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How strong of an obligation does an advisor have to attend his/her Ph.D. students' graduation?
I will be graduating my first Ph.D. student this summer. My student is quite strong and has done good work, and I am quite proud of him!
I do face one conundrum. He has expressed the hope that I would be there for his Ph.D. hooding and graduation ceremony. It seems like an utterly natural, totally reasonable thing to ask for. I was tenatively planning on being out of the country at the time, so I need to decide whether to cancel my plans to attend his graduation.
On the one hand, missing my student's graduation seems like the equivalent of missing your best friend's wedding. Or perhaps worse, missing your child's wedding, or your own. On the other, this seems to be very common. My own Ph.D. advisor was out of town for my graduation and I asked another professor on my committee to escort me in his place.
Is there any kind of consensus?

If you can postpone your plans, I would strongly suggest you do so. It is your first Ph.D. student to graduate, that opportunity will never come back. You might be sorry later - of all the comparisons you gave, I think missing your own wedding is the best suiting ;)

What kind of trip is it?  My feeling would be that "student's graduation" in priority is ahead of "boring minor conference" and "routine meeting with collaborator" but behind "exciting major conference" and "family vacation".  Personally, I'd put it closer to "co-worker's wedding" than "best friend's wedding".  But I agree with Martin that you may find it enjoyable and special too.

Different universities also have different degrees of involvement of the PhD advisor in the ceremonies. Your mentioned that you were escorted in your graduation ceremony. For my PhD hooding and graduation, there was nothing similar. (The difference is sort of "declining an invitation to a wedding" versus "declining a request to be a part of the wedding party".)

@Anonymous, in which direction did you want us to convince you when you posted the question? Because that's the answer.

You don't say which country. At Oxford, the ceremony was a full 2 years after my viva, because that's the waiting list, I met up with my supervisor for tea to introduce my parents, but there was never any suggestion that he would attend the ceremony: we were limited to 2 guests anyways. If your PhD student "really" wants you to attend, isn't that a bit immature anyway? Many of my friends graduated in absentia and I was planning to do that at first...

@PatrickT: I guess whether it's immature depends on tradition too. If a graduation is typically a big old celebration with your friends, family and colleagues then of course you'd invite your supervisor and express a genuine hope that they come. At the opposite extreme if you're not there then sure, it'd be kind of immature you expect your supervisor to be ;-) I'm an Oxford curmugeon too, I graduated in absentia although not for a DPhil, just an MMath. I didn't do even that until I was looking for my second job and figured someone might check my qualifications :-)

Obligation? Unless through your institution's academic responsibilities there is a requirement to attend, then none.
However, if you equate it to being on par with missing your own child's wedding, then I think you've answered your own question.
You only get one 'first Ph.D. student'.

At our place, PhD advisors read out the graduate's thesis title and the whole ceremony is quite impressive. I make it a point to attend all my PhD students graduation ceremonies, if at all possible. There would be very few things that would claim higher priority. However, if your award ceremonies are small and indifferent, you may take a different stance. For the first student, it may be important even to you.

Congratulations on your first PhD student!
I don't think there's any hard-and-fast rule about attending your student's graduation. It comes down to how much you want to be there, how strongly your student feels about you being there, and how compelling your other plans are.
There are certainly some people who don't care much about this kind of thing. (I am one of those people; I gave my father wholehearted permission to skip both my high school and college graduation. Neither of us has regretted his absence from those ceremonies in the slightest.)
Then there are some people who really care about graduations, and want the people who were instrumental in their success to be there. And you're right that it's a reasonable thing to ask for, if it's very important to the student.
So, see if you can find out what category your student falls in. From your description (he "hopes you will be there") it could really be either one. If it turns out he feels really strongly about it, you can look into canceling your trip; if not, I don't think it's a big deal.

I am a phd student myself, and to be honest I couldn't care less if my advisor was at my graduation. The graduation ceremony is not something you should cancel any plans over. If you missed my thesis defense however ...

I didn't bother to attend my own graduation. I don't think my adviser would have, if I had.

I feel the same way. That said, I also understand other people do not. This should fundamentally be about what the student wants and how they will feel, not how the advisor (or anybody else) would feel in the same situation.

Being hooded by my advisor was a really big deal for me. Without him, I wouldn't have gotten the degree.  If your student as explicitly asked you to attend, I would do it- if you have a good personal and professional relationship with this student, your absence would be significant.


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How ambitious should one be in picking a journal to submit to?
I've finished a mathematics paper with two co-authors, and I need to decide on a journal to submit it to.
More so than my other papers, I don't have much of a sense for how "good" it is. It is a substantial generalization of one of the main results proved in a very top journal, although not the most significant of these results, and not the one that got the most attention.
To my mind, (and after discussing the results with a few colleagues), the paper does not pass the "gut test" to be published in this same top journal. But it is not out of the question that it would be accepted. I would (very roughly) guess a 15% chance of acceptance, a 50% chance of positive reviews that are not quite positive enough, and a 35% chance of vaguely negative reviews that say "This is a nice paper, but it certainly isn't good enough to be published here."
Would it be advisable to submit to this top journal? Or would a little bit more modesty be wise? (And of course I will ask my co-authors, but I wouldn't be surprised if they defer to my judgment.) Thanks.

A comment to non-mathematician answerers: I do not know which top journal is being considered here, but beware that one of them (The Annals of Mathematics) is known to be extremely long to give an answer. By extremely long, I mean several years (not on average maybe, but not outliers either).

Wherever you decide to submit, put your paper on arXiv first.

The answer should certainly depend on many different elements, each of which should be judged with respect to your particular situation.
First, the time issue. You should have a look at the AMS survey on journal backlogs, which also indicates the median time to get an answer (for accepted papers only, but we can assume it gives an idea of what happens to all not-rejected-upfront papers). This survey is published regularly in the Notices, and you should be able to find it on line. Then, ask yourself if waiting that time is worth a likely negative answer. Some journals have a pre-refereeing procedure, and reject a fair amount of papers very quickly. This mitigates the risk (either you get rejected quickly, or you have a much-higher-than-average probability to get your paper accepted).
Second, the impression you give to editors. I guess that an editor could remember slightly abusive submissions, and that they would not help you future cases with her; however I have no data or evidence to back up this guess.
Third, your own feelings. Receiving bad reviews is not something to underestimate: it could diminish your enthusiasm toward your own work, alter your willingness to pursue in this direction. This is probably only a small parameter, but if you have had a few difficult cases recently, you might want to take a break from rejections. Added in edit after a few more years of experience: you should also think your possible chain of resubmission. What could happen is that after waiting two years and getting rejected by a top journal, you are a bit down and then submit much lower. Aiming at an intermediate level first might give you a better outcome. This applies even more at resubmission: how much do you try high? How high? This of course depends on the feedback from referees and editors, but some long-term planning might help.
Fourth, you should ask yourself if the journal you consider to submit to is an appropriate venue if your paper do get published there. I would not fear too much people telling that your paper is clearly below the journal's level, as we often judge papers by journal's name anyway. But it might happen that a more specialized and less prestigious journal could reach the intended audience better than the most prestigious, general journal. This is not a very common situation, though.
Last, but far from least, what you expect to get from getting published in the top journal? Is it so much of a career boost compared to very-good-but-not-top journals?
Note also that some editors have the habit of suggesting another venue to papers that have good but not good enough reviews in a very selective journal. It is not easy to know this beforehand, though.

+1 for the edit "But it might happen that a more specialized and less prestigious journal could reach the intended audience better than the most prestigious, general journal."

My thoughts, admittedly from a non-mathematician giving a general answer. Below are some things I consider when deciding where a paper goes:

Do you coauthors have suggestions? Especially senior colleagues, they may have a good feeling for where a paper belongs, or where it absolutely doesn't belong.
Do you have a timeline. As mentioned, journals have backlogs, and some journals are notoriously slow. If you need something in press soon, it might be best to pass on those, even if they are prestigious.
Do those journals publish papers that "feel" like yours? If they've never published something like your paper, what are the odds yours will be the first? If its extremely rare that one is published, does the journal actually have the readership you want and again, you might want to adjust your probability of success down a bit.

I will say, despite all of this, I once submitted a paper to a journal thinking "Why not, worst thing that happens is they reject it." It got into one of the best journals in my field, and is still, 6 years later, arguably my most visible publication.

If time is not so much of a consideration then picking the top journal is the natural choice. Sometimes it requires some luck to land in a prestigious journals. As they say, "beauty is in the eye of the beholder". Different referees may have different assessments of your paper.
So, why not try your luck? Nothing to be ashamed of since your paper has value to begin with.

Well, why don't you give it a try? Sometimes your luck might favor you. Last year, I submitted a research paper in a Journal called APEX(Applied Physics Express)- Impact factor 2.71. After considering for nearly 2 months they said me that the paper needs modification and be published elsewhere. I thought for a while and worked on my paper modifying it. I decided to apply for APL(Applied Physics Letters), impact factor 3.79 and guess what the paper got accepted. However, people at APL took nearly 6 months and also made me hire a native English speaker to make some structural changes to the paper.
I think you should directly go for the top level paper. If they deny you, you can always find a replacement.

