Conserving time while teaching and other hints for new faculty

1
Conserving time while teachingand other hints
for new faculty

• Sarah Keller
• Associate Professor of Chemistry
• University of Washington, Seattle

Warning The following slides are too dense with
information. I think thats OK. Most of the
information will be useful to you after you are
hired, rather than before. I want this document
to serve as a self-contained resource online when
you (and others who were not accepted to this
conference) need it in the future. - SLK
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Yes! We are hiring in the Chem. Dept. at UW
Seattle! We typically have 2 openings every
year. Please apply!
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• HOW WE HIRE FACULTY AT UW CHEMISTRY
• We receive gt300 applications for 2 advertised
  positions.
• Step 1 Sort and File. A secretary punches holes
  in the top of your pages, binds them in a folder
  so absent-minded professors dont lose them,
• reads your cover letter, decides whether you are
  a physical/organic/inorganic/
• materials/analytical/OTHER chemist and puts
  your file in that box.

Advice at Step 1 1) State your subfield clearly
in your letter so your file doesnt end up in the
wrong box. If you are interdisciplinary, state
what youd teach. (Example Within your
department, I would teach physical chemistry, so
would fit in your P-chem division, even though my
closest research colleagues are in your division
of inorganic chemistry.) 2) Leave big margins at
the top of all pages. Do not print doublesided.
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• HOW WE HIRE FACULTY AT UW CHEMISTRY
• Step 2 File the letters of recommendation. As
  your letters arrive,
• a secretary binds them on top of the materials
  already in your folder,
• and checks off a list of how many of your 3
  letters have arrived.

Advice at Step 2 1) Call the secretary to verify
that all of your letters have arrived. Letters
do get lost in the mail. A committee member may
assume that a writer doesnt like you if his/her
letter if it is missing. Sometimes it is true!
You want to find out early if one of your
writers has not been forthright with you, and you
need to ask a different writer. 2) Your letters
of recommendation are on top. Faculty tend to
read them first. Do all you can to help your
writers produce a good letter for you. Provide
them with a list of talking points (and address
labels). 3) It is often the third writer who
impresses the committee. Your Ph.D. advisor
probably loves you. Your postdoctoral advisor
probably loves you. If youve gotten someone
else to love you, thats quite valuable.
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• HOW WE HIRE FACULTY AT UW CHEMISTRY
• Step 3 A single faculty member can read on the
  order of 100 folders, then winnow out the top 20,
  and also probably note the top 10.

• Advice at Step 3
• By the 99th application, that faculty member is
  really tired.
• Dont send us every paper youve written.
• We dont want to read 20 pages at 10-point font
  in your research proposal.
• Hopefully youve written your research proposal
  very clearly. Dont just describe how
  interesting your field is, but tell us exactly
  what you will do. For UW, this document should
  be gt3 pages 5 is good 10 is longish.

1) Outline what your first experiments will be
something that a beginning grad student or
postdoc can do to produce preliminary results, an
early publication, and subsequent funding. 2)
Outline the eventual experiments you will do to
address a big, sexy, important problem, that is
not just an extension of your previous work
backed up with lots of references. 3) Diagrams
outlining your research plan are helpful.
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ON TO THE INTERVIEW! (NEGOTIATING)

• Got lots of other interviews? Great! Mention
  them in conversation.
• During your talk, use the microphone. Use big
  font. Invest in a powerful laser pointer. Older
  faculty may have poor eyesight and poor hearing,
  but lots of clout in hiring decisions. Dont
  rely on confirmation from the grad students in
  the back that they can see/hear you.
• When it is your work, say I, not we.
• Your interview talk is not the place to be
  modest. What did YOU do?
• Budget Be prepared to talk at the end of your
  interview about roughly how much startup youll
  need, and what equipment that entails.

If you are asked to provide a budget before your
interview, a good response is that you cant
provide one without being able to see the
resources available at that institution and
whether you would be able to use those resources,
or would need to build your own.
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ON TO THE JOB OFFER! (NEGOTIATING) Do you need
daycare in a university facility?
The wait list for daycare at many universities
can easily be 2 years. At some institutions you
can negotiate to be at the front of the list. UW
is very egalitarian, and this is not possible.
In what year/month will your appointment begin?
Are you in the middle of a fabulous postdoc
project and getting data? Ask to defer your start
date. The search process is so painful for
departments that theyd prefer late than never.
I deferred 6 months.
On what day will your appointment begin?
At some institutions, health coverage begins on
the 1st of the month, so that is the day to
start.
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• NEGOTIATING YOUR FACULTY POSITION (TEACHING)
• Preparing a new course consumes a great deal of
  energy. Can you secure a commitment in writing
  that you will be able to teach the same course
  for several years in a row? Of course, the chair
  may need to cancel this commitment in case of
  emergency (e.g. if a faculty member dies, etc.).
• What will you teach? The opportunity to teach a
  special topics course is often offered as a favor
  to new faculty. In most departments this
  opportunity will not arise again for several
  years. Evaluate
• 1. Is it being offered without strong
  departmental need for your course?
• 2. Will it save you time, because youll use
  it to train students?
• If not, consider delaying the special topics
  course. To amortize your effort, your course
  should be so good that students demand for it to
  be taught again.
• Many departments offer a lighter teaching load
  during your first year. You may have flexibility
  in which term is light. If you are waiting for
  lab equipment to arrive, you may want your
  heaviest teaching load your 1st term.

