text:
What's the meaning of "program"?
I was reading this.

Now here's some advice that isn't silly:  don't go to graduate school
  unless you get into a strong program.

What's the meaning of "program" in this case? What would be a strong program?

The question may be silly, but I have portuguese as my native languange and this is the first time I see this word used in this context.

In this context, it is referring to the particular department or school, that is to say, "don't go to graduate school unless you get into a good university, or rather a good department." Don't go to graduate school for the sake of going to graduate school - make sure you're going somewhere which does good research, where faculty members publish frequently, has a history of graduates doing well for themselves, etc.

One should interpret  "program" broadly in this case to includes curriculum, faculty, and placement record.
More generally, consider what your objective is for entering the program. If the primary goal is to pursue research, the program strength is particularly important.  If the primary goal is to obtain a tenure-track position -- pay particularly close attention to the placement record of the department, and to its reputation in the discipline. If the primary goal is to obtain credentials, overall program strength may be somewhat less important, if the school is accredited and has a good placement record.
Finally, as practical considerations, you may also wish to consider the completion rate, time to completion, level of student support offered, and RA/TA workload.

What would be a strong program? I'm not sure if it has something to do with the university you are in or with the number of disciplines you are taking.


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World map with academic works graded by relevance?
I remember of some article that was published in which the author showed a world map with circles that represented the number of articles published by country and their frequency in which a groundbreaking academic work was released in each country(One of them was represented by the size of the circle, the other by the color of the circle). But I can't find it now, could someone help me find it? I've googled some things but was unable to find it - my native languange is not english, so I ran out of permutations of words to find the article.

Is it the image shown in this question: Research publications per capita? (EDIT: it has the circles, but not the colour grading.)

Perhaps you're thinking of the map below?  It's Figure 1 of the paper Global Multi-Level Analysis of the `Scientific Food Web'.

(source: nature.com)
The caption is "Figure 1: World map of knowledge production and consumption in 6 major geographic areas of the world (North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Australia and Africa)."  An additional note: "Circle size reflects the number of papers $P_i$ produced by the corresponding entities $i$. The inner circle is for 2000–2002, the outer one for 2007–2009. The size of the pies represents (A) the relative proportion of citations $C_i$ that the entities earned in the 6 geographic areas, (B) similar for references $R_i$ recorded in the Thomson Reuters Web of Science database. The number of papers and citations have increased over time in all geographic areas, but their shares of references and citations have changed. For example, Asia reaches higher shares recently, characterizing it as an emergent scientific power, which has become almost comparable to North America or Europe. Note that, in the three leading knowledge producing areas, the majority of references cites papers published in the same geographic area, i.e., proximity matters."

I just realized that this shows data for major areas, not countries.  Should I delete this answer?

Please leave it. The info is useful.

I can picture the image you are talking about, but I'm having trouble finding it as well. There is however an interactive world map here, which is broken down by institution, rather than country: http://academic.research.microsoft.com/AcademicMap?TopDomainId=2

source: Stack Exchange

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

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sort: votes


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Providing APIs instead of directly providing data sets
Several academic paper hosts such as PubMed and Cochrane give some machine readable access to their data by providing  APIs, but do not directly provide the data sets. Is there any reason why they don't provide some dumps of the data sets, aside from trying to save bandwidth and avoiding to cron dumps?

Are: "trying to save bandwidth and avoiding to cron dumps" the reasons they told you, when you asked them; or just your own speculation - in which case, what did they say when you asked them?

@EnergyNumbers Speculation. I emailed Cochrane (Deborah Pentesco-Gilbert dpentesc@wiley.com) 20 days ago and haven't received any reply so far. I haven't tried to email PubMed yet (custserv@nlm.nih.gov).

One obvious reason would be that providing an api instead of a dump allows them to see how people are using the data.  It's also quite possible that the data contains PPI that is necessary for aggregation, but which shouldn't be exposed for subject privacy reasons, so an api lets them still do the aggregation while masking the sensitive underlying data.

all_licenses: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/


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Why do some conferences with double blind review ask for author names when submitting the paper for review?
I wonder why some conferences with double blind review ask for author names when submitting the paper for review. Why not asking for author information once the paper has been accepted?

Likely so they can track the papers internally by author. It prevents, for example, a submission being sent out to a reviewer who is on the paper.'
Double-blind just means that the reviewers are unknown to the author, and the author is unknown to the reviewers. It doesn't say anything about the conference organizers/editorial staff.

Thanks. Why not asking reviewers to list their paper submission number(s), if they've submitted anything? Is there any other use of the author information by the conference organizers/editorial staff?

@FranckDernoncourt An extra layer of security? It allows them to check, rather than relying on the authors reporting. I've been an author on a conference submission that I was only faintly aware of what was happening - relying on me to remember to ask for the number, and then report it, is less reliable than saying "Don't send this to Fomite, he's an author."

@FranckDernoncourt In my discipline, at least, you wouldn't send a paper to a colleague of an author i.e. somebody at the same institution. So you'd also need to know all the submission numbers for any colleagues who might have submitted to the same journal or conference.

@FranckDernoncourt cfr is right - conflict-of-interest. Some conferences I review for present a list of all authors who have submitted, without their submission info, so I can mark anyone who I have a COI with without seeing what they submitted. Useful for e.g. making sure I don't review my Ph.D adviser's work!

So that the Program Chair can check for conflicts of interest beyond what authors may have reported.
So that new authors don't pop up or disappear magically once a paper is accepted.

Thanks. Why would new authors pop up or disappear magically once a paper is accepted?

If authors change after the paper is accepted, there's a chance that it may impact the integrity of the review process adversely. Other situations that author disclosure seeks to curb include, for example, gift authorship.

Authors might disappear if attempted plagiarism is discovered, also.

A sudden thought about one of the reasons for this just crosses my mind. Doing so also prevents authors from changing the author list. Although technically, one can encrypt the author names without exposing the names to the program committee.


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Why do some MOOCs close their enrollment?
I have noticed that quite frequently MOOCs close their enrollment, and content is made available only for students who are enrolled. Why?
Example:

Just in case, many closed courses have another intake of theirs up and running.

Lacking individual interaction between instructor and student, MOOCs often have a policy that this kind of feedback is replaced by interactions with the "community" of other students on web forums. So my sense is that closing enrollments from time to time recreates traditional semesters, that is, batches up students into similar cohorts in time -- and then hopefully this serves to create a "critical mass" of respondents on the forums, who are all working through like material at about the same time, and more likely to respond to each other's questions and concerns in a coherent fashion.

And to add to Daniel's answer, the instructors may also want to set a pace, akin to traditional in person lessons. Releasing new material on regular intervals, the are encouraging students to follow it at the set pace.
So, if you sign up, and get a new lecture every week, are more likely to watch them on time, digest the material, and keep on the course, that if you sign up and get a backlog of 30 lessons to watch, and growing.

From the students' perspective, it doesn't make much sense to close the course. From an institutional perspective, however, it's usually just a budget and reputation concern.
If nobody official is answering questions, the course looks dead, which makes the school look flakey. At the same time, the cost of hiring someone to manage the course all the time is prohibitive. So, courses get closed.


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Finding papers that acknowledge a specific author
Is there any way to find all papers that acknowledge a specific author? (i.e., the author is mentioned in the acknowledgement section)

I've never heard of a database that indexes this.  I think you'll just need a full-text search.

Naïve Full text search won't work, as you will often get citations to their works (and of course works that they themselves authored).
With some parsing to identify the acknowledgement section, a "restricted" text search on that only would work. Writing such a parser is left as an exercise to the reader.

As recently as February 2015, there was such a search engine, called AckSeer (patterned after CiteSeer): http://ackseer.ist.psu.edu. Unfortunately, it seems to be inactive now. You can see what it used to look like on the Internet Archive. There is a scholarly article that describes it in detail.
Now, probably the only way to do search for authors in acknowledgements would be to search in a scholarly database that lets you:

Search the full text for the desired author's first and last name in quotes;
and simultaneously exclude the author's name from the author search.

Searching for the author's first and last name in quotes (e.g. "Firstname Lastname") is probably the best way to avoid returning articles that mention the author in the reference list, since most reference lists don't list authors in that format. This suggested technique is not foolproof, but it's the best way I can think of to get the closest to what you're asking for.

The search query you suggest returns many instances of the OP's name in references and in-text mentions: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q="Franck+Dernoncourt"+-author%3A"Franck+Dernoncourt"

Google Scholar is absolutely unsuitable for the kind of search that I suggested. As far as I can tell, for licensing reasons (I assume), it cannot distinguish meaningfully between fields when searching. Google Scholar is great for many things (e.g. I linked to it in my post to provide the scholarly article), but certainly not for this kind of search. Hence, I said, "a scholarly database that lets you ...".

You suggested searching the full text for the full name and excluding authored papers. That's exactly what my query does. (I think you assume wrong. Google Scholar does let you search body and author separately)

OK. I acknowledge your point. That said, if you look at the Google Scholar results in detail, out of the first 10 listed results, four mention Franck Dernoncourt in the acknowledgements (as requested), one is a dud (doesn't seem to mention his name at all), and five mention him in reference lists (false positives). So, with 4/10, "this suggested technique is not foolproof, but it's the best way I can think of."