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Is it unwise to repeat portions of a successful grant proposal?
Three years ago, I applied for and received a three-year grant from the National Science Foundation in pure mathematics. Now I need to prepare a follow-up proposal for continued funding.
There is, of course much that I have to say that is new. However, I am interested in the same family of research problems, and it seems to make sense to repeat some of the text from my previous proposal, since I thought very carefully about how to describe the background and motivate my work.
Will it make a poor impression if I reuse some parts of my previous proposal verbatim?

Ask the program officer (PO), because he/she will be able to back you up if the permission comes from him/her, should the reviewers criticize so.
However, slightly recast your question. For instance, ask if the proposal will be reviewed with your previous proposal side by side or by the same reviewers. Tell the PO that you ask because you intended to frame the background with some similar information you presented in the last version, but worried that it would create redundancy. And emphasize that you will be more than happy to transfer the background to the continual application if that would make the application process smoother.
In the mean time, evaluate the magnitude of the intended cutting and pasting and what information is being transferred. Historical findings are unlikely to change and can understandably be worded similarly; but if what you want to paste were things that you would set off to explain/learn, and after three years the unknowns remain, then it probably will not go too well. Also, critically review the literature. If the parts to be cut and pasted are more contemporary literature review, it's hard to believe nothing can be added in three years. Anyway, don't use them just because you don't have time to revise the background and the last one seems still pretty good.

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Is there an analogue to the Open University in Italy?
Is there an analogue to the Open University in Italy? By that, I mean a respected public distance-learning university with few/no access barriers. Another institution of this type would be the "FernUniversität in Hagen", in Germany.

I would expect that if there is one, then there is a unique one. So I don't think this is a shopping question.

Note that both OU and FernUniversität accept students from throughout Europe (and elsewhere). Language is an issue, of course. And the personal touch that both provide isn't available everywhere (local tutors).

There are several distance-based universities in Italy, but not a public or free (as in beer) one, as far as I know; you find a list on https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universit%C3%A0_telematica for instance.
Note that universities (online or not) are not usually free in Italy, though you can apply for tax reductions, full waivers or scholarships based on merit or low income; most prominently, all public universities are free if your family has an income less than 20k€/year.
Some public universities offer MOOCs; for instance the Federico II university of Naples, https://www.federica.eu/en/all-moocs/ or the Politecnico of Milan https://www.pok.polimi.it/ . Even more universities put some recorded lectures online freely accessible to everyone; for instance the one I work for, the university of Pisa, https://mediateca.unipi.it/ .

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Citing a citation from a paper?
So, I have a sentence in a paper I'm writing that looks like this:

This result was first discovered by Person X (PaperX 1915).

The issue is, the paper I cite, let's call it Paper X, written by Person X, is in German, and I have not read it. I know that the result is there, because another paper, let's say Paper Y, also cited Paper X and stated that this result was there.
Do I need to cite Paper Y as well as Paper X, since it is where I found the citation and the result? Or is this not necessary, as the information which I am repeating from Paper Y is information that they themselves repeat from Paper X, which I cite?

I would try to check if the reference you found is appropriate and then cite the original paper X. You could ask a german speaker colleague or find out by formula and figures. ...

You are correct, there is a format for this.  See http://www.apastyle.org/learn/faqs/cite-another-source.aspx

Please don't rely on the contents of a link for your answer - summarise the key points in the body of your answer as well.


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Am I allowed to do the work for a research assistant (RA) without having been awarded an assistantship?
I recently finished my undergrad degree and'm now enrolled in an entirely online graduate (M.Ed) program in educational technology/instructional technology.
Nonetheless, I'll be moving to the physical campus of this Lower Midwest flagship university in late August. Although I'll be receiving grad Stafford loans (huzzah, no undergrad loans!), I applied for financial aid past the assistantship deadline.
I know the importance of networking and collaborating with faculty. I'm prepared to live off of loans (which is feasible, given the low cost of living in this city) so that I can work for one of the projects associated with my school. It's my hope that this would make me an attractive candidate for a 2016-2017 assistantship.
So...should I live off loans (and, realistically, a 15-hour/week part-time job) for that first year, so that I can be what's essentially an unpaid intern?

Your title and the post are kind of different questions. In the title you're asking about being allowed to work without funding, and in the post about whether you should. Could you clarify please?

It's a little unclear to me whether you're asking whether it's permitted to do work without getting paid for it, or if you're asking whether it's a good idea to do that. I'll address both questions.
Almost any faculty member will be happy to take you on without needing to fund you, provided you have a decent reputation and they have sufficient time to mentor a grad student. I've done this several times when neither I nor the faculty member had funding (or the readiness to commit) by enrolling in an independent study with that advisor. Depending on the institution, this is probably fairly common. You can say you've worked with this faculty member, but you won't be able to say you were an RA with that person because you weren't funded by them.
Let's move on to the question of whether this is a good idea. Barring any red flags on your financial situation that you haven't mentioned, YES. This is a phenomenal way to get job experience and familiarity with the group. It does make you look like a more dedicated grad student, which should impress your advisor when he/she considers funding you later. It would also give you a head start should you apply for a fellowship.
I would also urge you to discuss this with the person you're thinking of working with. They might consider funding you if they see that you're already willing to sacrifice (it's a long shot!). They will be better able to advise you than anyone online because they know their funding situation, their field of research, their institution, and the local cost of living. Plus, talking to them early gives you a chance to connect.

Shouldn't have any financial red flags. My grad loans will be my first ever and I've never been in any formal debt.


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Why do US flagship state universities vary so much in quality?
In the United States, it is typical for each state to have one or more flagship state universities. All of them are reasonably good institutions, but some are absolutely top-notch, such as in Michigan, California, Virginia, and Wisconsin.
Typically, tuition at these universities is extremely expensive for out-of-state students and much cheaper for in-state students. So, at least in principle, these universities principally serve the best students from their respective states who choose to study at public schools.
How is it then that some schools became absolutely top-notch and others less so? To my mind there is no obvious factor explaining which of the state schools became top-notch; for example, Wisconsin is not, and never has been, an unusually populous or wealthy state.

An undoubtedly oversimplified but probably largely correct answer is that some states (at some crucial point in the past) made the funding of higher education a higher priority than other states did.  With 50 different state legislatures involved over a period of many decades, it's not surprising that there is no obvious single factor explaining the observed outcomes.

Also, in many cases the statement "Typically, tuition at these universities is extremely expensive for out-of-state students and much cheaper for in-state students" is now outdated.  In response to severe budget cuts from the states, some of these schools are now extremely expensive for in-state students as well.

Also: snowball effect. Reputation attracts quality which in turn increases reputation, etc. Even in the ideal case where all institutions started with similar quality, it's likely to diverge quickly.

You might be interested in the California Master Plan for Higher Education: http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/~ucalhist/archives_exhibits/masterplan/

States also vary dramatically in population and economic activity.  There are close to 40 million people in California and less than a million in Wyoming, and the per capita income/wealth is higher in California than Wyoming.

Different states have very different political attitudes towards their flagship schools as well. This makes a difference with funding levels of course. It also makes a difference in terms of how money is to be used. A governor/executive, combined with a university president, that wants to grow a flagship institution can help earmark funds to attract top-notch researchers, link business activity and academic areas to grow in, and so on. It takes planning and vision as well as money, and that varies a lot from state to state.

The use of "as well" here is confusing. "As well" as what?

"as well" as different funding directives (from the question and comments)

The one thing that has to be remembered is that classes at Universities are run by humans... and they aren't all of the same caliber.
If a University has decided to focus on a particular school, Civil Engineering for example, then they will expend the funds necessary to attract highly competent and well known professors in that area.  This might mean that funds aren't available to attract similar talent in another college at that University, such as English Literature.  However it also means that the university will get a reputation for turning out better candidates in those areas.
Next, Universities are funded through a variety of ways.  Only one is the actual cost of tuition.  Private funding, such as provided by various businesses or alumni, is a big part of this.  If a particular college within the University graduates a large number of high dollar workers then those private donations are likely to be largely earmarked for that same college.
Point is: Quality is determined by your professors and tools available and these are generally determined by the Money a University has or is willing to spend.

Athletics are a big deal when it comes to funding too. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the “Public Ivies” (as they’re sometimes called) have strong football or basketball programs.

@BraddSzonye - perhaps the exception proves the rule, but my alma mater, Miami University (Ohio), which is often on "public ivy" lists, had an 0-12 football record (Go Redhawks! Woot!), and a 13-17 basketball record in the 2013-2014 school year. Rah.

