Room for Improvement

Student comments on my teaching of a particular course:

Great professor!
I have enjoyed this class!
I liked the readings.
This course required too much previous knowledge.
Professor very helpful with homework.
Homework very useful for class.
Well-constructed lectures.
Very organized lectures.
She speaks very clearly.
She answered my homework questions.
She provided images and charts to supplement the subject matter.
The in-class exercises were helpful.
I liked the practice exercises we did in groups during lecture.
I liked that she asked questions during class and this helped deepen my understanding of concepts.
Useful supplementary material to help us understand lecture material.
She explained the topics completely in class. Didn't use a textbook as a crutch.
It was great that lecture and lab material were well coordinated.
She was always ready to answer questions.
She was always willing to help with any questions.
She provided the subject matter very clearly.
The last project was too much work for this level of class.
Lecture presentations very clear.
I liked the in-class exercises.
You should improve your teaching methods.

Note that almost all of the comments are in the 3rd person (except for the last one), as if the students were writing to someone else about me, rather than writing to me with feedback. I don't know if it matters in terms of type and level of feedback whether the student is imaging an unknown audience or speaking directly to me (?). At evaluation time, I give a little talk to the class about the importance of this feedback and how it is used by instructors and the department/college/university, but I think there is still general confusion among students about what exactly the purpose of these evaluations is and who reads them and whether anyone cares what they think.

These are overall nice comments, and unfortunately also rather classic in that the criticisms are too vague to help me understand what the specific complaints are.

The last comment, despite being too vague to be useful in any specific way, is absolutely right. Despite being deep into my mid-career years, I don't want my teaching to fossilize. I want to improve. In recent years I have attended teaching workshops and gotten some ideas from those. When I team-teach, a faculty colleague is in the classroom with me, so I get some peer feedback. And last term, I jettisoned the too-long and too-detailed textbook and provided focused readings, including some that I wrote myself. That seems to have worked quite well (or at least no one said they missed having a textbook), so perhaps that counts as an improvement. I would also like to do some new things involving e-learning and have been to some workshops and meetings about that.

I am thinking about teaching because I was just looking at my evaluations, though mostly I am enjoying having lots of uninterrupted time for research. This week I even managed to submit a manuscript on which I am primary author. It's been about two years since I've been able to do that (and I don't mean to imply that I did it alone -- an excellent colleague was essential to the completion of this paper).

As I was finishing the paper (and a related grant proposal) recently, it occurred to me that I could create a new teaching module based on this work and incorporate it into the class for which I just received teaching evaluations (not, of course, as extra work but replacing some older material). Probably more than any major change in teaching style, a realistic way that I can improve my teaching is to find good ways to incorporate new material -- specifically, integrating New Science with Classic Science, so that students learn the fundamental stuff without which they are incomplete as scientists and people and yet are also exposed to new things that help them see where the field is at (including being exposed to unresolved questions that might inspire them).

Anyway, it's been a busy summer so far. My father recently asked me if my husband "also has the summer off" and I was actually quite calm about it this time. Have you had a similar conversation with anyone yet this summer? Parents? Neighbors? Friends? Students? Assuming that you do in fact work in the summer even if you are not teaching, did you (1) smile serenely and let them continue to exist in ignorance; (2) correct them (a) calmly, (b) not calmly; or (3) lapse into stony silence (if having a conversation) or send a glaring emoticon (if in e-contact)? (or other..).

Minty Fresh Face

As I may have mentioned before, this summer has been extremely busy for me. It is the first summer ever that I have not had time to visit my family and the ancestral home.

Those who have read this blog for a while will know that I have mixed feelings about those home visits, but even so, it is strange and disconcerting not to make my annual trek to see my parents and aunts and uncles and cousins and to have various traditional summer adventures in the place where I grew up.

I thought I could power through the summer and early fall, energized by all the cool science my students, colleagues, and I are doing. And, so far, I have indeed been powering through the summer. It is difficult to stay energized all the time, of course, particularly when traveling a lot, but I have been doing fine, having fun, and getting (interesting) things done. It's been great.

