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nd public writing on substack while my work here has built ample cred among among scientists and others in academialand there s a ceiling to that credibility as long as i m writing on my own personal blog it s clear that blogging newsletter writing is becoming even more relevant and impactful as ever and that s why i m sticking with this i think it s funny that when i started out experienced bloggers advised me that the heyday of science blogs was long over yes the days of google reader are gone and twitter has been reduced to a toy of a petulant man child it just makes sense for me to evolve over to substack and the new name of the site i think puts a pin in the broader emphasis of what i ve been doing for a good long while if you just direct your browsers to my new site it ll basically be the same but actually i think a little better please note that drs amy parachnowitsch and catherine scott are still editors of this site and they may well choose to post here and maybe i will at some point though it s not in my plans the archive sees a fair bit of traffic and i m going to keep the site active so it s still findable this entry was tagged blogging date 31 july 2023 author terry mcglynn how about funding programs for puis that aren t deficit based standard there are a bunch of federally funded programs that are designed to support students and faculty who are at teaching focused institutions let s talk about it by busting out a new taxonomic term that we ll probably be seeing more of in the future basically any university that doesn t have r1 ish level of annual research spending is called an emerging research institution eri according to the chips and science act with this new bunch of cash nsf and other federal agencies are charged with making sure that eris are getting our share of the research pie which makes sense from an effectiveness standpoint because a lot of these institutions that don t traditionally rake in huge amounts of federal dollars are very good at what they do and it can be highly effective to spend more funds to leverage our expertise and reaching students at these institutions is essential for actually moving the needle on broadening participation there s a good argument to be made that the failure to identify the importance of regional public universities can explain why the graduate training programs and professoriates of pwis remain so darn w as funding agencies are looking to ramp up programs that are funding the broad array of eris out there across the higher education landscape i have one huge request could you develop these programs so they are designed to leverage our strengths instead of attempting to rectify what the conditions that research community tends to regard as our weaknesses could we have strengths based funding for our institutions instead of deficit based programs continue reading this entry was tagged funding nsf r1 vs non r1 date 26 june 2023 author terry mcglynn recommended reads 208 standard socioeconomic roots of academic faculty we show that faculty are up to 25 times more likely to have a parent with a ph d moreover this rate nearly doubles at prestigious universities and is stable across the past 50 years the most striking thing about the data in this paper is that this phenomenon hasn t improved in recent years it s actually gotten worse women in leadership face ageism at every age when people assume you re not in charge because you re a woman continue reading this entry was tagged recommended reads date 24 june 2023 author terry mcglynn when to use the terms pui slac msi hsi rpu etc standard we ve got an acronym problem when it comes to classifying colleges and universities no it s not that we have too many acronyms our problem is that the commonly used acronyms rarely capture the distinctions that we re trying to specify while i ve already taken a stab at describing institutions with a typology that i think holds up really well i think it would be really useful to provide y all with a rundown of more common and less common acronyms indicating not only what they include but also what they don t include continue reading this entry was tagged r1 vs non r1 date 21 june 2023 author terry mcglynn why it is icky to offer free conference registration for student volunteers standard some academic societies do this thing where they offer free conference registration to a limited number of students and in turn those students earn their keep by donating their labor for to help run the conference at registration tables projection tech support etc i think this is problematic you might think that this increases accessibility and allows students who otherwise couldn t afford to attend the conference to attend and i think you re right about that but just because a practice provides access this doesn t make it equitable or just this practice brings students who are already at a structural disadvantage and then literally treats them like the hired help because these students are replacing workers who otherwise would have to be hired by the organizers the students who come from well funded labs or who have the means to pay out of pocket aren t going to be volunteering they re going to be there to fully enjoy the meeting and they get to choose how to use their time the student volunteers are the hired help only they re not hired they re the poors who have their labor extracted for free so that the society can balance the budget i get that balancing the budget is important and also that it s hard and i really get that it s difficult and under appreciated work to do all the work in organizing the conference hats off to you thank you in full sincerity but also please listen carefully when i m saying here that there s else something to change up to make the meeting more equitable and to stop othering the students who have fewer resources you might argue that volunteering gives students an opportunity to do networking and be exposed to science that they otherwise might choose not see there is a bit of truth to that but if it s such an opportunity then shouldn t the conference be charging students who want this networking opportunity extra for the privilege or at least let students volunteer at no extra charge but you know that won t fly because you know and i know that volunteering for free registration is metaphorically sitting in the back of the bus the bottom line is that these volunteer positions exist because organizers are trying to make the conference accessible in two ways lowering the cost for everybody by reducing registration fees and allowing some students who need the support to attend without having to pay for registration those are really good priorities but operationalizing them by making poorer students volunteer to be able to have a seat at the table is diversity 1 0 iwe can do better than that we should expect better than that from our academic societies but what can societies do to make sure that students who can t afford registration can still attend the meeting i think there are a variety of more accessible ways to approach this you could increase registration fees to actually hire people to do the work and then offer registration waivers for applicants who can t afford it you could require full professors to volunteer you could require that every person who has attended the conference four previous times on their fifth meeting they need to volunteer you could sweeten the pot for those who pay for registration