The other answers have pointed out a number of important factors, but an additional one is lack of competition. Most of the best state universities are in states and even regions with few large private universities of similar caliber (and especially, where there weren't many when the universities developed). It's notable that the northeast, which is wealthy, populous, and tends to have politics that support higher education still doesn't have any public schools in that caliber---in large part because it has the highest concentration of private schools which fill that niche.
There's a belief that having research institutions brings benefits to a state by creating jobs indirectly. That benefit is a lot of the reason a state would want to put the extra resources into a school to make it a top tier research institution rather that a good school primarily for educating its own students. Private institutions can provide the same benefit, and so reduce the motivation.
(Compare Texas, which has openly discussed that it has too few top research universities relative to its population and wealth and is running a competition among its lower tier research universities to become the states third public R1.)

The northeast... doesn't have any public schools in that caliber - take that, Penn State, UMass Amherst, Rutgers..

But compared to Harvard, MIT, Brown, Yale, Princeton, Penn, NYU, Cornell ? Not entirely unfair.

@Suresh You're comparing public schools in the NE to private schools in the NE. Henry's argument is about public schools in the NE vs public schools elsewhere.

My reading was that Henry was saying "good private schools in an area block out development of public schools". To which your response was to list examples of good public schools in the area, to which my response was to support his claim that that the caliber is not mismatched. But then again, I'm already confused:)

@Suresh: Cornell is a special case.  It is a private university and also New York's land-grant university.  Some of its colleges are public, funded by New York State ("contract colleges"), and others are privately funded ("endowed colleges").

There are a variety of factors, and the sample is too diverse to come up with a simple answer. For starters, here's a list of all the State-run universities in the USA. This answer is basically an outline, based on my impressions, and I invite others to elaborate on these points with historical documents (this answer is a wiki) or maybe even a statistical analysis if we're lucky.
1) The need for a state school. Some regions already had several private universities that could serve their population. Others (California?) did not, so the state set one up.
2) The political commitment to the University system. Some state schools (CA) are written into the state's constitution. Other's are not (PA). Some were established with land-grants.
3) In a less formal sense, some states have a strong public commitment to public  education, while others value it less. The rankings of high schools has some correlation to my perception of flagship university quality.
4) As implied in the question, the total resources available to the state is an issue, though not the only one. Still, overall, larger and wealthier (and more urban) states tend to have more prestigious flagship universities.
5) And then there's randomness (as described by Chris Lively) -- all the stuff that is not a characteristic of the state per se. AKA, historical contingencies, personnel decisions, strategic decisions, and the general legacy of the University's infrastructure..
It would be interesting to see how all these factors contribute to predicting the prestige of the flagship university (a PCA or logistic regression, perhaps)-- but that analysis is outside of my expertise.

State population, and proximity to a large city likely also plays a role.  Its not a perfect correlation, but UCB, UCLA, Georgia Tech, UT-Austin, and several other "big name" state schools are either in or near major citys in high population states.
I'm guessing states like the Dakotas don't have enough students to build larger campuses, and hire as many profs.  Looks like neither Dakota has even 1 million people.  I'm guessing there just isn't very much real demand for education in these states, since fewer students are getting degrees the universities have less money for big ticket items like stadiums, rec facilities and "star" faculty.

Its not a perfect correlation — "To put it mildly," he responded defensively.

one thing, North Dakota has two competitive "flagship" universities, UND in Grand Forks and NDSU in Fargo.  other states with even twice the population (like Maine) have only one.  there are some reputable programs with research, but these schools serve as educational institutions more than they are research institutions, which serves their students quite well.  and most of the students leave the state after graduation.

Though it is growing and is the capital, Austin is not a particularly large city. It is centrally located (in a very expansive state), and UT has been periodically showered in money and has attracted significant private endowments.

State population probably plays a role primarily via the size of the state budget.  I suspect that proximity to a large city would disappear as a factor if you controlled for the fact that most things involving lots of people are close to big cities.  There are plenty of "small name" state schools in or near major cities in high population states, too, but somehow their names don't spring to mind as readily.  (Not to mention all the big name schools which are famous for being in the middle of nowhere.  I think @JeffE may have had one in mind specifically.)

authors: Bob Jarvis - Слава Україні


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Is there anywhere I can find reliable reviews of popular textbooks?
My mathematics department is adopting a new calculus textbook. The publisher has refused to continue printing the same edition that we have been using, and their new edition is one of several options which we are considering.
Several of these books are extremely well-known and widely used, and we have to judge which is the best. The most important step is to look at the books myself, which indeed I did. Beyond that, I am curious how the various choices have played out in actual teaching situations. Indeed, in our deliberations I feel that I am reinventing the wheel.
Are there any trustworthy sources of reviews of popular textbooks, written with an eye towards the experience of the student reading them?

What do you consider "trustworthy"?

@BenCrowell: I don't just want opinions; for that, my own suffice. ;) Surely there are people out there who have used multiple books extensively and have made specific observations about what students find more or less difficult with each? I found this https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/larsons-calculus-vs-stewarts-calculus.258744/ or this https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110711044320AATJ9in but there doesn't seem to be a lot of meaningful content there.

@ff524: By trustworthy I mean that the reviewer is an experienced calculus teacher and is basing his or her judgement based on students' experiences with a class based around the book in question.

I am not aware of any specific aggregator of textbooks review. But... reading reviews on Amazon may help. (By reading I mean actually reading, not just comparing average scores;  especially reviews with non-extreme grades. Usually they also gives some context the reader's position and motivation.)
Also:

some journals have a section with book reviews,
some researchers and lectures write blog posts, reviews or suggested readings,

however, each single review is only a single data point.
But once you focused on a few books, there is no shortcut to actually looking at their content and deciding whether it fits your course, approach, taste, etc.

+1, I'd also suggest scouting for syllabi online and get an idea on which ones are the popular choices. Some lecturers also explained the rationale of picking a certain textbook in their syllabus.

Sure. Presence of a book in syllabi means just that it is popular (was it chosen because its good, or because of other constraints?). But comments are invaluable, see example this list: http://bactra.org/notebooks/information-theory.html.

@Penguin_Knight: My personal opinion is that the most popular calculus book in existence is absolutely terrible. But I suspect that this is largely a function of my own tastes and biases, and I'm asking because I want to second-guess these. An example of what I'm hoping to read is a defense of this book, explaining why somebody thinks it's good and making claims as to how students benefit from it.

I'll also add that @PiotrMigdal's advice is exactly what I do for upper-level books, but for calculus books there are a large number of reviews which I don't trust.

@Anonymous For this particular topic, did you try http://matheducators.stackexchange.com/ ? Or look here: Mathematical analysis - text book recommendation sought - math.SE. FYI: personally, I think that Fichtenholz + Rudin is a good choice.

@PiotrMigdal: Thanks, I didn't (although I might) -- I hoped my question had a general answer; I assume that I could get opinions on particular books on Math.SE but was hoping there was some general source of which I was unaware. In any case, I am in the US where calculus is a service course and many of the students have quite weak backgrounds; an analysis book wouldnt fly. But thank you anyway!

I would ask the publisher for a free copy of the book for you to base your decision on.  If you will be using it in your class for some years it will be week worth sending you the book.
I would ask the same of other publishers, and make it known to the representatives of the publishers your in the market for a new book


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Nontraditional summer employment for academics
I'm a research mathematician, probably soon to be tenured, and I've been wondering what 'non-traditional' summer employment options are out there, involving either teaching or research. (I enjoy both!)
Programs like PROMYS would be fun and rewarding, but it appears that they are looking to hire students rather than faculty. Duke TIP seems to be one possibility.
In a different direction, I know that IDA hires mathematicians, although I am rather ambivalent about government surveillance and am not sure I would want to work in such a position.
What other opportunities are out there? I am especially interested in established programs that attract a relatively large community of other researchers and/or students, and am quite happy to travel. For the moment I don't think I would be effective in a leadership role, or in creating an opportunity from scratch.

My impression of Duke TIP, from years ago, was that it is all about promoting Duke.

Some foreign governments offer funding for short term visiting researchers.

Mathematical institutes like IPAM, IMA, ICERM, etc. have long programs, some of which are during the summer.

Have you thought about NASA?
I personally know a fair number of faculty who have spent summers working at Langley and Kennedy, and I can pull up a quick application form for JPL's summer faculty research program. A lot of people, faculty and researchers included, put NASA on a very high pedestal, but it is definitely an attainable position. I am not very knowledgeable of the limitations placed upon you, but I do know fairly valuable work is done, perhaps even outside of your comfort zone -- I know of a fluid dynamicist who worked at skunkworks in Kennedy, for one.


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What, if anything, is accomplished by formal assessment?
As a faculty member teaching freshman calculus, I was recently asked to participate in an assessment program. The aim of the program is to "design assessment procedures to measure student learning". This year's program is a pilot and they are asking for volunteers; in the future, participation will apparently become required.
To make a long story short, the instructions are intended to be simple and involve a minimal amount of hassle, but for my course would not be. (In particular, we were told to accept a homework assignment over Blackboard, which is not easy as my students work in pencil and paper and may not have ready access to scanners.)
The drawbacks of this assessment program are obvious to me: they create hurdles for me and, even more significantly, for my students. I would rather spend time on my research and on helping students. And certainly my students would rather do something other than try to find a scanner.
What are the benefits? I can think of a cynical answer: it gives paper-pushers fodder for reports, and allows them the warm glow of feeling that they are accomplishing something. Are there less cynical answers? In particular, is this type of information frequently used to identify and make constructive improvements to undergraduate curricula?

