funding cuts

And the funding cuts continue. After cutting the LAFHA tax benefits for everybody on the same visa class as me since this month, the Australian government announced another great money cut just a few days ago. This time it's the universities turn to tighten the belt.

There were rumors about this since quite a while and a lot of the research staff on grant funded positions were really worried, that maybe the number of research grants or the money attached to them will get reduced.

But luckily this doesn't seem to be the case and everybody who applied for funding this year is still in the game. However, there will still be a cut of 500 million$ over the next 4 years. This money is not directly attached to grants, but used by the universities to cover the indirect costs of research. Distributed over the roughly 40 universities in Australia, this is a huge cut for all of them. The first "victims" of these cut have already been announced. I'm not sure if more big projects like that will be affected or if the cuts will be distributed "downwards" to the individual researchers, but one thing is certain: it's interesting times!

new media

Nowadays smart phones, tablets, e-reader,... they are everywhere. I see 4-year old kids handling smartphones better than their parents and when I'm on the bus it seems I'm the only one younger than 70, who can survive this bus trip without starring at some kind of electronic device. Our world became "connected" during the past few years, 24/7, non-stop. People get nervous if their phone can't connect for a couple of minutes and how often do run people into each other because both were starring at their phones. Isn't there even an app that tells you, when you are about to run into someone, while you are in virtual worlds?

Sometimes it seems, that there is no awareness in the general public for this kind of "addiction", because it's so accepted and it's even expected, that everybody is always connected. Not only in private but for job purposes as well.

More and more guidebooks and news articles are published on this topic, telling you how to disconnect without feeling guilty, how to get back in touch with the real world or even just how to manage the massive amount of emails, so it doesn't stop you from doing all the other work you are supposed to do.

Of course, one might say that being able to check your emails wherever you are makes you more efficient and flexible - and in parts I guess that's true. But lately I recognized a trend, that disturbs me a bit.

We tell students to keep their phones off the table during lectures, so that they concentrate on the content and because it would be impolite in general. But it seems totally acceptable if academics check their smart phones every 5 minutes, while sitting in a meeting or "listening" to a students talk. If there is a big audience and the speaker will not recognize it anyway - no problem. But even if there are just 5-10 people in a small room listening to highly recognized speakers, I found that at least 2/3 of the academics drift off every few minutes and check their phones.

Maybe someone high up in the hierarchy doesn't care so much anymore, if people actually pay attention - I don't know. But students certainly recognize, if the academics in the room seem to have better things to do than to listen to their talk. Not very encouraging!

Is everybody really so busy and important these days? How did academics do that before the age of the smart phone?

I'm a great fan of the real world and sometimes I feel odd, because I don't have a smart phone to stare at, while I'm on the bus. On the other hand, I'm happy, that I'm not so busy and important, that I still can get through without any of these devices. And hopefully, if I ever get so busy and important, the general culture and expectation about being connected has changed and I can still only look out of the window while being on the bus or just listen to a students or professors talk, without being distracted by little *bing* and vibration alarms, telling me that my attention might be needed somewhere else.

different styles

My current and my former supervisor are very different personalities -not only in their general character, but especially in their style of leading a research group. 

My former supervisor is a very organized leader, who seems to have everything from deadlines for proposals to latest possible thesis defense date for each of his PhD students always present in his head. He says things like: "If you give me your paper draft until tomorrow at 3:30, I can read it on the plane and send the comments to you next Wednesday before 10am." and that is exactly what happens. He is running weekly group meetings not only to have all his students presenting their stuff once in a while, but he organizes who attends at which conference, who takes care of the next exchange student, the next group BBQ,... during these meetings and he lets his group know way in advance when he will be out of office.

My current supervisor is much more flexible with these things. Everything gets organized well and people know when they are in charge of something. But usually these decisions happen behind the scenes and often enough a new student arrives and only one of the grad students (the responsible one) knows about it. Same applies for his "out of office" times. If you need to be aware of them, because i.e. you have to hand in your thesis soon and there must be enough time for him to have a look at it, you'll know that he'll be away. But there is no general “keep the group informed” strategy as with my last supervisor.

While working with my former supervisor I found his perfect planning and thinking ahead very admirable yet sometimes even intimidating, as it set the standards very high for everybody who worked with him. Now I recognize that this actually brings the individuals in a group much more together. Everybody is on the same page and knows which deadlines, conferences, students, tasks,… are lying ahead. In my current group, the information gets transported where needed, but people work much more separate from each other – which has advantages of its own.

When it comes to my students, I often find myself acting not very strategic or long-term planned. I tell them when I’ll be away, but not very much in advance and I’ll let them know, when I see interesting conferences or workshops coming up, but I don’t have a specific timeline in my head for each of them. Even though I really appreciated that my PhD supervisor had this distinct plan and timeline for me as his PhD student.

I guess this is because I’m not their main supervisor, so I don’t actually make the strategy for them. I just push them, annoy them, motivate them, guide them, cheer them up on a daily basis. 

What is a good point in an academic career to have some deep thoughts and first actions about styles of leading a research group and strategies for successful PhD supervision? While you are “only” co-supervising? Or when you start with you first 100% responsibility student?

culture clash or what?

