It’s a (somewhat) unusual thing we do at Carleton: Our Department chair rotate regularly, and our Associate Deans as well. Since the Dean’s office interacts pretty heavily with people across other divisions at Carleton (Dean of Students, Vice President and Treasurer, etc) the regular change of management tends to catch people off guard and puzzle them. Likewise at institutions across the country with whom we interact, I believe.

Here’s a quick observation about what this rotation means to me (perhaps I’ll blog more about this wearing my faculty hat later):

Yes, it’s true that it can be weird to change jobs, and weird for everyone else when a whole new person with a whole new decision-making style and perspective shows up every three years (not that long, if you think about it, on the scale of an institution that changes rather more slowly otherwise). It also means that I spent an enormous amount of time on a very steep learning curve and neither the College nor I seem to be taking advantage of all the experience I’ve gained.

I could explain at length why and how that I have no regrets about taking this on at all — I enjoyed it — and am equally without regret at returning to being a physicist full-time. But for the moment, let it suffice for me to note that there is no moral hazard in such a situation. That is, every decision I (or my colleagues with the other portfolios here) make in the managing of faculty or curriculum is something I have to live with when I return to the faculty ranks. There is no forgetting what it was like, and what it will be like, to be in the trenches, and there is no ‘pulling up the drawbridge after me’ attitude that might result if I started thinking of faculty as ‘them’. Personally, I wish management in other divisions and other industries worked the same way: Coming from and returning to the ranks.

And if I’d been told I was going to be away for more than 3 years from doing Physics, I wouldn’t have contemplated taking it on, as irreversible a leap into the unknown as it would have been. No Peter Principle applying here, in short.

The brownish building on the left is Kohn Hall, which hosts the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. This week, I’ve been spending hours in a darkened room in there, trying my best to keep up with the talks at the workshop on ‘Quantum Control on Complex Landscapes’ going on there. I have also been trying to keep up with my ‘other/real’ job of Associate Dean, staying up late or waking up obnoxiously early in my hotel room. Lunch has been spent with other workshoppers, including my post-doc adviser and one former undergraduate student, clarifying something we’ve been hearing about, arguing about quantum mechanics in general, or just catching up with each other. Every once in a while I get 1/2 hour for a short walk.

I’ve been to KITP a handful of times before, and was a KITP scholar early in my time at Carleton; it’s also where I helped hatch the Anacapa Society. It’s one of my favorite places in the world to do physics. And not just because it’s in a gorgeous location: I love the feel and flavor of how it’s set up, encouraging conversations, collaborations, community.

Lately I have been feeling… defeated.
For quite a while now, I have been fighting increasingly overwhelming helplessness, an absence of control over my time and my work.This will likely not be a revelation to long-time blog readers. But, this time I feel like I have really lost the game. I am completely torn up by the demands on my time, pulled in every direction, things are constantly needed from me. I thought I could do it: I have stamina, I have determination, I have ambition, I can do it all.

I cannot.

Granted, she’s in a different place than I am (at an R1, with 3 kids), but her post captured elements of what I have been hearing over and over again in conversations with close colleagues across the country who are in the same stage in their career as I am — 2-7 years past getting tenure. We started out on the tenure track enjoying teaching and excited about working with students on research. We thought the post-tenure years would allow us to explore interests more deeply, to take advantage of our experience to be wiser in our classrooms and our research labs, to feel stable enough to take some new risks. We expected to feel in control of our careers and to see our CVs expand as we continued to grow professionally. Instead, we’re running around like chickens with our heads cut off. What’s the problem? As one friend noted, “I’m watching 100s of hours time be summarized by a line on the CV that says ‘program coordinator for X’ or ‘chair of strategic initiative Y’, but that counts for nothing professionally.”

This term has featured a lot of unbloggable happenings, and I’ve had some weeks where the ratio of time spent on the administrative/service components of my job to time spent on teaching and research activities combined was 1.5 to 1. Unlike some, I don’t inherently dislike administrative work/service — I am happy to participate in conversations and activities that contribute to the campus community. But I’m a faculty member first, not an administrator, yet the demands on my time are often otherwise. As a faculty member with much more of my career ahead of me than behind me, I am still primarily judged by the individual accomplishments on my CV: the publications, grants, and conference presentations. Administrative tasks don’t “count” in that individual accounting, so it’s no wonder that I, and others at this career stage, begin to feel torn and frayed.

