An Identification Guide to Professors

Posted on December 21, 2011 by Athene Donald

As we head for Christmas, it is worth considering the people we’ve been surrounded by for the past year.  Some will have been a delight, others may have caused immense stress for a number of different reasons. So, time to continue my characterisation of the Dramatis Personae in university departments, bearing in mind the recent discussion in the THE about what professors ought to be offering in terms of leadership, strategic development and support for those around*. (Of course the title professor should be taken as generic; these characters may apply at any career stage of a tenured academic.)

Professor Inefficient

Whatever task you ask this person to take on, they will manage either to fail to start or most certainly fail to finish; possibly they will even manage to screw up the bigger picture of the task for others en route.  Sometimes this is due to inexperience, but sometimes it is clearly a carefully thought through strategy so that colleagues never ask them to do anything again. I have known young lecturers who successfully followed this strategy early on in their career, so as to avoid having chores pointed in their direction, and who have subsequently turned into irreproachable heads of departments. I leave others to judge the ethics and/or wisdom of this behaviour.

Professor Centre-of-the Universe

This person may or may not be the star of the department. It doesn’t matter to them what the rest of the world thinks about them. As far as they are concerned they know the world revolves around them, and they expect everyone else to fit in with what they want. If they need more space they assume others will cheerfully relinquish their targeted rooms. If  they want that outstanding student who has applied from abroad, it never occurs to them that others may equally have their eyes on them – and the accompanying finance. Such behaviour can be amazingly disruptive; while less egocentric colleagues will confer and be willing to compromise, Professor Centre-of-the-Universe charges on without a sideways glance at those who fall by the wayside. Of course, if they don’t fall by the wayside voluntarily, things can get even nastier. Battle lines can be drawn before others have even had chance to draw breath. A tricky person for the head of department to try to keep in check.

Professor Mid-Atlantic

This person may or may not be synonymous with the previous character. Those who think they are the centre of the universe may also be those who are constantly on airplanes, jetting around the world from one high profile conference to another.  They rely on teams of students constantly to replenish their powerpoint presentations with new data, but they are not necessarily close at hand to advise these students. Hence a large team of postdocs may also be required to keep the research group actually functioning in the long periods of absence of the boss.

Professor Charming

Again this may often be one and the same person as Professor Mid-Atlantic, because a quick charm offensive on their return from every trip may be required to stop the troops from rioting during their next absence. One student I knew of such a professor told me how he had always gone into meetings raging about the lack of support  he received from his supervisor, but found himself instantly disarmed by the (mock) sympathy expressed by the professor, with the outcome the student came out still not having expressed his fury. This is a skill that is clearly very useful to possess, but I would be most reluctant to encourage others to perfect the skill! A related tactic, perhaps more relevant to dealing with senior colleagues, is the line I was once faced with ‘How long do you want to rant at me this time, Athene?’ Again, I was disarmed by this approach (and am still waiting for an occasion when I feel I can try that line out on someone myself).

Professor Last Minute

This character is well known by the administration. If there is an important grant deadline approaching, this one will turn up in the admin office a maximum of 24 hours beforehand demanding instant attention and resolution of all problems, large and small. This one will leave submitting marks for any course/exam until ½ hour after the deadline (to the distraction of the senior examiner) or fail to provide the syllabus for the course or title for any seminar until at least 3 reminders have been circulated. What makes it worse is they fail to realise the stress or mayhem consequent upon their (non) action. They’ve done whatever it was that was being asked of them, what’s the problem? – they will ask in injured terms.

Professor ChiponShoulder/It’s Not Fair

This person feels the world treats them unfairly. Always, Whatever. They believe they are asked to do far more teaching than anyone else, regardless of what any workload model may demonstrate (strange, as scientists are meant to believe in evidence). They are convinced that others get more departmental resources, be it space, money or access to students. Their brilliant research is (they would claim) overlooked if individuals are being considered for any ‘reward’ – more salary, a prize or a nicer office. Nothing that comes their way is appreciated because it’s never enough to feed their fragile egos. The strange thing about these people is that sometimes they genuinely are valued for their skills and treated accordingly well, but somehow they can’t see the respect with which they are viewed, leading to a self-fulfilling prophecy as others start to value them less.