but still volunteer for example many conferences only allow a maximum of one presentation per person you could allow those who register to give two presentations or you could promise a better talk time slot for those who volunteer and you can come up with a fancy ribbon or sticker or something for volunteers to make them feel good which indeed would indicate more something tangible about being an ally because that ribbon would indicate actual work to be clear you don t need to ask the students in the society who are already already marginalized on the basis of their financial status to further marginalize themselves by having to work for free you can find other ways to be creative and save money as our current president of the country that is has said don t tell me what you value show me your budget and i ll tell you what you value and i m telling you that making your poorest students have to provide free labor to have their seats at our table doesn t indicate good values you know this institutional change is hard slow and requires consistent effort maybe you could make this your next target to make your academic society more equitable anyhow i wrote about this a few years ago but i thought i d bring it up again as i noticed that one of my societies the ecological society of america of which i m a life member but not as a matter of honor but simply because i paid a bunch of money is still exercising this practice date 22 may 2023 author terry mcglynn why doesn t nsf redact horrible grfp reviews that demonstrate overt bias standard the ongoing conversation about inequitable outcomes in the national science foundation s graduate research fellowship program nsf grfp is scaffolded on a steady trickle of inappropriate remarks from reviewers that applicants share on social media take for example the howler from this weekend which said his hispanic pride prevented him from seeking mentorship and advise sic from other sic that would have helped him avoid and lesson sic some of his struggles and progress further i love the nsf grfp pic twitter com 2ajbph3fid ulises perez uiisesperez april 17 2023 even taken out of context and imagining it was written with functional grammar the content of this review is highly problematic you can t invent a universe in which that sentence is okay this isn t just a one off situation i think that the vast majority of reviews are actually lacking in obviously racist bias and the vast majority of them don t even have classist bias in my experience which is not insubstantial the reviews are by mostly from people who are thoughtful and are genuinely working with good intentions if not constructive approaches to broaden access and participation but i also have seen a plenty of people in the process who aggressively do not aggressively do not understand the forces at work that structurally exclude folks on the basis of their identity and personal backgrounds it s a problem because the review process involves the human beings who comprise our academic community these problems are a reflection of us and the racism in that review is a mirror for us to see ourselves one thing to keep in mind is that these reviews are coming from the panelists themselves the call is coming from inside the house so how bad is the situation there are enough overt problem that science wrote a news article about it last year and called it dysfunctional i spent a few minutes searching twitter for screenshots of problematic reviews and considering the volume of those you have to wonder about all the applicants who aren t on twitter and how only the extremely rare applicant will make the choice to share that kind of thing publicly and well yeah it s a problem while the absolutely number of such damning screenshots is finite and perhaps small this relative frequency belies the depth of implicit bias that happens while i ve seen some folks claim that the folks at nsf doesn t care about this bias from my observations and interactions i m confident that there is plenty concern about bias but i think there s more concern about bias in the process than there is about outcomes that may not result in broadened participation i think there are varying levels of concern that process that winds up principally elevating those who have already had access to prior advantages if you re going to measure merit and potential which are the building blocks of the program that s hard to do when you have a pool that has experienced different levels of opportunity and measuring achievement relative to opportunity is a hard thing to do especially when the reviewer pool is replete with people who have succeeded under the current system anyhow the specific question i came back to my slumbering blog to try to answer is why does nsf share reviews even when they happen to be incredibly nasty and racist i obviously can t provide any accurate answer to this because i don t work for them and haven t been involved in the stuff that program officers do in the absence of an explanation from the grfp program i hope i might be able to shed at least a little light for those of you who know even less about how the place works than i do here are some unordered things i have to say about this as far as i am aware nsf hasn t made any kind of public statement about how it is that they end keeping reviews that have highly problematic statements which means that they end up being part of the process before winding up in the hands of the applicants considering the funding rates and the number of awards they get at least 10 000 applicants or so this is a ginormous program and each application gets a few reviews i m not sure it s quite possible for every review to get that the level of attention that would be needed there is a small number of program offers who operate the process year round when they operate the review panels around the winter break it s an all hands on deck situation where people who don t operate the program are brought in to support the program who gets to decide where the line is on what constitutes overt bias i think there is probably a philosophy at work where transparency is valued and the idea that the occasional overtly biased review might be preferred to the idea that someone behind the scenes is tainting reviews by removing content that was intended by the reviewer in my opinion in a perfect world all of the reviews with overtly problematic bias would be simply deleted from the process before anybody on a panel would be exposed to them but there a lot of this is a big grey zone the howlers are very obvious of course but that s just the long end of a tail and who s going to draw that line maybe it s better that no line is drawn so that we can see the reviews when they are a problem i think there is the prevailing philosophy which i admittedly don t radically disagree with though i m not sure if i agree with it that overtly biased reviews are best addressed by not squashing them but instead by giving them sunlight i ve been involved in enough of these kinds of situations where i ve seen problematic statements in reviews either get entirely ignored and that these statements just obviously devalue the weight of the review in general and sometimes it s brought up and discussed in the way you hope it would be discussed then again sometimes it s me bringing up the issue and i don t have knowledge of rooms when i am not in them i think it s worth asking is it better to just delete these reviews...
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