20080819

Findings - John Tierney - Science Has Become the New Frontier for Title Nine - NYTimes.com

Findings - John Tierney - Science Has Become the New Frontier for Title Nine - NYTimes.com

Guest Post: Joel Corbo on Graduate School and Teaching | Cosmic Variance: "When people with such a passion are met with disinterest or even disdain by the people they want to emulate (successful physicists), the blow to their motivation can be severe. After all, who wants to stick around when their interests and talents aren’t valued or supported? I’ve heard it implied (and sometimes even said outright) that such students aren’t “serious enough” about physics and therefore aren’t worth keeping around, but without a crystal ball, who can really say which student will end up making important contributions to the field?"

Where Particles Collide, Sexism Is Rampant, Study�Finds - Chronicle.com

These have been sitting as individual drafts in my blog posts page for a while now. These are the essential questions to my sense of purpose as a teacher. I wanted to write blog posts about them, but I couldn't address them adequately in my master's thesis, and it would take one hell of a doctoral dissertation to get a good handle on them. In the meantime, they are a good bit of inspiration as September comes around and teaching starts up again.

1 comment:

  1. I've worked really hard to avoid working for jerks in my career. Students and postdocs will go work for Dr. Super-successful Asshole thinking it will propel their career, only to get their soul crushed by the end of grad school or their fellowship. Or, those people are already are jerks, then work for jerks and the cycle continues.

    Personally, I think it's a load of crap. Professors and other top-level folks create this viper-pit culture where their lab workers are so desperate for the boss' approval that they push themselves beyond all reasonable limits. It's not too bad in my department and UNC in general, but the most prominent and well-funded professor in the department is a chronic misogynist. Go figure.

    I worry about some of the kids who were go through the TIP program, or programs like it. Their psychology is ripe for exploitation down the line......

    Shifting gears, I don't know what it's like for Physics but in the biological sciences there are more women entering PhD (and maybe M.D. and M.D./PhD) programs then men. In 10-15 years when that group is looking for top-level jobs, it'll be interesting to see if it's still male-dominated.

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