Resorting to advanced search tool that most famous publishers offer would simplify your task (at least to an extent).
E.g., search for papers with name in full-text and not in authors and not in references.
Currently existing journal libraries do not support such a feature yet. The solution to your question is a topic of research by itself. The following articles, [1] and [2], might provide some insights.


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How to find the number of citations for each version of an arXiv article?
I wonder how to to find the number of citations for each version of an arXiv article. (E.g., given an arXiv article, 100 citations with no version, 31 citations for version 1, 56 citations for version 2, etc.)

A simple procedure would be to search for the arxiv identifier including the version number within articles citing the preprint in question. The arxiv identifier is explained here: Understanding the arXiv identifier.
Roughly as follows:

Find the article in a Google Scholar result list.
The entry usually has a link "Cited by: x". Follow this links to see the papers that cite the preprint in question.
It is now possible to limit further searches to the current result list. Do that and search for the arxiv identifier with version number added.

A quick example:
The paper arXiv:1207.1158 is cited roughly 609 times as of today: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cites=4690497069002627251&as_sdt=2005&sciodt=0,5&hl=de.
Searching for "arXiv:1207.1158v1" within the citing articles yields 4 results: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=arXiv%3A1207.1158v1&btnG=&hl=de&as_sdt=2005&sciodt=0%2C5&cites=4690497069002627251&scipsc=1, while searching for "arXiv:1207.1158v1" yields 6 results: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=arXiv%3A1207.1158v2&btnG=&hl=de&as_sdt=2005&sciodt=0%2C5&cites=4690497069002627251&scipsc=1.
As could be expected, the difficulty is that most papers don't include the arxiv identifier with the version number when citing an arxiv preprint.


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Terms for an PhD grant that covers everything
I am looking for the proper adjective that would carry the meaning that a grant for a PhD student covers everything (tuition fees, stipends, etc.). I believe one can use the expression "full grant", but I wonder whether there exists some more unambiguous adjective.

fully funded  is used

You can just say/write 'funded PhD' or 'fully funded PhD' to avoid any ambiguity that may cause for any resume reviewer abroad.


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How to find an author biography as mentioned in papers?
Some papers include the authors' biographies. Given a researcher, how to quickly find his biography mentioned one of their papers? Is tedious to have to go through their papers one by one to try to find it.
Here is the kind of authors' biographies I'm referring to (fictive example, turned out to pop up first on Google):

Find a journal that does these, search the publications list to see if they have a paper there?

Why do you want to do this?

@Kimball I need to get the bio of a several researchers, whose websites don't contain it.

Some people just don't share such information. Best bet is trying to contact them directly, asking for the relevant data and permission to put it to whatever use you are contemplating.

In addition to what @vonbrand says, copying a biography and using it in something else may be a copyright violation.

@Kimball Sure, I'll just make a personal use.

@vonbrand I'm just interested in author biographies present in a paper (i.e., the information is already shared).

If you want biographical information about an author, why not visit their web page?

@DavidRicherby Not listed there.

Did you try ResearchGate?


text:
How to find the number of papers per language written by a researcher?
Is there any fast way to find the number of papers per language written by a given researcher?
E.g., researcher John Doe published 30 papers written in English, 16 papers written in Spanish, and 3 papers written in German.
By fast, I mean faster than going on Google Scholar and counting the number of paper for each language  oneself.

This is actually a data analytics problem. This should either be supplied by the author page or be done with a help of a customised analytics tool.

@ÉbeIsaac Does it mean it's off-topic here? I have always been confused by the scope of this exchange website regarding software question. http://meta.academia.stackexchange.com/q/174/452 says it's on-topic but close votes are quite random.

Well I guess I'll leave the question here then

Let's hope author indexing site like Google Scholar would implement this one day and then you may receive an answer post to this question.

Clarivate's Web of Science citation database can provide this information. Assuming you have access to it, e.g. through your institution, you can

Search for a researcher's name
If necessary, use additional criteria to try to restrict the results to a single person
Look under "More options" for languages.

While this option is mainly intended for further restricting the search results, the tool also tells you the number of articles in language X associated with researcher name Y. Of course, their database coverage has some restrictions, so it may or may not work for your purposes. In certain fields, other databases could be more useful.


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What does "to be enjoyed with all rights and privileges pertaining thereto" mean on a French diploma?
I have noticed that many French diplomas contain the mention "Pour en jouir avec les droits et prérogatives qui y sont attachés", which can be translated into "[The diploma is conferred upon Mr. X and gives the Y level] to be enjoyed with all rights and privileges pertaining thereto."
What does "to be enjoyed with all rights and privileges pertaining thereto" mean on a French diploma? I.e., what are those rights and privileges? For example, if someone obtained the Baccalaureate diploma, what rights and privileges does that give?
I'm not sure whether it refers to some legal consequences, academic consequences, or something else, so that's why I don't post on Law.SE.
Examples:

I think "enjoyed" is an old-fashioned English translation of this.

The last of you examples is clearly the best.

That phrase is clearly not France-specific, as @ff524 mentioned. In order to add to and further illustrate the nice answer by @vonbrand, I will share the following paper, which discusses Roman origins and Medieval expressions of the relevant phase(s): http://www.jstor.org/stable/1844716.
In addition to some comments and answers for the above-mentioned most likely duplicate question, I would add that modern practical meaning of this phrase significantly depends on graduate's field of study and institution they graduated from.
In regard to the field of study, rights and privileges might include (beyond the implied rights and privileges to say that one graduated with specific degree from a particular institution, to wear the institution's regalia, to be referred to as a Dr. [for Ph.D. graduates], etc.): to be able to practice in specific regulated fields, such as medicine and law (upon satisfying additional conditions, such as attending medical residency or passing specific state's bar examination, correspondingly).
In regard to the institution, some rights and privileges include to participate in alumni activities, to retain institution's e-mail address, to get discounts on various products and services as well as on attending individual classes and, even, enrolling into certain degree programs at one's alma mater.

In most modern setups, the privilege we are after is being able to be hired at high-profile jobs requiring the degree. This is not limited to medical and law practice.

@svavil: The reason I emphasized regulated fields, like medicine, law and education, is because, unlike in many other fields, degree requirements are really mandatory in the the former.

That the holder is entitled to all rights and prerogatives pertaining to the degree. At the very least, the right to call yourself <whatever the degree may be>.
This is probably a leftover from the misty past, where holding a degree could allow you to use certain clothing, attend some ceremonies, the right to vote in certain matters, be ... European societies before the French Revolution were incredibly hierarchically structured. And much of the traditions (togas, berets for graduation, even many of the degrees) have their origins in the Middle Ages. Universities are touted as places in which new ground is broken, authorities questioned without mercy, and on the other hand we follow traditions that haven't made sense for more than two centuries (and were questionable long before).


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Does students asking questions in class improve the learning outcome of the entire class?
Is there any research/study/survey that looked at whether / to what extent students asking questions in class improve the learning outcome of the entire class?
I am most interested in computer science and math education, but curious about other fields as well.

@BenCrowell E.g., banning questions, video lecture only, or student surveys.

@BenCrowell Typical issues in human subject research.

The comments are not for posting one's personal opinion about whether questions in class are good, or for discussing how one might perform the research requested in the question.

@BenCrowell You could simply measure the number of questions asked in random classes and correlate this against performance or other measures of "learning". You would still have to control for the subject matter or quality of the teacher somehow, but otherwise it seems doable.

In a group class setting, educators, mistakenly, think that if one person responds, subsequently the rest of the class shares the same understanding. Most instructors would agree this is not the case.
Questions on relevant topics help to engage all the students. Often times I use the student's question as a connecting point to ask one of mine. Other times I involve other students by asking questions such as “Good, now can someone provide another example? Who else has an opinion? Who disagrees?”
If the question is off-topic then it is the educator's responsibility to bring the class back to the discussion by asking one of their own questions.
At this time, I am unaware of any research related to this.
Note: I will append any links to this post if I come across relevant studies.


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Doctorant (PhD student) vs doctorant contractuel (contractual PhD Student)
In the French education system, what is the difference between doctorant ("PhD student") and doctorant contractuel ("contractual PhD Student")?

In France (like other countries), there are several ways to fund a PhD student.
A doctorant contractuel is a legal designation used to refer to someone who has signed a specific job contract called a contrat doctoral. This contracts allows universities to hire PhD students and describes the working conditions of the PhD student as an employee of said university.
Note that, in addition to this contract, a decree (2009-464 in the Wiki link) can also modify the working conditions by stating that a PhD student funded with such a contract must spend 100% of his/her time on research activities. As a result, an additional clause must be signed to be allowed to do teaching activities. From what I know, this is the one crucial point to be aware of when proposing or signing such a contract.
A doctorant is a just a term used to designate a PhD student, without any distinction regarding the nature and source of the funding.

@NajibIdrissi Yes, you are correct. My point was to highlight the fact that, unless explicitly written on the contrat doctoral, a PhD student cannot legally do teaching activities (otherwise, it's either volunteering from the student's side if it's done for free, or unreported employment from the university's side if paid). Hence the necessity to sign the amendment (which I refered to as the additional clause in my answer).