Until the recent morning when I woke up very tired, got ready for my day with my eyes barely open, and smeared toothpaste on my face, thinking it was lotion or sunscreen, or something.

I don't know if you have ever smeared toothpaste all over your face, but in case you have not: (1) I don't recommend it, and (2) I will tell you that you can easily tell that it is not lotion or sunscreen. And if you can't tell easily, I fear for you because, even in my exhausted state, I knew right away that something was wrong.

I still don't have time for a vacation, but I think I will try to insert a bit of relaxation and recreation into my schedule in the next week or two so that I don't completely lose my mind. It is better in the long run to take a break for sanity and health than to work work work until you drop.

Of course, young students and postdocs don't need (or want) such breaks; this cautionary tale refers only to people over 45.*





[* attempt at humor]

Take Out

Summer is not a great time for editors of journals to find reviewers for manuscripts. At least, that is my experience. In the summer, many academic scientists (and others) are extremely busy trying to get as much research done as possible before the beginning of the academic year. Many of us travel (conferences, research visits etc.). Some even take a vacation.

And yet, many people submit manuscripts for review in the summer, when they have time to complete projects, so the peer review process cannot take the summer off.

With effort, I have been able to find a sufficient number of reviewers for most submitted manuscripts that I have to handle as editor, but I have also received a large number of excuses from people explaining why they can't accept my request to review a manuscript.

Of course, no one has to give a reason, but many choose to do so, no doubt feeling the invisible sting of my editorial frustration and fearing my wrath the next time they submit a manuscript to the journal I edit. Or something.

Most excuses are routine and uncreative:

• I have too many other reviews to do at this time (in fact, that's the one I use the most when declining review requests from editors of other journals).

• I am traveling non-stop for the next n weeks (further admission: I've used that one as well, but only when it's true).

• The subject of this manuscript is beyond my expertise. etc.

Boring.

This summer, I got this one from a potential reviewer:

My wife made me take her on vacation.

Shall we parse that? It's summer, we have nothing better to do, let's do it:

My wife.. It's her fault! Not mine! I really really wanted to do this review but..

made me.. I had no choice! I was coerced! She was going to refuse to make my dinner and wash my socks if I didn't accede to her demand..

take her.. ugh, this is the part I dislike the most in this sentence. Why did she need to be taken on vacation? Did he carry her? Strap her to the car roof? Does "take" mean that he paid, drove, or both, and she sat passively while he took her places?

on vacation.. because of course, given his druthers, as a serious scientists, he would not go on vacation, he would do the review. But, alas, he was not allowed to have druthers. His wife took them.

Surely we can come up with better excuses than the boring ones and the wife-made-me one. They need not even be true, as long as they are not boring.

I am requesting that each of you provide a creative, entertaining excuse for declining a request to review. Do not decline this request even though it is summer. I am quite sure that you do not have any other similar requests at this time, you can easily type one in the comment box even if you are traveling non-stop for the next n weeks, and I happen to know that your wife (or whoever) wants you to take this challenge and entertain the readers of FSP.

Missing in August

Comments to a post earlier this summer raised some well-known issues of how some US-based and some non-US-based researchers view each other in terms of work hours/work ethic.

It would seem that some researchers based outside the US (e.g., in Europe) think that those in the US have to work crazy-long hours with few vacations just to stay afloat, much less succeed. In this workaholic system, it is difficult to have a life outside of work. US researchers (faculty, postdocs, grad students) are prisoners of the extreme demands of endless work.

On the other hand, it would seem that some US-based researchers are incredulous at the vacation-laden work schedules of some of our international colleagues, including some international graduate students and postdocs who have particular expectations about summer vacation time.

I don't think a discussion about which is "better" (for individuals or for academia) would be very productive or interesting. I am more interested in discussing how/whether we can find ways to work together, even if we have vastly different philosophies about vacation time.

I have never found it to be a major problem to work with colleagues who disappear every August. I am hyper enough about my research that I am sometimes annoyed if a colleague disappears to their (apparently internetless) ancestral home and this delays submission of a manuscript, but a month isn't a big deal in the overall scheme of things. I don't want to take a month off in the summer myself, but I can work with colleagues who do.