The actual benefits or the aspirational benefits? I mean, a real, cross-cohort measurement of how you're doing couldn't hurt and might be put to good use.  But I always want to grab someone and shake them until they tell me how this differs from my testing the student's progress in class? Perhaps you'll get a some good answers.

Accreditation ?

Surely if this is a pilot program these are the sorts of things you should feedback, e.g. this is not a minimal amount of hassle. That way maybe the system will be changed, rather than forcing everyone to do the same stupid things you dislike in future.

You've said things elsewhere which suggest that you're in the US.  Scanners (i.e. phones with cameras) are fairly ubiquitous in the US.

I do not think it is too much to ask your STEM students to actually learn how to use a computer and write their assignments there. This is a skill they will have to learn sooner or later.

@Alexandros: I assign a fairly high volume of problems, many of which are to be accompanied by pictures. It would take a lot of time even for me to typeset an entire assignment.

People who promote quantitative education assessments believe that "educational achievement" is a valid research construct  (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_assessment)  With the proper instruments (a.k.a. tests and scoring systems), and with proper analysis (norms, scales, etc.), they believe it is possible and useful to draw inferences about the education system as a whole, or in part.
Broadly speaking, the advocates of standardized testing strongly believe that the only way to improve the education as a whole is to have "objective" measures of "reality" across teachers, across departments, across schools, across geographies. This "ground truth" data provides the basis for deciding what works and what does not, and for determining who is effective as educators and who is not.


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When refereeing a paper, stating I am not an author of suggested literature
When getting reports for papers submitted to a peer-reviewed journal, referees sometimes suggest that some missing items be added to the list of references. In my short career I have seen all possible cases, from honest additions that were clearly necessary, through border-line literature where one could cite any one of a long list of possible sources, to blatant cases of citation shopping where the reviewers ask for 10 of their own papers to be added to the list.
Here, I am looking at the problem from the other side (the reviewer side). I recently refereed a paper for which I suggested that the authors look at a very recent paper, authored by researchers totally unrelated to me, that touches on a couple of issues that I thought were very relevant. Since that paper is so new, it is likely that they were not aware of its existence. Because of all the misbehavior I talked about in my first paragraph above, I am afraid that the authors of the paper I reviewed might assume I am one of the authors of the suggested paper.
I know I should never disclose my identity in a report, but what about stating who "I am not"? Something like this:

I think the authors should have a look at recent paper Nice New Paper, which might help with the interpretation of their results. This reviewer would like to add that he did not participate in said study.

In my opinion this would serve two purposes. 1) Clarify the legitimacy of my suggestion (I do not get anything from it) and 2) prevent the authors of the reviewed paper from suspecting it was the other guys who reviewed their paper and they are shopping for citations.
What are possible ethical considerations against this course of action from the points of view of editors and authors?

I only suspect that reviewers are coauthors of suggested papers when it seems like a stretch to suggest said paper. If you find the paper relevant, I don't think you should worry.

Personally, that is a pretty good idea.

I would strengthen "This reviewer would like to add that he did not participate in said study" to "This reviewer would like to add that they did not co-author that paper nor are they affiliated with the authors of that paper."

blatant cases of citation shopping where the reviewers ask for 10 of their own papers to be added to the list Really? I'd talk to the editor in such cases, this is plain stupid and should be reported.

It should certainly not be made a universal rule to add disclaimers like that. Otherwise it will become rather easy to figure out who the referee is - or impossible for the referee to ever suggest looking at their own paper :)

Sometims this is obvious to the author even if the reviewer doesn't say anything, because the suggested additional citation is by that same author.

Side note: when referring to yourself in a review, even including a gendered pronoun reveals information about your identity, hence should be avoided.

You could of course decide as a field to go for open peer review, as is increasingly common in medicine and related areas. This has two good effects, it stops dead all the gaming you are dealing with, and it forces people to behave better as peer reviewers. Anonymous peer review is archaic in these days.

Personally I don’t think you should worry about this but you could always forego this problem by signing your review. Not sure how common this is in your field, and there are of course arguments against it as well.

This would have been better as a comment, but I wanted to share the image, and so had to post this as an answer. It's heartening to know that you are giving so much thought to this, when citation shopping can be so blatant:

@KakoliMajumder Priceless.

@Miguel...Seriously! How shameless can it get!

As a reviewer, I have suggested the authors to cite one of my papers only once or twice. I apologized for doing that in the notes to the editor, and remarked that I couldn't avoid it because it was really central. I wrote nothing in the blind notes to the authors, and I write nothing when I suggest papers from other people.
I do this because of two reasons:

I value anonymity of peer reviewers highly, and I prefer to avoid remarks that reduce it by unnecessarily providing additional bits of information. There are already unavoidable signs such as writing style and English mistakes, and I don't want to add more.
I believe it is the editor's responsibility to make sure that the referees are not citation-shopping. It can't be anyone else's, because they are the only person with all the information necessary to perform a check. So I have to justify my actions to him/her, not to the authors.

If, as an author or as a second reviewer, I noticed a very blatant case of citation shopping, I would consider it appropriate to write to the editor privately to suggest investigating. but this has never happened to me up to now. (Although there have been a couple of borderline cases.)

Thanks for your input. I agree that ideally this would be the case. In practice I find that many editors mass-process submissions and rely sometimes too blindly on reviewers to make decisions.

Honestly, unless it's particularly blatant (i.e. five suggested citations all to the same people etc.) I tend to assume people are doing this anyway, or at least extend them the benefit of the doubt.
So my core advice? Spend no more time worrying about this than you already have.
If you really care, the way I would approach this is to phrase your comment as if you had read the paper. So, for example:
"The authors may wish to consider citing the recent article by Fomite et al. Highly Topical Research is Highly Topical in this month's issue of Journal of Our Field. Based on my reading, their findings in Table 2 would strengthen the core argument of this paper."

I wished everyone behaved like this. One particularly bad case was a ref criticizing his own paper just so that I would add discussion and citation to mine. Initially he managed to trick me to believe he was someone else. This same guy has done stuff along these lines several times already, including pretending not to be involved in his papers: "I listened to [his own student] present convincing evidence of X at conference Y. His paper [coauthored by him] just appeared in Journal Z". He waited until publication of this paper before sending the review just so that the citation could be added.

@Miguel admittedly, a researcher is most familiar with his own research and publications than with anyone else, and they aren't supposed to reveal their identities.

FYI: You appear to have a typo: "The authors may with to" appears to be intended to be: "The authors may wish to" (perhaps you intended "want"?). Although, both those possibilities are phrased very passively (wish/want to consider). Better would be "The authors should consider".

@Makyen Fixed the typo. Honestly, most of my reviewer comments are in passive voice to make it obvious that when I switch to non-passive voice it's also non-optional.

I think that you should avoid remarks like this. Avoid politics and stay focused on science.
Is this the only paper you refer to in your review? If you have other places where you refer to other papers by other authors, what makes you think they will able to single out the paper you suggest as (falsely) your own?
Instead of the way you suggested to write it, how about something like this:

I suspect that the authors overlooked a very recent paper by XYZ (link doi ref etc). XYZ provide these new data and that interpretation which conflicts with point A of the authors and supports their point B. I think it is important that the authors address these new findings so their paper does not become instantly outdated and keeps at pace with new development in the field.

By phrasing it this way, you are doing the following:

You put the focus on the scientific content of the new paper. Instead of saying "here's a new paper, cite it", you point out the scientific reasons that this paper is relevant.
You leave the choice of citation to the authors. Again, by not saying "cite it" you lower the chances of them thinking it's yours. If the paper is indeed relevant as you think it is, there is no reason that they do not cite it. It's their paper after all, and if they choose not to cite the paper, it's their call (pending editor's approval).
You mention the benefit to the authors by reading and possibly citing the new paper. No one wants to publish stuff that's no longer relevant, or superseded by other studies!

I also think that by framing your comment similar to what I suggested, the question of whether they think you are the author or not becomes unimportant. What's important is the science: the point is to make the authors understand that the paper has scientific importance and should then be cited, and even if they think that you are the author of said paper, they will not think you are forcing them to cite it because you are trying to increase your H-index or whatever.

+1, but I would drop the "paper instantly outdated" side of the comment and would just leave the "keep at pace" part (which essentially says the same thing without sounding derisive).

@einpoklum point taken.


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Recovering your energy after back-to-back teaching
This past fall I taught three lecture courses back-to-back-to-back on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings. Although I enjoyed it, and felt I did a good job of it, I felt physically exhausted afterwards and usually did not manage to accomplish much those afternoons.
What strategies (yoga? meditation? long walks?) have others used to quickly recover their energy for research or other duties in such situations?