As of 2016, doctorants contractuels can do extras (vacations, such as colles).


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To what extent do visit weekends impact graduate school applicant's final decisions?
Is there any study/survey that tried to quantify to what extent visit weekends impact graduate school applicant's final decisions? (final decision = which school to attend)
I mostly interested in the computer science field in the US, but curious about other fields and locations as well.

This doesn't seem like the sort of thing that would have been heavily studied and have lead to a citable study. Are you trying to justify visit weekends at your institution (or perhaps find a justification for killing them)? I feel like there's an underlying unasked question here.

@BillBarth Always curious about ROI. There are a few tangential questions, e.g., what the most critical events are.

It does not contain any hard data, but this article on the "Recruitment Wars" from the late 1980s on the escalation of recruitment weekends in the sciences is an interesting historical digression.

I have anecdata from my own CS department that prospective PhD students who come to our visit weekend are significantly more likely to accept our admission offers.  But I'd be surprised if anything approaching a formal study existed; I can't imagine many departments would be willing to reveal how many admission offers they made.

@JeffE, I'd surmise that really interested prospects are much more likely to show up... the age-old "correlation isn't causation".

@vonbrand Sure. But implication isn't correlation either. The students who are are really interested a priori are a relatively small fraction of those who show up; most are merely undecided, curious, and willing to accept a free trip.

I visited 5 schools as well, and did not choose my "dream school" because of visits. I had actually started doing research with a professor there (and it was published during my first year of graduate school), but during the visit I realized that the department was not what I was looking for. One big thing that got me is that, on paper, they (and every program) seemed "interdisciplinary", but when you talk to them you realize that the "math biologists" don't talk to biologists. Add that the students seemed to not be interesting and I started thinking that, although it's a top school in the field (math), I wouldn't graduate as the person I would want to be.
The other program started with biologists and mathematicians together in the same courses, then you split off after the first year. Everyone was really interesting and I kept in touch with them after the visit. I met with a bunch of professors one-to-one and found about 6 I would like to have as an adviser and already had projects I wanted to start. Lastly, they showed the funding statistics and showed the available computing supplies. I got the impression that this school would really help me become who I want to be, and so I chose this school.
Then again, some people choose simply by the ranking.

Advisor/program fit is by far the most important aspect of choosing a graduate school. Visit weeks can both help or hinder a prospective student from obtaining this essential fit information. Below is a list of things to consider.

visit weeks allow you to see how you get along with the incoming class. These are the students you will be spending a lot of time with in courses and during time outside of your specific research group. They can be an essential part of program fit.
availability for meetings: Visit weeks can facilitate professor availability if all professors clear out their schedule for that day. However, if they don't, then trying to meet with professors in the department can be difficult if you are competing for meetings with all the other admits.
visit weeks can prevent admits/prospectives who can't make the visit week from getting good information about the atmosphere of the program when they visit at other times. The administrative staff is often a bit burnt out after visit week, and sometimes treats new visitors outside of visit week as after thoughts.
Gender equity. The structured nature of a visit week can give you a glimpse into how much the program thinks about diversity issues. A good visit week organizer will think about diversity and gender equity, from the way social events are organized to the gender ratio of the professors giving talks. For example one program I visited had a session for women grad students and women prospectives only, organized by the female grad students. Every female recruit at this visit week chose this school (possibly a coincidence; it was a great program). This event could not have happened as it was structured if every student visited the program individually.
Along gender equity and incoming class assessment, a visit week, due to alcohol consumption and group dynamics can lead you to discover important information about "sexual harassment" and "hostile work environments". I've seen many examples of this during visit week and a telling sign is how other students respond when fellow students do something innapropriate.

I visited 5 graduate schools, 3 during visit weeks, one not during a visit week at a school that had a visit week that I couldn't attend and one that did not have a visit week. I was seriously considering all 5 schools. I enjoyed my time the most at the 3 schools with a visit week, but I was ultimately not there to enjoy myself but to make a better decision.
The school that did not have the visit week it was easier to meet with professors I wanted one on one (harder to do when you're competing with 10 other students for meetings).
The absolute worst experience was visiting the school that had already put on their visit week before I visited. The administrative staff treated me as an inconvenience. I had to pay for all incidental expenses (food, transportation to the hotel they were putting me up in). I was not offered to attend anything social. I was often eating meals alone. Ultimately, I didn't choose this school because the professor I initially wanted to work with rubbed me the wrong way (was far more arrogant and judgmental than the professors at the other schools and I perceived the potential for personality conflict, despite his great research). However, had the potential supervisors all been equal, my experience probably would have leaned me against this school. Note this conflict was not due to another visit week but an exam that a professor refused to let me take early.
So for me, yes the visit weeks made me view the institutions more positively. But it probably didn't affect my decision.


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How do schools have the same number of each week day?
My school is currently on a 14 week schedule where we're supposed to have 14 Mondays, 14 Tuesdays, etc. each semester.  Because of various holidays, that's harder than it sounds, and so we have a couple days that have to get adjusted; for instance, tomorrow is a calendrical Wednesday, but an academic Monday.
This has some drawbacks: some students have outside commitments (for instance, jobs) which don't shift just because our schedule does, and because the modified days always happen on short weeks, compliance is limited.  (For instance, it's already hard enough to get students to stay around for classes on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, but it's really hard to get students who have class on Friday to realize when they make Thanksgiving plans that Friday classes meet on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.)
How do other institutions deal with this, and are there any particularly good solutions to it?

This sounds like an unreasonably complicated system. Why exactly do you need Wednesdays to be Mondays? (Google wasn't very helpful.)

@101010111100: We need to have the same number of Mondays and Wednesdays in the semester.  But there are several weeks in the semester with Monday holidays, so those Mondays need to be made up somehow.  I believe we're making up one by ending on a Monday and one by starting with a Monday, even though the calendar says Wednesday.

At my school, I just lose three Mondays from my M/W class and none from my T/Th classes ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

My experience in one institution was the same as yours: the missed days were put in at the end of the semester, with the 'day's being adjusted as needed. Another ignored the holidays (timing of teaching was such that this was not too much of a problem). Another simply reallocated teaching from those days to any appropriate slot (students are expected to be available for all teaching slots, so it's their problem if they can't make it).

They day is skipped, and the skipping is planned beforehand. punishing the students for bad planning of the course instructor is a No-No. it doesn't matter how many mondays you're supposed to have, you know when christmas is and when thanksgiving is (or 4tth july, or 1rst may in europe). plan accordingly.

@CptEric I really don't understand your comment. How are the students being punished, and why are you blaming, of all people, course instructors for the academic calendar? (And, which course instructor?)

"This has some drawbacks: some students have outside commitments (for instance, jobs) which don't shift just because our schedule does, and because the modified days always happen on short weeks, compliance is limited." i consider this punishing. The academic calendar has to adapt to the real world's calendar,  and real world's calendar is fixed way before a new course starts. That means that a missing monday because it's "Flag Day" ,or "John Day", should have already been adjusted correctly, and the content split to the other available days. Shifting that monday to thursday is a rude patch.

And it's the course instructor, teacher, or whoever you call it there task to do these adjusts along with his/heirs colleagues, transparently to the students.

@CptEric I think calling it "punishing" is unfair; it's a difficult problem with acknowledged disadvantages that we try to work around. As the answers suggest, there aren't many alternatives - a longer school year, not having holidays at all, or switching globally to a schedule not based on days of the week; all of those have comparable disadvantages. Not that having course instructors adjust their content to compensate isn't a possible solution, because the requirement is about total course hours.

it might look unfair, but it's a lot more unfair for the downtown guy struggling to pay his semester and his rent with a King Donalds bi-weekly salary, that his survival is gonna punish his grades or vice-versa.  Here, content is adjusted according to the real world calendar, because time is like matter, you can't make up more out of nowhere, and if you take it from somewhere, that somewhere better be empty for someone. I have found both types of solutions along my years as student, the one that has always worked best is the one i explain, which includes (continuation on next comment).

a "verbal contract" between students and teachers on performance dedicated to those contents that could be covered in less time, at same or almost similar depth, in exchange of less assignments during them. if a 6-hour, 3 week content had to be explain in 3 hours during two or one weeks, so be it, but it didn't come with the encumbering assignment work related to 6h and 3 weeks.

@CptEric I'm quite aware of the impact on working students, and, as I said in another comment, I think this policy would be less viable at schools where more students were in that situation. But none of the other solutions I've seen are even better for those students. If you have a solution which is better for those students, that would be really helpful. Being the fourth person here to tell me, as if I didn't already know, that other schools don't have to deal with this requirement, isn't. I prefer the same approach you do, but the requirement is about classroom hours, so it's not an option.

I'm afraid that if it's a "from above" rule,  the only solution i can come up is you bring the issue to the next meeting with your colleagues, and have whoever decides those requirements match them with the real world's expectations, or let you reassign those hours accordingly.

@CptEric The requirement comes from our accreditation agency, possibly interpreting a mandate by the state legislature. This is a case where we have a difficult requirement to deal with, and wishing it would go away is a distraction from finding the least disruptive way to handle it.