Since a few months I have a new colleague in my office: smart guy, very focused and concentrated, but always nice and friendly. Somebody you can chat with for 5 minutes and then go back to work. 

All seemed well and the sun was shining innocent in our office and no one expected the thunder storm that recently broke out - or at least I didn't!

A PhD student and I had a discussion in our office while NewColleague was there and suddenly NewColleague switched on his music. At first I thought that was not on purpose, but he didn't stop the music after a few seconds. So I thought, that might be a "hint" that our discussion is disturbing him and I asked him about it, but he negated - twice! So I told him, that his music is actually disturbing us and if he could switch it off. Ooohhh, totally wrong move! He just went so crazy, telling me in a very aggressive way, that there are rules - internationally accepted rules! - for offices and people should stick to them. But he of course could not make people stick to these rules and yes, sometimes discussions turn out to be longer than expected, but still... one has to stick to the rules. And if a discussion takes longer than 15 min, one should leave the office for that, there are meeting rooms and coffee shops for these occasions,.... . 

I couldn't make out his point from what he was saying, because he never said, that we are actually disturbing him. He just went on about internationally accepted rules and that he sticks to them. I told him several times during his speech that in case I'm disturbing him, he must tell me that. But he didn't! And as I thought it was very rude of him to "educate" me in front of my PhD student, I was not willing to follow his un-spoken wish. Instead I turned around after he was finished and continued my discussion. He interrupted us once more to continue his speech and after that I again turned around and continued talking to my PhD student. And finally then he managed to say, that we are disturbing him and we should leave the office - what we then did.

The temperature in the office dropped by a few degrees.

A few days later the discussion continued, after I - not very diplomatic, I know - reminded him of his internationally accepted rules, after he had a discussion in the office, which exceeded the magical 15 minutes. There was nobody else in the office at that time and he got so mad at me, interrupting half of my sentences, was offended, when I asked him to repeat something, because I didn't understand it through all the anger,... .

I offered that we could set up some rules together with the other colleagues in the office, but he said, that's not necessary, because I am the only problem in the office. As I did not agree to his point of view, he decided, that it's a waste of time talking to me and dropped out of the discussion.

The temperature dropped below freezing temperature and there it is.

I know that I could have been much more perceptive in this situation and could have stopped the escalation of the topic. But if I would have given in, while my PhD student was there, I would have lost my standing with both of them - and the situation was just to surprising and ridiculous and rude!

I'm not sure where NewColleagues sudden emotional release came from. I never had any problems in the various offices I worked in and none of my "older" colleagues ever mentioned, that I'm disturbing them.

Three theories:

1) It's a woman-man problem, as I'm the only woman in the office and NewColleague has a problem to fit in his big Ego into the same room with a woman, without being accepted as superior right away.

2) It's a culture problem, as he comes from an Asian country, where people are maybe not used to being direct, when they feel disturbed. From his point of view being direct might be impolite and so he sent subtle signals to express his discomfort. I, on the other hand, don't have the sensing abilities to deal with this, as I never needed them - this might as well explain, why my other colleagues never said something so far, as they come from Asian countries as well ( that's a very generalized statement, of course)

3) I am an unpolite and rude person and was just lucky so far with the offices I've worked in, that the people could deal with it.

Any other suggestions?

first baby steps in teaching

As I forecasted in the last post, my teaching kept me quite busy during the last weeks. It's the first class I'm teaching at all. I did a lot of lab course supervision for students from various disciplines during my undergrad and PhD time, but this is my really first serious class. I don't know how this is handled at other universities, but I just got pushed into the cold water. I got the old slides of my supervisor and the PostDoc, who gave the course last year. But that was about it. And slides, which mostly show graphs copied from various publications without any bullet points, are not sooooo helpful. So, I'm learning how to swim right now within a topic I haven't fully mastered myself. 

The first lecture was just awkward. I have never seen how a lecture within my school is "usually given", I don't know much about the curriculum and what the students are supposed to know. They are not all directly connected to our School. Some are enrolled in different studies and can do my course as an optional one.

 So, I gave a classic teacher-centered class, mostly me talking, mostly rushing too fast over important topics and I looked at quite a few confused faces at the end of it. I find it very hard to balance between explaining stuff on a too basic level and overwhelming them because I assume to much pre-knowledge. In the first class I definitely took too much knowledge for granted.

In the next classes I tried to implement more interaction with the students, asked more questions, let them use the stuff I talked about right away. That worked a bit better and there were a few bulbs lightening up once in a while. It still wasn't a totally amazing class, but at least I didn't drown half way through the course.

And now I just recognized how much I remind myself of all these young teachers I had in High School, who were fresh out of university, trying to test all the stuff they have learned during the last years on their students. Sometimes I liked that and sometimes I felt like a little lab rat with electrodes connected all over.

But its exactly what I'm doing right now for my class: Digging out everything I have ever heard of "engaging" teaching practices and test them out. And it's actually fun. I don't know how much for the students (I'll see in the evaluation, I guess), but at least for me. Next time I'll bring paper, cord and modeling clay. And then we'll see if this is a good learning experience or if my students feel relegated to pre-school.