Not only is it birthday 1 for Occam’s Typewriter but last week was my literal birthday. So maybe a good time to reflect about what I can do differently in the New Year.
I have a new job since I started blogging at Occam’s T; a new academic job and as we know the UK Research Excellence Framework (RAE) is on the horizon. In case you don’t know, its an assessment of Higher Education Institutions (HEI) by HEFCE (Higher Education Funding Council for England) academic department by academic department to see how excellent each is (relatively) which also decides how much money we get in 2015 ! While 2015 seems like a long time away, it isn’t. Especially not from an assessment point of view; good researchers today will be good researchers tomorrow and will be the best HEIs – so the logic goes. There are some fundamental flaws in the logic. The most obvious is, great researchers aren’t necessarily great teachers. Which many of you who have ever been taught in an HEI will also realize is the great understatement of the decade.
But I, as usual, digress.
How can I make my blog better?
Pictures perhaps, Athene Donald mentioned adding more pictures (if she were adept with a camera). Maybe I should have some more pictures, real pictures not one’s stolen from elsewhere? Maybe I can invent creative cocktails in the lab like Jenny Rohn? I definitely don’t want to work for another PhD like Erika Cule (who just upgraded this year, well done). I do use elastic scattering as a technique but this has already been described by Richard and I need to read more books like Henry.
So what to do? I do think I need to write more about the research I actually do, which involves reading books, taking pictures, interacting with PhD students and drinking (for a variety of reasons) as well as diffraction – so this is my new Occam’s year resolution.
Happy belated birthday Occam’s Typewriter!
Diffraction. Definitely more diffraction.
And Higgs Bosons. I hear they’re all over the place these days.
Also – happy birthday to you, too (also belated)!
Me too , wishing you a happy belated birthday!
Pets.
MOAR HOCKEY!!1!
And happy birthday 🙂
True enough, though a lot are pretty good if they can be bothered.
The problem in UK Universities is more that there is no reward for being a great teacher – or, more accurately, far less reward than for being a successful researcher.
Part of this is a result of there being no consensus on how you decide who is a great teacher, while there is at least some kind of agreement of what constitutes a successful researcher (papers, especially high profile ones, grants, PhD students etc).
In fact, people who end up with a lot of teaching in Univs now tend to be pretty good teachers, in my experience, mainly because otherwise they would probably go crazy. But when promotion time comes around, you hear things like:
“Well, simply doing a lot of teaching doesn’t show you are necessarily especially good at it”.
– with predictable results.
Anyway, the basic fact is that University promotions in the sciences remain heavily, heavily loaded towards research, and that getting promoted on a ‘mostly teaching’ ticket is really tough – unless, perhaps, you are specifically employed in an “Instructor” role with no research component at all.
The govt has argued that the new market in undergrad fees will change this, and increase the status of teaching in UK Univs – but I have to say I haven’t seen any change in that direction yet, looking across the sector. In some ways, indeed, rather the opposite.
/rant
Oops, lost in ‘rant mode’ there and forgot to say Happy Birthday.
Happy Birthday!
Perhaps it’s the festive season, but I find myself in total agreement with Dr Aust. Which either means that he’s right or we are both completely mad. When I was a graduate student I found research dreary, but I absolutely adored teaching. This might explain my subsequent trajectory – away from the lab and into what we used to call science communication. Given that good teaching can make a big difference – can be so inspirational – it is a shame it’s not rewarded. We at Your Favourite Weekly Etcetera think mentoring is important and have even been known to reward it.
Oh, and, Sylvia, what the boomerang thrower said to the tax inspector.