Make up days at the end of semester
The solution that I saw used is that for certain subjects, where one of "their" days fell on a holiday, the semester was one week longer, i.e. the break was shorter. Your described solution was not considered feasible - transferring a Friday class to Wednesday would fail because (a) there would be some students who have also chosen the Wednesday class and would have to be in two places at once; (b) there might be also a similar collision for lecturers who teach multiple classes and (c) there weren't enough facilities to host all the usual Wednesday classes plus all the usual Friday classes at once.
Skip them
Another reasonable possibility is to reduce the number of lectures. If it's known well in advance, it's no problem for a lecturer to take a course that usually is split in 14 lectures and teach it in 13 - and they can shift part of that material to extra reading and homework in the "empty" week where the lecture doesn't happen but students do have the rest of the week available.

First of all, let me re-iterate what thisismynamenow wrote in this his now deleted answer - if you are in a position to do so, re-consider whether this requirement is important enough that you are willing to go through administrative and managerial hassle for it. Like thisismynamenow, I think most schools just live with the fact that some classes in some years "lose" a session or two due to public holidays.
You should also note that one reason why students don't like this solution is that it essentially "punishes" them for having a public holiday - "hurray, Friday is off, so now we need to get the same classes done in 4 days". In a way your current planning removes the point of having a public holiday - you are just moving classes so that students don't need to sit in class on a public holiday without actually reducing the workload on students in this week. Essentially, if for example Friday is a "day off", the students now spend more time than regularly in class Monday to Thursday, and maybe  then need to catch up on their homework and assignments on their "day off" because they did not get to it as much as regularly during the week.
If having a fixed number of classes per course is really important to you, you should at least communicate these changes to the schedule differently. Your current way to phrase this seems ungodly complicated to me:

tomorrow is a calendrical Wednesday, but an academic Monday.

Why not just announce (for each class that needs to be moved) that the class planned for week 3 has been moved to Monday (same time) due to the public holiday on Wednesday, rather than messing around with "renaming" days?
This of course does not change the fact that students are encumbered by your change of schedule, and I really don't think there is a good way to fix this (other than announcing all moved sessions as early as possible, i.e., at the beginning of the semester, which I expect you are already doing).
If these class changes happen frequently enough, it may make sense to discard the notion of a fixed weekly schedule entirely. In my alma mater, for smaller advanced classes, we basically had no fixed weekly meeting time. Instead, some weeks did not have sessions at all (replaced for instance with more time for projects, home work, or self study) while others had longer sessions (e.g., when we presented semester projects, classes would last at least a full afternoon). The weeks where we had regular sessions did not necessarily all happen at the same time and day, but were scheduled individually based on availability of rooms, course requirements, and, for small courses, taking individual student constraints into account.

Indeed. From year to year, I have fluctuations of a few hours on the total number of lecture hours delivered in a course.

I've never heard that complaint from students, and I'm not sure why they would have it. They don't have extra work that week, it's a longer semester that compensates. Relatedly, I'm not sure why you talk about students spending more time than regular on the other days; I don't see at all why this causes them to have more work on a day (on average).

@Henry Because the point of a holiday day is to have less work over a week.

@MassimoOrtolano: Yes, I understand that. What I don't understand is why xLeitix (and apparently you) think that's not the case under the system I described.

@Henry As I understand from your question, if you are saying that your students might have outside commitments on a certain day, to me it means that, usually, on that day, they wouldn't have lecture. Is it right this interpretation?

@MassimoOrtolano: Mostly, but they might, for instance, have morning class and a job in the afternoon. It's true that students who have a job Wednesday and also their Friday classes that day have extra work; conversely, students who have Wednesday classes and a job on Friday have a double holiday. Moved days even out the schedule, so it should be averaging out even at the level of individual students: students who don't get a break from the holiday get one at the start or end of the semester. No perfect, but it seems minor compared to other issues, and I've never heard a complaint about it.

Actually, rereading this response, this "now we need to get the same classes done in 4 days" doesn't make any sense to me. They still have the same number of class days that week (always 3, in practice, because of what weeks it happens), it's just that they're not the same ones as the calendar says.

@Henry Me and, I guess, Massimo just assume that students would have something else to do on the days that you scheduled the class to from the student's day off. Whatever it is (doing homework, working their side job, ...), they now need to squeeze it in some other time. Hence their week is now more busy due to the day off and your scheduling policy.

I think most commonly they have other classes. (Outside jobs are an issue, as I pointed out in the question, and I expect this would be less viable at schools where non-work study jobs are more common.) Regarding homework, students with Friday classes complaining that moving class to Wednesday means they have to do homework on Friday when it was supposed to be a holiday seems no more substantive than if we didn't switch, and students with Wednesday classes could complain that they don't really get a holiday because they have to do homework during the Friday holiday anyway.

My institution (a small private college in the US that uses semesters) does it this way:

Most Federal holidays happen on Mondays (e.g., Presidents' day, MLK day, etc.) but we're a private institution, so we ignore them for purposes of instruction. That means there are instruction days which support staff have as holidays.
Each semester is 15 calendar weeks with 14 weeks of instruction. That leaves one week of break each semester. In the spring, it's a contiguous week ('Spring Break'). In the fall, we have a Monday and Tuesday "Fall Break" around the middle of the semester, and then Wednesday through Friday off at Thanksgiving.

This strategy gives a standard 14 days of instruction per semester for each day of the week. We do occasionally have campus events that cause classes to be cancelled (we inaugurated a new college president last fall; we typically have a  day to showcase student research in the spring; on very, very rare occasions we'll have a snow day), but we don't try to make them up in any formal way.


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Journal publications/citations data at Scimago (SJR)
For defining Impact Factor, Wikipedia uses an example of Nature with the following data

2016 papers = 880
2017 papers = 902
2018 citations = 74,090

leading to the 2017 Impact Factor of 41.577 for Nature.
Checking the information at SJR for Nature

2016: total documents = 3,108
2016: citable documents = 4,237
2017: total documents = 3,062
2017: citable documents = 4,400

Apart from the fact that the total vs citable documents is contradictory (the latter should be smaller), the data are 4-5 times higher than those given in Wikipedia.
On the other hand, Cites / Doc. (2 years) for 2017 is 15.1777, which is 3 times smaller than the 41.577 Impact Factor.
How do you interpret these data? Is it inconsistency or am I missing a point?

SCI calculations are correct! Clarivate is very selective in choosing citable documents. This is the impact factor of Nature calculated by exaly based on citable documents identified by CrossRef.

Source: https://exaly.com/journal/12348/nature
As you can see, it is very similar to those reported by SCI.

The calculations are presumably correct, but the values do not correspond to what people (or at least journals) tend to mean when using the term "impact factor".

First note that you get different values for the impact factor depending on what set of papers and citations you use as an input. That Wikipedia article describes the methodology for the "official" impact factor from Clarivate:

The value of impact factor depends on how to define "citations" and "publications"; the latter are often referred to as "citable items". In current practice, both "citations" and "publications" are defined exclusively by ISI as follows. "Publications" are items that are classed as "article", "review" or "proceedings paper"[9] in the Web of Science (WoS) database; other items like editorials, corrections, notes, retractions and discussions are excluded. WoS is accessible to all registered users, who can independently verify the number of citable items for a given journal. In contrast, the number of citations is extracted not from the WoS database, but from a dedicated JCR database, which is not accessible to general readers. Hence, the commonly used "JCR Impact Factor" is a proprietary value, which is defined and calculated by ISI and can not be verified by external users.

SJR does something different, using the Scopus database instead of Web of Science. Scopus is known for being more inclusive than WoS. See this answer for a more detailed description of some of the differences. Thus, their data yielding different values should not be surprising.
In addition, SJR's definitions of some things stand in contrast to those of JCR. First, they describe (click on the little table icons to see the descriptions) their "citations per document" statistic as

This indicator counts the number of citations received by documents from a journal and divides them by the total number of documents published in that journal.

i.e. it seems they use total documents, the sum of citable and noncitable documents, in the denominator. This is different from the usual impact factor, which would exclude many of these documents.
Finally, you mentioned that the number of citable documents for a given year is apparently higher than the total number of documents. This actually isn't inconsistent using SJR's definitions, just confusing. They describe citable and noncitable documents as

Not every article in a journal is considered primary research and therefore "citable", this chart shows the ratio of a journal's articles including substantial research (research articles, conference papers and reviews) in three year windows vs. those documents other than research articles, reviews and conference papers.

What this seems to mean in practice is that the sum of citable and noncitable documents in a given three-year window labeled by a year equals the sum of total documents over the three years prior. Using 2017 as an example, the numbers from SJR are

2014: total documents = 2,373
2015: total documents = 2,512
2016: total documents = 3,108
2017: citable documents = 4,400
2017: noncitable documents = 3,549

This yields a total number of documents in the three-year window labeled 2017 equal to 7,993 = 4,400 + 3,549 = 2,373 + 2,512 + 3,108.
In conclusion, if you need the "official" impact factor of a journal, use the "official" numbers. If you don't need it, then just be aware that there may be significant methodological differences between different indices.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/


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Should we reply to the editor after a paper has been rejected and we don't plan to revise/resubmit?
After receiving a rejection (not revise and resubmit) decision from the editor/associate editor of a journal, should we write an email to thank him/her for the time, or just do nothing? I imagine one might do that out of courtesy, but then I don't really have much to say otherwise.

