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Wordless Wednesday: Things in my office February 22, 2012

Posted by mareserinitatis in engineering, photography, work.
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Scientist, with kids February 19, 2012

Posted by mareserinitatis in career, education, engineering, family, feminism, grad school, homeschooling, older son, personal, physics, research, science, societal commentary.
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FSP has a post asking about the Local Mom Effect.  That is, she wonders if being in a department with more women professors who have kids affects the outlook of younger women in the field.  I find this post interesting…but also, I hate to say it, irrelevant.

Let’s put it this way: what women?!

When I started school at Caltech, I knew of two women professors out of all of math, physics, and astronomy.  I only ever met one of them, knew she had no kids. I knew nothing about the other professor.  When I decided to go back to school a few years later, I ended up in a physics dept. where the professors were all men.  Later, I ended up in an electrical engineering department where the professors were all men.

I guess that, in my mind, the notion of being one of the few women in the department was no different than being one of the few women with kids in the department.  When I went back to school, I had a kid already, so it wasn’t like I really had a choice about whether or not to be a childless woman in physics or engineering.

I will say that when I originally got pregnant as an undergrad at Caltech, I was told by my advisor that women couldn’t do calculus while pregnant and that I should drop out.  Of course, he was a guy, so I seriously doubted he understood how women’s brains work while pregnant.  (And it turns out that I can do calculus great while pregnant…I just can’t speak a full sentence coherently.)  However, I guess I never took it as a message that women with kids don’t belong in science…I inferred that he meant it more personally, and that I myself was not a good fit for science.  (Fortunately, major hopping got boring after a while, I ended up back in physics.)

When I went back to school, however, I felt that being the only woman or one of a few was very advantageous for several reasons.  First, if I was the only woman or one of a very small number, I was already an oddity.  A woman with kids is probably not much more odd than a woman without, and there was really no one to compare myself to (or say that I was doing it wrong).  Second, I went back to school in North Dakota, and it really seems like people here more or less expect you to have kids no matter what you’re doing.  I know that grates on some people, but for me, it was a blessing: having kids is just another part of life, and most people here learn to do their jobs while having them.  (Also, I can’t recall anyone having a fit if I said I couldn’t make it to something because of kid-related issues.)  Third, I was older than the average undergraduate or even grad student, so I think people assumed that it was pretty normal for someone my age to have kids.  The fact that the younger students didn’t have kids was simply a function of age and never made me feel self-conscious that I did have kids.  Finally, when I started my MS, my advisor was fine with the fact that I was homeschooling the older boy and would only be doing my degree part-time.  He said this was really no different than other students in the department who were working full-time and pursing their degree part-time, as well.

I have been told, especially when doing my PhD classes, that it was “really cool to see a woman in science with kids”, especially by some fellow grad students.  Until I started my PhD, I really hadn’t expected it to be a big deal.  It had never occurred to me that I might be a “role model”…but I keep hearing it more than I ever expected to. I also suspect it’s because I often had kids with me or family issues that were more apparent to fellow grad students.  Many professors try to maintain a more professional relationship with their students, and it doesn’t surprise me that many grad students don’t see how having kids affects the lives of the professors or that they don’t realize some professors have kids at all.

Realistically, I only got here because I didn’t really know that what I was doing was unusual in any way.  If I had been surrounded by women who had kids but never let it on or didn’t have kids, I might have felt self-conscious about being a mom already.  With no one to compare to, however, I just assumed that it wasn’t any more abnormal than a woman without kids.

And now they’re gone… February 18, 2012

Posted by mareserinitatis in career, engineering, research, work.
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Thursday was the last day for our colleagues who’d been laid off.  Early in the week, we were trying to figure out what to do for the people in our group when the admin sent out an announcement – they were having a staff appreciation lunch to give everyone a chance to say goodbye.

