Category: Perspectives

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Money Walks and Talks in Academia

Buzz_Tweed

As junior academics spend longer in their career, sooner or later, they start to realize that money matters more than anything when it comes to dealing with University Administration. Some will have this formalized in their tenure track agreement, but others will more blindly wander into it as promotion looms, and ask they get involved in developing plans for new hires in their department. Being wiser to this reality earlier on in my career might have helped me make different decisions along the way, or at the very least temper my idealism with a more natural cynicism.

 

For many academics, money (even one’s salary) is a secondary thought to research and teaching.  But obviously, these professional activities require money for them to function and often require substantial amounts for them to be done to a high level. You would be forgiven for thinking that where this money comes from is irrelevant and that its what you do with the money that counts, not just getting it.

 

As part of the economic crash that befell Ireland (and pretty much everywhere) sometime around 2008, the government accelerated is cut-backs to the 3rd level education sector. The latest figures I have heard kicked around my institution is that the government provides directly only about half the amount of money that is required to educate our students. This is an enormous shortfall to make up and doubtless troubles the sleeping patterns of our Provost and his administration greatly. Among the various options to bolster the funds are the usual suspects of international students (though in reality, although their fees are high, the government don’t supplement their place with additional funds, so its not really all that high when the money hits the red line), wealthy donors and of course overheads on research grants.

 

Different countries and institutions administer overheads differently, but generally there is some mechanism by which the university gets a percentage of the grant into a separate account to the research project which they can do as they wish (sometimes with conditions).  In Ireland, these might as much as 30%, but equally could be 0%. These overheads might be split, with some going to the PI that won the grant, some going to support PhD scholarships and some going who knows where in the black hole. Deans like big grants, because they come with big overheads, and this is where the trouble starts.

 

During a meeting to discuss the possible recruitment of a new senior academic in quantitative ecology, I was rebuked for naively pointing out that the person in question would be somewhat immune the current economic as their infrastructure demands were modest.  If you do expensive research, the financial benefits to the institution are larger than if your research involves a few computers for example. Dig up the cricket pitch, knock down the Arts Block and install a particle accelerator and name it after someone wealthy*. This is why disciplines whose research is cheap, and individuals who have low costs, face an uphill battle in gaining attention and reward for their work.

 

Money begets more money too. As well as PIs in receipt of grants receiving a portion of the overheads (not always the case even within my institution), some are then given additional monies from our national funding agency (as is the case for SFI who will give anyone with an Advanced ERC grant moving to Ireland up to €1million to smooth the transition!), but they are also rewarded indirectly with staff appointments in their research area (I suspect mostly as an easy decision that doesn’t need much thought beyond “there’s gold in them there hills”).

 

For my part, the grants I have held to date have not provided overheads of any note and I have benefitted indirectly from the grant successes of others, with my students accessing scholarships, stipend awards and travel expenses (though some of these funds come from philanthropic donations too). The reasons these grants don’t come with overheads are that the funding agencies in question argue that the PhD student fees they pay are there to cover the bench fees and associated costs for the student.

 

The most frustrating part is that all the research and teaching outputs in the world don’t make up for inputs in the form of cold hard euros. A recent internal missive from our institutional Research Office berating us for slipping down the world rankings by a whole 7 places, seemed to forget that many of the members of the academic community who contributed to our top 100 placement through hard-fought teaching and excellent research papers, books and other outputs, did so on a shoestring budget with innovative vim and vigour, in the face of cutbacks to our research, teaching and personal incomes.

 

We should all celebrate with our colleagues when they get the big grants as we all benefit from their success, and we collectively need the money to make the academic world go around. Those who win these grants need to remember that not every can and will be able to land these treasured grants and that they themselves were to some lucky on the day. Those running our institutions** need to remember that the success of any activity will ultimately be valued on its outputs and not who won the most money, even, in the end, university rankings.

 

 

*though I was pleased to read that Trinity recently spurned this approach so as to not turn off the not-quite-so-loaded donors.

 

**Interestingly, our nearest neighbours out at UCD handled their rankings very well, with a balanced and measured message to the community.