I don't recall ever having received such an e-mail as an editor, so it's not standard (let alone mandatory), but I wouldn't be unhappy to receive one.  I doubt anyone would care enough to make it worth the effort, but it could be a nice gesture if you feel inclined.

This is a nice answer. I try to remember that at the end of the "editor@" email address is actually a real person, often working for free, doing what I think must be the ultimate thankless task. After sharing a few beers with a Nature editor I even pity the professional editors. I'm sure a "thanks for your comments and quick reply" would not go unappreciated.

I believe that if you feel the rejection was unjustified and you do not plan to submit to that journal again, you do not need to reply.
But if you feel the rejection was justified, you plan to submit to that journal again, or you were helped by the comments and suggestions of the referees, then I would recommend that you write an e-mail thanking the editor and the referees for their time and effort.

I think it is reasonable to thank editors that keep you up to date, solicit reviews in a timely manner, and provide an understandable overview of the reviews. Unfortunately, the number of good editors is small, so I would caution against thanking editors for merely acting as editor. The benefits are small while the potential cost is huge. It is so atypical that you run the risk of the editor thinking you are whining.

"The potential cost is huge"? I just got a rejection, from an editor who accepted my previous paper, and replied with "Thank you, and happy new year". What's the potential downside of that?


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How comes over 25% of retractions fail to explain the reason of the retraction?
Steen, R. Grant. "Retractions in the scientific literature: is the incidence of research fraud increasing?." Journal of medical ethics (2010): jme-2010. claims:

Many retractions are cryptic as to the actual reason(s) for
  retraction; 8% of retractions were for unstated reasons and
  up to 18% of retractions were for ambiguous reasons.

How comes over 25% of retractions fail to explain the reason of the retraction?

One reason is that it can be a face saving technique.  Sometimes there are suspicions of fraud or other misconduct that are difficult to prove, or the authors strenuously disagree with each other about who had responsibility for something or exactly what happened.  Instead of fighting about the explanation, the editors and authors may agree to retract the paper while giving only a vague reason that everyone can agree to.  This is not ideal as far as scientific clarity goes, but sometimes finding the truth is genuinely difficult, and even when it's possible it may not be worth the effort.
As a general heuristic, if a paper is retracted with no clear reason, then the reason is probably not good (or at best it's complicated or debatable).  After all, if there were an explanation that sounded good and was clearly true, then why wouldn't they include it?


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Does a supervisor have right to submit paper without consents of coauthor students?
Me and another PhD student, we are first two authors in a paper. We had a disagreement with our supervisor about submitting our paper to conference. We both opposed the submission as we think it's too early to submit our result and the paper will most likely be rejected. Our supervisor said, academically he has the full authority to submit the paper even if we oppose. My question is does a supervisor have the right to submit a paper from the point of view of the university?

Our supervisor said, academically he has the full authority to submit the paper even if we oppose. — He is incorrect.

@JeffE Did you show him this comment?

Your supervisor does not have the right to submit a paper with your name as a coauthor without your consent. By making such a submission he would be making a false representation that all coauthors have agreed to the submission, thus essentially committing a form of minor fraud or certainly dishonest and unethical behavior that is considered completely unacceptable in the academic world.
Note that you write "from the point of view of the university", so technically there is a chance that your university has unconventional standards in such matters and in their eyes your supervisor is correct. If that is the case (which I strongly doubt), I would suggest getting the heck out of that miserable institution and going to a real university.
Finally, while it is absolutely possible that you generally have better judgment than your supervisor (a possibility that does not occur to many graduate students even when perhaps it should), he does have more -- probably a lot more -- experience than you in matters of publications, so I agree with jakebeal that it is worth questioning whether your objection to the submission is a good idea, and maybe consulting other experienced academics from your field.

Even if the university does have such a policy, the university rules don't override standards of academic publishing ethics (which come from the journals, publishers, and larger academic community - not the university).

ff524, of course you are correct -- I was merely addressing the OP's question in its literal form.

I'm not sure if this is true but the coauthors may have to sign the paper before it's submitted.

coauthors may have to sign the paper before it's submitted — I've never heard of such a requirement.

Ethically, a paper should only be published with the active consent of all the involved authors.  Thus, from an ethical point of view, your supervisor should not submit without your consent.  If your supervisor does so, that is a clear breach of scientific ethics and needs to be treated very seriously.
On the other hand, are you sure that you are right in withholding your consent?
You say that you think that it is too early to submit your result to this conference.  Are you sure that you have a better idea of the size of contribution expected by this conference than your advisor?
You don't say how far along you are in your program and how much you have published before.  It is common for early-career researchers to overestimate the size of a result necessary for a good paper.  In my graduate program, for example, Ph.D. students were expected to produce a Masters thesis first, and a common failure mode was for students to essentially try to do a Ph.D. worth of work already.
It is natural to want to be able to submit a paper that definitively solves the whole subject, but in some areas, particularly engineering fields, it is more common to have a sequence of conference papers that build up piece by piece, followed by a capstone journal paper that ties it all together into the complete and thorough package.  Conference papers can thus be reports of a significant step toward a result, rather than the result entire.  You supervisor may be seeing a step of that sort in the results that you have so far, and it would be good to ask and see why your supervisor thinks the work so far is significant enough to publish.
Take a close look at your situation, compare with other papers published in the conference (not the award winners, but random papers in random sessions), and ask yourself how the size of your increment compares with theirs.  You may find that it's reasonable to submit after all (the criteria is not: "Am I certain to be accepted?" it is: "Will the reviewers be annoyed that I am wasting their time?").  Or you may gather evidence that will let you make a stronger case for why you think your paper is not ready, and be able to convince your supervisor.

Just a note: in many engineering fields, you don't submit conference "papers." Rather, your submission is an abstract, and you have the conference presentation, with no subsequent publication.

@aeismail Of course; and in others you do submit papers, which is why I qualified with "some".  The O.P. clearly speaks of a conference paper, though...

On the other hand, are you sure that you are right in withholding your consent? — This is a red herring.  If coauthors disagree on whether to submit, it's the positive coauthor's responsibility to convince the negative coauthors.  Simply overruling the negative coauthors is inappropriate under any circumstances.  Any advisor-advisee relationship between the coauthors is utterly irrelevant.


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Unsatisfactory Instructor Evaluations: balancing of expectations of engineering students
I teach undergraduate and graduate level courses in mechanical engineering at a research oriented university in the United States.  I am a teaching track professor and my sole responsibility, on which I am judged for pay raises or promotions, is teaching efficacy.
The courses I teach have a strong mathematical component to them.  Some notable examples would be: computational fluid dynamics or finite element methods.  For those here familiar with these courses, you would know that calculus background is necessary to understand the nuances.
However, I find that the students I teach this to (mostly 4th year undergraduate students) balk at the prospect of doing some analytical "pen-on-paper" work and would like only to know how to use relevant software skills for these, with no mathematical background.
This leads me to receiving unsatisfactory end of semester evaluations (3.90/5.00) from students with a lot of them complaining that "the course is too math-y"(verbatim).  The department requires teaching professors to consistently receive a 4+/5.00 for courses they teach and base promotions, continuing contracts and raises on this.
Unfortunately, I refuse to pander and just teach students "software-button-clicking" alone. Software skills can be learnt from Youtube and they don't really need me to teach them that.  I continuously tell them that mathematical/fundamental analytical skills are far more important because the software landscape is quite fickle and ever-changing based on industry whims and fancies.  However, fundamental mathematical skills are resolute and robust and may be applied to most engineering problems.
Has this been encountered by other folks on this SE and is there some effective method you have devised to counter this? My university is significantly "engine research" driven and students end up getting jobs at the "big 4" automotive companies.  Perhaps I need to ply my trade at a different department like "applied mathematics"?
On my part, I juxtapose software results with analytical results continuously to explain how analytical results are necessary for validating software results.  However, students are under the impression that the "software is always right" irrespective of whether or not their problem set-up and boundary conditions are correct or not.

@user37208 The department gives the instructor "free reign" actually.  Since it is an elective course the instructor doesn't have a "formula syllabus" (s)he must stick to.  No, students neglect simple things like integration and differentiation and somehow pass math courses -- they do not have maturity to simple enough mathematical concepts that they are supposed to have had already, which is unfortunate.  The anecdotal evidence suggests that students at my university think "math" is separate from engineering.

I'm in electronics, and as a colleague of mine is used to saying: to proficiently employ an electronic simulator like Spice, you should know electronics much better than it. First, recall that to the students ;-)

Is your background in engineering? I find sometimes lecturers from other disciplines (math, physics) are unfamiliar with the mathematical capabilities of engineering undergraduates.

This would seem to be a question to ask directly to the department chair and/or whomever is responsible for your evaluation and contract.

Have you tried to make more clear either in prereq's or outright in the syllabus the mathematical expectations of the course? You might have to be extremely blunt and state "Paper and Pencil calculation required, will not instruct to specific software" and then possibly offer an office hour or two to those who want industry level software support.