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Faculty reflect on their first year as the
busiest, most stressful year of their lives.
(R.J. Boice Higher
Education 2004, 62, 150)
In 2006, a friend (Andri Smith, Quinnipiac) and I
compiled hints we thought might make the lives of
first-year faculty a bit better. S.L. Keller and
A.L. Smith, Advice for New Faculty Teaching
Undergraduate Science J. Chem. Ed., (2006) 83,
401-406.
If you want a copy and cant find one in your own
library, contact me slkeller (at) chem (dot)
washington (dot) edu.
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• CONSERVING YOUR TIME - Office Hours
• Encourage students to use office hours (or those
  of your TA).
• Schedule one office hour directly before or after
  your class.
• Your head will already be in the material. Your
  day will not be fragmented.
• Hold office hours somewhere other than your
  office.
• Fewer students will stop by your office just to
  chat.
• Encourage drop-ins to make an appointment.
• Undergraduates have little understanding on the
  requirements on professors outside of class
  contact hours. They respond well if you cast the
  task you are doing (e.g. preparing for another
  class, writing a grant, working on research,
  performing university service) in terms of
  something that will improve the quality of their
  education.

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• CONSERVING YOUR TIME - Hide!
• For uninterrupted time, work away from your
  office.
• CONSERVING YOUR TIME - Reserve Your Time
• Paperwork expands to fill all available time.
  Try to relegate it
• to a certain time of day.
• CONSERVING YOUR TIME - Hold weekly optional study
  sessions in a classroom. You can use it as your
  office hour.
• -Students who have previously been frustrated by
  their competitive
• pre-med peers particularly appreciate working
  together.
• Arrive late.
• Let students know you will arrive by as much as
  1/2 hour late to the study session and that they
  should use the time to work together.
• 1) Students will answer each others easy
  questions first.

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• CONSERVING YOUR TIME - Online threaded
  discussions
• Many universities host websites that allow one
  student to ask a question
• and another to comment on the topic.

• 1) Students answer each others questions.
• 2) Bounce questions that come to you by e-mail to
  the website where either you or other students
  can provide an answer for the whole class to
  view.
• 3) Caveat The site needs to be monitored
  occasionally
• to stop the propagation of wrong answers,
• but not monitored so much that it is a
  time sink.

• CONSERVING YOUR TIME - Publishers
• -Contact publishers for free copies of textbooks
  and CD-ROMs.

Including images from the CD-ROM in your lecture
may (or may not!) save preparation time.
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CONSERVING YOUR TIME - E-mail

• 1) Turn off your computers audible e-mail
  notification
• 2) Keep text files of common responses to copy
  and paste. (e.g. what students should do when a
  class is missed, what you require for a letter of
  recommendation)
• 3) Got TAs? Enlist their help!
• Forward appropriate student questions to
  your TA.

CONSERVING YOUR TIME - Letters of Recommendation

• 1) Decide beforehand what your policy will be.
  Will you write a letter for every student who
  asks?
• 2) Astonishingly, students need to be told to
  fill out all forms, to give you addressed stamped
  envelopes, to tell you which term they took your
  class, etc. Send them a form letter.
• 3) Retain copies of letters of recommendation for
  easy modification when students ask for future
  letters.

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CONSERVING YOUR TIME - Enlist aid from TAs, staff
and faculty

• 1) If you have TAs, have them keep track of hours
  spent.
• 2) Ask your TAs if there is something simple you
  can do to help them. In return, they can spend
  more time debugging your exams, writing exam
  questions, or covering office hours.
• 3) Nominate great TAs for awards, and theyll
  want to work with you again.
• 4) You probably arent used to having a
  secretary. Think about how he can help you. I
  use the criterion that if it will take me just as
  long to do it myself as to explain it to him,
  then I should have him do it. Inevitably some
  snafu happens and the task takes longer than I
  expected.
• Your assistant will appreciate it if you
  can give him a specific estimate of your deadline
  required on your job. No rush means different
  things to different people. Try to be specific
  and to say I need this in X weeks/months.
• 5) Your faculty colleagues are often happy to
  share notes, syllabi, and exam questions. Ask
  them.