 

author: Andrew Jackson, @yodacomplex

Image: Wikicommons

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Advice for new Faculty

hinew

Congratulations – you’ve got your first Faculty position and you’re about to start! So you know you have to put together new teaching modules, get some grants and write some kick-ass papers. But in the midst of the head-down craziness of a new position it’s important to keep your eye on the ball. How do you make sure that in two years time you’ve been doing the right things and can progress at your new institution?

1. Get hold of the promotion form for your new institution, start filling it in and update it every 3 months or so. Do the same with the annual appraisal form, hopefully it’s similar to the promotion form! That way you can start building your portfolio and you don’t forget achievements. It also keeps you focused on the activities that you will be evaluated on. Try to talk to people who have sat on the promotion and progression committees to find out if there are other things you need to be doing.

2. Make active decisions about what you want to do rather than getting given jobs. Suggest to your manager potential service roles that fit with your interests & skills. If you’re asked to do something you’d really like to do but you don’t have time for then say that. “I would really love to do that but I currently have these other service/admin roles that prevent me from taking it on – is there a way of making room in my workload for this new job?”

3. Network within your new institution, you never know who will be able to help you out. It’s often easier to ask someone how a new task is done rather than trying to do it yourself from scratch, find those invaluable people who know the ropes.

4. The first 2 years are really tough no matter how well you do so cut yourself some slack. Most of the best things about being an academic never make it onto the promotion or appraisal portfolio. Count the successes & moments of satisfaction: improvements in your teaching evaluations, seeing a student get a concept due to your explanation, getting the funding to do something you are really passionate about, getting a paper published that you’re super-proud of. Don’t dwell on the missed deadlines (there will be many), rejections (there will be many, many) and frustrations (manyn) along the road.

And if you haven’t yet got that ideal academic position we’re hiring a spatial ecology/environmental biology permanent, fully funded, Assistant Professor at Trinity College Dublin J https://www.tcd.ie/Zoology/vacanciesindex.php closing on 18 September 2015.

Author

Yvonne Buckley

Photo credit

http://www.weenotions.co.uk/user/products/hinew.jpg

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We have no need for that hypothesis

Science-vs-Religion-e1364999088759Scientists as a demographic group tend to be atheists. One survey of members of the National Academy of Sciences found “…near universal rejection of the transcendent…” As scientists are concerned with the study of the natural world they are liable to eschew any supernaturalistic explanations, although there are notable exceptions. Historically science and religion have frequently crossed swords but recently there has been a marked increase in the criticism of religion by various scientists.

An increasing number of scientists have become popularisers of their research area and frequently engage with the public; this inevitably leadsto the person’s own philosophy and opinions being put forward in addition to the science. In particular, the past decade has bore witness to a surge in the amount of popular literature promoting atheism and criticizing religion. Scientists have also entered the public sphere to debate intellectuals in theology, philosophy etc. on matters of religion and atheism.

Scientists have had both a proactive and a reactive response to religion. For some, science can now fill the gap that religion once occupied. Richard Dawkins wrote that Darwin has made it possible to become an intellectually fulfilled atheist. This success has led to the development of a modern scientism. Michael Shermer, the founder of The Skeptics Society and a noted atheist, describes it as “…a scientific worldview that encompasses natural explanations for all phenomena”. This is a complimentary definition of a typically pejorative phrase that has dogmatic connotations.

One criticism from an Irish perspective comes from Gabriel Daly who, while celebrating the achievements of science, says that scientism “…can be rightly repudiated as a monster of arrogance and philistinism.”

Shermer’s contention is that certain developments in science have allowed humans to ask questions and indeed get answers from areas once exclusive to religion. For instance, cosmology and evolution can probe the origins of the universe and of our selves. On Stephen Hawking, Shermer wrote, “…this being the Age of Science, it is scientism’s shamans who command our veneration.” He maintains that scientism can bridge the gap between the two cultures of science and the humanities that CP Snow described. Daly also invokes the idea of Snow’s two cultures but he has a different interpretation to Shermer. He argues that the two cultures offer different perspectives, that neither one has the final say on any issue so there is no reason for conflict.

It does appear that scientists have shed the need for religion as a way to look at the world. If you have that mindset you’re happy with an unwoven rainbow.