I don't have an answer, just a comment of encouragement. I have an engineering degree (electrical), and I enjoyed/valued my theoretical mathy classes; in fact, the math was the whole reason I went into the field in the first place. However, I'm from an older generation than today's students, who apparently want to be able to just download information into their brains without having to take notes or study or, y'know, actually work at it. Keep up the good fight!

I'm surprised that the department has a hard requirement of 4+/5.00 on student evaluations. That seems like possibly shooting itself in the foot if that is prioritized over anything else like, say, meeting the course description in content, etc. This makes it effectively impossible to have a challenging, "rigorous" course. One possibility I shudder to bring up is, since evaluations usually occur at the end, make the front part of the class even harder and encourage failing students to withdraw ASAP.

@mg4w Yes, my background is in engineering. I have a PhD in mechanical engineering and invariably I used partial differential equations to come up with new technology.

A quick comment: in the EE classes I teach with similar math-y components, I make it a point to constantly remind students that employers in my sub-field get quite frustrated with junior engineers who rely too heavily on circuit simulations, for example, and remind them that, during an 8-hour long technical interview, they will not be placed in front of a machine and asked to simulate anything: they need to be able to convince interviewers of their skills at the whiteboard.

This is what we get when we eliminate the "weed-out" aspect that used to loom over the "big 3" of the freshman engineering curriculum -- calculus, physics, chemistry. Thirty years ago, these students would have changed majors or dropped out in their first or second year.

@drN I want to bring to your attention Katherine Johnson - someone I would use as an example for these students. Please check her personal history/etc for more information, but a quick summary can be found on Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katherine_Johnson). Please pay special attention to this excerpt from the NASA subsection. In 1962, when NASA used computers for the first time to calculate John Glenn's orbit around Earth, officials called on her to verify the computer's numbers.

Seems like something doesn't match along the lines of what you understand you should be teaching and the required pre-requisites for the course. Either you are teaching too math-y or the wrong students are being let into the class. As others have commented, as a person (like 95% of the human race) whose life depends on engineers having a firm grasp of mathematics, I hope and expect that any accredited program expects a great deal from engineering students in that area. Whether your class is where that expectation should be applied might be more a question for the administration.

The professor that taught me statistics dealt with this basic problem, which is that students would come into the course thinking it was like any other "narrative" style of course (like a history class), but the truth is it was a math class that was not listed as MATH 3XX.
Part of the job of a student is to pick courses, ordering them and balancing them into a semester that allows them to handle all of their classes. If they do not have the information they need to balance their schedule (as some classes are naturally heavy loads and others are light), they cannot do their job. So here's how I learned to help them do their job so that they would feel that you were doing your job.
Reset Student Expectations
On week 1 or 2, assign a special test. Include absolutely the most challenging math you expect them to do for the entire semester (not hard for the sake of being hard). Make it  absolutely clear that this course does in fact require previous knowledge and ability, and that this test is designed to do just that - test their readiness for this class. You can make it an in-lab assignment and just give credit for doing it - you can give them the answer key and let them grade themselves.
Clearly explain to students that if they cannot complete this test satisfactorily, that is information for them to decide if they are ready for this class. When I ran this lab session I personally explained to students that if they weren't willing to spend at least X hours per assignment per week, they would be unlikely to do well and should reconsider their plans now while they can still re-arrange their schedule. I had a few students drop by the next week, but then everyone who stayed stuck with it all semester.
Don't Make Students Feel Dumb
One of the great dangers of being an expert and a teacher is that you become very distant from that point in time when the material was truly difficult for you, and you lose some of your understanding of what it was like to not know. You are also likely to have an IQ far beyond the average, as well, so you might not ever have experienced this material as difficult - which makes it even harder to avoid this mistake.
I personally remind myself of the time where I had scrawled out about 8 pages of hand-written calculations and equations to solve a factorial analysis of variance by hand, because my professor said it was important. If someone at that moment had looked at what I was doing and even vaguely implied "oh, that's mostly just basic algebra, that's not so hard" I would have stabbed them in the neck with my pencil right then and there. (The pencil was dull and my wrist was tired, so they would have probably escaped serious injury. But still!) Maybe it wouldn't have been hard for them, but it was a challenge to me.
With your advanced understanding of mathematics, you might unintentionally be sending your students a message along the lines of, "oh, this math is pretty basic first year stuff, you shouldn't have any trouble with it". Math is often hard and time consuming and mind-bending and forgotten quickly, even if it is important, and to imply otherwise is insult your students intelligence and character. This will likely result in them not liking you, and worse - they may not learn as much from you as they could have.
Be honest, but take care to honor their struggle with fundamentally non-trivial material. Students appreciate "I know this may seem hard, but you can work through it" more than "this is easy, work harder".
...and make sure the material Is Really Relevant
Yes, math is important and sometimes being able to do it by hand is even important. But I've had teachers include complex material based on the idea that it would be on X industry test that was 3+ years away and that I would not ever be taking, and could otherwise be looked up in < 10 seconds if I really needed it. Sure, now if I get stranded on a desert island I'll be able to calculate proper binary subnet masks so I can build a complex routed network for all my coconuts, but otherwise I'm still a little annoyed I spent hours on that mess when I could have spent it on my research projects.
Motivating the material with a calculation the computer can't solve but they can do it by hand, if such an example exists, can help. It may also be helpful to really drive home the point that if you don't understand the underlying math you'll click stuff that is laughable and makes no damn sense, but the software didn't know any better so it did what you asked anyway.
Still, make sure you really aren't including tough material (according to the students) just because you really think its cool and is technically somehow applicable, but not really necessary or very valuable to the student. Those topics might be a perfect fit in another course - just not this one.

I think you'll find that if students are made to understand what will be expected and necessary upfront, you empathize and honor the challenges your students deal with, and you pair down the material to what truly best serves students, you'll find that not only will students like you more and rate you more highly - but they'll also learn more and the class will be more fun to teach, too.

I actually am establishing a "2nd week concepts exam" in this course.  It tests students in calculus concepts that are relevant to this course.  I am also making mathematics relevant by breaking down, say, the heat equation into its individual terms and explaining the physics behind each term and "switching ON or OFF" terms to express the physical effect.  I hope these work. Thank you for your answer.

There are several aspects to examine:

Students' expectations of the course
Your expectations of the students' abilities
Course alignment with curriculum

Let's take #3 first. Presumably, you live in a state that licenses Professional Engineers. Since you mention Big 4 auto, I'm going to take Michigan as an example. The Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs declares:

Article 20 of Public Act 299 of 1980, as amended was created, to license and regulate the practice of professional engineering in Michigan. Article 20 defines professional engineering as professional services, such as consultation, investigation, evaluation, planning, design or review of material and completed phases of work in construction, alteration or repair in connection with a public or private utility, structure, building, machine, equipment, process, work or project when the professional service requires the application of engineering principles or data.

Michigan requires PE applicants to pass both the Fundamentals of Engineering Exam and the Principals and Practices Exam of the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying (NCEES). As you know, these are standardized national exams. Your students will generally take the FE in their senior year of college, which is the year of the students you're asking about.
You should make sure that your courses align with the topics that your students are expected to know for the FE. These include calculus, differential equations, and numerical analysis, which your students already seem to be having trouble with. The bulk of the test for mechanical engineers (pdf) consists of MechE topics: statics, dynamics, mechanics of materials, material properties, fluid mechanics, thermodynamics, heat transfer, measurements and instrumentation, and mechanical design. Your students will need to know these topics cold in order to pass the FE.
As for #2, given that calculus is a series of freshman courses, and all of engineering builds upon it, you are not unreasonable to expect your students to be able to practice it.
As for #1, my suggestion is to clarify in your syllabus for each course that the goal of the course is to have the students understand topics X, Y, and Z that are covered in the FE, with links to the NCEES site. It also might be a good idea, for each new module that you cover within a course, to identify which section of the FE that it addresses.
Your students may protest that they are only getting the degree for its own sake, or they will immediately go to business school for their MBAs, or whatever. Emphasize that many engineering jobs will be closed to them if they don't follow the PE path. Also, if they are going for an MBA, a PE+MBA combination would facilitate their going into business for themselves.
Disclaimer: I have an engineering degree but am not in academia and am not a P.E. Also, I am from Texas and not Michigan, but the tests and accreditation are national.

This may be surprising but licensure is not needed for most engineers due to the "industrial exemption" for engineers in manufacturing, mining, and telecommunications. Perhaps 10-25% of MEs get licensed and of those, many do not need the license for their jobs. The pass rate for the FE is high, about 79% of MEs. Appealing to the FE will probably not motivate students.