That last statement becomes somewhat less true if the individual in question is a graduate student or postdoc who disappears for a month in the summer.

Graduate students who are not on a fellowship may have their funding separated into an academic year part and a summer part. The academic year part may be paid from one of my grants or it may be paid entirely or in part by the department/university (e.g., for teaching). In the summer months, however, I am almost always responsible for paying my students an RA salary (+ benefits). Some students might TA a summer course and some might also be paid from the grant of a co-adviser, but somehow I need to organize things so that my graduate students are paid in the summer months.

Summer is the time for getting a lot done. Graduate students rarely take summer classes, and, unlike during the academic year, there are few other distractions. Therefore, if a student is being paid from a grant to work in the summer, and if this is the time to make maximum progress on thesis research, taking a month off can be a problem.

Some students do it anyway. If a student really wants/needs to go home for a month in the summer, we can usually work that out to make it possible. Ideally, the student will have made excellent progress already and can afford (in time) to take a vacation. If progress has not been so great, taking an entire month off each summer might mean that the student's funding runs out before they finish their thesis research, and that's a problem for everyone. These things should be discussed.

So, my overall philosophy about people who disappear for a month in the summer: (1) colleagues: OK, I can deal with that; (2) students or postdocs paid from a grant: maybe not OK, but it is not impossible. If it does occur, the vacationing person will ideally deal with any major deadlines or other issues that arise during the time away, and not completely disappear off the grid.

If you advise graduate students or postdocs and support them on grants in the summer, what is your policy regarding long vacations? I am not talking about a couple of weeks off; everyone should be able to do that. I am talking about those who go away for a month and do not make any research progress during that time. Some may not even communicate at all during that time. Is that OK with you/not OK with you? Why or why not?

Hyper Mellow Break Time

Not long ago I had dinner with some friends who have known me for ~30 years.

At one point, late in the evening, after we'd been talking for a long time, one of my friends said to me "You're so mellow. You've always been a really mellow person."

Another friend literally spit out her wine and screamed "Omigod, she is the least mellow person on this planet!"

I'm not sure what that means. I am moody? At least one of my friends was drunk?

Or that people, even friends -- even very good friends -- will perceive each other in very different ways. This is not surprising, but it may mean there is no hope of us ever being understood by our colleagues and students and others who know us less well and who interact with us in more stressful circumstances.

It may also mean that I am simultaneously a nice, mellow person and a hyper-aggressive, competitive jerk.

In an effort to find a good mellow-hyper balance and to recharge and to focus intensely on Science while my daughter is away at a summer camp, I am taking next week off from blogging.

Thanks for reading, no matter what you think of me, my life, my choice of topics, and how I present my views.

Summer Time

It is with some reluctance that I am diving yet again into the fraught topic of

Professorial Use of Summer Time.

Yesterday's theme was money. Today's theme is students.

As part of my continuing effort to explain Academia from the point of view of a (mostly) well-meaning professor and adviser, let's consider the summer situation of a professor on a 9-month appointment at a research university.

Although I in no way condone the rude behavior of professors who apparently seem strangely pleased to inconvenience students who want to defend their thesis or take a preliminary exam in the summer (e.g., by refusing to participate in these events during the summer), I will throw out for discussion a few of the relevant issues from the professorial point of view.

At my institution and others like it, professors are not required to teach or do institutional service in the summer. That is the principle behind our being paid for 9 months of work rather than 12. Nevertheless, it is not uncommon for students and others to think it entirely reasonable that professors be available in the summer for committee meetings, exams, and so on.

Another frequent comment is that professors who make a decent 9-month salary should be happy with that. After all, we can have our 9-month salary paid out over 12 months, so it is just like being paid for 12 months. The reasoning seems to be that the actual amount of each pay check doesn't matter as long as you continue to get paychecks in the summer.

Is there another profession in which it is widely believed that those in that profession should work without pay for several months of the year just because they make a decent salary? Wouldn't it be a great way to keep health care costs down if medical professionals volunteered their services for 3 months of the year? Their salaries are high enough; why shouldn't they donate their time and expertise? And what about lawyers? Couldn't they work pro bono a few months of the year?