Professor Workhorse

Every department needs its share of these desirable individuals. They quietly get on with whatever is asked of them. Give them an extra dose of lecturing and they will perform, perhaps without charisma or even much enthusiasm, but with competence and consistency so that the student liason committee will not need to make a fuss demanding that they are instantly removed. Ask them to join a committee, and they will have read all the papers before the meeting although they may not wish to contribute much to the debate one way or the other (something that is by no means always a disadvantage). They will likewise deal appropriately with practical classes or admissions or whatever other task is tossed in their direction. What valuable colleagues these are, even if they may sometimes be less likely to attract large sums of money or the most aspirational students. They are a welcome relief from many of the other characters described above.

Professor Nearly Perfect

I don’t need to describe this person, since I’m sure all my readers fit into this category so they can fill in the blanks themselves.

Who have I forgotten?

* Any similarity to real persons, alive or dead, is purely coincidental.

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Are We Nearly There Yet?

Posted on December 18, 2011 by Athene Donald

The Equality Challenge Unit has recently published its annual survey of statistical information about staff and students in UK universities (this year there are two reports covering separately all grades of staff and students) . There is a wealth of data to drill down into there, and the previous 3 years’ of data are also available at the ECU website. Hence the question I pose in my title: how far have we got regarding gender equality and, if we’re not ‘there’ yet, are we getting close? The answer can only be a qualified ‘maybe’. The trends are definitely in the right direction, but whether progress is fast enough is debatable, because we certainly haven’t achieved anything like parity in SET subjects. The reports cover not only gender but other equality aspects (ethnicity, age and disability), but I will concentrate on the gender side of things.

The article on this report  in the THE this week, headlined the fact that overall 76% of professors are white and male. Such a lack of diversity cannot be healthy. The numbers of BME (black and minority ethnic) staff across the board, male or female, is truly dismal. A mere 5.3% of academic staff are non-white UK nationals and there are a further 6.6% of non-UK BME staff members.  The cover of the ECU report itself focusses on pay disparities, noting that there is a 16.3% median gender pay gap (and a 20.3% mean gender pay gap). I think such comparisons are not helpful, however, because, as long as there is grade segregation – and there undoubtedly is in academia, with a heavy preponderance of women in the relatively lowly paid grades of catering or cleaning for instance – such a significant pay disparity is inevitable. What matters is whether there is a gender pay gap within equivalent grades and there isn’t enough detail to make this out. It is the gender breakdown in the academic grades that I want to concentrate on here, trying to tease out what I can about trends.

There is very little historical data in the report, but one figure that is highlighted is an overall increase in the proportion of women, rising from 40% in 2003 to 44% in 2010.  A 10% increase in 7 years sounds pretty positive. Interestingly, or possibly worryingly, of the women in the 2010 workforce, 43% are working part-time (compared with only 28% of the men). These part-timers no doubt comprise a mixture of those who are temporarily and probably enthusiastically working part-time due to caring responsibilities, with those who are on part-time contracts because that’s all the work that is available; the statistics don’t distinguish, so it is impossible to tell if the larger number of women who aren’t in full time positions are doing this voluntarily because this is what works for them at a particular stage in life, or whether they are being disadvantaged by being shifted into part-time and possibly insecure positions which offer little hope of progression. If that is the reason for the overall increase in the percentage of women, we should be feeling less complacent. That’s the trouble with data like this, there are always more questions one wants to know the answer to than one can get at from what is provided.