I certainly agree that you should not pander to a teach me the 'software-button-clicking' mindset in an engineering course. When I took Finite Element Analysis during my undergraduate engineering degree, commercial FEA packages were not covered. Everything was done by hand with some work done in Matlab. I am personally a strong supporter of this fundamental approach.
As others have pointed out, it would be worth checking that the mathematical rigor you are using in your course is appropriate to the students at your university. Some schools/countries are much more mathematically focused. Perhaps go through your lecture notes with a lecturer who is popular with the students, or with a graduate student who did their undergraduate degree at the same school. From the universities I have been at the level of mathematics in a text such as Hutton - Fundamentals of Finite Element Analysis has been appropriate for upper year undergraduates.
I don't know what material you are covering in your course and how you are approaching it, but perhaps a few adjustments could boost your ratings. Some things that I have found useful in the past:

Include a project in the course where the students use a commercial software package to solve some problem. Don't teach them the software in class, let them learn it themselves (or give them some instructions to follow). Have them solve the same problem by hand and compare the results.
Focus more on applications in assignments and exams, but cover derivations in lectures.
We wrote a direct stiffness method FEA program for analysing trusses in Matlab as part of a course. I thought this was useful, but some students struggled with the programming aspect.
Nonlinear stuff is likely beyond undergraduate capabilities.

Nonlinear stuff is also where, imho, software fails (or simply comes up with sub-optimal solutions) a lot whereas some pen-and-paper analysis can give a lot of insight. It might be a good idea to show a few of these examples (without focusing on it, but giving the students a taste of it).

Well if you insist on delivering content that your students dont want, and not the content that they do want, then you should expect a low score.
Most CFD users see it as a problem solving tool, and you are not really preparing your students to solve problems if they have no software tool experience.
You could spend more time showing them how to actually solve real world problems with it, even without getting too hung up on what software package you use.
The counter point to "software can be taught from youtube" is that the math can be taught from any of a dozen reference textbooks. Software is inherently more useful to the students. As for the "you always have to check the software" approach, you are right that the software cant be trusted alone, but it can be validated through other means, such as prototyping.

Well in most first year math courses the content our students want is the emptyset. Our job is to teach the course curriculum, and not to skip things just because the students find hard..... Mathematics is about understanding the material, not blindly using tools without the faintest idea why.

Students seldom know what they want.  I doubt education is a democratic system where students get to vote on what they want and don't want.  I also disagree that math can be taught from any dozen reference books.  It takes expertise to explain to students for example that "the Biharmonic equation can be used for BOTH evaporating liquid films and vibrations.  Isn't it cool that you can solve two different engineering problems with the same equation?".  As an instructor, it is my duty to distill "complex" math information to provide perspective.

Your comment is completely nonsense. Of course that the students have absolutely nothing to say about what is to be taught.

@Jonas, it's not necessarily that students should have control over course content, but that their evaluations will reflect their opinions, however misguided or not those opinions may be. An instructor whose fate is significantly determined by such stuff is in a tough spot.

@paul garrett Quite right. Often, we think twice before doing certain things. Unfortunately I have been there often. Basically, universities put the pressure on the wrong place, the right place would be the students.

Software is inherently more useful to the students. --- [citation needed]


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Breaking into research oriented tenure-track positions from teaching track
I received a PhD in Mechanical Engineering in 2013 in the USA and then had a brief stint as a "teaching assistant professor" for one year at my alma mater.  I moved then to a post-doc position in Europe which was highly dissatisfying and "unsuccessful" (unsuccessful=zero publications) for a year.  I returned to the USA and now I am in a non-tenure track position (teaching track as "Lecturer") in a mechanical engineering department. A non-tenure track position at my university is a two year rolling contract which may be renewed based on performance in TEACHING, service and some project management activities.
I enjoy teaching and find that my students do like me as a teacher and this is evidenced by favorable "instructor evaluations" from the students.  Instructor evaluations are one of the main factors in "re-employment".
I find very often that there are burning research questions that I would like to work on but since I am on a 4-4 teaching load (4 courses/preparations per semester), I actually do not find too much time to start investing my personal time in research.  My personal time goes into "mandatory service activities" (a lot of it is 'busy work') for my department.  These service activities are skirted by tenure track faculty and falls squarely on the shoulders of "Lecturers" (NTT).
I would like to get into a tenure track position as that seems to be inviting.  I say this because, it would seem that on average, in the USA, for mechanical engineering/applied mechanics departments, tenure track (Asst Professor) has a 2-1 or even a 1-1 teaching load.  The other portion of their time is mentoring graduate students and writing grants.
The topic for my PhD was niche (hydrothermal space applications) and did not produce tomes of publications (2 Journals, 10 conference), none of them cited significantly (twice at most for journal papers).
How do I break out from my non-tenure track position and move into a tenure track position?  I realize the breadth/scope of my question is perhaps too subjective so I decided to form strategies.  I am wondering if people on this forum who are into hiring committees could shed more light on whether these strategies are useful or if not, provide other perspectives
Strategies:
Strategy 1:
Continue in non-tenure track for a few years.  Eventually I won't be spending too much time on new course preparation and that may afford me time to spend on research. However, then I will have significant backlog of scientific work to catch up on!
Strategy 2.:
Start applying for tenure track positions fully knowing that although I do have an aptitude for the research I want to do, I am lacking in publications.  I have exhausted my PhD work into two publications (such was the nature of my PhD) and there is no "new data" or "new angle on old data" that I can publish right now.  In this strategy of "job applications", I will have to focus on projecting my strengths (teaching, mentoring) and extend it or relate it to future proficiency in research
Strategy 3:
Quit my job and spend time trying to do research sans a pay-check (risky?) in the hope that this would allow me time for research.
Strategy 4:
Collaborate with tenure track faculty in my current university.  The trouble is ("challenge" is a better word...) striking a working relationship with someone when I know that I am exhausting over 10 hours a day (on avg.) on teaching activities with little zing left in me at the end of the day!
Strategy x.:
Anything I might be missing as a strategy.  This is where perhaps I could gain from someone's experience in this forum.

Not strategy 3, anyway...

@paulgarrett So I would assume too... but then there are always those who just might have done that (or something equally outlandish). So I thought I should include any "thought" or "strategy" I can think of, however poor or great.

It is true that working any sort of substantial full-time job leaves one with little energy to undertake another essentially full-time activity after-hours. I fear no reasonable strategy can overcome this, especially when one's CV shows the arc one is on. It's hard to catch up to people who've (through luck or whatever) gotten a big head start at some point.

It almost never happens that someone succeeds in doing what you're hoping to do.  One example where it did happen is Yitang Zhang, who essentially followed your Strategy 1.

As an updated, it is not going well! I have succeeded in teaching and establishing a small research "plan"  for myself but besides that, I am getting rejected left, right and center with respect to job applications.

Any updates on this? I am in a similar dilemma: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/170056/seeking-advice-about-teaching-track-vs-research

@dusa... update: still in teaching track.  Universities are extremely parochial.  It is very very very difficult to break into the research track, from a teaching track (STEM at least).  as far as I am concerned, my career is set in stone now, whether I like it or not.  Treating it like a paycheck.

@dearN I really appreciate the honesty and your time to reply to this, particularly since I made so many mistakes because I was not guided well (phd and post doc). Really hate how academy works. I actually like teaching, and it seems stable over a post doc but not ready to say bye to research, not sure what future holds. Thanks!

@dusa good luck!  I wish you a good career.  It is possible to make a good career in teaching but for that you must look to teaching oriented universities instead of R1/R2 research oriented universities.. I am doing that now.

@dearN Thank you! All the best of luck to you too!

As an alternative to your strategies 1 through 4, I remember reading the book A PhD Is Not Enough, which had the suggestion of working at a governmental research lab (like the US Department of Energy's National Labs) or an industrial research lab (like Bell Labs) after grad school. You'd most likely earn a higher salary, with shorter workdays than you do now with your 4-4 teaching load; and most of that workday would be focused on research. Some such research labs have an environment that feels quite similar in spirit to academia, & may actively encourage academic publication by the staff. If so, you could build up a good publication record and THEN apply for tenure-track jobs.
The major downside would be a lack of teaching, if teaching is something you love. There's also no option for tenure at most such labs, but that may not be a problem since you don't have tenure right now in a Lecturer or Instructor position anyway.

I faced this situation 28 years ago, when after defence I found myself at an Adjunct position, spending almost all my time for teaching and surviving on a miserable salary.
I chose Strategy 1.  It was tough, but it eventually worked out.  I learned how to spend less time for course preparation, and how to allocate more time to research.  I started publishing -- and aggressively sending my publications to all senior colleagues who might potentially be interested in my works.  After 6 years of that miserable existence, I received a postdoctoral fellowship at a good school, then a postdoc at a government lab, then a permanent research scientist position there.  It was tough, very tough.  Still, looking back, I have no regrets. I very much hope that you also succeed in your career in science.
PS
In what area is your research?


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Are NSF RUI proposals evaluated separately or are they evaluated against the general pool for that program/division/directorate?
I am preparing to write and submit a grant proposal to the US National Science Foundation (NSF) through the Research at Undergraduate Institutions (RUI) program. This will be my first submission to this program.
From my understanding, proposals submitted through RUI are sent to the appropriate program in the appropriate division and directorate. Since my project involves synthetic chemistry in alternative reaction media, my proposal would probably go to the Chemical Synthesis (SYN) program in the Division of Chemistry under the Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences.
My colleagues, both in chemistry and in other disciplines, have shared conflicting reports about how RUI proposals are evaluated. Will my proposal be evaluated against the entire pool of proposals in the SYN program from all institutions? Or, are RUI proposals evaluated separately?
I am hoping that RUI proposals are evaluated separately, since I do not have access to the same research infrastructure that someone at a research institution does.

this is a nice question ! a refreshing change :)

At least in mathematics (and presumably in other fields, although I have no direct experience with that), they are evaluated in the same pool as all the other proposals.  In practice, there seem to be two key differences in how they are treated:

Panel members can be a little more forgiving for certain aspects of RUI proposals.  For example, if the PI publishes excellent papers but not very many of them, then this low publication rate would probably be considered a bigger drawback in a non-RUI proposal.
The NSF may give some degree of preference to a few RUI proposals, as described below.