A good nap (on an office sofa, or at home, or outdoors if the weather is nice) will always help. Although napping in the middle of a workday seems frowned upon in U.S. culture, I find myself a lot more productive after such a nap and will often subsequently stay up working until well after 2 a.m.

@DanRomik: A comment could be made regarding whether or not one should stay up until well after 2 a.m... ;)

Building on the answer from @D.Salo -- try to map out exactly what you're going to do on the target afternoon, ahead of time.  For example, that might be a good time to edit a paper rather than attempting something more creative.  Or you could choose some specific reading for that afternoon, ahead of time.  Regarding walks, yoga and so on -- try them out, see what works well for you.  Basically, you need to find a way to transition out of your extroverted self back to your introverted self.

Don't forget to eat and rehydrate. If possible, get out of your building to do so; that adds a change of pace, which also helps. Give yourself permission not to do anything intellectual while you fuel up.
When I have a schedule like that, I intentionally save relatively mindless chores for afterwards. Work gets done so I don't feel like a slacker, but I don't have to break my brain either.

Heh. I no longer worry about feeling like a slacker.

When I was a graduate student, I was a teaching assistant for several terms for the big introductory artificial intelligence class at our school.  There were 300-400 students in the class and 4-5 TAs, each of whom was responsible for leading tutorial sections of ~10 students/section.  Because of other constraints, the tutorials all had to be scheduled Monday afternoon or Tuesday, which meant we all had long, long blocks of tutorials all through every Tuesday.  At the end of every Tuesday, I would be exhausted, covered with chalk dust, throat sore, and very well versed on the material.
We TAs thus had a tradition of meeting at the lab afterwards to socialize and drink together and generally blow off verbal steam.  We'd hang out for about an hour, kibitzing about the class and our experiences, and by the end of that time we'd be sufficiently unwound and recovered to be speak about other things as well.
These days, I don't think I would use alcohol, but would still take a "palette cleanser time" to do something different and give myself time for things to settle out of my head.  Half an hour to an hour seems to be able the right amount of time for me. Overall, it's much better for me to do something active (e.g., walking, talking with others) than to do something passive like reading blogs, because the I find the more passive activities to be more about emotionally detaching rather than cleansing, and I am likely to not recover emotionally in the way that I need to.  Others, of course, may find that different things work well for them.

My answer would be much the same though I will add that I have also had success using online activities (particularly video games and movie nights - where you chat or Skype while everyone watches the same movie) with other TAs and tutors. The only reason I would add this is that in my case this group did not attend the same school anymore or even live in the same region but met through earlier degrees, organizations, and jobs.


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Should I encourage foreign students to adopt local handwriting customs?
I am an American teaching in a US university, and I've noticed that many foreign students come with their own handwriting customs for writing English. In particular I've noticed that Indian students often write the letter 'x' so that it (to me, anyway, and probably to many Americans) resembles an 'n', and makes their work (very slightly) harder to read. (Another example: a Croatian friend of mine wrote his 'q' so that it looked like 'g' to me.)
Should I encourage them to write in an American way? I am especially interested in hearing from foreigners and whether they would have appreciated this. On the one hand I don't want to presume that my culture is superior to others; on the other, they have chosen to study in the US and I would like to help them communicate their ideas with as few obstacles as possible.
Does the answer depend on circumstances (e.g. whether the student is an undergraduate or graduate, whether the student has teaching responsibilities, and where the student aims to work after graduation)?

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.

In ordinary text, this might help a little but probably doesn't matter much, since there's plenty of redundancy to aid in understanding.  However, it can make a big difference for equations.
If the students are in a math-intensive field, I would definitely point this out, but in a broader context.  When I teach beginning American undergraduates in mathematics, I offer them handwriting advice for equations: make sure t doesn't look like +, z doesn't look like 2, the letter l doesn't look like the number 1, etc.  Furthermore, mathematics students have to learn how to write all sorts of potentially unfamiliar symbols as they progress in their studies (aleph, Weierstrass P, fraktur letters for Lie theory, etc.).  If you are working on a calculation on a whiteboard with someone, it's a real issue if they can't easily and reliably parse your equations, so just about every mathematician has put at least a little thought into this.
From this perspective, I wouldn't tell people "You're in America now and have to write like the Americans", but rather "Writing equations clearly is something everyone has to deal with.  Here are some issues you may need to adapt to, some of which are generic and others of which are specific to your background."

This. I started barring my Z's and 7's after struggling to understand the board handwriting of a couple of professors.

An alternative to barring zees is to make sure the top line curves in a way clearly opposite to that of 2. There's also the matter of u, v, U, V, set union, alternative, and lowercase Greek nu.

@dmckee I started barring my Z's and 7s (and curling my t's) after struggling to understand my own handwriting.

It is very hard for someone to change its handwriting. If a student is forced to write in an uncommon way he need to use a lot of cognitive energy to it and he will be much slower. In general there is no correct way of handwriting and different styles, e.g., cursive, sütterlin, kurrent.
I would talk to the class and declare that I can only grade answers readable to me. So every student should try to write as clear and unambiguously as possible.

I have to disagree with this answer.  In my experience, it is actually fairly easy for someone to change their handwriting.  Most people just seem to assume that it's difficult because they've never tried it.

Strongly disagree with the first paragraph. While learning a new alphabet I found that it was surprisingly easy to control my handwriting, and with only a small conscious effort I was able to greatly improve my writing of all characters, even those I was already used to.

I also respectfully disagree with this answer. First, we're only talking about changing a couple letters--that's not comparable to an entire alphabet (if we were talking switching to kurrent or sütterlin, that would be an entirely different story!). Second, I've lived in a foreign country and had to adapt my handwriting (only a couple letters/numbers), and then moved back, and had to readapt: it was quite simple (and satisfying to know that I was doing "right" for the culture).

I seem to have domain-specific handwriting, where I write 1, 7, 0, l, t, z, and other characters differently in equations, mostly to avoid ambiguity. My normal writing is just as bad as ever.

I (mildly) disagree with the comments disagreeing with this answer. Personally and anecdotally, in high school, I decided to switch from print to cursive in order to write more quickly on essay-style tests. I was able to write well enough to read my own handwriting within a few weeks, but it took me over a year before I was really comfortable with my new handwriting style.

As a freshman in college I was told to use period as a decimal separator instead of coma.
I can understand how that can be confusing - the professor teaching the class wrote 7s that looked like 1s, and .123 instead of 0.123. (This was another complaint of his - he said my 1s look like 7s).
Unless it's a trivial problem (some people simply have terrible handwriting) I would bring it up, chances are your students are confused too, especially if they are new to the US.

authors: ณัฐชา ทรัพย์แต่ง


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Do course buyouts happen in pure mathematics?
I am a pure mathematician teaching a 2-2 load at a state research university in the United States. I know that many of my colleagues in applied math, engineering, and the laboratory sciences are able to buyout much of their teaching as long as they are successful in obtaining grant funding.
This doesn't seem to be the case in pure mathematics, however. In the US, most external funding for pure math comes from the NSF or the NSA. A program officer at the NSA explained to me that they don't allow buyouts, even in lieu of requesting summer salary. I e-mailed the same question to a program officer at the NSF, and my e-mail was not returned. I also asked my chair if I could pay for a buy-out (down to 2-1) from my own money, and he said no -- only grants or startup money are acceptable for this purpose.
I am curious -- are pure mathematicians ever able to secure course buy-outs, other than in their first few years (when this seems common)? Are there any funding agencies whose funding I might compete for that allow this? Alternatively, are buyouts from salary acceptable in other departments?

Some mathematics dept heads and deans are hesitant to put a price on what it would cost to buy out teaching: if the price is low, it's too easy to buy out (short of the authority's simply refusing), and if the price is high, this weakens the argument that "research is the primary job" (and rationalizations for giving lower raises...). It's a wanting-to-have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too deal, for some bureaucrats. It's also inconvenient to make last-minute staffing arrangements, certainly, especially if the amount of money freed up is small! And from whence the office space for those covering? :)

@paulgarrett wow, my departments have always figured out our teaching-research-admin ratio and priced the buyout accordingly. For example, if my ratio is 40-40-20 and I teach a 2-2 load, each class would be 10% of my salary.

@StrongBad, good that your dept is sensible. You can also imagine scenarios in which a "manager" prefers to make things easiest to manage, rather than most productive. :) (Fortunately, not the situation any more in my dept.)

@paulgarrett: My department has indeed put an exact price on it: we have applied mathematicians in the my mathematics department, and many of them write course buyouts into their grant budgets and subsequently buy out some of their teaching.

Not exactly a buy-out, but I know one department where you can just teach less for less money.  Also some departments give teaching reductions for getting grants.

