Author: Kristen Felice Noble

Lord Rayleigh famously explained why the sky is blue. He was also a Nobel Prize recipient, but for a completely different reason. In 1894, he discovered (quite accidently) a new element, the inert gas argon. This story is one I remember from reading my student’s analytical chemistry textbook. It also relates well to my first lesson from The Chronical of Higher Education article, Small Changes in Teaching: The First 5 Minutes of Class. Lesson #1: start with something engaging! Storytelling wasn’t actually one of the author’s tips for starting a lecture, but the article started with a story and that grabbed my attention enough to keep me reading on. Here are James M. Lang’s other suggestions with my thoughts and comments.

1. Establish a purpose for each class by opening the lesson with questions. The questions should be answered during the lecture to demonstrate learning.

I like this idea of asking questions at the beginning of class because it right away tells the students that there is a point to the lecture and to the material they are learning. I am imagining a lot of “Have you ever considered this,” or “How might you determine this,” questions for an Analytical Chemistry class.

1. Review the previous lecture material by asking the students to give the review, aka “retrieval practice.”

I always appreciated when my professors would review the material from our previous lecture. Though it took up some precious minutes of class time, it really helped to get back in the mindset of the course, especially after a weekend or having three other classes in between. I like the idea of asking the students to give the review because it creates an opportunity to gauge what they remember and clear up any misconceptions.

1. Reactivate what students learned in previous courses or have heard about in the media.

This is so important. I love when professors do this or when I can do this for my students. It’s that “Oh yeah, I remember that!” moment when everything floods back to the front of your memory. Reactivating the student’s memory helps gauge their knowledge and understanding and helps them make connections that can bolster learning.

1. Have the students write down their answers.

This is not something I have considered before though I think it is a good idea. Ask the students a question, have them write down their answer, and then at the end of class after you’ve answered the question in the lecture have them look back at their answer. That way, they can recall what they knew before the lecture and remember what they learned during the lecture.

I found this article very valuable and look forward to implementing Lang’s suggestions in my classroom.

Preamble: If I estimate where my wealth would be if I chose a vocation over undergraduate and graduate school, I could easily have bought a house by now. After five years at university and two bachelor’s degrees under my belt, one in Chemistry and one in Forensic and Investigative Sciences, I started out earning an annual salary of less than $45,000 and had $18,000 in student loans (thanks to my middle-class parents who could afford to help me pay for college). Thank goodness I was also living at home and not paying rent because rent on Long Island (NY) would have been more than two weeks of my salary. I went back to school 1.5 years later, working toward a PhD in Chemistry and making enough to save a little (thanks to my wife, who is also in graduate school, and our relatively low rent). If and when I graduate and find a teaching position at a university, there’s a good chance I will be making just a few thousand dollars more than my starting salary out of college. To sum it all up, that’s 11 years of schooling, $18,000 in student loans, and little in savings. Meanwhile, I could have spent 2 years at a vocational school, earned money while taking classes, and started out making $45,000 a year, according to nprEd’s recent article, High-Paying Trade Jobs Sit Empty, While High School Grads Line Up for University.

So what’s wrong with learning a trade? Nothing.

In the United States, most vocation professionals are well respected and well paid. Then why aren’t more high school graduates going to vocational schools and earning certificates and associate degrees? The nprEd reporters highlight both the high demand for vocational workers in the United States and the contradictory high school-to-four-year university pipeline view of many parents, schools, and high school students. The imbalance is likely caused by the negative stigma around vocational work. Parents want more for their kids; they don’t want their kids to have to work “dirty jobs.” Plus, vocational work is for people who can’t cut it at 4-year universities, right? Hopefully this mentality changes, and soon because we need more people skilled in vocational work!

Based on the article, vocational work sounds like a good career/first serious job choice. There are more jobs available, workers are paid well, they start earning several years before university graduates, and they are re not swimming in debt from tuition at a 4-year university. Also noteworthy, salaries for jobs that require a bachelor’s degree are declining while demand for vocational workers is pushing salaries up up up!

Students at university should have a good plan for when they graduate. Instead, many of them come to college because they think they are supposed to or they have to in order to get a job. When I ask my undergraduate students what they want to do after they graduate, most of them stare back at me terrified and respond with “I don’t know.”

The moral of the story is, not everyone is fit for a 4-year university just like not everyone is fit to learn a trade. But, we need to do a better job of helping middle and high school students choose the path that’s right for them and prepare them for their futures.

