Failure is an Option

During the first night of our around-the-world tour of education, I had this overwhelming sense of the arrogance/complacency/stupidity/ignorance/blindness that I have as an American.  I realized somewhere in there just how much I (and I suspect most of us in the States) take for granted.

The first issue was choice.  In some other countries, we have 14-year-olds choosing their future and nearly stuck on that path without the option of changing their minds.  Here, when I was a senior in high school, they told me “you can be whatever you want to be”.  I have a nearly infinite array of choices and even after picking my initial path, switching majors was a piece of cake.  Then choosing a career that really wasn’t in my major.  Then choosing to switch careers a couple times, then choosing to come back to school in a major that was sorta close to all of what I had done before but in an effort to switch careers again into teaching.  I didn’t really realize just what a luxury having all those choices at my fingertips was.  One of the freedoms I have also just taken for granted.

The second issue that struck me was the inherent assumptions that we (and here I have to include at least our instructor) make about our foreign colleagues/classmates.  The session was set up for foreign students to tell the class about the education system in their countries, starting with elementary school.  But did anyone else notice that we never educated those from other countries about what the system is here in the United States?  Do we assume that they already know?  Why would they?  Or, more insidiously, do we truly think this should be a one-way exchange?  I doubt that Dean DePauw set up the session with the intent of being unfair, but don’t our foreign brethren deserve the same opportunity to compare their system to ours that we got by listening to their stories?  It seemed to me that a large portion (20%?) of our class was being short-changed.  As I said, I don’t think it was on purpose, but I do think it is part of the blinders we wear as Americans.  And realizing this, it opened my eyes a bit.  I hope I can work on setting those blinders aside to make me a better professor.

And in the meantime, I want to share a little bit of our system, based on my own experiences both as student and parent.  Others may have a totally different take on our early education system so I hope they take the opportunity to fill us all in with their own experiences.

The first thing to note is that policies on education vary from state to state or even from county to county.  For example, I started my kindergarten year at age 4 in Pennsylvania.  Half way through, we moved to Virginia where they deemed that I had started a year early so they kicked me out and I had to start all over again the following fall.  Of course, back then, kindergarten was a half-day program whose main skill taught was finger painting, so being thrown out wasn’t much of a set back.  Today, kindergarten has more of a curriculum with my kids going a full day and learning to read within that year.  Then I had 6 more years of elementary school to be followed by 2 years in an “intermediate” school.  I was in a county with lots of tax base, so the offerings in 7th grade included lots of languages (I chose Latin), music classes (I chose beginning guitar) and lots of levels of basic classes like math (they pushed me into algebra, a class typically for 8th graders).  Most of the way through my 7th grade year, we moved to a different county that was less wealthy and a lot of my choices went away.  I was then in what that county referred to as a “middle” school, including 6th, 7th, and 8th graders.  That model seems to be the most common in this region now, though I know of schools in more rural areas that go all the way from kindergarten through 8th.  In my case, I had to forget Latin and re-start on French in 8th grade.

High school is 9th through 12th grades, so with the age requirements for kindergarten, the vast majority of students graduate at the age of 18.  State law requires parents to send their kids to school, except in the case of “home schooling”.  Public schools are free to attend and with the mandatory attendance, caters to all levels of academic aptitude.  The curriculum is fairly rigid, or at least it was when I went.  In certain years, you study certain courses with maybe a third of your schedule open for electives.  Each required subject (math, social studies, English, etc.) is taught at various ability levels.  Grades are similar to Virginia Tech though in most cases, a broader range is used for each letter grade.  The letter grades are translated to a number scale (4.0 when I went) and you have a GPA.  Just after I graduated high school, my county went to a 5.0 scale for advanced classes so that basically you take the 4-point scale and add 1.  It was an easier way to distinguish those of us who struggled through classes like calculus or 5th-year French from those who took less grueling subjects.  I am still bummed that they didn’t have that system when I graduated, as I likely would have placed a few spots higher in my class.