Funny. When I was in college I thought, "This would be great if classes just didn't get in the way!". I guess the faculty feels the same way... :-) Which sort of calls into question the raison d'etre of institutions of higher learning... :-(

The NSF won't generally allow a faculty member to take more than 2 months of salary per year from NSF grants.  Since you would typically want summer salary before buying out of teaching, this effectively makes it impossible to buy out of teaching on NSF funding alone.
However, if you combine your NSF funding with funding from other agencies (such as the Office of Naval Research, Army Research Office, National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, DARPA, DOE, etc.), it's certainly possible to have enough months of grant support to buy out of teaching during the academic year.  Whether your program manager will agree to pay for this and whether your institution will allow it are still questions that you'd have to answer.

I could imagine that some people are willing to use summer salary to buy out teaching and then work for free over the summer.

Thank you for your answer. That said, I am indeed asking whether the NSF or any other agency will let you buy out teaching before taking summer salary. (My circumstances are perhaps a little bit atypical, in that I am managing to live on much less than my salary.)

You'll have to start by finding out whether your institution would be willing to do this at all (some department chairs or deans might not be willing) and under what terms.  Does a one course buyout cost 25% of your 9-month salary based on a 2-2 teaching load, or does it cost less (say 10%)?  Then you'd have to find out whether your program manager is willing to do it under the terms set by your institution.  A program manager might or might not agree that those terms are acceptable.   There's really no general answer to this question.

I was under the impression that it was strictly impossible to use NSF (DMS) grants to buyout courses.  I know it is impossible at my institution, but I had vaguely thought that the NSF itself views this as impossible.  Do you happen to know?

The Grants and Programs Guide simply says: "As a general policy, NSF limits salary compensation for senior project personnel to no more than two months of their regular salary in any one year. This limit includes salary compensation received from all NSF-funded grants."  In my experience this has always been summer salary.  However, see the discussion at: http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2004/nsf04014/itr2004_financial.htm

I don't think that you'd have a problem with the agencies asking to use grant funds to buy out of teaching if the funds came from ARO, ONR, DARPA, etc.  It's more likely that your own institution would tell you to take the funding as summer salary first and not allow a buyout until you had full summer salary.

I have heard one mathematician say he has used his summer salary from NSF to buy out academic-year teaching (and that he then volunteers to teach an advanced course without compensation).

authors: Bob Jarvis - Слава Україні


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Can dysfunctional graduate admissions processes be improved?
I am an assistant professor at a lower-tier research university. Recently I learned that my university and department have a dysfunctional system for reading and evaluating applications to our Ph.D. program.
There is no way to read the applications online, or indeed to collect all the applications together in one place so that applications can be compared. Instead, applications were printed out as they arrive, passed around with a comment sheet on top, and then discussed. This happened several times; after each go-around, the files that were just evaluated would disappear, usually to not be seen again.
As my colleague on the committee put it: "While I took notes, it was incredibly difficult to compare people even a week apart. ... Overall the process was much too opaque for me."
This is in stark contrast to our hiring, for which we used MathJobs. This system is designed perfectly: it provides online, secure access to all the applications online. When I was on our hiring committee we individually read applications in detail (and were able to read the files of candidates on our shortlist as frequently as we wishes). We came to meetings well prepared; these meetings were short, to the point, and resulted in excellent hires.
There is a similar site MathPrograms which we could use for graduate admissions, which is also extremely well designed, requires almost no effort to set up, and which costs well under a thousand dollars. If we were allowed to use this, we could evaluate applications much easier without the Graduate School's "help" than with it.
Two questions:

Are graduate admissions systems this way for some "good" reason which I may have overlooked?
As a faculty member, is there any way I can usefully push for using MathPrograms, or some similarly sensible system?

Who decides how the application process is handled?  If it's decided in your department, then I'd think you have a good chance of making it more reasonable --- maybe not anything like MathPrograms that costs money, but at least keeping all the files in one place where you can review what you saw last week.  Maybe you can get a secretary to scan the files and make them available on-line to the appropriate faculty members.  If the decision is made at the college level, then you may have more work changing the process, but money may cease to be an issue; a big expense at the department level can look trivial to a dean, provided the dean understands how bad the current system is.  If you need to deal with a central Graduate School, the subject of "help" (in quotation marks) in your message, then all I can do is wish you good luck.

Yes, there are good reasons, which might not apply in your department (and somewhat apply to mine), as to why graduate admissions are handled that way.
There are still many places in which admissions, even graduate admissions, are non-competitive.  This means there are some standards, which vaguely correspond to having sufficient qualifications to indicate the applicant is likely to be able to complete the program in a reasonable amount of time, and everyone over that standard is admitted.  Applications are not meant to be compared against each other but rather only to a fixed standard (even if that fixed standard can't be precisely specified or easily explained to an outsider).  When admissions is non-competitive, the system you are describing means that applicants can get a decision on their application fairly soon after their application is complete, instead of waiting until after a fixed application deadline date.  It also means that you don't have to have a deadline for applications, since you decide on an application without worrying a better one will come later.
Not having deadlines for applications can be an advantage, since some people don't decide until very late to apply to graduate school.  Being quick is also an advantage, because some people may take the first offer they get.  Note both these advantages are more important for applicants to the lower-ranked schools for which admissions tend to be less competitive.
You might be shocked that graduate admissions could ever be non-competitive, but this makes sense in several kinds of situations.  One situation is for a program that usually barely gets enough qualified applicants to fill their spots.  In that case, it makes sense to simply take everyone who is qualified, and the quicker the better, since one is worried some spots might go unfilled.  Another situation is for departments which have enough faculty resources to support all their applicants (or whose universities want the faculty to stretch if necessary) in subjects where students commonly go to graduate school without funding.  In that case, admissions can be made on a non-competitive basis with funding (which is limited and hence has to be competitive) decided later, even perhaps with students being forced to decide whether to attend or not before they know if they will get funding or have to pay from their own pocket.
Now as to whether you can change this, it depends.  First, if in fact your department really is in a situation where it should just admit every qualified person who applies, there is no point in changing this.  If that's not the case, and your department is in control of its admissions process, it's not so hard to change.
However, in many cases, graduate admissions is controlled university-wide, and your university may very well have a general philosophy of accepting every qualified applicant.  If non-competitive applications make sense for most of the departments in your university and your department is an exception, it doesn't make sense to change the university rules just for you.  In that case, your department might be able to get permission to institute a pre-application process where potential applicants who don't first make contact with your department before a certain deadline automatically get rejected, and you notify the pre-applicants soon after the deadline whether it will be worthwhile for them to make an official application (which costs an application fee) or not.
Be careful.  If you make a change that causes enrollment in your program to drop, you might get in trouble and your graduate program might simply get eliminated.  It's hard enough already for us to explain to our administration why we can't have 30 students in our program with only 15 university-funded TAships, since mathematics is one of the few subjects with neither grant funding that covers tuition for a neither percentage of students nor many students willing to pay for graduate school from their own pocket.  If your graduate program runs at a financial loss, your university may not be willing (or even may not be able) to keep it going.


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Can one publish papers which give an improved presentation of old results?
A colleague of mine (I'm in mathematics) has shown me a splendid note. He took some of the results from a confusing, hard to read, and important paper from the 1970's, which have not yet appeared in book form, and gave them much cleaner and simpler proofs, and explained them in a very clear way.
I urged him to publish his writeup, and to submit it to a very good journal. But he feels that, because the results are not (strictly speaking) new, the paper would be unlikely to be accepted.
Certainly I feel that work such as his is extremely valuable, and I think the mathematical community ought to encourage more of it. Was I right to encourage him to publish? Or was his pessimism more on target?

Yes.

If the proofs are genuinely new, and genuinely simpler, then this is a contribution.  And if proper attribution is given and the relationship between the old and new work clearly explained, then this should be publishable, assuming that the results are still interesting for the wider community.

An addition: one can target journals that publish expository articles, like "l'enseignement mathématique", or "expositiones mathematicae" (Elsevier though...), but I am well placed to know that also traditional math journals do publish new proofs of known results.


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As a dissertation advisor, how can I best help a "typical" graduate student?
I am about to officially become the Ph.D. advisor to a math grad student at a second-tier state school. (He is about to pass his comprehensive exams.)
He is strong, motivated, and talented, but not to such an extent that I wonder why he's in our program and not some top-20 program. He doesn't know precisely what he wants to work on, and will be looking to me for guidance. He hopes to get some kind of academic job afterwards, but hasn't thought about precisely what.
How can I best help him? For example, should I urge him to work on something difficult, technical, and of interest to experts -- or something less exciting to experts, but easier to explain and motivate?
Typically, although not always, our successful graduates don't get offered research postdocs, but do often go on to faculty positions at second-tier liberal arts schools or branch-campus state universities. Assuming he would be happy with such a position (which of course I will ask!), what can I do to maximize the chances for his success?

This is an excellent question to discuss with your faculty mentor.  (You do have a faculty mentor, don't you?)

Yes. And certainly I'll be discussing this with him, as well as with other people at my university whose students have got jobs.