I was glad they hosted the lunch as it seemed like a nice last gesture.  However, part way through, I got so depressed about it that I had to leave and opted not to say goodbye to anyone.  I’m not very good at that sort of thing.

This has been hard for two reasons.  First, after an awful two years, I came here with the intention of only working for about six months to pay some tuition and then be done.  I ended up fitting pretty well with everyone, and it was so nice to work with people who were friendly and communicative…not what I’d been dealing with the two years prior.  For the most part, we all got along and clicked well, and I began to enjoy my work again. After my six months was up, I was told I could stay, so I did.  And now some of these people, who helped me get on my feet again, are being sent away.

Second, and worse in a way, the news about my research got around and hit relevant industry journals and even some popular press all over the world.  Over the past two weeks, I’ve been inundated with calls and emails.  It seems so unfair that things can be going so well for me when we’re in the middle of laying people off.  I can only hope that the positive press will lead to more funding opportunities so that I can help make sure no one else has to leave.

But now, hopefully, the worst is over.  At least I won’t have to sit here and dread when people will be gone because it’s over.  I’ll still probably feel rather sad every time I walk past people’s old desks and wonder what they’re up to.

My many hats February 9, 2012

Posted by mareserinitatis in computers, engineering, gifted, homeschooling, math, teaching, work, younger son.
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A couple weeks ago, my blog was promoted by a couple of sites and the hits started flowing in.  I commented to someone (most likely Gears) how it’s nice to be recognized for my blogging about engineering but frustrating for the lack of recognition for my actual engineering work.  Guess I should’ve waited a couple weeks.

Normal work has also been crazy. I’ve been given full control of the Minion and have thrown him in on a new project where he’s learning everything from scratch.  It’s similar to projects that I’ve done, but even more complicated and using a different program.  So our next couple weeks are going to be real fun as we’re going to be trying to make our way through using this new program and occasionally resorting to the old program for reality checks.

The other serious challenge I’ve been dealing with this week is long division.  It’s pretty scary stuff, especially when you have a seven-year-old who is fighting some rather strong perfectionistic tendencies.  He’s been getting to the long division portions in his computer math, and he starts to shut down.  I’ve been getting more and more frustrated with it, so I decided to put an end to it tonight.  I went back and printed out some of the older homeworks so that we could take a couple steps back.  I think the problem is that he really thinks he can do everything in his head.  I have to admit that his ability to do mental math far outweighs mine: I simply have to write everything down.  However, he’s starting to hit the limit of this particular ability, and so he freaks out whenever he has to do a problem where he can’t do it all in his head.

I told him that tonight’s homework was going to be doing some work sheets.  With the problems written out on paper, he didn’t seem to have this idea that he had to do everything in his head.  The first couple were challenges, but then he started getting the hang of things and was able to execute the last few problems very quickly.  By the time we had finished, he was doing 3-digit numbers divided by 2-digit numbers with no problem.  We’re going to do some more difficult problems tomorrow and then try heading back to the computer.

We tried a similar approach when he started to get stuck on multiplication a couple months ago.  I guess there are some things that really have to be written out to be understood.  I just hope he starts to make regular use of his notebook from here on out.

The care and feeding of minions February 9, 2012

Posted by mareserinitatis in education, engineering, research, work.
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Shortly after seeing the movie Despicable Me, the younger son asked Mike if the people who worked for him were minions (like the little yellow guys in the movie) or henchmen (presumably from some other movie he’d seen).  When I was in the lab one day, I asked a couple such individuals which they preferred.  The one who’d graduated said he preferred henchman, while the undergrad liked minion.  After that, we determined that we’d call all the undergrads minions, and once they graduate, they become henchmen.

