Author: Ishi Keenum

As you may have guessed, I am someone who believes in the power of higher ed. I want to work in it as a researcher and educator and I think this is the purpose of tenure, to be able to criticize the institution you are a part of. I don't see that very often today but I hope it still happens in corners I don't know about.

As a student here is what I think we need to change when considering the future of the university:

1. Affordability. I think in the US we have begun to equivocate a bachelors degree with being able to get a job and not only does this mean we are producing bachelors degrees at a rate never before seen but we're also reducing the pay rate of those degrees because of over saturation. All this is occurring while having these students take on mountains of debt. College isn't for everyone and I think we need to be more ok with that idea. We also need to make it affordable for everyone. It is unethical that your parents ability to afford an education is what can keep you from attaining it. We are country built on the idea of being able to change your station and statistically this is more true in Canada than the US now.

2. Publication pressures. Faculty based incentives or the "publish or perish" idea take away the idea of producing quality literature to improve the advancement of public knowledge. We need to place emphasis on quality maybe over quantity. Yes you do need to be working on something in academia but a lot of those things can't be done in a year or even two. Making faculty raises and success metrics based on pure numbers of citations is toxic. As we investigated in ethics week, the academic field is turning into a pressure cooker and then we punish those who crack. I fear when I become a professor because while I honestly think I could be good at it, I wonder about the costs of failure and what would I even do.

Those two things are major changes and would require institution wide reform but I think they are possible.

Student loans make sense to me to a degree and that degree really only applies to my parents generation. When you were taking out a loan that you could realistically repay in a summer or two of full time work. I do moderately agree with the idea that you should have some stake in your education but , and this is where I get liberal, as an 18 year old you should not be allowed to make a decision that will essentially having you buy a house without the house. I think there is (was? I'm not sure if it has past now) an issue with parents not transparently conveying to their kids the cost of higher ed. I do know parents who were much more transparent with their children about it but that was not the majority.

I get that as parents you want to give your child the world and we are told growing up to apply to the best school you can but I think this is really misleading and honestly detrimental. I wish that in the US you could go to the best school you were qualified for regardless of cost. To me, that's kind of what freedom might mean but I also understand wanting students to understand that this is not an excuse to just do nothing in college. Regardless I am a part of a generation who either didn't understand the true cost that student loans would be or wasn't really told. This is now a generational issue and is meaning millennials can't afford to buy houses because financially we're already on the hook for that amount of debt. I think we as a society are just starting to feel the repercussions of a generation who grew up the Recession and now are making homeowner size payments. I am hopeful that there are people motivated to do something in office but I haven't really seen that come to fruition. Inroads are being made with free community college and statewide commitments to free college if students make under a certain amount but its somewhat too late. The wheels of change turn slow and hopefully they keep turning.

I chose to try to investigate university faculty engagement on twitter. I had trouble embedding the figure but the link is below. In my field in the classroom, I have never been asked to keep a blog or really interact with faculty online aside from canvas discussions. The survey conducted by Pearson in 2013 found that 55% of faculty felt that engaging students online through interactive technologies created a better learning environment. I believe this but also think we need to do more to incorporate STEM fields in this online environment. I feel that my engineering education has been primarily stuck in an 1800s rut of straight lecture and exam with occasional homework. I haven't heard of very good websites that help students solve complicated problems together but in my experience, working together is where you learn, but I realize that isn't true for everyone.

My experience in grad school is almost a complete 180 from my undergrad. I think this is due to the nature of grad school and the involvement of faculty in student's life. I have been thoroughly impressed with how faculty engage with students on twitter at conferences and I think this is a really impactful way to continue conversations about research after the presentation is over. It also allows a level of camaraderie with an international field of experts. Often now I find out about publications on twitter as well as conference submission deadlines. I have also found that I need 2 twitters. I have a public as well as a private to try to separate my conference interactions and professional relationships from my musings that just don't need to be on my PI's newsfeed. I think that social media has the potential to connect faculty and students easily once they leave the classroom and tools like LinkedIn have allowed me to stay in touch with faculty in undergrad. I haven't seen as much involvement in the classroom itself but I am sure that will change as I feel its relatively inevitable.


https://www.onlinelearningsurvey.com/reports/social-media-for-teaching-and-learning-2013-infographic.pdf

The more I get involved in research and academia I realize the importance of iterating. I have learned to roll my eyes or get really exasperated at the idea of inventing something totally knew or unheard of because, to me at least and I can feel myself getting jaded, it is completely naive to think that you won't need help/ the knowledge of others to come up with something revolutionary. Grad school has been really good at teaching me the importance of community, both socially and academically when developing new ideas or innovations. We are constantly improving on past ideas and seeing where new metrics or indices would be helpful to move us forward.

