah. That's the real question. Teaching evaluations can be brutal, especially at private colleges. And there aren't many ways to evaluate how well students learn, as opposed to how much they like their professors. At my first school, the sciences lost around one junior professor a year to bad reviews resulting from student teaching evaluations.

It's difficult to balance the need to challenge students, and support students, and get good teaching evaluations, and publish.

What about Service? Don't you have to do Service?

Oh, yeah, service. You know... service takes care of itself. You get assigned to a few committees, you go to meetings, you get credit for service. It's basically a box that needs to be checked off - unlike research and teaching, it doesn't have to be excellent. I haven't found committee work to be overwhelming - in fact, it lets me get to know people across campus.

So... would I do it again? In a heartbeat. I like teaching a broad range of subdisciplines. I like working with students one-on-one in lab. I like spending time in the field with each research student, brainstorming with them, trying to remember to make them say what they see before I tell them. I like watching students transform into independent scientists. I like mentoring.

(If I had to do it again, though, I would have left the first job after a year or two. There were warning signs that things weren't going well, and I would have saved myself a lot of grief if I had paid attention to them.)

(Geoscience grad students/post-docs: if you want a broader range of advice, check out On the Cutting Edge. Their workshops for this year are full, but they've got general advice on the website.)

Teaching for a new geology job market

Geotripper asks whether the sudden boom in geologist hiring is a good thing. We got into geology for the love of it; can one become a geologist just for the money?

I've got a slightly different question (but one that Geotripper alluded to at the end of his post): what would happen to our teaching if students suddenly started flocking to geology majors?

I've never seen boom days for geologists. I graduated from college in 1989. Nobody was recruiting geologists then. I went straight to grad school because I got an NSF fellowship, and it paid. The alternative, as far as I could tell, was flipping burgers. I went to job fairs in grad school, but there weren't many recruiters. My friends who did dissertations on basin analysis or copper porphyry systems had trouble finding jobs; the companies certainly weren't interested in young idealists who specialized in structures in metamorphic rocks. Most of my grad school cohort got jobs in academia or in government, or became computer geeks, or got MBAs, or disappeared from the geology radar.

I've had the fortune to teach in good undergrad departments. (My current department has more undergrad geology majors than any college in Colorado, including 20 graduates this year.) But even here, surrounded by spectacular mountains, our intro courses are mostly filled with students looking for general education science credit. I see 50 to 100 intro students a year; one or two of them go on to be geology majors. We constantly worry about our numbers of students. Will we recruit enough freshmen? Will we attract enough transfer students? How many sophomores are registered for Mineralogy?

If we suddenly had the numbers of students who want to major in something like Accounting, though, I wonder what I would do? I'm used to intro classes full of students whose interest in geology is marginal, at best. My sophomore mapping class, however, is a complete zoo when 30 students register for it. If we were flooded with sophomores, I would need to divide the class into at least two sections, which would make it more difficult to schedule everything (since I also teach Structure and Earth Systems, with labs, that semester). My goal in the mapping class is to make sure the students leave with the skills to do field work in the rest of their classes. Would I be able to give the students the individual, hands-on attention that they need? And if I had 30 students in Structure at the same time, would I be able to function? Would I be tempted to weed? (I probably wouldn't need to; students have to take chemistry, pre-calculus, and Mineralogy before they take Structure.)

Our students are being recruited right now. I know of offers comparable to the ones quoted by NPR and Bloomberg. I'm advising the seniors not to get used to high pay, and to take care of their debts and retirement planning ASAP. I wonder how I would react to freshman who were only in it for the money, though. I'm used to an entirely different market, one in which a geologist has to survive on love of the work. I might still be too much of an idealist for industry.

Internships, scholarships, and workshops, oh my!

Here are various opportunities culled from my e-mail from the past few days. These start with undergrad opportunities, and then go on to opportunities open to grad students, post-docs, and faculty.

Association for Women in Science Multicultural Internship Program: summer internships in Washington, DC for women undergraduate science majors from underrepresented groups (individuals of African American, Latino/Hispanic, Native American, and Pacific Islander descent).

Summer of Applied Geophysical Experience, a Research Experience for Undergraduates program at Los Alamos National Lab, New Mexico. (A former student of mine was an intern at LANL for a year after graduation, and the experience helped him a great deal in grad school.)

Various Association for Women Geoscientists scholarships. Several chapters give their own scholarships, some for undergrads, some open to grad students. There is also the national Minority Scholarship, open to undergrads nationwide.

On the Cutting Edge workshop deadlines:

Preparing for an Academic Career in the Geosciences, for grad students and post-docs. Deadline is Friday, March 14.

Early Career Faculty, which means in the first four years of a full-time teaching position. Deadline is Friday, March 14.