Keep him busy all the time but don't drag him if he is too slow for you. The first research problem you give him should be doable (and you don't need to hide it from him). The second one can be anything depending on his success or failure on the first. If you think he may do research in the future at all, arrange that he works as a TA for some decent level class. From the job search perspective, a no teaching position is a kiss of death for one not in the top 5%, but spending all time grading business calculus assignments is even worse unless your goal in life is to become a "calculus tzar".

Let him teach.
Assuming that he decides to make plans for working at a LAC or a branch campus of a state university he will need to be ready to teach the day he starts. So encourage him to take that part of his professional training seriously.
If your soon-to-be student is really going to end up in a small department a very helpful thing is that he can continue his research more or less independently. There is the internet but it is not the same as having half a dozen people working on the same topic just outside your door. This, I feel, is more important to his future than whether or not the topic he decides on has a large or small buy in cost. That being said he will want to have some facet of his research program that can be explained to a general mathematical audience, but this does not have to be all of it.
If all else fails, find a friend of yours or a not-so-recent graduate who teaches at a school like this and ask them what they want to see in a candidate. That should give you a good guide for what outcomes you should work for in your student.

Encourage him to give talks on his research early and often, and give lots of constructive feedback.  Probably the most important part of many campus visits is the job talk.  Start working now to ensure that when the time comes, he'll nail his job talk.


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Is there anything wrong with faculty socializing with grad students?
I was a little bit surprised to read this comment thread on the Chronicle of Higher Education, which suggests (among other things) that faculty shouldn't fraternize with grad students. I think this site has a different slant than CHE, so I thought I would bring up the question here. Is there anything wrong with faculty socializing with grad students?
I agree that professors should definitely avoid getting romantically involved with grad students, or getting drunk with them. Moreover, I agree that a heightened sense of boundaries is important.
But is there any reason for a professor, who would otherwise be interested, to decline offers to attend parties thrown by grad students, or to go hiking with them, or to play soccer with them, or to go to bar trivia with them? I've observed this to be common in math departments, and appreciated by faculty and students alike.

I guess this strongly depends on culture on an almost fractal scale.  I (a PhD student) agree with most of your observations.

While I cannot speak for all cases, I can say I have a very amiable relationship with my research adviser. He treats me as a colleague rather than a subordinate. He is that way with all of us in the group, and it is noticeably different than the way he treats the general student body.

Even at the undergraduate level, the occasionally we would play board games with some of the professors in the department. In my experience, the best thing a professor can do is treat a student as an equal when he/she is ready to be treated as such. Not only does that make it a more comfortable work place, but also allows for stronger collaborations in the future.

this comment thread on the Chronicle of Higher Education — I think you misspelled "comical".  If you find yourself in a department that describes graduate students as hoi polloi who need to be kept in their place: Don't walk.  Run.  Even if you're faculty.

For the most part that article does contain some good advice (especially DON'T VOLUNTEER!).  But I agree with others, a little socialization does no harm.

I suppose it depends on whether one views grad students as hoi polloi who need to be kept on the other side of a "class boundary" (as the CHE comment put it), or whether one views them as colleagues who just happen to not be as far along on their academic journeys.  I prefer to see them as colleagues.
For what it's worth, when I was a grad student my advisor often had us (his research group) over to his house for dinners and drinks, and I'd often play racquetball with one of my dissertation committee members.  This made us feel appreciated and made it much more palatable to put in crazy hours when needed to meet a proposal or paper submission deadline.  And now, as a tenured faculty member, I take my students out to lunches and dinners and beers and hiking trips (alas, I'm too old for racquetball now).  I enjoy getting to know my students as whole individuals, and find that the socialization engenders a sense of community that makes things more pleasant for everyone.
Socializing with students is very different from being "buddies" with them: the relationship between a professor and an advisee is very different than that between friends.  But IMHO this is no different than any other professional relationship with any other colleague: there are some things that are fine to share and others that are best left unexplored.

"Socializing with students is very different from being "buddies" with them" is a very good point. I think this is a distinction that makes these arguments much sillier when forgotten.

What about students being buddies with members of faculty who are not their advisors or on their dissertation committee?... and in some universities, untenured faculty may simultaneously be grad students -- can they not have any university buddies?

You are in good company. This very well respected teacher would have students over to his house for dinner exactly for the purpose of getting to know them as people.

Exactly. In my field students who have entered full-time research are widely treated as colleagues (and we all know that it is the most senior and able grad students and the postdocs who get most of the work done). There is plenty of socializing across the PhD horizon, it's just that it is work social rather than play social.

Just know the boundary between "socializing" and "fraternizing" and you should be fine. I've seen a few examples where crossing this boundary was rather detrimental to the PhD advising process (though nobody got fired or expelled; it just got very difficult to force the student to meet her obligations and to carry out the required assignments because the student got an idea that she had a right to argue with and to question everything she was told to do). However, I don't think that maintaining some "class hierarchy" makes much sense at the PhD student level or even during extracurricular undergraduate activities like Putnam training, etc. though I'm all for it in the low level undergraduate classes ever since the time I was being kept on teaching nothing higher than engineering calculus for four years in a row, and the idea of introducing some kind of "faculty uniform" like in the military is not altogether alien to my mind.
One thing to remember however is that no matter how friendly you are with your students outside the classroom, when you are lecturing, you are the boss and they are subordinates. The joint soccer game or beer jug yesterday should not become an excuse for not turning in the homework today. If this principle is understood and followed by both parties, I guess that's all "hierarchy at the graduate level" we need.
As to the journal article in question, it was written by an administrator, albeit a clever one. Most advices he gave are excellent but at some places you certainly get the feeling I had some twenty years ago when I was pulled over for speeding by a policeman, asked him what would be the maximal speed they would allow in that state (North Dakota), and got the reply "Sorry son, but all I can tell is that if you go under the posted limit, we won't bother you").

A rather emphatic "No!"
I socialize and have socialized with my advisers and other related professors many times. In fact, its rather encouraged in our department.
We have an informal departmental event almost every week called HBI (Human Beer Interaction - yes, rather cheesy given the HCI focus of our department) where graduate students and faculty in the past have been known to hang out and talk about different things.
Different professors socialize differently. Some professors have movie nights with their lab. Others organize dinners/lunches/pizza making sessions at their houses. Its a great opportunity to meet their better halves and families. Its also really great to go to the major conferences (CHI/CSCW) in our areas and hobnob with the professors there. I found the linked article to be rather out of sync - at least as far as our department of information science is concerned.
Anecdotally, I know that in other departments in our university, there have been co-ed professor-student intramural soccer/softball teams, ice cream sessions, beers, dinners etc.

Answering as a student: No.
My teachers and the students at my institute (Life sciences, for reference) socialize a lot. We have a yearly volleyball tournament in which my teachers participate, have drinks with them sometimes, are allowed to call them by their first name and I had dinner at their house for an article in the school newspaper. You could almost describe the relation between the two groups as informal. This isn't always the case at the other institutes at my university.
My point is that socializing helps a lot with the work ethic and morale. Because we know our teachers and professors better, it's easier to have meetings and productive discussions. We also tend to work together as a team more (where the professor has the lead obviously). We're all adults after all.
An important factor is that we never forget the professional distance between us. They are the professors/teachers and we are students. At the end of the day, the faculty still has the lead and determines what goes down. There's nothing wrong with students and professors getting to know each other a little better but that barrier must be crystal clear.

One of the issues I have encountered is that PhD students and even professors sometimes like to use their positions as a weapon to prey on younger students, especially the females. For this reason, it is better safe than sorry for anyone older than 30 to keep away from the younger students.

There might be a problem here. Now this is somewhat related to what happens in corporate . If the student is a brown -noser then that is ok. He might be doing this(socializing ,which often leads to doing personal favors for adviser) to further his career. But if he is a backstabber ,he might get away with that crap , because he is close to that adviser and adviser completely trusts him.
I have personally seen cases where the grad student would go to an adviser's home ,babysit her kids , do her some personal chores and then speak crap about other students .And since the adviser thought this student was sincere, she would believe in whatever he said sans verification.
It is always better to have a friendly relationship with peers but with an Adviser you should be  a friendly acquaintance ,but not a friend . A manager (in this case an adviser or mostly lab supervisor) should always keep his distance from his student.

The problem you describe is not the advisor and the student being too friendly.  The problem is the advisor and student both being childish.  Don't walk.  Run.

It may (and does) happen and one rotten apple often spoils the bushel, but what you described looks more like "favoritism" than "socializing" and can be done without establishing any close personal relationships as well. Anyway, I see no real reason to downvote this post, so I cast my vote back up.

@fedja No man , most of professors are not good at people management .Most of them are engineers who work in research in corporate in small teams before becoming prof's . So when they become close to one student by what i call "excess" socializing ,they dont want to discipline that guy sometimes , even though his mistake maybe obvious and clear to see. In fact i think most of the Profs must be made to go thru management classes ,so that they can be better at how to deal with students.