It turns out that we’ve had one minion who started as a freshman and is the only undergrad working for my husband right now.  Because we’re both doing electromagnetics work, I would sometimes get the minion on loan.  One of these episodes was during the development of the Widget.  I came up with the idea and did a variety of simulations.  Once I got to a point where I didn’t feel we could progress much using the simulations, I had the Minion build up some prototypes and test them out.  He’s far less concerned about losing brain cells from nasty chemicals more adept in the lab than I am, so despite the fact that what I asked him to do involved a lot of drudgery, he was very willing.  What he didn’t realize is that he would make something and test it…then I’d go back and ask him to modify it and test again…and repeat that ad nauseum.

I really hate giving him all the ‘boring’ work but I have to admit that without his help, the project would have gone much more slowly.  He was put as second author on the Widget paper, and has also been lead author on a couple other papers as they were his own projects.  Now, he will apparently get a bit of publicity for his role as an undergrad who has had an opportunity to do some research.  He deserves this as he’s one of those people who you can hand stuff to and rely on them to do a good job and get it done quickly.

In fact, he’s so dedicated to his work, that he’s even willing to risk his own health!

Just kidding.

But seriously, thanks for everything, Layne.  We’re glad to have you around.

Making sure I don’t get a big head February 7, 2012

Posted by mareserinitatis in engineering, feminism, research.
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Things have gotten crazy at work.  The university sent out a press release on the Widget, and it’s getting a fair amount of press.  (Much more than I expected.)  In the past couple days, I’ve gotten several emails and have even been interviewed.  I’m having a hard time keeping up as I still have my normal work to do, too.

Like a good midwesterner, I try to anticipate that not all things will go well, so I shouldn’t get too excited.  And the universe dutifully complies and lets me know that this is prudent.

This time, Dr. Husband got an email addressed to both himself and the Minion asking if they were interested in looking at some technology related to the Widget.  The email wasn’t copied to me, and I wasn’t addressed in the introduction.  Incidentally, the articles which had our names also had me listed first in the research team.  There is a good reason for this.

Just an FYI: if you want someone to buy your stuff, leaving off the lead author and main architect of the project is not the smartest move.

Evals! Oh happy day! February 6, 2012

Posted by mareserinitatis in education, engineering, teaching.
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I had to make a run down to campus and, while there, I picked up my evals from last semester.  Apparently there were no comments on the evals because I just received a sheet for each class summarizing my ‘grades’.

I had been dreading this day for quite a while.  I had a couple of cranky students at the end of last semester.  I was also worried.  When teaching geology labs, it seemed like I got some very pissed off students who left simply nasty evals.  (I discussed this on my old blog a couple times.)  Compared to some of the other TAs, my evals usually came out worse.  A lot of this had to do with the perception that I was a harder grader.  In reality, I graded more easily on labs and more harshly on exams, so my averages were about the same as everyone else.  But that’s not what the students think.

Anyway, so I sat down with my numbers and discovered that some classes had better or worse perception than others.  For instance, my first Thursday class gave me the lowest scores (3.6 out of 5 for a couple questions) while the class right after that gave me the highest scores (4.5 of 5).  My Tuesday classes were somewhere in between.  The smallest class was the happiest, but the largest class wasn’t the unhappiest.  I’m not sure what happened with that one Thursday class, though, as it was a lot lower than the others.  Maybe I need to make sure to regale future students with my huge stack of nerdy science jokes.

They said the average for the department was around 4.2…but I realized that they were talking about the University Studies department, not engineering.  (The class is listed under University Studies, but some departments choose to have their own teachers for the class, as was the case for the sections I taught.)  I’m actually relieved that my scores were on par with the rest of the University Studies department given I heard many complaints about how much more work my students had to do relative to other sections (which weren’t being run by engineering).  Despite the fact I “worked them to death,” they were still okay with it.

That’s good because it’s not going to get any easier for them.

It’s looking,therefore, like last semester went as well as could be expected, especially given it was my first time teaching it and the whole thing was an experiment.  I wish there was some way to see if the kids really did get anything out of it to help with their long-term academic goals, though.

