Well, if you thought that last column was deservedly denied, it's because it was a first draft that I mistakingly copied and pasted without actually reading. So now to waste more of your time, here is the final. At very least, I'll call this a lesson in editing and let my first post up rather than delete it. My apologies, but seriously: I'd love to hear what people think about the drastic differences between the two. I think this version is orders of magnitude better in terms of making a cogent argument and hopefully you do too.
"In the academic world, the coming of spring brings more than migrating birds and warming temperatures. We can also count on seminars filled with faculty candidates, and prospective graduate students flocking to elaborate departmental recruiting events. Little time has elapsed since I was an interviewee in the latter category, but seeing things from the departmental side this time around has shown me the importance of recruitment events for everyone involved.
It is easy to see why potential students should take the process seriously, but it’s harder to grasp the large impact that these events can have on current graduate students, post-docs, and faculty members. Scientists rely heavily on professional and social connections for future positions, advice, critiques and collaborations. For many, the foundation of these important networks are laid during graduate school. Interviewing and recruiting potential students is essentially vetting the composition of our future social and professional networks - a task not to be taken lightly.
As a student, I have a vested interest in my program’s ability to select the top candidates and to convince those candidates to enroll. Their aptitude and productivity will ultimately affect the value of my institution and, by extension, my degree. Far more importantly, these individuals will have an effect on me because a portion of them will be my future friends, collaborators, and reviewers. Faculty should likewise concern themselves with graduate student selection; these students compose the front-lines of research, share bylines, and likely also comprise a considerable portion of scientific connections years down the line. And, of course, everything that I mentioned both for faculty and current students applies equally to post-docs, the vast majority of whom are conspicuously absent from recruitment events.
During these formative events, the more personal interaction we get with students the better. After all, we don’t choose our friends based on transcripts, essays, and GRE scores, and choosing friends is at least part of what we are doing. Surrounding ourselves with people that we respect scientifically, and get along with socially allows for productive and informative conversations to take place outside of the lab. These social connections unite people across labs and disciplines, providing fresh perspectives on our own research as well as informing us about diverse areas of research that our colleagues are working on.
Though it may sound exhausting and futile to converse with a litany of students in order to get a fair picture of both their aptitude and amiability, time with recruits need not be intellectually taxing. As a recruit, I found even casual conversations with professors and current students to be more informative than hours spent with web-pages and journal articles. These encounters were relatively brief in nature, but I am nevertheless continually amazed about how accurate my initial sketches proved to be. Most of us are busy with research and other obligations, but surely everyone can spare a small amount of time for our own sake as much as the potential students.
Of course, if students attend the highest ranked school that they get into regardless of their interviewing experiences then we have little incentive to bother. However, I still believe that student decisions are not quite so rigid. Ask a few of your close colleagues about their graduate school choices and recruitment experiences. While you’re at it, give a thought to where you met those colleagues; you might be surprised to find how many of your scientific friendships started during graduate school. When you’re finished, get out there and recruit a few more."
Saturday, April 23, 2011
the Nature of failure
While this is a bit of an esoteric topic, I've been quite busy and I was happy with the final product so I decided to post this entry: a failed submission for the Nature Careers Columnist competition that I wrote a month ago (see this link for background). My apologies for the lazy recycling of material. I'll hopefully get time to write a bit more soon.
"The skies of the northern hemisphere are cluttered each spring with birds returning to their thawing homes and graduate school applicants hoping to find a home of their own. It was only a short year ago that I traversed the United States as an interviewee, and now that it’s my turn to entertain the potential incoming class I realize just how important these weekends are for everyone involved.
As a student, I have a vested interest in my programs ability to select the top candidates and to convince those candidates to enroll. Their aptitude and production will ultimately effect the ‘name brand’ of my degree, but far more important than benefits to the program and institution as a whole is the direct influence that these individuals will have on me; a portion of them will undoubtedly be my future friends, collaborators, and reviewers.
Faculty also have reason to concern themselves with graduate student selection; these students will make up the front-lines of the research, share the bylines, and most likely make up a considerable portion of scientific connections years down the line. And of course, everything that I mentioned both for faculty and current students applies equally to post-docs who are too often conspicuously absent from recruitment events though their research and connections still rely heavily on students.
In our capacity as members of the department, the more face-time that we get with students the better. Exhausting as that may sound, it need not be so intellectually taxing; indeed, sometimes less science is even better. As a recruit, I found even casual conversations with professors and current students to be far more informative than hours spent with web-pages and journal articles, and it amazes me to this day how accurate these initial sketches were even with a year of new knowledge to build on.