When I talk to people about make a true impact or thinking that this one paper will solve it all, I am blown away by how truly selfish I find that. Everyone in our field is working towards a common goal of understanding and you think that, your 2 years of grad school will be the break through we all need? At the same time I realize how important having this new energy is to keep things moving. We need to be able to ask why and how and is there a better way. I can feel myself losing that ability as I get so ingrained in my lab's methods that I forget to question if it makes sense.

All I can say is I'm learning that you probably won't come up with the best answer the first time but there is incredible value in putting yourself out there to be criticized so your next idea is slightly better than the last.

As spring break looms I often think about what are graduate student rights when it comes to breaks and vacation. My contract guarantees me with no time off from my mandated 20hrs/week of research which is already somewhat of a joke. I have heard horror stories of students being expected to work through Christmas and major holidays due to an advisor not allowing them to take time off and I wonder, why aren't graduate students treated like real employees in addition to students? Surely this idea isn't novel but there should be university policy guaranteeing graduate students with rights.

This ties into my continued worries of the lack of breaks in academia but the expectation that graduate school is not a typical job seems fraught with flaws. You should not be expected to postpone all life, financial, and mental health goals in order to get a PhD. Academia cannot be this toxic to its lowest denominator. I wish my lab had a given policy or expectation of allowable vacation days throughout the year, like a job. I understand that sometimes things come up or experiments must run but I feel that is not too different from any job.  I know individuals appreciate the freedom that comes with academia but with that freedom comes a double edged sword. You can work whenever you want but the premise is you are always working.

I have heard of graduate students unionizing at other schools to ensure there is fair treatment by supervisors and I have to say, this may seem fair. The main argument against it that I have seen is that the advisor/advisee relationship is very different than that of an employer/employee, but I sometimes wonder, How? Sure their success depends on my success and vice versa but how is that different from any other company? As I sit in the snow and the undergrads talk about their trips to Florida I do think it would be nice to at least know I was allowed to take time throughout the year without a constant approval system that leads you worrying if your employer thinks you are taking too much time off.

Happy Spring Break!

I really like research. I discovered this in undergrad and it is why I am at VT today. I don't know why but the struggle and daily grind is appealing and keeps me from getting bored which is really what I want in a job. I have gone back and forth between do I want to be a professor or do industry or pursue a career in research and until now my thought has always been "we'll see what's available when I'm looking" but I'm realizing how crazy intense getting in academia is. I know colleagues who apply for years with no luck or who just give up because it looks like its not going to happen for them. This is insane! To be honest; its a job. I don't believe I will get super hero wings when I am able to finally reach out to that depraved undergraduate who just needed my sole mentorship to blossom into a beautiful underpaid graduate student but I do think I would groove on it. The pace of research and the travel are immensely appealing to me and I do like the idea of trying to implement and change campus culture for those who will change American culture.

The appeals of a solely research career though are also very enticing if at a national lab or in academia as non tenure track. To be honest it sounds like less stress and at least in a national lab environment I like the idea of potentially being able to move up and do more project oversight. I recently went to our departments recruiting event for new graduate students and the professor giving the introduction described each research group as a tiny business. You have to balance the books, bring in new team members and produce something that means you can get more funding to balance the books next year. I had never thought of a lab environment like that but it makes sense and it also makes me realize that maybe I'd also like just working at a business.

I don't think I'll resolve this debate soon or ever but fundamentally I want to be able to pursue a career that keeps me interested and curious about what is going on in the world around me. I worry about negative work culture destroying that curiosity as I've seen with other graduate students but I don't think any of this is unique to academia or any field.

These are just musings that continually come up when I am inevitably asked "So what do you want to do that" in regards to my PhD.

I'm all for open access to science but I do wonder - why do we have to pay 4,000 dollars for it to happen? I chose to look at Environmental Science and Technology, an American Chemical Society journal. The about the journal section is brief and states it's goals almost exclusively as a research journal with little/no attention to a broader audience or to generating discussion outside of the field. The journal, as an American Chemical Society subset, gives a 3 options for open access. 4,000 dollars for immediate open access or 2,000 for open access in 12 months. They is very little discussion about it and it feels like a topic there because it needs to be and not because the journal really wants it there.

Pivoting on our ethics investigation with the office of research integrity, I feel like a lot of academic culture is that of "Keeping up" with others and I'm realizing how impossibly difficult this can be. Often I find myself jealous/ envious/ aware of colleagues successes and progress and I think naively try to benchmark it against my own. Am I doing enough? Is what I'm doing good enough? I know, logically this is pretty textbook imposter syndrome (or at least I think, please correct me)but I don't feel like I fraud, I feel like a marathon sprinter. How are you supposed to stay up to date/ make progress in grad school when it feels like hurdles come at you out of nowhere?