Author

Adam Kane, kanead[at]tcd.ie

Photo credit

Science vs Religion

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There is no magic formula…(sorry!)

miracle

I recently attended a mentoring event that left me faintly frustrated and I was finding it hard to put into words exactly why. Eventually it came to me – at these events people always want the answer to the same question: what is the magic formula for succeeding* in academia? The problem is that there isn’t one, and I always feel really bad having to say that.

Sadly being smart is not enough. You need to work hard (not 24/7 or anything insane but you can’t slack off all the time and expect to succeed) and you need to be lucky. That luck can involve being in the right place at the right time, having the right skills, or knowing the right person. Of course people make their own luck, and being in the right place is not going to help you if you don’t also have the CV to be able to grab the opportunity. But still I would say that luck plays a fairly large part in most people’s careers. Of course you need publications, preferably in well-respected journals (Science and Nature papers would be a bonus!). But how many publications depends on your field, the post and, importantly, who you are competing with. The same applies to grants, presentations, teaching, outreach etc. This makes giving generic advice really difficult.

Another problem is that things are changing rapidly in the academic job market. Often we get advice from PIs who got their jobs in a completely different economic and academic climate. For example, I got a PhD with no papers, no research experience, and when I was half way through my MSc degree. These days this wouldn’t be enough for me to get PhD funding from the Irish Research Council. My point here is that you should take generic advice with a grain of salt, and also try to avoid getting annoyed with PIs for not giving you the “magic formula”. All we can do is tell you about our personal experiences.

What kinds of advice might be more useful (beyond the obvious advice to “write more good papers”)? First, before you’re looking for jobs take a senior academic in your field (preferably several) out for a coffee to show them your CV and ask them if there are any obvious gaps. This gives you the opportunity to fill those gaps before it becomes an issue. Second, when you start applying for jobs, try and get as much information about the job as possible from the advert but also ask people in the department if you can. This might save you time, for example if it turns out there is an internal candidate or if your CV is really not competitive, or give you an idea what the department is really looking for. Third, if you apply for jobs and get rejected, try and get feedback. This won’t always happen due to the volume of applications, and it won’t always be useful, but it’s worth a try. And don’t let rejections discourage you, keep on trying!

Good luck, and if you do find the magic formula please let us know!

*this assumes that getting a permanent job is equivalent to success!

Author

Natalie Cooper @nhcooper123

Photo credit

http://cnx.org/

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Shall we kill all our bees?

1024px-Bee_covered_in_pollen“Kill all the bees!!”, the modest proposal of Prof. Paul Sutton from University of South Australia is a provocative attempt to convince economic rationalists to finally start counting what really counts.

If all the bees were to go extinct we will have to replace them by, for example, hand-pollinating our crops. That means employment, economic growth in terms of GDP and tax revenues: very good for the Economy. Continue reading “Shall we kill all our bees?”

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Outside hours – working for free and making it pay

kids-alexandra-palace-bioblitz

Do voluntary work and outreach activities really make much of a difference in an environmental career?  Yes, in general, but not for the reasons you might expect.

Picture this: you have finally found an amazing career path that you really want to follow.  It is engaging and challenging and you will make a positive contribution to the world.  But before the excitement carries you away you discover a big problem – other people have found out about your dream job and they want it too.  A good degree is a great start, but if you want to land that first job or move up the ranks, you need something more.  That was the challenge facing me as an aspiring ecologist nearly ten years ago, and the question I asked was this: how can I make myself stand out?

Work for free

The advice pages tell you the same thing again and again – it is all about qualifications, skills and experience.  But if the qualifications are not enough to get the job, then how do you get the skills and experience? Well, you work for free – and frequently from a very young age.  Career profiles of successful ecologists often detail the work they did for the local wildlife group from the age of six, when they were apparently already experts in hedgerow flora and bog moss. For the rest of us who were more interested in Lego and finger painting at that age, it can be a bit disheartening.

Putting it into practice

For me, collecting additional work hours began in college.  I started doing free or badly paid field work during my undergraduate, lectured during my masters, and as a consultant ecologist I did as many training courses as I could.  There is an embarrassment of acronyms in the Professional Memberships section of my CV.  To supplement formal training, I took on some voluntary bird and plant surveys.  A few years ago, I started to help organise an academic conference and environmental career fair in my spare time.