The other day I received a text message from my good friend and former lab-mate who is now teaching undergraduate Chemistry courses at a liberal arts university. He asked for my help with getting some supplies together for a trip he was making to Virginia Tech with some of his students. They were doing an experiment and needed to use one of the VT Chemistry Department’s analytical instruments that was not available at his university. When I met up with him, his face was not as cheerful as usual; he looked exhausted. When I asked how he was doing, he said okay but described feeling burnt out, overworked and buried under his busy schedule. I was worried. My lab-mate is a pretty seasoned instructor, having been professor of record for general chemistry at Virginia Tech for several semesters before finding his new job. He was now in his second semester at his new university, teaching several undergraduate Chemistry courses. I knew the preparation for one of his courses was extremely challenging. The topic of the course was something he had never taught before, nor had he taken a class like it before in college, and he was basically starting from scratch. Nonetheless, I figured he could handle it.

I was worried for my friend’s well-being but I was also selfishly worried about my future. If I could potentially experience total burnout, did I still want to teach undergraduate chemistry? Of course I did because I love teaching, but I wanted to know more about other faculty experiences at institutions of higher ed, so I went searching and found a recent article by David Gooblar in The Chronical of Higher Education, 4 Ideas for Avoiding Faculty Burnout. Turns out, “faculty burnout” is very real and likely, very challenging to avoid, at least for new professors. The problem, teachers are so committed to their students and institutions that they get stressed out, depressed, and anxious. This is bad for teachers but also has a negative impact on student performance. A teacher’s commitment to their students requires further explanation. Teachers are not only committed to the success of their students in the classroom, they are also committed to their well-being. Teachers are academic instructors, mentors, therapists, guidance counselors, mandatory reports, and occasionally victims of irate student’s criticisms and banter, hats that weigh heavily on their mental health.

For those of you interested in teaching or already teaching in higher education, here are the suggestions Gooblar offered to help avoid faculty burnout:

1. Take time off, if only for an evening.
2. Remember that your job is a job – even if you love it.
3. Find ways to say no.
4. Choose sleep over extra class-prep time.
5. Don’t be afraid to ask for help.

I hope you find them helpful and wish you all the best.

Future of the University

One thing I believe should change in higher education…

I believe higher education in the United States should be not-for-profit. I say this, even after reviewing the rather short list of “for profit” colleges and universities in the United States, provided by Wikipedia. The reality is that just because schools are non-profit doesn’t mean that some individuals aren’t earning large sums of money while making higher education less affordable. For example, in-state tuition at Virginia Tech increased $378 to $13,230 annually for the 2017-2018 school year. This increase was attributed to an increase in health insurance costs and faculty and staff salaries. For reference, the average employee salary at Virginia Tech is just under $70,000. The university was proud of this small tuition increase of 2.9%. Meanwhile, Virginia Tech’s vice president for advancement and chief fundraiser, Charles Phlegar, earned $661,700 in 2017, a 4.2% pay increase from his 2016 salary of $635,000. If we do the math, Mr. Phlegar’s pay raise is equal to the cost of tuition for two in-state Virginia Tech students and his salary is covered by enrolling 50 new undergraduate students! No wonder enrollment at Virginia Tech increased by 1,402 students between 2016 and 2017.

Of course, faculty and staff need to be paid to do their jobs but there needs to be greater focus on education, graduation, and job placement. Why should schools be in the business of making money? We shouldn’t put a price on educating our future employees and employers.

I’d Be an ‘A’ Student if I Could Just Read My Notes

– The Wall Street Journal March 12, 2018, author: Melissa Korn

When it comes to the debate over laptops in the classroom, I feel like I have heard every argument and yet I am still not sure if I will or will not implement a “no laptop” policy. I am definitely leaning toward allowing laptops in my classroom, however I have some reservations. That is why, when I saw the front page news article “I’d Be an ‘A’ Student if I Could Just Read My Notes” in the March 12, 2018 issue of The Wall Street Journal, I stopped and gave it a read.

To summarize, the article focuses on interviews with two types of students, those who are (1) frustrated with not being able to use laptops in their classes or (2) frustrated that their peers ask them for their legible and well-organized notes. The students argue that using a computer to take notes would improve their ability to learn. I find this interesting because I prefer taking handwritten notes, probably because I grew up without a laptop, smartphone, or tablet. Handwriting is a bit slow, but when I’m writing I feel like I am retaining more information even if I don’t end up looking back at my written notes. The online article also provides links to other WSJ articles that report on reasons why professors have banned laptops from their classrooms and a study by Princeton University/UCLA that suggests students who take handwritten notes outperform students who take notes using a computer. I did not read further, but I wonder if it’s just too soon to tell if this younger generation will learn more effectively with technology in their classrooms than older generations.