However, let’s assume that the 10% increase is entirely a good thing, and that the significantly larger proportion of women in part-time jobs is not a source of concern. Let’s look at the trends in the professoriat, building on the headline figure that the THE set out.  The professoriat is interesting, particularly the comparisons between what is termed SET and non-SET populations, but again I faced problems when trying to work out what was going on by way of a comparison with earlier data (in this case the 2008 report, covering the year 2006/7, which is the earliest I can currently find on the web). It’s hard to make the comparisons I want, because what ECU deem as ‘SET’ (Science, Engineering and Technology) in 2008 has broadened by this latest report to include medicine and subjects allied to medicine, such as nursing and dentistry, the subjects covered by the ECU’s Athena Swan Charter. So, whereas the total number of all professors has increased from 16430 to 17375 during these 3 years, the apparent number in SET subjects has increased to a much greater extent. Furthermore, the subjects now included also include those specifically where one might expect to see more women, based on their representation in undergraduate classes, so an apparent increase in the percentage of female professors in SET subjects from a mere 7.9% in 2008 to nearly double that at 15.1% has to be regarded with some suspicion. Things aren’t as rosy as all that. Doubtless there has been an increase, but if one could do a like for like comparison I am sure it would be much less marked (overall the increase in female representation in the professoriat, across all subjects, is from 17.5% to 19/1% over this time period).  So, it seems impossible to tell quantitatively how well things are moving forward for women in SET subjects at the highest levels.

There’s one final point I’d like to make, before leaving interested readers to dig down into the report themselves to find out the answers to the things that personally intrigue them. That concerns the student population.  This year’s report highlights the gender gap here, which is the reverse of just about everywhere else in these reports. More girls than boys go to university, although this gap is slowly decreasing (from 14.6 to 13.2% over the period from 2003/4). In some subjects the disparity is huge:  80.6% are girls in subjects allied to medicine, 76.6% in veterinary sciences, and even in biological sciences the percentage is 62.9%. Is this a cause for concern? Should we be looking at doing more to facilitate boy’s progression into these subjects at university?  This is the side of the coin that doesn’t often get looked at, but I can’t help feeling this disparity is just as ‘wrong’ as the tiny numbers of girls embarking on engineering or computing degrees. The difference in the case of males, is that these low numbers at undergraduate level do not propagate into the higher tiers of academia. In Veterinary Sciences there is an almost exact 50:50 split amongst all academic staff according to the report. In fact, in my own university we don’t have a single female professor in the Vet School and I suspect that may not be atypical, though the statistics in the ECU report don’t provide that information.  In Biosciences, the proportion of males:females is approximately reversed between undergraduate (37.1: 62.9%)and staff (57.6:42.4%) levels.

So, we should be asking ourselves, not only ‘are we nearly there?’, but where is the ‘there’ we are trying to reach. Is the ideal a 50:50 split between the genders at all levels and for all subjects, or do we believe that this is a) impossible or b) undesirable – or even c) irrelevant as a metric. I’ll be interested to read your comments.

 

 

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Science and the Law

Posted on December 15, 2011 by Athene Donald

It’s the grey end of term and the dark time of the year when it is easy to feel that too many things have been left undone that should have been done.  The Christmas break is fast approaching and most people will have a long to-do list that will be impossible to accomplish before Christmas. Academics are no different.  In the back of our mind may be the Christmas card list, the turkey or the fairy lights lurking uninspected in the attic, but towards the front are the responses to the student questionnaires, the grants and papers that never got written, let alone submitted, during 2012 and the lecture notes/handouts for the new term which remain stubbornly un-updated despite the very best of intentions. The short days, the grey skies, the endless dose of Disney and other manifestations of Scrooge and company accompanied by false festive cheer only exacerbate the problem.  So I shall put on my Bah Humbug hat and look beyond academia to our government for cheer.