The process of getting into college is somewhat variable, depending on the university.  Just about all of them require standardized tests (the SAT’s) with some needing more subject specific tests (ACT or Achievements).  Students take these tests usually in the 11th grade and have the opportunity to re-take them as many times as they want with the composite score being the best individual score from all the attempts.  When I took the SAT, there were only two subjects, Math and English, but now I believe they have split English into two different tests.  My final score for college admission purposes was my English from the first time I took it and my Math from the second time.  My scores were pretty high by the standards of the time, but in talking to various people recently, it seems that scores today are significantly higher than they were then.  If you read Virginia Tech’s info, the median score today is in the mid 1300’s but back when I came here as an undergrad, they were in the 1100’s.

In addition to test scores and grades, different colleges look for different things.  Like extra-curricular activities, admission essay, etc.  And different programs within colleges have different requirements.  For example, I know a girl who is making 4 college trips in October and November to audition for their dance programs.  Her sister is dance major with a math minor and intends to go to medical school after graduation.  Certainly not the typical path but indicative of all the opportunities and choices we have in the system.

And then there is the undergrad experience.  Some universities require you to pick a major before you arrive while others assume that all freshmen are “undeclared” giving them a chance to adjust to college before picking a major.  A large percentage of students change their minds on their major at least once during their academic careers and thus, 4 years is only an estimate on how long you will be in school.  In my case, I switched once and slacked off a lot so spent 6 years getting a 4-year degree.  Because of my financial need, I got some assistance from the federal government, but wound up borrowing thousands and thousands of dollars to finish.

So hopefully with this brief introduction, students from the more “rigid” countries can see there is a very large difference in how we do things in the United States.  And, you can get a feel for just how variable and flexible our system is.  As for my fellow Americans, if you read this far, maybe like me, you got a sense of just how fortunate we are to have what we have.

I have recently gone through the 1940 document on Academic Freedom and Tenure and found the magic 7 year tenure track number.  This dates back over 70 years?  Wow.  It may be time for an update.

Let’s assume that a big part of obtaining tenure is research and publication.  Think about how that was accomplished in 1940.  Let’s say I wanted to study the behavior of widgets.  I get a bunch of them, test them, write down my results in a notebook, fire up my pencil and paper and spend months crunching data.  Then I pull out my manual typewriter and start typing away, maybe stopping from time to time to spend a few hours hand-drawing the figures that would accompany my article.  So in 7 years, how many studies can I finish and publish?  2?  3?

Now think about today.  I get my widgets and run the tests.  Given modern equipment, depending on the tests, they probably run a lot faster.  I record my data into my spreadsheet and almost instantly have my analysis.  I copy and paste that into my word processor, re-format, put out a pdf and and ship it via email to my reviewers and eventually, the publication.  How many of those can I do in 7 years?

I am not saying that the system is flawed.  In fact, I would think that the 7 years is likely a good amount of time to gain the academic mindset that one would likely need to be an effective professor.  But, the standards for performance have certainly changed in the 70+ years since the 7-year timeline was created.  Should it be re-visited?  What do you think?

For any familiar with my personal blog, you know that I often come up with seemingly random thoughts that somehow I think warrant blog attention.  For example, what is up with the yoga pants craze?  But it seems that today’s thought is more in line with the purpose of my GRAD blog than it is concerned with my personal observations of campus life as a non-traditional grad student.

This morning after my class (8 am classes should be undergrad level only, by the way), I spent some time catching up with a classmate.  We were neighbors for quite a while, but since I moved this summer, we haven’t seen much of each other.  The conversation turned toward discussing various professors including their knowledge base, attitudes, teaching styles, and compatibility with our individual personalities.  You see, he and I are on similar tracks.  We both have kids, both gave up a somewhat lucrative professional practice to come to grad school, and both intend to teach in the future.  And though discussing professors is quite common amongst my classmates, it occurred to me this morning that it is much different for those of us on the professor track.

When I first got here, I knew what I wanted to do afterwards and that has flavored everything I do.  I sit in classes and not only attempt to absorb the material but also think about whether I would want to teach the class and if so, how would I teach it?  Would I use the same examples?  Would I want to use PowerPoint or chalkboard or some of each?  How would I grade that bear of an assignment that takes students a month and a half to complete and a lifetime to truly understand?  I would hazard the guess that many in the PFP and Pedagogy classes have similar thoughts during their education.  In fact, Pedagogy made us consider a single class syllabus, forcing us to consider these types of thoughts, even if we hadn’t previously.