I recall two different interview weekends, both of which went reasonably well, but following my string of thank you emails I received responses from all five professors that I met with at one university and zero from another; they practically made the decision for me. The important thing to remember is that these impressions aren't just about graduate school, my opinion of certain departments and individuals has been likely shaped for years to come.
Face-to-face meetings are a two way street, and I still firmly believe that a conversation is worth as much as GRE scores, essays, transcripts, and reference letters combined. While these other methods may importantly measure past aptitude, conversations are where we can get a sense for a persons intangibles that are difficult to teach such as confidence, enthusiasm, presentation skills, etc. Try as we might to quantify and objectively view a person with essays and test scores, determining graduate school success may never be so algorithmic.
And of course, we must keep in mind that while the nebulous 'department' may be trying to judge graduate school success, as individuals in that department, we are trying to judge far more. We're making decisions about who we surround ourselves with, which will have implications perhaps decades down the line.
If students attend the highest ranked school that they get into regardless of their interviewing experiences then we all have little incentive to bother. But I still don't believe that student decisions are quite so rigid, and the data would be relatively easy to gather. Start by thinking of yourself and your close colleagues, and while your at it, think about how many of those close colleagues you met while either one of you were in graduate school."
"The skies of the northern hemisphere are cluttered each spring with birds returning to their thawing homes and graduate school applicants hoping to find a home of their own. It was only a short year ago that I traversed the United States as an interviewee, and now that it’s my turn to entertain the potential incoming class I realize just how important these weekends are for everyone involved.
As a student, I have a vested interest in my programs ability to select the top candidates and to convince those candidates to enroll. Their aptitude and production will ultimately effect the ‘name brand’ of my degree, but far more important than benefits to the program and institution as a whole is the direct influence that these individuals will have on me; a portion of them will undoubtedly be my future friends, collaborators, and reviewers.
Faculty also have reason to concern themselves with graduate student selection; these students will make up the front-lines of the research, share the bylines, and most likely make up a considerable portion of scientific connections years down the line. And of course, everything that I mentioned both for faculty and current students applies equally to post-docs who are too often conspicuously absent from recruitment events though their research and connections still rely heavily on students.
In our capacity as members of the department, the more face-time that we get with students the better. Exhausting as that may sound, it need not be so intellectually taxing; indeed, sometimes less science is even better. As a recruit, I found even casual conversations with professors and current students to be far more informative than hours spent with web-pages and journal articles, and it amazes me to this day how accurate these initial sketches were even with a year of new knowledge to build on.
I recall two different interview weekends, both of which went reasonably well, but following my string of thank you emails I received responses from all five professors that I met with at one university and zero from another; they practically made the decision for me. The important thing to remember is that these impressions aren't just about graduate school, my opinion of certain departments and individuals has been likely shaped for years to come.
Face-to-face meetings are a two way street, and I still firmly believe that a conversation is worth as much as GRE scores, essays, transcripts, and reference letters combined. While these other methods may importantly measure past aptitude, conversations are where we can get a sense for a persons intangibles that are difficult to teach such as confidence, enthusiasm, presentation skills, etc. Try as we might to quantify and objectively view a person with essays and test scores, determining graduate school success may never be so algorithmic.
And of course, we must keep in mind that while the nebulous 'department' may be trying to judge graduate school success, as individuals in that department, we are trying to judge far more. We're making decisions about who we surround ourselves with, which will have implications perhaps decades down the line.
If students attend the highest ranked school that they get into regardless of their interviewing experiences then we all have little incentive to bother. But I still don't believe that student decisions are quite so rigid, and the data would be relatively easy to gather. Start by thinking of yourself and your close colleagues, and while your at it, think about how many of those close colleagues you met while either one of you were in graduate school."
Saturday, April 2, 2011
South of the border, sans fireworks
I'm trying to keep this blog broadly science oriented, as it is my primary area of study and expertise, but it's nearly impossible for me to not inject some political and economic commentary every now and again; especially since the scientific industry, like all others, is heavily reliant on political policy.
Two weeks ago, President Obama visited South and Central America for the first time in his presidency. This baffles me.
Think of 10 humanitarian causes or images of plight and suffering across the world. Then think of 10 images of successful global cities or centers of industry. Chances are that with the exception of Haiti in the former category, you won't give a thought to the western hemisphere (sans U.S. / Canada) and who could blame you.
I wish I knew why this was, aside from the obvious fact that our education system doesn't teach us about Latin America and our media doesn't cover it. We have stronger ties with Thailand, Saudi Arabia, and Poland than we do with Peru, Uruguay, or Costa Rica. Our hispanic population is growing immensely and, with a clear majority, the best known second language in this country is Spanish. Yet still our ties with these countries and their greater than 600 million residents are feeble at best.