This is coming from an immensely stressful past couple weeks and an upcoming exam and I know when I get a few days to plan my own schedule / make progress where I think I need to and not on things that are suddenly thrown at me, it will settle but is this how academics live their lives? I've noticed it happen with my advisor when grant deadlines or reports or presentations are upon us but how are you supposed to keep up and anticipate this? I am sure it comes in time and you get better, but sometimes it feels rather sink or swim and I guess you just keep swimming.

As a PhD student and someone who's entire life is focused around research right now, I am often frustrated by the continuous analysis and iterating that comes from producing quality work. I know though that I want my work to mean something and that I need to do the due diligence whether it be in statistics, experiments, or quality assurance/ quality control and as frustrating as it is sometimes, I do enjoy it. I also continually try to remind myself that falsification, unethical research and practices hurt more than me if I were to engage in it. It hurts my professor, my family, my field and the societies relationship with science and research.

This week, looking at the Office of Research Integrity cases that come up I chose to focus on a recent case of Dr. Li Wang. She is being reported for "research misconduct by recklessly including false data" in grant applications. She did withdraw 3 of them and has been remorseful but still I wonder if her 'punishment'' is justified. For a year, Dr. Wang's  institution has to verify the validity of her published research ( I can get on board with this one), her research must be supervised through what sounds like a lot of paperwork and she cannot serve on any advisory board committees or peer review. I wish I knew how she was found guilty of these things, which, silly as it may sound, would affect the punishment I feel she deserves. If she self reported, which she may, I feel that some of these measures are a bit harsh, especially not being able to serve on any advisory boards. If she was reported, I would say she is not as remorseful as she may have lead on and that these things seem justified. Still, research integrity is a challenging topic. Research does need policing to ensure quality but I have no idea how I would report misconduct if I saw it. I wonder though who decides these punishments, is it mainly one person at their desk doing this all day or is it a committee? How do you get promoted to being the person who is ethical enough to decide if what other people did is ethical? Reading these cases I understand how a researcher may have felt pressured to include false data in a grant proposal, I get it. Research is hard, but at the end of the day you have to realize if what you are doing is right. Maybe we need to take a step back and evaluate the incentives that we place on researchers. If getting grants is what is solely rewarded, we may have created a corrupting infrastructure bound to have more of these events. 

I chose to look at and compare the mission statements of 3 colleges/ universities close to my family; Michigan State University (MSU), Addis Ababa Institute of Technology (AAiT) and Macalester College. I was interested in how the mission of a small liberal arts college like Macalester would compare with two much larger universities and how an international setting would alter the stated mission.

All three missions are quoted below with links to finding them. Examining each mission statement I was struck by how the different emphases related back to the school's identity. AAIT emphasizes the importance of "technology transfer" which I think is vital to helping educate the public of Ethiopia. MSU, as a contrast, emphasizes research and improving quality of life around the world and Macalester, as an internationally oriented small liberal arts school, really reflects this in their stated mission. I am interested in the contrasting lengths and vagueness that comes with establishing a mission statement for large university like MSU and I feel that this leaves the university somewhat at a disadvantage with no clear direction they want to take. While they emphasize global work, there is minimal specifics. I feel that the mission statements of the smaller institutions like AAiT and Macalester closer reflect what I have  experienced with these universities and this is most likely why MSU's individual colleges also have mission statements in addition to the university at large. 

As a future faculty member I feel like reading the mission statements of potential places I could work will show more clearly how the institution orients itself and can help me decide if this is something that reflects my values. For example there is no aspect of the MSU mission statement that hopes to represent a diverse community while Macalester emphasizes the importance of multiculturalism in their school. 

MSU: "As a public, research-intensive, land-grant university funded in part by the state of Michigan, our mission is to advance knowledge and transform lives by:

• providing outstanding undergraduate, graduate, and professional education to promising, qualified students in order to prepare them to contribute fully to society as globally engaged citizen leaders
• conducting research of the highest caliber that seeks to answer questions and create solutions in order to expand human understanding and make a positive difference, both locally and globally
• advancing outreach, engagement, and economic development activities that are innovative, research-driven, and lead to a better quality of life for individuals and communities, at home and around the world" Source

Macalester: "Macalester is committed to being a preeminent liberal arts college with an educational program known for its high standards for scholarship and its special emphasis on internationalism, multiculturalism, and service to society." Source