The review panel classifies proposals into three categories: roughly 10% that are highly recommended for funding, 30-40% that are recommended for funding, and 50-60% that are not.  The available funding is never sufficient to cover all the proposals recommended for funding, so further decisions need to be made after the panel.
The ones not recommended for funding are automatically eliminated, and the ones highly recommended for funding are more or less guaranteed to be funded.  The ones in the middle are ranked in order by the panel, but the NSF is not required to follow this ranking.  They largely follow it, but they adjust it based on their own criteria (for example, balance of fields, geographical diversity, etc.).  My understanding is that if no RUI proposal in a given panel would otherwise be funded, then the highest-ranked RUI proposal may be bumped up in the rankings.  However, this is not guaranteed, and it depends on having a high enough ranking from the panel.  The program officers may also compare how panels in different areas ranked their RUI proposals, to see which ones seem most worthy of funding.  However, there is no RUI-only panel.

Given that mathematics and chemistry fall under the same directorate, I would expect similar behavior. Thanks.

This also matches my experience in computer science.

My experience with Computer Science panels (IIS Division) is similar.
However, in IIS, acceptance rates are typically somewhat lower:
10 %  Highly competitive (HC),
15 %  Competitive (C),
75 %  Not recommended for funding by panel (NRFP)
NRFP proposals are immediately discarded.
Sometimes some of the NRFP proposals are classified as Low Competitive (but still
immediately discarded).
Highly competitive proposals are usually, but not always funded.
Some (approx. one third) of Competitive proposals are funded.
Total funding (acceptance) rates (e.g., for III) are typically around 15 percent, sometimes a bit higher (up to 20%) for Early Career proposals.
Funding rates in Computer Science vary widely across programs, solicitations, size classes,
divisions, year submitted, etc.
ranging from 10% to 50% (depending on budgets, number of proposals
submitted, etc.)  In general funding rates decline with increasing size (budget) class
of the proposals.
RUI proposals are considered together with other proposals but
treated somewhat more leniently.
Proposals from all of the review panels for a particular cluster (group), e.g., III in IIS Division of the CISE directorate,
for a particular solicitation (and size class) are considered together when
making funding decisions.
Panel recommendations are only advisory to NSF staff, who also consider geographic
diversity, programmatic priorities and balance, institutional diversity, etc.


text:
Is teaching experience of any value in a National Laboratory job?
I know that national laboratories prioritize research work over teaching experience.  Of course, I have some research papers published in my name, but I also have over 4 years of professional (full time) mathematics teaching experience at the university level, which includes teaching a senior level and graduate level mathematics course.
Is my teaching experience of no importance/value to the national laboratories?  Is there a way I can sell my teaching experience as an asset to a research position in a national laboratory?

Preface: I worked at a US national laboratory for five years.
Under most circumstances, I don't see teaching experience being very useful in a national laboratory career. You won't lose anything by having it, but you're not likely to be able to spin it as a true "positive" in an interview. The only exceptions to this would be:

If you're going to be in a "customer service"-type position, where you are going to be working with people who are using the services or tools your team is providing.
You're in a position co-sponsored by a university, in which case you may have to do some teaching anyways.

Also, if you're invited in for a technical interview, you're almost certainly going to be interviewed by multiple technical staff members, so don't try to spin the teaching into something it's not; it won't win you any points with most of the staff members. (All of the staff members I had the fortune to work with had excellent BS detectors.)

Under most circumstances, I don't see teaching experience being very useful in a national laboratory career I tend to disagree. I am currently employed at a government laboratory (DoD). My PI was a mathematics professor before entering the national lab network (I believe our laboratory is his second government lab to work for). His ability to explain our research area was a magnificent boon to my onboarding process.

@JonathanLandrum: Okay, I suppose if you employ grad students or postdocs, that could be another class. But again, it's a small one—a typical DOE lab with 4,000 technical staff might only have 100 postdocs.


text:
How to write a personal statement for a dissertation fellowship?
I'm writing an application for a dissertation fellowship, which according to the application is "to a truly outstanding doctoral degree candidate in the last semester of residence".
I need to write a 'personal statement' which is only described as follows:

a statement of how the fellowship will facilitate the completion of
  the doctoral degree by May 2015

That's it.  No other guidelines are given to describe how to write this personal statement.
My research is theoretical, and does not require the purchase of any special equipment other than pencil and eraser.  Thus, my naïve, simplistic answer this question is:
"I need the money so I can pay for tuition long enough and buy enough food to keep my brain cells alive long enough to graduate".
Obviously, I know this is the worst possible way to answer this question.  In all honesty, the way this fellowship describes how to write the personal statement is rather limited.  Other than writing a more eloquent phrasing of "give me money so I can eat", I can't think of anything else to write in it.
What do personal statements generally contain for fellowships like this?  Are they usually as limited as this?  What other points can I bring out in this statement other than "I need to buy food and pay for school"?

Your answer is over-simplistic.  In reality, having money allows you to devote time to research as opposed to getting a job to earn the money so that you can eat and do (less) research.  If you already have such support, then I do not see the point of applying.  If it turns out that finishing this dissertation quickly and with fewer distractions advances science as well as your personal and professional goals, then applying seems reasonable.
I would write something along the lines of how the time to prepare and establish the results is precious, and that having such a fellowship will grant you that time.  Also, while your expenses may be minimal, you may find that using some of the money to attend a conference or to facilitate discussions with colleagues will allow you to add more to your dissertation than you could otherwise.
This is just off the top of my head, and I've been outside the ivory tower for more than a decade.  Certainly some of your colleagues off the Internet can also suggest some themes to use for this aspect of your application.

What about those students who don't receive that fellowship? Do they drop out or do they work as Teaching Assistants in the department? If it's the latter, then just point out how you would like to spend your time doing research instead of preparing courses.


text:
How did graduate schools come into existence?
When did universities start to segregate their certifications into undergraduate degrees (bachelors) graduate programs (master's and doctorates)?  More importantly, why did this separation occur?  What prompted the need for separate levels of certification in academic settings?

I found this article the other day; it provides at least some history, but is specific to the UK.

@waiwai933 That's a great link.  It may be specific to the UK, but in a way which indicates the larger (and heterogeneous) international context.  If you can summarise it in any way at all, you should re-post it as an answer.

Bachelor, master, doctor degrees are medieval European in origin. Wiki has a reasonable page on medieval universities. The primary need for these levels was the certification of who was allowed to teach and what they were allowed to teach in the university. The Catholic Church in the Middle Ages being what it was was concerned with proper teaching to avoid passing along heresies (which universities got accused of from almost the beginning of their existence) which meant you needed a license to teach and to preach in those days.

This is misleading at best. The MA did not exist in the UK (I can't speak for other countries) as a distinct qualification between the late 17th century and the mid 19th century (it was granted as a matter of course to all BAs), and the research PhD originates in the 19th century. While their names certainly date from medieval times, the degrees and qualifications thereof are very different, when compared to the BA which has changed much less.

In the medieval period the doctorates granted were in law, medicine, and theology. So your comment that the doctor of philosophy is more recent is fair enough.


text:
Consolation position after tenure is denied
In my department, an assistant professor was denied tenure. However, he remains in the faculty as a lecturer.
Is this the typical protocol of departments.  If a professor is denied tenure, do their departments typically offer them some sort of position of lower stature?

Unless this was the assistant professor's request, this is ethically questionable by your department. Every tenure denial I have heard of allowed the person to keep their title for a year or two while they searched for jobs elsewhere. This kind of demotion could kill the professor's chance at getting another tenure track job. This department is asking for people to start job searches prior to tenure review and this could result in them losing their best assistant professors (or having to pay more money than they otherwise would have).

No, this is not common.  Someone denied tenure is generally allowed to stay in their current position for another year, to give some time to find a new job.  However, it's not standard to offer them a non-tenure-track job as a replacement.  Theoretically there's no reason they couldn't apply for such a job, but it sounds really awkward.  I imagine most people wouldn't want to stay in the same department in a lower status position, and the department wouldn't want them to either; I've never seen it actually happen.  When it does happen, I'd bet there's some compelling reason behind the scenes.  (For example, perhaps the lecturer in your department has a strong personal reason to want to stay in the area, and there are no other suitable jobs available.)

Maybe 'lecturer' is the job title for the one-year extension after negative tenure review (the question does not say whether the lecturer position is fixed term)? I mean, after tenure has been denied, one can hardly continue calling it a tenure track position, right?

@xLeitix: That's possible, although in the cases I've known about the person who was denied tenure has kept the same job title as they had before coming up for tenure.  Changing to a lower-level title would be adding insult to injury and might make their job search even harder.