Despite the general gloominess of this post, the one bright spot this term is that I am thoroughly enjoying the class that I am teaching. Hopefully, I will have a chance to write some reflections on the course soon, because it is one of the things that has kept me going.

Since Newton’s classical apple cart was upset by relativity and quantum theory, physicists have been seeking a theory that would unify the macroscopic and the microscopic and explain “everything” (for sufficiently small values of the word ‘explain’ and large values of the word ‘everything’).

CERN theoretical physicist and coiner of the term “theory of everything”, John Ellis, best-selling Oxford physicist Frank Close, and philosopher of science Nicholas Maxwell have a conversation about the limits of knowledge in this video.

The discussion ranges from physics to philosophy,  methodological to metaphysical, with [a Standard Model t-shirt wearing] John Ellis bemoaning physics failure in devising a means of experimentally testing String Theory.

It’s fun. And it’s made/posted by a (new to me) endeavor called the Institute of Art and Ideas.

For standard courses where I am the instructor of record, I’ve not taught any course more than three times in the 22 trimesters I’ve been at Carleton. Labs are a different story; I’ve repeated those more often. A couple of my colleagues in other departments were talking about repeating a single class six or seven times in five years. To me, that sounds like a blessing (more opportunities to refine the course, possibility for reduced prep time) and perhaps a bit of a curse (getting tired of the course, being concerned about falling into a rut).

So here’s my question — in an ideal world, how many times would you want to repeat teaching a course over a certain period of time? When would you want a break from a course? Does it matter if the course is offered every term, every year, or every other year? I loved my schedule when I taught one of my courses annually for three years in a row, but recently, I haven’t had much consistency in my teaching schedule.

My toddler offered me some course prep advice tonight: “Your students should do more art projects” When I asked if she had suggestions, she said, “Handprints with paint.” If I run out of energy for course prep soon, I may be tempted to take her advice.

When I was still a junior faculty member, I expected that service/administrative obligations would grow after getting tenure, but becoming department chair just a year after getting tenure has shown me that I underestimated the extent of the change. Pre-tenure, colleagues both at my institution and elsewhere worked to help me protect my time so I could spend it on the things that mattered for achieving tenure. As soon as the tenure decision was made, suddenly it felt as if people had tried to protect my time pre-tenure for the express purpose of being able to ask for my time post-tenure. While I expected the increase in service/administrative roles, I had hoped that I would have more ability to choose to say yes to opportunities that interested me and no to those that didn’t. The reality is that certain service roles (department chair, for example) aren’t optional, and they demand a lot of time. Despite messages such as, “The art of happiness is to serve all,” I worry that, over time, service demands will be a recipe for my becoming unduly cranky at best or seriously burned out at worst. I have become good at turning down requests to serve, and many of the service roles I agree to are ones that are of particular interest to me, but I’ve got a ways to go before I’m happy with how I define the service portion of my job.

Pipeline guilt

A great blog post that hit a little too close to home. When I was in college, discussing future plans and wavering about whether to go to grad school, a trusted senior someone in my life said, “You will go to grad school, and you will be successful. Otherwise, you are just contributing to the women in science problem.” I think it was said with the best of intentions, but the statement left a permanent scar. Ever since then, with every decision I make, I am always haunted by the specter of whether my personal decisions are hurting other women. Of course, I realize it’s ridiculous. Personal decisions are just that, personal, and it is not my individual responsibility to make life choices where I push harder or choose particular paths just to prove a point about women in physics. And yet, whenever, I make decisions, I always have this niggling concern that I might make a decision that is right for me but contributes negatively to the bigger issues relevant to women in physics. I love what Jessamyn writes in her post: “Not only is it important to make decisions that will make you happy, but it’s also important to recognize that there are many ways to advocate for underrepresented groups, and many ways to lead by example. Many of them are outside the pipeline, and it isn’t a betrayal of all the women who couldn’t make it to the top to choose a different path.”

Who persists in a MOOC?