Distraction is probably the most-used argument against allowing laptops in the classroom. Laptops can be distracting to instructors and irrefutably can provide distraction to students. Nevertheless, I am more concerned with students without laptops being distracted by other students with laptops than students watching TV or browsing Instagram. This behavior is rude but if they’re not distracting others then they made the choice to not pay attention. If they are distracting others, I can tell them to put their laptop away or leave. A policy that defines proper laptop use and the consequences for improper use is very important.

Laptops and tablets can be valuable assets in the classroom. In group meetings, I like to have internet access to answer my general chemistry or curiosity questions and to quickly search for journal articles to save for later reading. With my tablet, I can take written notes, move my notes to create space for new information, add pictures or website links, and import class notes. I’ve found that I’m more likely to review these notes. I carry my tablet with me everywhere but I tend to misplace random notebooks.

I know professors who have “no laptop” policies and others who have embraced technology by publishing their presentations for students to use during lecture. Overall, I believe note-taking preference should be left up to the students. Those students who are determined to learn will avoid distractions.

 

Can you spot the fake?

Look close enough and you might find something disconcerting about the below image:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/08/science/cancer-carlo-croce.html

I would like to preface this blog by saying that blogging is tough. Whenever I start writing my blog, I find something more interesting to talk about. So, you may want to skip down toward the bottom and follow the NY Times link to a great article on ethics in cancer research.

Visiting the Office of Research Integrity website, I navigated to the most recent case summary, 2018 – Colleen T. Skau. Dr. Skau is a former postdoctoral fellow in the Cell Biology and Physiology Center, National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, National Institutes of Health. While employed by the NHLBI, Dr. Skau contributed to 11 publications, which I found through a Google search of “Colleen T. Skau” that brought me to her corpus on ResearchGate. Her case summary details her engagement in research misconduct in two of those papers.

The ORI found that Dr. Skau intentionally, knowingly, or recklessly falsified and fabricated research record by selectively reporting data points, inappropriately including or omitting data points, and altering data points in numerous figures. Additionally, she fabricated results and/or falsely labelled experimental results that came from alternate experimental conditions or experiments. For example, in multiple experiments, Dr. Skau over-reported the number of cells analyzed per condition, once by over 100 cells.

I was surprised then, that I could easily find the two papers from the ORI report and read them with no mention of the first author’s research misconduct.

The papers:

Cell 167(6):1571-1585, 2016

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112(19):E2447-E2456, 2015

Are published in respectable journals with decently high impact factors (from a chemist’s perspective)

Cell – Impact factor (2016) of 30.410

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences – Impact factor (2016) of 9.661

The ORI report was released in late January 2018. Dr. Skau agreed to correct or retract the papers. By now, the papers should have been removed from open access until further review.

After reading the report on Dr. Skau, I wondered who (e.g. in what area(s) of research, age, sex, etc.) is more likely to commit scientific misconduct. I went to Google and searched “ethics in science who falsifies data,” and came across an interesting news article published on March 8, 2017 in the New York Times.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/08/science/cancer-carlo-croce.html

The article describes the numerous misconduct allegations against a top cancer researcher who has never been penalized for misconduct and continues to win millions of dollars in federal grants while chairing a department at Ohio State University and serving as a member of the National Academy of Sciences. After reading the article, I had several questions. Are some researchers too big in their field to be cut down by misconduct allegations? Is it possible that falsifications and misconduct are occurring at the research level (graduate and undergraduate students) under the radar of the primary investigator? No question, research faculty are under enormous pressure to bring in funding and publish in high impact journals. That pressure is most certainly passed on to the students, who are responsible for producing results.

The article points out several problems related to ethics and ethics violations in research. First, the review of ethics inquiries is the responsibility of the same universities who employ the researcher, a clear conflict of interest considering the university benefits from the funding brought in by research faculty. Second, are journals and universities not taking seriously the misconduct accusations from other PIs? Could this article be describing a witch-hunt after a successful researcher? Is this a failure of the peer review process, or has the peer review process succeeded in questioning the findings of a successful researcher? With those questions in mind, take a second look at the figure published above.