Are grad classes a waste of time? February 5, 2012

Posted by mareserinitatis in education, engineering, geophysics, grad school, physics, research, solar physics, teaching.
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I have seen both Gears and Massimo post comments about how grad classes are a waste of time.  Last week, Gears said this in his EngineerBlogs post (which I’d like to address several points, but this will have to suffice for tonight) and Massimo has suggested ‘workshop’ classes. I have to say that I disagree with both of them, but I think it’s because of my weird background.

For review, I did an undergrad in physics with a math minor, my masters in electrical engineering, and my PhD will officially be in geophysics (as was all my coursework) though my project is actually on solar physics.

Honestly, I’m not sure I could have done that without the coursework.  On the other hand, I think my attitude would be different if I’d stayed in one field. In my work in electrical engineering, I use almost every class I took, especially the grad courses.  I use antennas and microwave engineering a lot…so much so, that my circuits classes are probably the most rusty.  (I know, that’s completely backwards for an EE, but that’s how it goes sometimes.)  I find myself often wishing I’d had the opportunity to take some advanced signal processing, as well.  And one of the most useful courses was numerical techniques in electromagnetics.  Not only does it help me with the work I’m doing in EE, it’s also helping with many of the things I’ve run into looking at geo- and solar physics research.

The flip side to this is that if I’d continued on to get a PhD in EE, any further coursework would not have been terribly relevant.  I think there’s an optimum point, and that may have come earlier if my undergrad was in EE.

My classes in geophysics were not as useful, and I think there were probably 2.5 classes that had anything at all to do with my research and what I’m doing now.  Realistically, for the stuff I was interested in, I probably should have looked at a PhD in physics or astrophysics…but that may not have been much better if I was taking a bunch of classes on stuff that had no bearing on my research, either (which is likely).  However, the 2.5 classes that were useful have been REALLY useful.

I’ve got a breadth in classes that most students never get.  This is one thing that I think is a bit of a sticking point for some students.  Most places have a ‘breadth requirement’ – i.e. so many classes outside of their department.  I think this is a good thing as it helps people to see what other types of things could be relevant to their research.  I really think this is something that should be required because of all the ideas that come from seeing how different disciplines approach their fundamental problems, and even having some exposure to what those problems are is a benefit to students.

The real problem, in my opinion, is that so many places require a LOT of credits.  It’s fairly common in most good EE programs to require somewhere between 50 and 60 credits of JUST coursework.  I don’t like the idea of no classes, but I really think you could trim them back and just make students take classes that are relevant to their research as well as a couple classes for breadth.  I was very disappointed with my PhD program because once you hit advanced candidacy status, you’re not allowed to take any more classes unless your advisor is willing to foot the bill.  Not likely because most advisors want their students working on their research and getting done (not that I blame them).  The down side is that there are a couple classes that I could have really used but was unable to take because they didn’t fulfill the requirements for my degree.  Most of my classes had to be in the department as I’d already fulfilled my breath requirement, so taking a class here or there outside the department was viewed as a waste of time because they didn’t allow me to tick off some of those boxes in the red tape.  And of course, it becomes obvious that you would really benefit from a course once you’ve hit advanced status and can’t take any more.

It would be nice if there was a system where your advisor could sit down with you and figure out where you’re interested in going research-wise and plot a course through the classwork that makes sense and is flexible.  Wouldn’t it be nice if you discovered you need to learn about a particular topic and could then go take the course on it? It makes more sense to me than filling in boxes to get to a certain number of credits or hedging bets that something will be useful later on.

Let’s face it: research degrees are already very specialized and take a long time, so it would make more sense to cut the classes down to those that are relevant.  This would ideally save time without sacrificing the background required for a research project. Finally, a really good option, which more universities ought to allow, is independent study classes.  During my MS, I took one class as an independent study working on emag stuff.  It was awesome as I got the material I really needed in a more structured way and was able to do a project which (I’m still hoping) would be a foundation for some decent research down the line.  Therefore, I don’t feel grad classes are a waste of time, as long as they make sense, and I wish universities would be more flexible in some of their requirements.