But of course I won’t find it. David Willetts may write on his BIS blog that this has been a fantastic year for science, but as the recent CaSE report made clear, this would be a very optimistic interpretation of funding.  Furthermore, the  Government’s attempts to inject money into ‘innovation’ and their plans for the future also seem to have been received with little enthusiasm.  The gap between their rhetoric and the reality seems large, and the prognosis for the future of this minimal package would seem to be unencouraging (as discussed this week by Richard Jones here). We have, as we rather consistently have had over many years, a government which lacks scientists on the front benches who perhaps might understand some of the more practical realities. We have a Schools’ minister who has a Law degree, an Education minister with an English degree, and a Science minister and a Prime Minister, who share the distinction of having obtained first class degrees in Politics, Philosophy and Economics. (Vince Cable alone started off studying science, even if he moved on to economics for his final degree.)  Cameron is unembarrassed enough by his lack of scientific education to stand up and say he got a C in O level biology at the very moment he is announcing grand plans for the life sciences. (I don’t think he mentioned what, if anything, he got in physics or chemistry, but I suppose scientists ought to be heartened he is apparently prepared to devote a couple of hours every 3 months or so to work through the whole of science.) Furthermore, since his education was at Eton, where one would assume teaching was of the best quality, such a poor grade implies he really wasn’t motivated very much by the sciences. This is now the man in whose hands control of anything vaguely scientific ultimately lies. (I have no intention of passing comment on his other attributes, such as appreciating the meaning of a veto or collegiality, although his degree might have been thought to make him something of an expert in economics, despite the evidence of the past week.)

None of the degrees listed above, held by the various honourable gentlemen, are likely to require much of a science component, nor even a significant degree of numeracy.  The Royal Society, in its recent report Brain Waves 4: Neuroscience and the Law makes some striking recommendations on this front. I am not going to dwell on some of the aspects of this report which have featured in the more lurid articles in the popular press (the Daily Telegraph was definitely pandering to the lowest common denominator with its headline ‘Brain imaging could pick out benefits cheats’) , but concentrate on one aspect of the recommendations. In particular, Recommendation 3 reads:

University law degrees should incorporate an introduction to the basic principles of how science is conducted and to key areas of science such as neuroscience and behavioural genetics, to strengthen lawyers’ capacity to assess the quality of new evidence. Conversely, undergraduate courses in neuroscience should include the societal applications of the science.

The report is driven by neuroscience, so the need for basic statistics is not spelled out in the recommendations, but of course they lurk in every case where some sort of causal link is meant to be established. The idea of the probability of conjoined improbable events was at the heart of the Sally Clark case (the fallacies and more mathematical analysis really required to understand it are well written up here, albeit this write-up predates the ultimately successful appeal), one of the cases involving so-called ‘shaken baby syndrome’ which is alluded to in the report. In that unfortunate case Dr Roy Meadow made the statement (which clearly swayed the court in the original trial) that

the chance of two children in the same (affluent nonsmoking) family both dying a cot death was 1 in 73 million

Ergo, it wasn’t a natural death because the statistics proved it. The fallacy in this ‘calculation’ was only accepted long afterwards, involving the work of many including my Cambridge colleague David Mackay, now the Chief Scientific Advisor to DECC.  Meadow’s made the assumption that the occurrences of two cot deaths in a single family were independent events and hence the probability of both occurring would have been the probability of one occurring squared. This ties in with the so-called Prosecutor’s Fallacy, which involves confusing the conditional probabilities, and  is expressed in the Royal Society report, in the following way:

In other words, does the probability deal with the question: ‘Assuming that the accused is innocent, what would be the probability of finding this trace evidence on him?’ Or the quite different question: ‘Assuming that this trace evidence has been found on them accused, what is the probability that he is innocent?’ These sound very similar but they are quite different and lead to different conclusions.

Lawyers – the prosecuting barristers and the judges alike – undoubtedly need to have a much firmer grasp of the statistical approaches which may be relevant to their judgements; the current Stephen Lawrence case is another in which the lawyers (and indeed one would hope the jury) have their minds quite clear about what can and cannot be demonstrated based on the evidence and analysis presented.

So, it would be nice to think the Cabinet, collectively reading this new Royal Society report on neuroscience and the law, will realise their ignorance;  and those responsible for legal education will spring into action to ensure the lawyers of tomorrow have a firmer grasp of the requisite scientific methods, enabling them to make correct decisions based on the evidence in front of them.  Indeed it simply highlights the fact that science is pervasive, not something that can be squirrelled away in a corner as too difficult for most otherwise-well-educated people to have a grip on. As a community we need to keep pressing for scientific literacy amongst all, not just those the rest of the world sees as unfortunate geeks.