Time for a reckoning

Now, my supervisor tells me that maybe I have gone a bit far.  Is it really possible to be an active member of over ten organisations and still do a PhD in three years? Given the time and money involved, can I afford it? Really, how have I actually ever benefitted from being involved in such a breadth of organisations?  Should I cut down?

Volunteering and training can give you hard skills, but the biggest dividends I noticed are fuzzier and hard to quantify.  Networking opportunities might be the biggest benefit.   When I finished my masters, it was contacts I had built up over the previous two years who helped me to get a decent job.  People I have met through volunteer work advised me when I wanted to go back to college, helped me to find funding and they are there whenever I pick up the phone with a question.

Working outside your comfort zone will increase your confidence.  The thought of selling myself or raising funds used to fill me with toe-curling shame and embarrassment, until I had to fund-raise for a national conference.  Being forced to do it helped me to get over my reluctance to ask for cash.  Without that experience, I don’t think I could have asked for the funding required for my PhD.

Broadening your perspective can be a huge benefit at work.  As a volunteer, you can meet people with a range of backgrounds and training, and this is very helpful when it comes to team work or engaging with clients.  Having recently worked with zoologists, engineers, educators and students made moving from botanical consultancy to a multidisciplinary research project merely intimidating instead of being terrifying and insurmountable.

What do do?

Surprisingly, my experience seems to be quite normal.  Research shows that volunteering helps your job prospects whatever sector you are in, but not for the reasons you might expect.  By taking on volunteer work, you prove yourself to be motivated and engaged, but you are not necessarily perceived as being more skilled or qualified.  Who you know is as important as what you know, and in some cases motivation and drive can trump academic skills.  For me, this means I will keep on doing voluntary work, but be smarter about it.   I have been lucky to get plenty of in the course of my PhD, so I will focus on management and networking activities.  I am looking forward to it.  From now on, I will be socialising for a cause, enjoying the illusion that with each sip of wine I am boosting my career prospects and helping to make the world a better place.
Author

Aoife Delaney, amdelane[at]tcd.ie

Photo credit

http://www.nhm.ac.uk/natureplus

 

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Before training your dragon, print a 3D tail for him

dog

3D printing (or additive manufacturing, AM) describes any of the various processes used to make a three-dimensional object. In 3D printing, additive processes are used, in which successive layers of material are laid down under computer control. While its limitless potential in manufacturing, the construction industry, transportation and human health has been widely recognized, 3D printing also plays a significant role in animal protection and conservation.

Several cases of using 3D printing for animal assistance have been reported during the past few years. Although artificial limbs have been used to help poor dogs and other animals who lost their legs, 3D printing makes the design and manufacture of the limbs far easier. And, thanks to the well developed 3D-scanning technology, the printed limbs are more efficient and comfortable for animals. Just see how happy this dog is.

Birds also benefit from 3D printing. This bald eagle and Costa Rican toucan both received printed beaks which will hopefully improve their chances of survival. And a tortoise has even been given a new shell thanks to 3D printing technology.

3D printing can be also applied to animal conservation in the wild. For example, the Wildlife Conservation UAV Challenge uses 3D printed drones to save endangered animals from poachers. 3D printing has also been used to build animal habitats including hives for bees, artificial reefs for fish, and nests for birds.

For the sake of scientific education, 3D printed models of skulls, organs and muscles can be used for demonstrations and detailed observations. In research, the technology can play an important role in studies of animal behavior and physical ecology. For example, 3D printed birds and fish can be used to explore how animals adapt to hydraulic resistance.

The wide-ranging potential for using 3D printing in animal protection and conservation seems limitless!

Author: Qiang Yang (Marvin), @MarvinQiangYang

Image Source

 

 

 

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The moral of the story

polit-marionetten30

Most of us have some inbuilt sense of right and wrong; don’t steal and don’t murder are as basic to us as our ability to breathe. But where does this moral sense come from? In general, people of a scientific bent don’t attribute it to God nor as some sort of free floating truth that can be grasped by the human intellect. If you hold a materialistic view, that is to say the idea that at its base the universe is composed of energy and matter, then it’s next to impossible to understand morality in those terms. Instead the scientific view proposes our morality is an evolved feature, something which gave group-living animals a selective advantage over their amoral competitors. A social group that tries to cooperate when it’s made up primarily of murderers, thieves and cheats won’t get very far. By contrast a crowd of goodies can gain the many benefits of cooperation.