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EXAMS - Notecards Allow students to bring a page
of equations to the exam

• 1) Students perform their own review to compile
  the equation list.
• 2) Reduces student anxiety
• 3) Students think you are nice

EXAMS - Student-written questions As a homework
question, ask students to write an exam question

• 1) Sometimes a student produces a clever,
  well-written question
• that you can actually use after the
  student graduates.
• 2) Students have little conception of how hard it
  is to write exam questions until this exercise.
  They suddenly appreciate your work.
• 3) For ideas on how to implement this, see The
  Hidden Curriculum Faculty-Made Tests in College
  Science,
• S. Tobias, J. Raphael eds., Plenum Press
  NY, 1997.

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EXAMS - Formatting

• At the bottom of each exam page, draw an answer
  box
• in which students must place their
  answers.
• Dont rely on students to box their own
  answers.
• Label the box Put your answer in the
  box.
• This saves immense time in trying to
  figure out which number is supposed to be the
  answer amidst a page of incorrect work.
• On the exam include a summary score sheet listing
  
• the points available on each question.
• - Now you do not have to draw one on each
  exam you grade.
• - It notifies students which questions are
  more valuable.
• - Place this on the exam so that you can
  fold back the face page of the exam and still see
  the summary chart (e.g. on the back of the 1st
  page, or on the 2nd page). Folding the first
  page back helps convince students that you grade
  fairly, without looking at student names. It
  also enhances student privacy when exams are
  returned, only the students names - and not
  their grades - are visible for other students to
  see.

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EXAMS - Regrades

• Require written requests for regrades to be due
• within one week.
• Set a regrade limit, at maximum 5 of the overall
  exam score.
• - Require students to dispute at least the
  number of points
• in the regrade limit in order for a
  regrade to be considered.
• - This is particularly useful in classes
  with a heavy pre-med enrollment. Large numbers
  of students will argue vociferously
• for an inconsequential change in their
  grade.

EXAMS - Final Exams
- Consider not returning your final exams to the
class (although students should be allowed to
view exams). If your exam has not made it to
a student file somewhere, you may be able to
reuse some questions. If you implement a new
teaching method, you can gauge the
performance of two groups of students on
identical tests.
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HOMEWORK

• Students should collect graded homework in a
  place physically apart from your office, even if
  it is just down the hall, to reduce
  interruptions.
• Make your first homework assignment a non-graded
  self-test of the prerequisite material. Make it
  due quickly.
• Unprepared students who have not taken the
  pre-reqs will drop your course, instead of taking
  your time to teach them course material from
  another class. The students who are on track
  will benefit from the review.
• Many colleagues and I maximize our TA support by
  instituting
• 1) Some (small) number of multiple choice
  questions on every exam.
• 2) Partial grading of homework.
• To see how this is done, and for references to
  materials on hints for writing good multiple
  choice questions, see our paper (Keller and
  Smith).

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• TEACHING - Student Happiness
• Freshmen often dont understand grading curves.
  Make exams worth more than 100 points (e.g. to
  produce a grade of 80/120 rather than 40/60)
• in order to decrease frantic distress.
• - Pass out teaching evaluations before the last
  week. Evaluation scores correlate with students
  estimates of their grades. Some students who
  blow off class all term show up the last week.
  When they realize that they should have done more
  work, they give you a bad evaluation. Rumor has
  it that it is better to start off with mediocre
  evaluations and improve than the opposite.
• TEACHING - Awkward Situations
• Do not post student names or full IDs to comply
  with the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act.
  Instead, post the last 4 digits of the ID .
• At UW we are not allowed to send grades to
  students via e-mail either.
• If a student collapses from illness, call 911 on
  a cell phone (yours or a students). In 2007 I
  had a weird experience Students noticed that a
  male grad student was taking notes on a female
  undergrad. Dont wait to talk to your chair
  call the police. All was OK. Both students were
  part of an approved research project, but did not
  inform class instructors as required.

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• TEACHING (continued)
• - Decline requests by students who want to make
  announcements during your lecture. If you set up
  an online threaded discussion, students can make
  their own announcements online without seeming to
  be endorsed by you.
• Explicitly define cheating/plagiarism in your
  syllabus, and what your reaction will be.
  Incoming students are often confused. For
  example, can text be shared for lab reports?
  Will you give a 0 for an exam with cheating?
• Will you forward all cases to the disciplinary
  committee? UW has a faculty handbook on grading
  that addresses to assign grades and how to speak
  to students who may have cheated
  (http//depts.washington.edu/grading/).
• If you think a student has copied from another,
  do not return their exams - make copies. A
  common cheat is revision of exams before a
  regrade.
• Make a pdf of exams before returning them. Or
  instruct graders to make a line at the end of the
  student work and on page backs. Regrade requests
  for new work that appears below the mark have
  violated rules for cheating.
• - Students will ask you to grant them special
  grades due to extenuating circumstances (e.g. an
  incomplete or a withdrawal). Do not agree to
  anything. Do not even say Ill have to ask or
  Ill think about it by e-mail. Talk to
  someone. There are usually rules about when you
  can grant these things. At some point, a student
  with a low grade will e-mail you saying that your
  grading is unfair. Respond politely that this is
  an important matter, so you are forwarding
  correspondence to your chair for undergraduate
  education.