Teaching Introductory Geology in the 21st Century still has ten slots open, although the deadline passed. The workshop program is starting to come together, and it's going to incorporate discussions of how to reach out to underrepresented groups and how to teach geology in an urban setting. (I'm going to this one.)

Gender and the geoscience pipeline (or: life as one of the 14%)

I don't have access to Nature Geoscience, so I haven't read the article published there on gender equity in the geosciences (“Gender Imbalance in US Geoscience Academia” by Holmes, O’Connell, Frey, and Ongley, p. 79-82) that Eric and Julia have recently written about. I've read the older "Where Are the Women Geoscience Professors?" report by AWG (and some of the same authors), however, and I've shared a GSA hotel room with one of the paper's authors. (Does that alone say something significant about women in geology?)

Jim asked what the women geobloggers thought, so here it goes...

First, the short answer: I think the best explanation for what I've observed over my career comes from Virginia Valian's gender schemas work. The basic idea is that people's expectations influence their perceptions of others (and of themselves), and these little differences in perception add up. So the statements about "intrinsic female attributes" (such as the ones Eric quotes: 'females in general prefer to teach'; 'females lack self-confidence'; 'females in general have a low interest in the subject matter'; and 'females don’t like field work') are the problems in themselves. Even when they aren't true about a particular job applicant (or woman coming up for tenure, or grant applicant, or paper author), the expectation that they will be true influences the people making the judgments.

It feels to me like I'm constantly having to disprove the same flawed hypotheses, over and over again. (I'm the first woman professor in any of the small schools in western Colorado - there were others on the Front Range, but in the triangle bounded by Colorado Springs, Albuquerque, and the greater Salt Lake City area, I was the first.) No, I am not the department secretary. Yes, I can identify rocks. Believe me, it gets old after a while.

Second, the personal experience.

I graduated from college in 1989. Half of the students in my undergrad department were women. One of the four tenured professors was a woman. When I started grad school at Stanford, three of the five new PhD students were women. My graduate advisor was a woman. When I got my first teaching job in 1993 (with PhD in hand, and yes, that was very fast), I was the third woman in a six-person department. Things looked pretty good.

That department now has one woman out of six professors. (And I am not the one.) I've got a lot of stories that I could tell, but perhaps I will just tell two, one about research, and one about teaching.

Research: I heard through the grapevine that I supposedly was only given my PhD because I had gotten a job. (Umm. No. Actually, I hadn't intended to finish in four years, but when I met with my committee after 3.5 years, told them about the two papers I had nearly ready to submit, and asked them what to do next, they told me to finish. I panicked; I didn't feel prepared to take on the job market, especially in January. But I started applying for jobs, and got three interviews and two offers. And, yes, that was unusual. And remember I was the third woman in the department that hired me; I was not an affirmative action hire.)

Teaching: I taught this large lecture non-majors course, and to get discussion going on the first day of class, I asked each student to write a question on a notecard. One of the responses from students was "What's your sign? Who's your daddy?" Another was "Is it true that this is the easiest class on campus?" (I was filling in for another person who normally taught the course, by the way. I wasn't the person responsible for the reputation.) When the teaching evaluations came in, the students said the class was too easy.

I was denied tenure at that job. (By the administration; my department unanimously recommended me for tenure. The problem was with course evaluations in the large intro class and with letters from outside evaluators about my scholarship. I "wasn't excellent enough.")

I got another job, and I've got tenure now. But I'm not the only tenured woman professor in the geosciences with stories to tell. There are women who are incredibly brilliant and talented who have lost jobs, or have been passed over for promotions. Some had children; some, like me, did not. (I had my son after moving to Colorado.)

The academic job market in the geosciences has been extremely competitive in these past twenty years. It's hard for everyone to get the jobs that they want, and the hiring committees have a lot of good people to choose from. The two men who entered grad school with me both are tenured at major research universities, and I think their institutions are lucky to have hired them. They're great people, and extremely talented scientists.

The women I knew in grad school are also extremely talented people. But they aren't, in general, in as prestigious of positions.

The problem isn't the pipeline. There were plenty of women in the pipeline twenty years ago. They were in grad school with me, or they were new PhDs at GSA, smart and exciting. They should be tenured professors now, and leading cutting-edge sessions at GSA. But the demographics at conferences don't seem any different than they were when I started. Lots of women students. Not many women who are established scientists.

I don't think that the problem is entirely structural, either. (*Insert bad joke about faults here.*) Yes, it is incredibly difficult to juggle a small child and new teaching and research responsibilities. But it is even harder when you've also got to disprove flawed hypotheses. ("She's only interested in teaching." "She was only a courtesy co-author on that paper." "She doesn't want to do field work." "She lacks self-confidence." "She was only hired because she's a woman.") Changing the tenure clock to accommodate childbirth only helps if the committee doesn't think less of a woman for taking that option. (Or doesn't assume that the woman should write twice as many papers in that time.)