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Appraising the Future

Posted on December 11, 2011 by Athene Donald

Back in those distant days of the Thatcher Government, various changes to the way academics worked were introduced, whose details are rather lost in the mists of time (or at least lost in the mists of my memory). One consequence was the formal disappearance of tenure in new contracts, for instance. Another change was the requirement for some sort of appraisal process to be introduced, although the unions successfully prevented this from being anything as concrete as a performance review, and it was explicitly decoupled from pay and progression. So, ever since, appraisals have languished in a sort of no-man’s land, in which they are not infrequently carried out, but often with little sense of purpose:  a great shame, in my view. They can and should be a crucial part of supporting young researchers and recently appointed faculty. Even successful professors may welcome an opportunity to let off steam and compare notes with another such, though one should be sure that it is steam and not bile that is let off.

However, although professors might welcome the chance to chew the cud with a peer under the guise of an appraisal (or as Cambridge now terms it ‘staff review and development’), I see no logic in the reality which is that, nationally, faculty are more like to be appraised than postdocs, as revealed by the ASSET2010  survey: around ¾ of faculty said they were appraised as a matter of course, whereas only ½ the postdocs said the same.  It is the early career researchers who need advice, not least about whether they should stay in academia or seek pastures new, as several of my recent posts (here, here  and here) have discussed. But we appear to have a system where giving such advice in a formal way is patchy, to say the least, lacks any sort of quality control (which would not be tolerated in industry I’m sure), and is also not necessarily valued by the organisation but can be seen as a chore that is part of the ‘centre’s’ requirement to tick boxes.

I feel very strongly that a decent appraisal, if only a chat of one human being with another at an earlier stage in their life, should be a valuable experience, something of a sanity check. It might even be enjoyable for both partners in the dialogue. Having just completed my annual allocation of appraisals my belief in their potential value has been reaffirmed, boosted by receiving a heartfelt thank you from one of those I appraised this year.  But there is no doubt that not everyone – on either side of the process – view it so positively. Part of the problem is that the appraisers themselves are often unwilling to take these interviews seriously. Does it help with their own progression? Almost certainly not, which is why I suspect not all appraisers are prepared to invest much time, thought or energy into the process; without that the dialogue is bound to falter.  And yet, to my mind, it doesn’t seem that challenging or disagreeable to be asked to offer assistance to someone on a lower rung of the academic ladder. We are supposed to be wise and experienced, even if perhaps sometimes also uncertain about how we got to where we did. Nevertheless, it is often easier to see things that are wrong – and point them out in a nice way – than to be sure of a uniquely correct way forward.

One of the things that I always look at carefully – particularly for those who have already had several years as a postdoc or progressed beyond that to some degree of independence – is the CV. I make sure I get this well in advance so I can look not only to see what is there, but what isn’t. It is all too easy to fail to put down in black and white things that, as soon as they are pointed out, seem obviously to be missing.  Things like neglecting to list the conferences talks you’ve given, or students that you’ve had responsibility for or formally supervised. Or, for more senior individuals, a complete omission of grants won or invited presentations at internationally meetings. It seems so evident these things should be written down, and yet I’ve seen examples of these very gaps in CVs of appraisees.  There is no single right way of putting your life’s history down on paper, but there are clearly things that are crucial if you are to sell yourself effectively.

However, beyond the mere paperwork, there is plenty more that an appraisal should look into. Are there problems? Access to equipment satisfactory? Any training accomplished or needed? If something is needed, where can they turn to get it? Have they been playing safe for too long and now need to break out into pastures new and diversify? Are they getting any external visibility and if not why not? Do they feel they are getting the local advice they need on a day-by-day basis, and what can be done to improve things on that front? I have occasionally asked a pointed question that has opened up a can of worms, or called for the quick production of a packet of handkerchiefs.  But that, to my mind, is all well and good because it opens up the dialogue.

