Do faculty need more vacation time?

When you are a professor at a PUI, you are constantly giving giving giving of yourself to your students.  It's the best job in the world, but, particularly for introverts like me, by the end of the semester you can feel like you've been sucked dry.

Some of my PUI friends get five weeks off for winter break.  I know a few that barely get two weeks.

Winter break is important.  You need to rest.  Get recharged.  Brace yourself for the spring semester.



Is there such a thing as too much winter break?  ....and what is the humane lower limit for time off of school?

Science resolutions at a PUI

Happy last day of 2010!

Some of you might be super happy to see it go, while others had a fabulous year (hmm...I smell a blog roundup/carnival?).

Now is the time when we make our resolutions for the upcoming year.  My life is split up into three main categories, Teaching, Research, and Life.  (I'll save how they each make up my day for a later post...I don't want to freak out any of you considering PUI positions....it is the holidays, after all.)  Because of this, I always make resolutions for each area of my life.

In past years, my teaching resolution has been let's just get through this.  Now that I'm more established, I feel like I can start focusing on specific areas.

For research, I just want some damn publications.  To get publications, you have to just suck it up and write up your stuff.  While this might sound very easy, particularly to those of you at research institutions, I assure you it is not.  Doing research at a PUI brings in many new issues with respect to publishing.*  The pace of research is much, much slower.  Funding is a huge issue.  Just getting your institution to agree to matching funds can be a giant hurdle.  And how are you going to write a grant when you have two new preps?  Something I didn't expect was how intimidating it would be to submit publications under my new institution rather than LargeU.  Call me crazy, but work done at small PUI is viewed differently than work completed at Big Name Research U.

For Life, I usually resolve to keep a better balance between life and work.  Ha.  For 2011, I'm going to keep it more attainable.  I am going to read more (Any!!) non-work books.  I have a number in my head that I'd like to reach by Dec 2011, but I'm going to keep it there, for now.


Have you made any resolutions for 2011?



*while perhaps these issues aren't specific to PUIs, I never encountered them as a grad student.  Maybe this is because I wasn't the PI, but I believe it has more to do with institution reputation and the emphasis on research at R1s.

Adjusting expectations at a PUI

I'm a tenure track professor at a predominately undergraduate institution (PUI).  Current grad students often ask me what's the most important thing I've learned about my job.  In my opinion, the most helpful thing I've learned in my first two years here is to adjust expectations.

I've adjusted my expectations about scholarship.  With my undergraduates only spending four to six hours a week on research, I have had to recalibrate with respect to research productivity.  Research tasks that would take me a week to accomplish might take my students all semester.  I don't anticipate submitting a paper before June.

I have also lowered my expectations about the strength of incoming students.  I've found that I can't take for granted that my freshmen are coming into college with the math and writing skills that I would expect.  More time is taken in the first semester to bring all students up to speed on written communication and problem solving.  Would it be awesome to just teach to the top 10% of my class?  Of course.  Would it get me tenure?  I doubt it.

Perhaps the biggest adjustment is to the state of funding.  My start up funds were not too terrible, but I can't bank them for next year.  I have to spend everything up and just hope I can get enough preliminary results to warrant a Big Funding Agency to decide that I deserve to be in the special top 13% group (or whatever the funding line is).  There are essentially no internal funds here, so I have to get outside funding.  This is a daunting enough of a task at a research institution, let alone at a PUI.  And so I've learned to not be surprised by the lack of internal and external funds here.  What if I run out of money next year?  Me stressing about the worst case scenario certainly won't help my undergrads be more productive.  All I can do is keep truckin'.



Now, should I passively accept subpar students or a paucity of funding?  Of course not.

But it certainly helps me maintain my sanity if I can adjust my expectations for the time being.