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TALKING TO YOUR COLLEAGUES - When your faculty
colleagues ask do you want to have lunch? say
yes whether or not you eat lunch. It is your
opportunity to ask questions and bring up
concerns. When faculty get busy and forget to
drag you out of your office to lunch, invite them
instead. - It is worth figuring out who will be
on your tenure committee, and spending time over
lunches to educate them about your research.
SERVICE BE SELECTIVE ABOUT THE COMMITTEES YOU
JOIN (Both the number and the time
commitments) - If you have the luxury to choose
your committee assignments, select one or two
that you feel are important, for which your hard
work will produce satisfying results for both you
and your department.

• SALARY
• If you are paid on a 9-month salary, you may
  need to budget to receive no summer paychecks,
  depending on how your institutions accounting
  works.
• If you have funds from your 9-month salary put
  away for the summer, it may have tax consequences
  (http//www.aaup.org/NR/rdonlyres/CD158F3E-9A98-4A
  BB-B788-48502AD4460E/0/TaxAlerton409A.pdf).

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• OUTFITTING YOUR LAB / LAB SPACE
• Your university probably maintains many software
  licenses (e.g. MS Office).
• You may not need to buy these programs.
• Helpful book At the Helm A Laboratory
  Navigator
• - HHMI lab management safety
  hhmi.org/resources/scientists.html
• Ask for discounts or quotes. Bid companies
  against one another.
• List price is rarely the actual price.
• At UW there are three magical numbers. Find out
  the s at your institution.
• gt 1000 may be exempt from state sales
  tax
• gt 2000 may be equipment instead of
  supplies, and no overhead.
• gt 3000 may be subject to bid unless you
  can produce a convincing
• sole source letter
  saying you need that one specific model.
• Get help from other
  faculty to write this letter for your
  institution.

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• WRITING GRANTS
• First, get help on your budget from a staff
  member.
• What is the internal deadline? Your department
  may need to approve your finished proposal as
  early as 3 weeks before the official due date.
• With the NSF, you submit electronically through
  Fastlane, and you need an account. Work with
  your department. For the NIH, you need an
  eCommons ID (ask about it). The software hoops
  that you and your secretary will need to jump
  through to submit and NIH proposal are daunting.
  
• Some faculty will let you borrow their proposals.
  If a colleague knows about your field, he/she
  might actually read your proposal and give you
  advice.
• After you submit your proposal, you may get a
  call from the NSF/NIH program manager asking Can
  you write me a new budget for your submitted
  proposal? I think you really need X thousand
  less.
• Be happy they are about to fund you!

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• HAVING CHILDREN
• Are you even thinking about having kids? Apply
  for daycare now. Yes, do it now. Now! You do
  not need to have a kid in hand or to even be
  pregnant to get on many wait lists.
• You may get a break from teaching if you (or your
  spouse) has/adopts a child.
• - There may be rooms around your campus equipped
  with breast pumps. Ask.
• - If you are paying for child care for a kid
  younger than 13 (I think), your university may
  have a dependent care assistance program, which
  allows you to pay for daycare and/or afterschool
  care with pretax dollars. Ask your HR person.
  You can opt either for this or the IRS tax break
  for child care, but I believe that you cannot do
  both. See here http//www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p5
  03.pdf. If you file taxes separately (rather
  than jointly), you are not eligible for the IRS
  program.

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• YOUR TENURE PACKAGE
• - Show a distinction between your postdoctoral
  and faculty work.
• When you collaborate, make it clear who did what.
  
• Grants are also important.
• - You will write up a little narrative describing
  what effect your work has had on your field. For
  example, perhaps you were the first to discover
  something or demonstrate some effect. Ask if
  faculty who have just gone through tenure will
  let you borrow their package so you can see what
  this looks like.
• - Both teaching and service are important for
  being a good departmental citizen. Do it, and do
  it well, but dont go crazy at the expense of
  your research.
• - After your department votes on your tenure
  case, your case grinds through the university
  bureaucracy, up to the president who informs you
  that you have been approved for tenure. You get
  a raise when tenure finally happens (which is
  probably about a year after your department
  vote). Throw yourself a party.