The best explanation that I can come up with is that the highest performers still underperform compared to western europe, and the lowest performers are considerably better off than the poorest nations of Africa and central Asia. These countries are stuck in the middle ground where NGO's care little about the poorest (Nicaragua, Bolivia, Honduras, etc.) and, with a few exceptions, our government ignores possible strategic alliances with the wealthiest (Chile, Argentina, Panama, etc.).
Aside from brutally obvious political (security) and economic (natural resources, labor markets, trading markets) advantages that relationships with our southern neighbors will foster, I'm also interested in the science. Intelligent and entrepreneurial people are being educated and doing research in the higher performing countries of this region, and I can't help but think that the economic might of the U.S. can help further the growth of science and technology industries here. Indeed, these industries already exist (see: Chile and Panama) but few people realize it or give them much merit.
Instead, the rising scientific and technological powers are emerging in Asia (think: India, China, Singapore, Korea). While I support increasing scientific proficiency and investigation everywhere, it seems that many of the countries of Latin America would produce a far greater return on investment. With GDP per capita in multiple countries doubling that of China and quadrupling that of India, they are simply better poised to enter the global marketplace of ideas and develop policies conducive to scientific investment.
In what will inevitably be a predominant theme of this blog, and of my future research: I firmly believe that scientific discoveries and technological innovations are to a large extent numbers games. More people actively pursuing discovery will result in more discoveries but meeting the challenges of a more diffuse scientific network will require smart policies to cope with the infrastructural needs of knowledge dissemination and trust. Businesses, educational institutions, and individuals can start by fostering collaborations but eventually our government must set a clear precedent of allegiance based on mutual interests and our increasingly shared cultural heritage.
As it stands, most of the well performing countries in Latin America are politically far to the left of the U.S. (Colombia and Chile being two notable exceptions) and would likely prefer an invite to dinner with Hugo Chavez and Raul Castro over Barack Obama. This is tragic, and for the sake of political security, economic growth, and scientific discovery, it must be redressed.
Two weeks ago, President Obama visited South and Central America for the first time in his presidency. This baffles me.
Think of 10 humanitarian causes or images of plight and suffering across the world. Then think of 10 images of successful global cities or centers of industry. Chances are that with the exception of Haiti in the former category, you won't give a thought to the western hemisphere (sans U.S. / Canada) and who could blame you.
I wish I knew why this was, aside from the obvious fact that our education system doesn't teach us about Latin America and our media doesn't cover it. We have stronger ties with Thailand, Saudi Arabia, and Poland than we do with Peru, Uruguay, or Costa Rica. Our hispanic population is growing immensely and, with a clear majority, the best known second language in this country is Spanish. Yet still our ties with these countries and their greater than 600 million residents are feeble at best.
The best explanation that I can come up with is that the highest performers still underperform compared to western europe, and the lowest performers are considerably better off than the poorest nations of Africa and central Asia. These countries are stuck in the middle ground where NGO's care little about the poorest (Nicaragua, Bolivia, Honduras, etc.) and, with a few exceptions, our government ignores possible strategic alliances with the wealthiest (Chile, Argentina, Panama, etc.).
Aside from brutally obvious political (security) and economic (natural resources, labor markets, trading markets) advantages that relationships with our southern neighbors will foster, I'm also interested in the science. Intelligent and entrepreneurial people are being educated and doing research in the higher performing countries of this region, and I can't help but think that the economic might of the U.S. can help further the growth of science and technology industries here. Indeed, these industries already exist (see: Chile and Panama) but few people realize it or give them much merit.
Instead, the rising scientific and technological powers are emerging in Asia (think: India, China, Singapore, Korea). While I support increasing scientific proficiency and investigation everywhere, it seems that many of the countries of Latin America would produce a far greater return on investment. With GDP per capita in multiple countries doubling that of China and quadrupling that of India, they are simply better poised to enter the global marketplace of ideas and develop policies conducive to scientific investment.
In what will inevitably be a predominant theme of this blog, and of my future research: I firmly believe that scientific discoveries and technological innovations are to a large extent numbers games. More people actively pursuing discovery will result in more discoveries but meeting the challenges of a more diffuse scientific network will require smart policies to cope with the infrastructural needs of knowledge dissemination and trust. Businesses, educational institutions, and individuals can start by fostering collaborations but eventually our government must set a clear precedent of allegiance based on mutual interests and our increasingly shared cultural heritage.
As it stands, most of the well performing countries in Latin America are politically far to the left of the U.S. (Colombia and Chile being two notable exceptions) and would likely prefer an invite to dinner with Hugo Chavez and Raul Castro over Barack Obama. This is tragic, and for the sake of political security, economic growth, and scientific discovery, it must be redressed.
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