@fedja I mean these profs have a responsibility  to advise students and deal with students regularly but they have no freaking clue on how to spot the impostor or the bad apple among students.

Do you really think a distant, purely professional relationship would prevent back-stabbing? Really? (Also, almost none of the engineering profs I know  "worked in research in corporate in small teams before becoming profs", and the few that did generally have excellent people skills.)

''most of professors are not good at people management". You may have a point here. I only wish to know a noun to plug into "Most of ..... are good at people management" to make it a true statement. As to "most of them are engineers...", that is plain false unless you talk about very particular departments at very particular schools, etc.

@JeffE I better create a separate post about this ,because i an curious about community's view on best way of dealing with a backstabbing brown-noser.

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


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How do you make connections to faculty outside your department?
I feel like the answer to this question should be obvious, but it doesn't seem to be.
Anyway, in my second year on the tenure track, I find myself more confined to my corner of the ivory tower than I intended to be, and would like to branch out and meet other faculty in other areas.
My research (in theoretical math) is very specialized, so I don't have collaborations in mind. Also I would rather not volunteer for university-wide committees, as these look rather boring and I don't find myself inspired by the administration's pet projects.
Rather, I have in mind something intellectual and fun, that recaptures some of the enjoyment of being an undergraduate and hopefully leading to making new friends. For example, semi-public lectures on chemistry, theology, art history, virtually anything intellectual, ideally followed by discussions and debates over beer...
Obviously, the first step is to do a better job of carefully looking for opportunities at my particular university. (These have been a bit hard to suss out, but I could stand to look harder). Nevertheless I would be interested to hear success stories. What have people done to make connections outside their own field of interest?
Thank you!

Let me just link this great answer by JeffE: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/6035/how-do-researchers-from-different-institutions-collaborate/6037#6037

@Federico: I think the OP is interested in making social contacts, not finding collaborators (these areas overlap, of course).

JeffE's answer is awesome. Nevertheless, three wonderful aspects of conferences are that (1) there are obvious scheduled events to go to, namely talks, at which you can meet people, (2) it is particularly common and well accepted to introduce yourself to strangers at conferences (in my field anyway!), (3) nearly everyone is separated from their routines, meaning that random invitations are very likely to be accepted. None of these is entirely false in "everyday life", but I particularly love conferences for these (and other) reasons.

I organized a beer night for tenure-track profs in our department (and this was later expanded to related departments). the basic rules were: it's once a month, anyone is welcome, and it happens even if I'm the only one at the bar :).
Do you have one person from a different department you can start this up with ? set up a mailing list and ask around to get maybe another 1-2 people involved. Start doing this regularly, and never lose a chance to mention this when talking to professors.
Word will spread. Tenure-track profs need support groups. Our beer night is very popular :).

Interesting suggestion, +1. Our department is very social, mostly the grad students, but our weekly beer night never sees faculty from other departments. Perhaps something to try once I get a little more established.

I think this problem is very common.
I'm no expert in making new friends but I can tell you what work out for me in my internship at UT.
Starting from the lab, we use to hang out for coffee and talking about everything, most of the time it was not about the lab work. This was awesome, especially for an better understanding of the culture, food, girls... stuff like that. Dinners are also very good for socializing.
The housing service was also cool, they organized movie streaming sessions and social events, usually with free food (which means a lot a people and something to talk about).
Finally, when I did more and much stronger friendships was at church (I'm Seventh Day Adventist), people received me really, really well. Not directly related with the academia, but there lots of students in church and we talked a lot about our field of expertise.
Probably the most important thing here is find things you have in commom with other people so you have something to talk about and find more stuff, and so on. Sometimes is right in our faces and we don't see it.

Just start showing up to seminars in other departments. At my university, there are several different email lists that send out "Events this week." Seek out some talks are interesting and go. Maybe start with closely allied departments (CS, Stats, Physics). Then talk to the speaker if it was interesting, even if it's just to say "Hi, I'm [XYZ] from the department of [ZYX]. I really enjoyed your talk."If the speaker is internal then all the better, if from off-campus then there will certainly be other local people talking. I've had a blast doing this at talks completely outside of my field.
One of the very best things about being an academic is the sheer number of different interesting things that are happening on a university at any time. Academics are driven by curiosity, and a university is a smorgasbord of things to learn. You say that your research won't lead to collaborations, but you never know.
If you really want to stick your neck out, start an interdisciplinary seminar series. Seek out connections between disparate departments and fields.
As a side note: junior faculty should avoid committees above the department level if at all possible. Your department should shield you from these responsibilities. Your job right now is getting tenure. Those committees are for those with tenure.


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Do you acknowledge someone mentioned in your paper/presentation that is in the audience?
Say for example you are giving a paper at a conference and someone you name in your paper is in the audience. Is there any expectation that you make reference to this persons presence when giving your presentation?
For example say the text in your paper is;

Professor X, in his paper on Human mutation...

would you change it to something like;

Professor X, who is with us today, in his paper on Human mutation...

Not unless someone asks an awkward question about Professor X's work ;-)

Generally I would not. However, I have in the past done so, but you really need to be a good speaker to ad-lib in something like that on the fly.

It depends on your and their style. Some charismatic people can pull that off, and make the audience appreciate and maybe turn to the person acknowledged (could come with a warm or funny remark), but if you're not that charismatic person, it can just be awkward. In either case, make sure to not come across as sycophantic ( - in most cultures).

If you're merely referring to someone's work who you don't know very well or haven't worked with, I wouldn't. If they are someone who is well known then it's likely that people will recognise that they are in the audience and that you are referencing their work.
If it is someone you have worked with or someone in your lab, then they usually get a shoutout. For example, a PI presenting work that is primarily done by a grad student or postdoc is likely to point this out and point out the person if they are in the audience. The reason for this is that it is beneficial to that person to be recognised. It encourages others to talk to/network with them because of the work they've done.


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How to cite ACM Computing Classification System?
In the research I'm doing for my master thesis I use the ACM Computing Classification System (2012 edition).
I mean I literally use the data they provide as an RDF graph. How should I cite this classification system? Ideally I'm looking for a bibtex snippet.

Since you want to use the ACM Computing Classification System as a data set, rather than a publication, I recommend to use rules, established in the publication style guide for citing data sets. The only potential change I would consider is substituting the type of reference from [Data set] to [Data set -- Ontology] or, even, just [Ontology]. That is, of course, if your institution is not too inflexible on deviations from publication style standards. Otherwise or if you want to be on the safe side, just use the standard [Data set] identifier.
Check the following relevant resources on citing data sets, based on APA as well as other publication style guides. It should not be a problem to convert your ACM CCS citation to BibTeX format by using @misc entry type and including [Data set] into a relevant field (location-wise).

Resources:

Official APA blog post "How to Cite a Data Set in APA Style";
Examples by MSU Libraries How to cite data: Dataset citations (various styles);
Excellent comprehensive article "How to Cite Datasets and Link to Publications".

UPDATE: (initial attempt - alternatively, delete publisher / address and use "ACM" as author)
@misc{Acm:2012,
  author = "",
  title = {{ACM} Computing Classification System {[Data set].}},
  howpublished = {Retrieved from \url{http://dl.acm.org/ft_gateway.cfm?id=2371137&ftid=1290922&dwn=1}},
  note = {Accessed: 2015-06-21},
  year = {2012},
  publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery, Inc.},
  address = {New York, NY}
}

You can also use @electronic or @online entry tags instead of @misc. Just make sure that generated citation's formatting is acceptable, as AFAIK it sometimes significantly depends on the entry tag used.

Thanks a ton! But why the authors part is empty? Shouldn't it be something like "Bernard Rous et al"? (or some people from here)

@AlexeyGrigorev: You're very welcome! As for the authors, these types of resources usually have too many authors to mention, so, unless there are clearly specified editors for a specific reference in question (in this case, you can mention Editor-in-Chief, as listing all editors is IMHO not feasible), I would leave the authors field empty. So, I would just add the following field: editor = {Zvi Kedem} (don't forget the trailing comma).

There is also a paper that describes the update to the ACM CCS, which you might cite since it has a DOI. The paper itself is at http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2366320, and the DOI is http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2366316.2366320.

While I understand your point in regard to DOI availability (which should always be preferred under equal conditions), I think that the OP's clear intent is to cite the ACM CCS data set per se, not a relevant publication, describing it.

It's amusing. The usage instructions request "that copies bear ... the full citation", but I can't find any recommended format for such a citation. There is a published article about it, though, which may be the best you can do.

"The full citation" IMHO implies the one, which is governed by a chosen or required publication style guide, hence my answer. Most style guides recognize data sets as valid objects for citation.

Sure. I upvoted your answer. Mine isn't contrary. Just supplemental.

Absolutely (upvoted as well). It is a pity that ACM does not provide a DOI for such a popular and important data set (ontology).

Agreed. I thought it was odd. Maybe OP can send Bernard Rous a note.