There is a problem with this theory though. Irrespective of its truth, an evolved morality renders us with a situation where there is nothing objectively right or wrong about anything. Even an act of murder isn’t intrinsically immoral. One way to think of this is to compare it with our other adaptations. We don’t consider any other evolved traits ‘moral’, it’s not as if four legs good, two legs bad is something people really espouse. What we’re left with is a moral nihilism.

‘So what?’ you might ask.  We’re a smart species, we can decide for ourselves the best way to act such that our society can flourish. Why don’t we adopt some sort of utilitarianism, the moral system that promotes the greatest happiest for the most, and judge the rightness or wrongness of our acts that way? Indeed this is the way most secular societies establish what is permissible today. This idea can even allow for the expansion of our moral circle to include other beings who are capable of suffering.

Yet the modern understanding of our selves means even a created morality still can’t fairly punish or praise for a simple reason: humans have lost their soul. Modern neuroscience tells us there is no actor in our minds making decisions moral or otherwise. We are our brains, nothing more. There is no ‘I’, no ‘ghost in the machine’. The idea of a freely willed agent who can separate his or her self from their genetics and environment is anathema to anyone who takes materialism seriously.

Much follows from this. Most notably our justice system should be radically re-evaluated in light of this idea to become more biologically informed. Currently persons with certain mental disabilities are afforded more leniency when it comes to their sentencing because they are said not to be in full possession of rational thought processes. Something has affected their ability to have done otherwise. But as automata this is true for every person who has ever existed. This is not to say that we should open up the prisons and free every criminal the world over rather that we should focus much more on promoting environments that cause people to act in a way conducive to a functioning society.

We are all of us robots acting on inputs. Some people take these inputs and act like ‘goodies’ whereas others can take the same information and behave like ‘baddies’. Take your pick of a hero or tyrant from history. They don’t deserve your respect or your contempt. That is the price of a biological morality.

Author: Adam Kane, kanead[at]tcd.ie, @P1zPalu

Photo credit: http://www.postswitch.de/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/polit-marionetten30.jpg

 

 

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Zoological Zodiac

zodiac-signs02

Aries- March 20 to April 20. Your model will converge around the 13th, which is in no way related to your model convergence dance (turning in a circle three times and raising your left hand twice).  Please stop doing it, we can all see you.

Taurus- April 20 to May 21. A reviewer will suggest additional work prior to publication. Reply to the reviewer with an audio file of yourself singing Bruce Springsteen’s No Surrender and the reviewer will back down.

Gemini- May 21 to June 21. May is a great month for fieldwork. Even if you’ve never done it before and all of your prior research is theoretical, give fieldwork a try. Sure, it’ll be grand!

Cancer. June 21 to July 23. Luck is on your side! This is a great month for finicky experimental work. Optimize your PCR this month and it’ll work at least until June. Probably.

Leo. July 23 to August 23. As Mercury moves into retrograde, your ability to make Powerpoint videos run will be at its peak. Plan an exciting video filled slide show for the 17th. You can make it work this one time!

Virgo- August 23 to Sept. 23. Students in your research group will actually submit work on time. Be prepared for an influx of papers on the 23rd. Assign random grades and see if anyone notices.

Libra- Sept. 23 to October 23. Your research team is going to face an ethical issue within the month. Ask everyone in the department what they think of it and then pick a response out of a hat to solve it!

Scorpio- October 23 to Nov. 22. A research road block will be solved by just ignoring it until the email moves to the second page of your inbox. Go ahead, ignore the issues!

Sagittarius-  Nov. 22 to Dec. 22. News of your ability to comfort sad undergraduates will spread this month. Stock up on Kleenex and sweets in preparation of the post-exam panics.

Capricorn- Dec. 22 to January 20. Someone in the department will steal your lunch twice this month. Try leaving snarky post-it notes. People love those!

Aquarius- January 20 to Feb. 18.  Write a grant application. Please, just write it. Everyone’s waiting on you. Come on.

Pisces- Feb. 18 to March 20. You will be struck with inspiration for a fantastic research project at a conference but then forget it before you can write it down. You should really carry a pen and paper more frequently.

Author: Mystic Mo, william2[at]tcd.ie

Photo credit: http://www.freelogovectors.net/