But today went beyond that.  Today prompted thoughts of what kind of professor I want to be outside the classroom.  Do I want to be the professor who plays favorites and isn’t afraid to show it?  Do I want to be on many different grad students’ committees or none? Do I want to invite students to meet at my house just because I dislike coming to campus on non-teaching days?  What kind of respect would I show to a 22-year old with a chip on their shoulder instilled at some elitist undergrad school?  Would I encourage the use of Mathematica or Mathcad or Matlab, Windows or Mac, Paper or Plastic?  A thousand questions whose answers are slowly evolving with each experience and each conversation with professors, classmates, or even near strangers who happen to enroll in the same PFP class as I have.

And in the asking and answering of these questions, I realize that the grad school experience is very different for those of us aspiring to be professors.  We may do the same research, may write the same papers, may attend the same football games (and tailgates), but we think differently.  We look to the future with a different gaze.  And at least for me, it is fulfilling to share these thoughts, in part or in total, with others in the same situation.  I look forward to my next hallway discussion and the round of questions it brings to mind.

Once upon a time, there was a practicing engineer who decided to come back to school on a mission.  To become an engineering professor.  Now along the way, he encountered various adventures, obstacles, rewards, and some really great people.  But as his time has neared the end (okay, so maybe it is still like 21 months, but that is closer than the 5 years I started with), it is time to start considering the next phase.  Where would he want to teach?

In my time here at Tech, I have run across engineering students from around the world who have studied at universities so diverse, it would bust the blog server for me to discuss them all.  But from that rather long list, there are a couple universities that have popped out at me for various reasons.  Clemson, with its proud alumni always willing to spell the word T-I-G-E-R-S for us, just in case we forgot.  And Marshall, perhaps the original “We Are” school.  In my way of thinking, both would offer some advantages, so when asked to pick two schools to learn more about, in the form of examining their Mission Statements, I chose those.  By which I mean that I did a Google search for the university name and “mission statement”.  The top result for Clemson was from their police department.  They have their own mission statement and based on their placement in the Google listing universe, you have to wonder why exactly they are so important.  Maybe South Carolina isn’t the place for me afterall.  But, eventually, I found what I was looking for.

The two statements are as different as the school colors, though strangely compatible (unlike the combination of purple, orange and green).  Clemson offers a very concise paragraph in which it attributes its core to Thomas Green Clemson himself.  Marshall starts that way, points out that it was approved by the Board of Visitors, and then gives very specific bullet points of how the mission applies to the activities of the University, faculty, staff, students, and administration, in that order.  I wondered how administration got put last, but it was likely a lively and lengthy debate by the BoV that came up with the order, so who am I to question?  They likely debated even longer on each bullet point, but my favorite was “enhance the quality of health care in the region”.  It struck me as very odd compared to other things, but then I researched and found out they have a Medical School, so it made sense.

There was a pair of phrases used that I want to quote, because to me, they are the core essence of a mission that I embarked on over 3 years ago when I came back to school.

Clemson:  The foundation of this mission is the generation, preservation, communication, and application of knowledge.

Marshall:  The University actively facilitates learning through the preservation, discovery, synthesis, and dissemination of knowledge.

Okay, so, they both want to preserve.  One says communicate while the other says disseminate.  Symantics.  One says generate while the other says synthesize.  Hmmm… are those different?  In fact, along with synthesizing, Marshall wants to discover.  As if knowledge exists in some raw form under the West Virginia mountains.  That seems strange to me.  Generating knowledge seems more comfortable, as a lot of us know what it is like to play off of a colleague and together generate energy toward a goal, learning along the way, increasing our individual knowledge bases.  But, I suppose that could be seen as discovery and maybe synthesis is just another way of describing it.  I am not an English major, so I will assume those are roughly the same.

But, the last word remaining is near and dear to my heart.  At Clemson, a land-grant university, they want to apply knowledge.  If you read the rest of the statements, it makes a lot of sense.  Clemson is more integrated into the community by design, applying the knowledge generated to the community.  Engineers like the word “application”.  It makes us feel all warm and fuzzy that what we are learning in theoretical terms promises to  have actual use to someone.

Of course, there are lots of other similarities and differences between the schools and their missions.  And I will likely spend a good bit of time researching more about them, should they have an opening advertised in the next couple years.  But for the moment, it was an interesting first look at how two different schools see and portray themselves.