I was interested to see the demographics of those who completed edX’s Circuits and Electronics course: “80 percent of respondents said they had taken a ‘comparable’ course at a traditional university prior to working their way through Circuits & Electronics. Of that 80 percent, nearly two-thirds said the MOOC version was better than the ‘comparable’ course they claimed to already have taken.” Generally speaking, a course is easier the second time around so I’m not surprised people liked the MOOC version better. However, it’s also interesting that most of those who succeeded already had the benefit of traditional education. At least in this case, it seems like the MOOC isn’t providing a revolutionary education, but rather refreshing what had already been learned through traditional education. One aspect of MOOCs that greatly it interests me the demographics of the participants:  previous educational background, socioeconomic status, gender, race, and ethnicity. I imagine that there are probably significant disparities in the demographics. As someone concerned about diversity in higher education, I think it’s important to pay attention to who might be well served and who might be left behind in the MOOC world.

The physics major opens many doors. The quantitative modeling experience, the computer programming and laboratory skills, the thoughtful approach to problem solving, these are all relevant in many different arenas. Looking at the diverse paths of our graduates, I’m always bothered by why it is still hard to sell physics as a relevant major.  Part of the problem is that physics majors (with the exception of the few who get PhDs and go into academia) don’t become physicists, at least not in job title. Other majors seem to have clearer career tracks. Pre-heath students are on their way to jobs in the health professions. Computer science can provide a path to software development positions. Physics provides a clear track to ….? The answer is that physics can lead in a lot of different directions, but the physics major itself doesn’t send you in a particular direction. Student interests, experiences, and avocations in large part determine where students go after graduation. While the diversity of trajectories is a strength of the physics major, I also think that the open-ended possibilities can strike fear into the heart of an undecided student. Why risk the unknown if there are other STEM majors that can provide more clearly defined career paths?  My answer to that question is why pigeonhole yourself if you can choose a major that leaves immense career flexibility.  One of my favorite websites to have students visit is the Hidden Physicists page on the SPS Careers Using Physics website.  Nearly ninety percent of physics majors may be hidden, but wow, they do a fascinating array of things!

Another challenge in trying to sell the physics major is how best to highlight the ways in which physics majors can make a contribution to society. When I talk with incoming Carleton students, one of the most common reasons that science-minded students express an interest in being pre-med is because of a desire to have a fulfilling career which “makes a difference.” Students I talk with really want their work to be meaningful and impact people’s lives for the better. Physics often seems impersonal and remote — the particulars of the Higgs boson are unlikely to have much impact on public health or quality of life. Nevertheless, many physics majors choose career paths that have a significant impact on both individual lives (think teachers and medical physicists) and on bigger social problems. Physicists in engineering have long done “big impact” work, although they often work behind the scenes to make circumstances significantly better for society as a whole (reliable distribution of electrical power, designing greener buildings and more efficient transportation, etc). Recently, I’ve seen many of our physics majors interested in careers in the renewable energy sector.

The question, of course, is how to get these messages out to students early, before they decide that the path of least career resistance is to take a path that is more clearly defined.

I wanted to choose something that was substantial enough that it would force me to change my habits, but one that wouldn’t feel like too much of a burden. I thought long and hard about what I would do, and ultimately decided that my selfish summer goal would be to read ten books between the last day of exams in the spring and the first day of classes in the fall. The books couldn’t be anything work-related, so books I read for class prep didn’t count. Why did I choose this as my goal? In part because reading for fun always feels like a guilty pleasure, one that should be put aside for folding laundry or reading journal articles. In the past few summers, I’ve been lucky if I read 5 or 6 non-work-related books.  Thus making reading a priority was a genuine challenge for me. I’m happy to report, however, that today I finished my tenth book, just in the nick of time, because classes start tomorrow. The whole endeavor highlighted how bad I am at taking time for myself.  I felt guilty throughout this project, worrying that I should be doing something else with my time. But I also took great pleasure in the reading that I did and the license it gave me to explore, engage, and reflect on everything from characters’ human foibles to life’s big questions.

For readers of this blog, three of the books I read might be of interest. For physics folks, Alan Lightman’s newest novel Mr. g: A Novel about the Creation is a clever, engaging account of the creation story that sits at the intersection of physics and philosophy. For those interested in women’s roles today, I highly recommend Anna Fels’ book, Necessary Dreams: Ambition in Women’s Changing Lives. Andrew Delbanco’s book, College: What It Was, Is, and Should Be, will be on my mind for quite some time to come; it’s a thought-provoking look at higher education and residential liberal arts education.

And with that, I close the door on summer for good. Onward to a new term!