I am satisfied with my 9-month salary and pleased when I can get paid for at least some of my research time in the summer, but I disagree with those who think that we professors are greedy if we want to be paid for the work we do in the summer, that professors who work in the summer don't deserve to be paid in the summer, or that professors should automatically be available in the summer at the times that are most convenient for the students.

That last statement is obnoxious, but I mention it because, although the vast majority of graduate students are very hard-working, I have seen more than a few cases in which a student procrastinated throughout the academic year, spent a lot of time being involved in hobbies and social activities, and then needed to take an exam in the summer. That's the kind of thing that can rankle even moderately nice professors who are otherwise on board with working without pay in the summers and being available to help students.

In fact, most of my colleagues volunteer some or all of their time in the summer, and many of us are happy to do so. We don't stop being advisers just because it is summer. Most of us also know that it is in everyone's interest that students get the help they need, make progress in their research, and pass the various milestones (exams) in a timely way. Sometimes it just works out that summer is the best time for an exam or defense. And certainly if a student needs to defend in the summer in order to move into a particular job, the vast majority of professors I know would show up for a summer defense if at all possible.

Like most of my colleagues, I work in the summer and I enjoy it. Except when blogging, I don't obsess about my summer salary, or lack thereof, and I spend a lot of time with students of various sorts, whether or not I am paid to do so.

Even so, I do not want my summer time to be taken for granted or wasted. And I do not want my university to proscribe my research and advising activities in the summer (the topic of yesterday's post). Furthermore, if it's not asking too much, although I am of course enjoying the fabulous fun to be had in the waning phase of the academic year, I would like summer to come soon, please.

Giving Less Than 100%

Here is how I think the summer salary (from grants) thing should work:

If I can get some summer salary from a grant, that's great. If I can't or if I need to spend my summer salary on another grant-related research activity, that's fine. No matter what my summer salary situation is during the 3 months when the university does not pay my salary, I advise my graduate students, I advise my undergrad researchers, I write new grant proposals, I go to conferences, I read, I think, I write papers, I discuss Science with various colleagues, and I even occasionally think about what I will teach in the fall. I basically do whatever I think is best for my researchers and our research program and my overall job as a professor. I adore having this flexibility. For me, one of the excellent things about being a professor is that there is an extended interlude in the year when I have a lot of freedom to set my own schedule and priorities.

Here is how my university thinks the summer salary (from grants) thing should work:

If faculty get summer salary from a grant and are paid at their usual salary rate for a specified time period, they can do nothing other than activities related to that grant: no writing of papers unrelated to that grant, no research activities unrelated to that grant, no travel to conferences unrelated to that grant, and certainly not any writing of proposals for a new grant.

During that time, we aren't even supposed to spend significant time with graduate students who are not supported on the same grant that pays our summer salary for that time block. We are supposed to say "Xavier, I'm sorry, but I can't help you with that until next month when I am no longer being paid summer salary" or "Benita, we should discuss that before July 7 because after that I can't talk to you about your research until August 12", but "Omar, yes of course we can meet this afternoon. You and I are being paid on the same grant right now."

And what about graduate students who want to defend their thesis in the summer? They'd better find out the summer funding situations of all their committee members or they are out of luck entirely. It would be better to have a committee comprised entirely of faculty with no summer salary from sponsored grants because these faculty can do whatever they want.

Although one might think it is in the best interests of the university that faculty write grant proposals and give papers at conferences, woe betide faculty with proposal deadlines or conference abstract deadlines in the summer.

And what are we supposed to do about reviewing or editing manuscripts and proposals during this time?

I can see the reasoning behind not paying someone from a particular grant while they are working on another project. I don't like it if the policy is going to be interpreted so strictly as to prohibit legitimate professional activities, but I can understand the principle. What really bothers me, however, is when the definition of the working day is not confined to standard hours and faculty are not even supposed to do other work, including write proposals, in their free time -- nights and weekends, for example. Apparently whatever time we work, whether it is 40 hours or 168 hours a week, that time belongs to the grant that is paying us, and we can work on no other projects, not even in the wee hours of the morning while sitting on the porch with a laptop and some friendly cats. The grant owns all our working time, however much that is.