So what can we do about it? Well, question our biases. (Yes, all of us. Women too.) When we write letters of recommendation, make sure that we talk about women's talents as scientists, not just about how nice they are. When we read letters of recommendation, take "she's a great teacher" as a positive thing, not as a sign that the woman applicant is mediocre at research. And call other people on their biases, especially when we're on hiring or tenure or promotion committees.

It seemed like the work was over in 1989, or in 1993. But it isn't.

So now how am I supposed to teach my students not to plagiarize?

When I started teaching, I had to figure out how to handle the possibility that students might cheat. I wanted to create an atmosphere in which students could learn from each other - in my experience, science is a highly social experience, and the stereotype of the Lone Mad Scientist off in a lab creating a monster is a myth. (Well, except in the argon lab in the middle of the night, but we won't talk about those ignoble gases...) But on the other hand, I wanted the students to learn, not to copy answers from one another.

One of my solutions was to model my requirements after the scientific publishing process. If students were supposed to contribute equally to an assignment (and receive the same credit for it), they became the equivalent of co-authors. If they talked to one another, they had to add an acknowledgments section, where they would thank Lisa for explaining how to do a three-point problem, and Joey for bringing the iPod speakers so everyone could rock out during lab. And if something was published, they had to cite it in a list of references.

You can probably guess where I'm going with this, if you read the paleontology blogs. (Or science ethics blogs. Or Nature.) Researchers at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science have been accused of some very serious ethical violations. Publishing a new species name when they knew another group had a paper in review about the same issue? Publishing information that originated in a graduate thesis at another institution? Publishing insights discussed while visiting another museum's collection? These are the sorts of things that I hope that my students learn not to do. I want my students to learn that science is done best when people share ideas openly, but I also want them to be honest and fair about the sources of their ideas.

I'm teaching my department's writing class this semester. One of the things we discuss is professional ethics. We've talked about citations already, but we haven't talked about the ethical guidelines of GSA or AGU or AIPG yet. It looks like I'm going to have a new case study to discuss.

So you're applying to graduate school...

Female Science Professor has posted a very useful discussion of e-mails to potential graduate advisors. If you are an undergrad applying to graduate school, you might want to check out her comments - it isn't often that you get insight into what grad school faculty want to hear from applicants! The comments also give a view of the range of opinions about pre-application e-mails.

(My experience... well, I had to walk uphill both ways in a snowstorm just to search a paper copy of the Directory of Geoscience Departments to find out which universities employed metamorphic petrologists. I suppose I could have sent pre-application letters via the Pony Express... *shakes cane* So, anyway, I'm glad to hear what faculty at research universities think of the now-traditional e-mails.)

Edit: Female Science Professor has added a new post discussing applications of MS vs PhD students. It's a useful read, as well. But keep in mind that she teaches at a major research university - there are a range of types of institutions out there, and for some of them, the terminal MS degree is the most advanced degree offered. If you are primarily interested in going into industry rather than academia, an MS degree might be the way to go - especially right now, when both the oil&gas and mining industries are hiring geologists. (They are also hiring people with PhDs, but PhDs take a lot longer to complete, and the job market can change a lot in five years.)

reviewing articles: anonymity, or not?

Here's a question for all the readers of the geoblogosphere:

Under what circumstances would you choose to remain anonymous when reviewing a journal article?

- When recommending an article for rejection, or stopping just short of recommending rejection?
- When reviewing somebody famous/important in the field?
- When your personal circumstances were uncertain (grad student, post-doc, pre-tenure faculty member...)?
- When some other type of politics was involved, and you had somehow gotten stuck in it?

I have received anonymous reviews, back in the far distant past. They panned my papers, but stopped just short of recommending rejection. I was too stubborn (or maybe too stupid) to get the hint, and stuck with it until the papers were published. (Also, although the reviewers were anonymous, their identities were pretty obvious. They were the only people who would have had those particular objections. So I didn't feel like I had been personally rejected, or that my ideas weren't worthwhile - I felt like I had gotten stuck in the middle of an argument that I hadn't started.)

The signed reviews that I have received, on the other hand, were very constructive, and I learned some useful things by dealing with their comments. (I learned a lot from dealing with the anonymous reviews, as well, but I also learn from picking up hot objects off the stove.)

After my experience with anonymous reviews, I have always signed my own reviews. (Even when the reviews were very harsh, in part because I suspected that my identity would be obvious.) But I've also always gone out of my way to be constructive and detailed in my criticisms. And it's a good thing that I'm not asked to review papers very often, because critical-but-constructive reviews are a lot of work.

And I wonder. Is there any paper for which I wouldn't sign a review?

What about you?