Am I missing something here? January 27, 2012

Posted by mareserinitatis in education, engineering, science, teaching.
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Like everyone else, I came across the article on why college students leave engineering.

I was reading it with my jaw hanging open.  Specifically this:

The typical engineering major today spends 18.5 hours per week studying. The typical social sciences major, by contrast, spends about 14.6 hours.

My first thought was: Where the heck can you go to school and study for 18.5 hrs/wk and still manage to pass enough classes to get an engineering degree?!

My second thought was that it explained something that has been puzzling me.  Last semester, my students complained about the amount of homework I assigned for my 1-credit class.  There was about 1  homework assignment per week, and I figured this meant they’d be spending an average of 1-2 hours outside of class on assignments.

When I started school, the rule of thumb was that 3 hours per week outside of class PER CREDIT was required for an A, two for a B, one for a C.  This meant that if you planned to go to school full time (which was 12 credits per semester) and get an A average, you needed to be spending about 36 hours per week just on homework in addition to your 12 hours of seat time in a classroom.

I also learned that, for some classes, this was a significant underestimate (usually math, engineering and physics classes) while for other classes, it was an overestimate.  I remember one senior-level sociology class that I took where I spent, on average, three hours per week on homework and still came out with one of the highest grades in the class.  This is why I always felt it was a good idea to have a nice balance between technical and non-technical classes: it would even out the homework load a bit.

My understanding of a typical homework load is obviously a couple decades behind.  (Although I am not sure I plan to change my tune any time soon.)  However, I did feel good about one point in the article:

STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) have also had less grade inflation than the humanities and social sciences have in the last several decades.

Apparently you can study less in engineering than you used to have to obtain a degree, which I have to admit bothers me a bit.  However, it’s still harder than humanities and you’re more likely to actually have to earn those grades.  Despite the fact that we’re probably pushing STEM fields more than we really need to, I do hope employers take that into consideration.  STEM students have to be more committed to make it through their fields, which are also more technically challenging.  I’d think that should be worth something.

Why are the women so good? January 21, 2012

Posted by mareserinitatis in education, engineering, feminism, teaching.
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I’d been thinking about writing this post last semester.  However, it slipped my mind until some trollish comments showed up on EngineerBlogs today.  I think that Chris, Gears and Katie gave the troll a good smackdown, but one comment bothers me:

few women are capable of handling these kind of demanding environment.

I’ve heard this before (pretty much since I started as an undergrad).  However, after teaching my class last semester, I have to wonder what the hell these people are talking about.

I had 90 students last semester, 5 of whom were women.  All five of those women were easily in the top 25% of the class and were more likely in the top 10% of the class.  They were the students who repeatedly handed in assignments on time and seldom (if ever) had to redo any of them.  I will say that none of them chose to do the programming – but that is likely because they had turned in all the optional assignments required for an A before the matlab assignments were given.

If anything, what I saw was puzzling to me.  The women seemed the most prepared to meet the demands of a college class, were able to communicate well both in written and verbal form (and one of them was a non-native English speaker), and contributed well and frequently to the class.  It was almost strange how they were on top of things when the majority of their male classmates were struggling.

I’ve heard it argued that the women most likely to be in engineering are generally those who are in the top of their classes.  Women who may be good at math but not outright brilliant will be swayed to go into other careers.  From what I could see, this was true.

If you listen to trolls on the internet, you get the impression that women are incompetent engineers, however.  The women in my class were some of the most competent and motivated students, but I admit that they were more passive than the male students, which I still think leads the male students (and probably later on, male professors) to believe that the female students don’t know anything.  But it’s interesting to hear this comments after witnessing the exact opposite of what everybody “knows to be true”.  I can only think that people who make these comments are really overestimating their own abilities or wrongly judging what it takes to be a good engineer.  Maybe both.

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