And in fact, if we are working, we should be working in an "approved site", which does not include homes, cafes, or the various nooks we find to work while our offspring are engaged in enriching structured activities (sports, music etc.).

I don't get that either. Is the assumption that if we are not sitting at our desks, we are likely to be lying on a beach somewhere? If we were allowed to work at home, do the ethicsmeisters fear that faculty would interpret this as permission to do "research" in posh night clubs and resorts (and charge the expenses to our grants)?

A widely held view among physical scientists is that our biomed colleagues would do just that, and, in fact, that without these strict policies, they would all be paying themselves double so that they could support their cocaine habits, even though they force their grad students and underpaid postdocs to manufacture most of their own personal drug supplies in their research labs. {<-- attempt at joke}.

The good news is that we are allowed to attend a conference in the summer if the theme of the conference is related to the grant that is paying our salary at that time. I am confused about this, though. If we attend a conference to present a paper on the topic of the grant that is paying our salary, are we allowed to attend other talks, even if they are off-topic? Can we chat with colleagues about other research? Will we be banned from the poster sessions because they are rife with unethical possibilities for viewing graphic depictions of unrelated research?

The people who tally effort have run amok.

The solution, of course, is to claim effort at <100% during any time period that requires working on multiple projects, advising various students, writing new proposals, or attending a conference.

That's doable. Instead of being paid x weeks of summer salary at 100% effort on a grant, I can be paid at a lower % effort for longer. And then I can have the kind of summer that I want to have, and everyone benefits: my research group, my university, my cats, and me.

Problem solved? Maybe in practice, but the policy that necessitates these accounting games makes me want to gnash my ears.

Summer $

If you are a faculty member paid on a 9 month basis, how much summer salary do you typically get from grants? By "how much", I refer to time, not the actual amount of money.

The poll refers to a typical total amount of time for a summer, not an amount per grant.

This is a difficult question for me to answer because there is no typical amount. If you have the same situation, perhaps you could answer with the average amount in recent years. The answer should also be the amount of time for which you are paid a summer salary, not how much you budgeted, as the budgeted amount may be greater than the actual amount paid.

If your typical summer salary falls between two possible answers in the poll, pick the closest answer.

How much summer salary do you typically get from grants?
	none
	1-2 weeks
	1 month
	2 months
	3 months
pollcode.com free polls

Summery Summary

As summers go, this summer was a good one. Compared to the rest of my year, summers are very relaxing, even though I work just as much as I do the rest of the year. The difference is that I can focus more on fewer things in the summer rather than dividing my time among many activities. Also, there are fewer stressful deadlines in the summer. And no faculty meetings.

In the summer I primarily do research (including writing) and I advise students (grad and undergrad) and postdocs. I work on many different projects, but in the summer it is like sampling an enticing buffet of fun and interesting possibilities rather than being overwhelmed by all the things that need my time and attention all at the same time.

This summer, my hope was to get 5-10 manuscripts submitted or resubmitted, some by me and some by others in my research group, as well as a proposal or two. It looks like we got 7 manuscripts (2 with me as first author) and one proposal in, but a few more manuscripts are within reach in the next month or so despite the onset of the academic year and therefore the obliteration of uninterrupted time. Overall, I am content with these results even as I feel my usual impatience about some manuscripts that have been lingering much too long in the almost-ready-to-submit state.

Whether a summer was good or not in terms of research productivity also depends on how much new work gets done, and based on that criterion I am also quite pleased with the summer.

Perhaps I should have titled this post Smug Summer Summary, though my intention is not to boast about my awesomely productive summer but to show that it is possible to feel more satisfaction for what has been accomplished than regret for what remains to be done, even when the work is infinite.

Summer Bonanza

In the summer, some faculty spend a lot of time in the department, some come and go, and some disappear for the entire summer. I am in the middle category: I'm here a lot, but then I travel, then I'm here a lot, them I'm away again.