The whole point of checking things through, like CV’s, is because of course it really matters for future progression. And for anyone trying to progress further up the academic ranks – it still matters.  So I’ll throw in at this point an idea we have introduced within Cambridge. Initially this was something WiSETI (the local Women in Science, Engineering and Technology Initiative) introduced, specifically for women in the STEM subjects.  A group of us – who have sat on promotions panels – have come together to offer to look over the paperwork, CV’s included, of women considering applying for promotion, in advance of when they need to submit the stuff.  That way we can identify lacunae and provide objective advice about whether the time is right to apply.  Initially we were paired up with those seeking support based on discipline area, but left it to the women to contact us  they were simply given the contact details of one of us. We rapidly worked out some did not have the confidence to make that first contact, so now we make the approach ourselves, to make it clear we really do mean to offer assistance. This process has seemed to work well, and now it is intended to roll out this process across the entire university for the next promotions’ round (we are still setting up our cohort of experienced CV readers to make this happen). Of course women, and men, should be getting this sort of mentoring and advice from their local working environment.  Nevertheless, sometimes they clearly are not, for all kinds of reasons including, but most certainly not restricted to, timidity.

Appraisals and such ‘CV mentoring’ procedures are something experienced professors should feel proud to be able to offer the stars of the future. It is regrettable some colleagues seem to think it is beneath their dignity to do anything other than further their own cause by selfishly looking neither to left or right to see who might be in need of assistance.

Posted in Science Culture, Women in Science | Tagged , , , , | 10 Comments

All Human Life is There (Happy 1st Birthday OccamT)

Posted on December 9, 2011 by Athene Donald

The first part of this statement was once the proud motto of the now deceased and unlamented News of the World. In a friendlier vein, compared with many of the ignorant witch hunts they pursued and the dirt they used to dish, I would like to think Occam’s Typewriter – and my own personal microcosm within it – similarly covers much of the Life Scientific (as Jim Al Khalili would describe it). We happy band of bloggers cover everything from the unidentifiable object/stain malingering at the bottom of the lab freezer to the aspirations of postdocs; from animals and birds living in our back yards to the creatures that populate high level committees and departments; from the joys of working in interdisciplinary science to the shortage of women in all our fields. Happy birthday OccamT, it has been a fun year!

For myself I have learnt a lot about the readership as well as my fellow bloggers. I have learnt the most read posts are often those which provoke fewest comments; that the ones dashed off in a mild alcoholic haze have (so far, on the statistically meaningless count of one) been rather more successful than ones which I have laboured long and hard over; these latter don’t necessarily generate much interest.  It is clear that if I raise issues around gender, or personal experiences in which gender has played a part, there is much more likelihood of getting my posts retweeted than if I stay with a purely professional bent. And the couple of times my argument has been sloppily presented I have been hammered in the comments for apparently implying things that were far from my intent.

So, as I enter into OccamT’s 2nd year with my fellow bloggers, I can perhaps pause to think if I want to change my style, my persona or the content. I could choose to use more photos if I were more adept with either camera or software, but as I’m not I think that one is out. I could devote myself entirely to gender issues, but then that would be very narrow and negate a lot of my other experiences. Furthermore, I’ve never considered myself a feminist in the way I was reared to understand the meaning of the word which – to one of my generation – smacks too strongly of bra-burning, even if it generally conveys something rather different now, so I doubt I’ll do that either. As I get sucked up into the maw that is the REF I could write exclusively about impact, but in that case I suspect my readership would dwindle to single figures and I’ll be thinking enough about that during the working day to warrant clearing my brain when ‘off duty’ as it were, so that too I’ll give a miss. In fact, I suspect my blog will continue to be the same sort of random pot pourri stimulated by whatever I’ve read, participated in or been vexed by recently.  As a compliment from a reader, I rather liked the tweet I received recently, which stated one of my posts had ‘provoked thinking+giggles as ever.’ If  I’m managing that, I think I’ve probably achieved as much, no actually a great deal more, than I ever anticipated when I set out in this good company last December (strictly speaking I joined a day or two after OccamT’s birth, but I’m not going to split hairs).

So, here’s to our 2nd year. I raise a metaphorical glass to all of us and am delighted to find myself in such convivial company.

Posted in blogging, Science Culture | Tagged , | 8 Comments