I have written (complained) before about how those of us who are in the department in the summer get asked to do 'volunteer' service work. The university doesn't pay our salaries in the summer, but administrative tasks must be done and someone has to do them. Those someones are the ones who are in their offices and labs in the summer.

But every once in a while, something good (in the administrative sense) happens to those of us who lurk in our offices for at least part of the summer. In fact, something pretty good just happened to me today.

I was sitting at my desk and the Chair walked into my office. I admit that my very first thought was "Oh no, he's going to ask me to do something." But no. In this case, my cynicism was unfounded, though in 99.57% of cases it is not.

The Chair reminded me that last spring I had compiled a list of requests for teaching supplies that various faculty desired. These supplies were all of a related sort that could be ordered from one vendor and that would benefit a variety of classes. I was motivated to compile this list in part out of frustration with the sad state of some teaching materials I was using and also because a new faculty member will soon teach a class that I have taught for many years, and I was feeling bad about handing over to him some ancient somewhat-wrecked supplies. I thought he should have nice new materials for his first experience teaching this class. It occurred to me that other colleagues might also want some similar items, so I made a spreadsheet/wish-list. Alas, the funds for teaching supplies vanished, and we were unable to order anything.

Funds for teaching supplies have reappeared and must be spent this week or the Dean will take the funds away. The Chair was wandering the halls looking for faculty who had made requests last spring, and he found me. The other people who made requests are not here, so he told me to give my list to an accountant and the items will be purchased.

I am feeling very lucky that this happened this week (when I am in my office) instead of last week (when I was far away). My colleagues who are away this week missed out on an opportunity, but I don't feel too anguished about my random luck because the funds that just fell from the sky will benefit many colleagues, not just me, and because the windfall is for teaching materials, not for a new espresso machine for me office (I will have to use grant funds for that*).


* Note to NSF program officers: That was a joke. Really.

Travel Fiends

On September 2, 2007, I wrote: Next summer I will organize things differently so that my travel is more spaced out, and I might say no to some invitations to participate in workshops and conferences..

Last summer I traveled much too much, and at the end of the summer I didn't feel rested and ready for the new term, and I didn't accomplish as much as I'd wanted to over the summer. In fact, as I was returning home from my most recent major, long-distance trip a few weeks ago, I felt very tired of traveling and being away from home and my family (and, yes, my office), and was happy at the thought of not going anywhere for too long or too far for a few months. I love traveling, but even I have my limits. Or, at least, I thought I had limits.

The day after I got back from that trip, I was invited to travel far far away for a very intriguing workshop later this month, and I instantly said yes. My daughter will be away at camp at that time, and the opportunity was too interesting to pass up. I think if I had got the invitation on the very day I was doing a lot of traveling, I might have said no, but I guess it only takes me 24 hours (or less) to forget about the annoying and exhausting aspects of traveling and to be willing to do it all again.

I am not the only one with travel amnesia. My husband is the same way. He was going to turn down some invitations to speak at conferences in a couple of months because he is tired of conferences and tired of so much traveling. Furthermore, some of these conferences, although juxtaposed in time, are on opposite sides of the world from each other, and he'd also agreed to serve on a panel that met at about the same time in yet another place. Somehow, however, he ended up searching online for absolutely insane travel itineraries to get him from one side of the world to the other so he can attend most of both conferences. He just told me he got his tickets.

Overall, I am traveling less this summer than I did last summer, so I hope to emerge from the summer feeling recharged for the fall term despite my upcoming wanderings, which may result in sporadic posting and comment moderating.

Summer Salary Season

When reviewing proposals, I don't spend much time looking at the budget unless there is some particular reason to do so, such as: comments on the budget are requested/encouraged because a proposal concerns equipment or some other large-ticket item; the proposal budget total is surprisingly high or low; and/or I am curious about some aspect of the budget, e.g. how funds for a particular aspect of the research are allocated or justified. The part I care about least is what people request for summer salary. I figure that that part is between the program director and the PI's to work out, and I don't really care whether someone requests 2 weeks or 4 weeks of summer salary.

The amount of summer salary I request typically has no relationship to the actual time I spend on the research -- I always spend much more time on the project than what I can reasonably budget in terms of salary. Similarly, the random (but low) number that my university assigns as my '% effort' on a project never has any relationship to my actual 'effort', which would be nearly impossible to calculate anyway.

When constructing proposal budgets, most of my colleagues and I try to pick a 'reasonable' number that is neither too high (causing sticker shock and making one seem greedy, even if it is theoretically reasonable to request funds to make up for at least part of the 3 summer months many professors are not paid by their university) nor too low (causing people to doubt the PI's commitment to the project).

If the overall budget starts to get out of control owing to the high cost of grad/postdoc salary, fringe benefits etc., my salary request is typically the first thing to go. And even if I do keep some amount in the budget for my summer salary, if the grant is awarded and funds get tight owing to unexpected costs -- e.g. when my department mandated a raise for grad students, including for RA salaries paid from existing grants that didn't budget for this because the raise was announced without warning -- my summer salary gets whittled away because it wouldn't make sense to take the money from the amount budgeted for the actual research. It is the same for many of my colleagues as well.

It's of course nice to get paid something in the summer. I work hard in the summer, and there are various expenses involving the offspring, house, car, travel that are easier to deal with if one is paid in the summer, if only for 1 month out of the three. Or three weeks. Or two.

One of my senior colleagues refuses to tie summer salary amount to base salary. He calculates summer salary as a fixed amount that is the same no matter what the base salary of the senior personnel. That is, if he writes a proposal with a junior colleague, they both get the same summer salary. His philosophy is that they both work as hard, so why should he get paid more, at least in terms of grant-generated funds? From what I've seen, this approach is rather rare, and most people prorate summer salary requests to their 9-month base salary.

As my salary has increased over the years, I find that I ask for less summer salary, mostly for the reasons mentioned above re. priorities in a limited budget and a wish to avoid budget sticker-shock. And some years, I don't request any summer salary, even though I don't do any less research. As long as the cost of everything keeps going up and funding agency budgets don't increase, summer salary erosion will likely continue, and some of us will be able to add "volunteer" to our list of titles.

What I Did On My Summer Vacation

Travel: In the summer, I typically do a fair amount of traveling for professional and personal reasons, but this summer I was away more than usual. For example, I have been on the road for 6 of the past 10 weeks, and that was too much. Next summer I will organize things differently so that my travel is more spaced out, and I might say no to some invitations to participate in workshops and conferences if they require non-stop travel for weeks.

Research, writing etc.: I wrote several papers, revised several, reviewed a lot, edited a lot, and so on. Fortunately this type of activity can occur even during travel, though I wish I were the kind of person who could read and write in moving vehicles. I feel satisfied with my research progress overall, though once I started traveling in July, I was no longer able to get in the lab myself and collect data, and that was frustrating. I am teaching two classes this semester (and taking the intermediate level of the language class I started last year), so it might be a while before I get back in the lab for more than a few hours here and there.

Advising: Most of my students were very busy this summer and it was fun keeping track of their various activities and discussing (either in person or by email) their results and ideas. We will have a party later this week to celebrate that we are all back in the department and to welcome the new students and researchers in the group.

Outreach/Service: I did more of this than is typical for me in the summer. I don't regret the time, but I definitely didn't know, when I agreed to participate in some educational activities, how much time it would all take (i.e., weeks, including preparation time and travel). One of the organizers of the most time-consuming event said to me and another professor from a research university "Do you know how difficult it is to find people like you who would agree to do this?". I think it was meant as a compliment, but the other professor and I later discussed whether it really meant that we were just more gullible than our peers. When asked to suggest faculty to teach next year's workshop, we hesitated to suggest people we actually like [that's mostly a joke, but not 100%]. The rewards of participating were great, but the commitment of time and energy was immense.

Reading: The best books I read recently were "A Spot of Bother" (Mark Haddon) and "Number 9 Dream" (David Mitchell; I also loved his other books). The worst book was "Giraffe" (J.M. Ledgard).

So, despite being stuck on a long flight with nothing to read but a book whose first chapter is narrated by a giraffe fetus, Summer 2007 was pretty good. Things have turned around for me in terms of my department habitat owing to the new department chair and the continued presence of an excellent and fun colleague, and I feel much better at the start of the new academic year than I did at this time last year.

"Free" Time

Just this week I was marveling that I had not yet been asked to do any departmental work this summer, then wham.. I got 'asked' to do two things: read an undergraduate honors thesis (by tomorrow, because the professor who was supposed to do it is away) and serve on a grad student committee for an exam. Professors are not paid by the university in the summer, but we are expected to 'volunteer' for these activities because [select explanation from menu of options below].

#1: It's not the students' fault that faculty don't get paid by the university in the summer, yet student schedules for exams, theses, etc. don't always fit into the academic year.

#2: We get paid enough during the other 9 months, so we should work for free during the summer.

#3: We have lots of free time in the summer, so we might as well spend some of it doing administrative work.


The best explanation, at least in the case of faculty who are active year-round in research, is #1, but I've heard the other two expressed. I don't mind doing some student-related work in the summer, but I do mind the situations in which I am asked to do something just because I am here in the department and some of my colleagues are not. Some of my out-of-town colleagues are out of town for research-related reasons, but some are taking the summer off. That's fine, they can do that because they aren't being paid by the university or by grants, but it means more summer 'volunteer' work for the rest of us.

August Does Not Really Exist

It's deep August -- the one month during which I am paid neither by my university or by my grants (max = 2 months in summer), and therefore the month in which I am particularly reminded of several things: (1) I (and, I think, most professors) don't do this for the money, and (2) That doesn't mean I want to do any department committee work, field emails from students about next term's classes, or do other things that could be dealt with in September when the term starts and when my daughter is back in school and when I am supposed to deal with things like that. Yet the latter activities are more than looming. They are here.

Last week I was very pleased to learn that a male colleague of mine at another university feels similarly oppressed about being asked to do lots of departmental tasks just because he's organized and efficient. He is often told that his other colleagues are 'too busy', as if he isn't. In fact, his other colleagues are just less able to balance everything. I think it might not be a coincidence that this colleague is a single dad and has probably had to learn to balance everything, and he got so extremely good at it that he always seems to have time for just one more task.

Meanwhile, I am doing the final checking and rechecking of a manuscript that came back from review and is ready for final submission. One of my students is first author, but his idea of finishing a manuscript clearly doesn't involve running a spellchecker, making sure all the references, figures, and tables are in order, and so on. This is one of those times that makes me feel old because I can't help thinking "When I was a graduate student...". [I would sooner have stuck thumbtacks in my eyes than have my advisor do this much editing work on a manuscript.] But I'd rather just get it done and do it well than hand it back to my student yet again for another stab at punctuation, verbs, and logical ordering of text and figures. It's a good thing it's still August and I have lots of time for this.

Involuntary

The other day I mentioned that professors are not paid by the university in the summer, so technically we can't be expected to do any teaching or administrative work. Of course we still advise graduate students and work with undergraduate research assistants and interns and do random things to get ready for the next semester, but the focus for many of us is on research. Even so, I spent 5 years directing a summer intern program as part of my department 'service', and this task (which is actually quite rewarding, even if unpaid) has now been taken on by junior colleagues. OK, that's fine, but today one of the office staff told me that the department chair was reluctant to ask a senior colleague to spend part of an afternoon helping out with a student recruiting activity because faculty are 'off payroll' in the summer. The chair has never been reluctant to ask me and some others to do 'off payroll' activities, even things involving vast amounts of time. I think this again relates to the fact that some people are just more Professorial than others, and professorialness is not related to objective measures of productivity as researchers or talent as teachers. But if we all refuse to help out the department, even in the summer, important things will not get done. Nothing is every totally *fair*, but maybe they could be just a bit fairer than they are now.

We all write annual reports documenting the things we've done each year, and our teaching evaluations are scrutinized, but then it seems like these 'data' are plugged into an equation that involves variables such as amount of facial hair, number of sport jackets in one's wardrobe, and so on.