text:
Photo requirement on CV?
I came across an advertisement of an academic position (in Europe) that states explicitly:

Application package should include:
   (1) a complete curriculum vitae (with a photo), (...)

I have never seen a photo on CV to be a requirement (although the fact that is included in parenthesis might implicitly mean that is optional?)
In any case I find it mildly strange.
Assuming that its is indeed a requirement, what is the rationale behind this? What are the benefits (for the person advertising the position) of doing so?
I am not asking what are the benefits for the applicant (for which there is a related question) but I am asking from the point of view of the person receiving the applications. Even though the position is located in Europe (Switzerland), feel free to answer for your own region!

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I have never seen a photo on CV to be a requirement (although the fact that is included in parenthesis might implicitly mean that is optional?)

My interaction with colleagues in Europe (especially Germany) seems to suggest that this is a relatively common requirement, or at least a default expectation for what is a "complete" CV that they may feel the need to specify due to an international applicant base.

Assuming that its is indeed a requirement, what is the rationale behind this? What are the benefits (for the person advertising the position) of doing so?

I imagine many of the rationales boil down to "This is how it's done". Every justification I've ever seen is about making a "personal connection" and evaluating some soft factors based on the photo.
Whether this is a good idea or not is left as an exercise to the reader.

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This is not uncommon when you have a large pool of applicants, because makes it easier to identify you vs other candidates.  It is likely that this approach has been adopted for all recruitment at this institution, in a one size fits all strategy rather than specifically for this post.
Some people remember faces better than names, so having both available serves both.  For example:
If I have interviewed 8 people in one day and another 8 on the previous day and am discussing you with other members of the hiring committee who may have seen you in a different order then we don't have a conversation that starts "Was PsySp the guy with the pink hair?", we would just refer to the photo, then we would be on the same page.
Source: Several years ago I was involved in mass recruitment for entry level IT roles.

Yes, that's what I understand. In my location, almost everything requires  photo. Your ID card, your diploma, your job application, your CV , all have photo on them, Basically, photos are for ID purpose. I used to go to photo store to take a photo and then ask for a  couple of dozen photos because I need them everywhere.

This does not read as a description of a competent interviewing process.

I find this justification hard to believe. Also that is most likely not the reason it is asked in OP's case. Photos in CVs in Switzerland are supposed to convey information about presentation skills/soft skills but are mainly there because of tradition.

The question is what benefit is there to the recruiter, and why is it being asked.  It is likely not useful to the recruiter in the OP's case, however it does happen.  Is it really that hard to believe that some people remember faces better than names?

@DavidAldridge: Could you elaborate why you think so? It seems to me like the explanation provided in this answer is spot-on; at least it matches exactly what is stated over and over in web and print articles on how to successfully apply for a job in Germany, so it is well conceivable the same applies to Switzerland. People's photos are simply more diverse at first glance than visually relatively nondescript pages of text, and accordingly easier to memorize as a mental anchor for all the information contained in the application.

"because makes it easier to identify you vs other candidates after the interview stage" - actually, this restriction could be dropped here. The photos are especially helpful when all you have is some sheets of paper/some PDF files from each applicant, before the interview stage.

@O.R.Mapper Good point.  I'm not a visual memory person, so never really considered it at that stage.  Will amend it.

@O.R.Mapper Sure -- because relying on conversations and recollections at a time when you can't associate a CV with an interviewee directly, says: "We weren't structured in our approach. We didn't go through the CV, take notes on their experience, we had not planned questions for this particular candidate, nor recorded any answers. We did not prepare."
If I was interviewed by a person who sat with a copy of the CV, didn't make notes, didn't seem familiar, and hadn't prepared, that would be a big red hiring flag.

@DavidAldridge: I'm not sure I get what you mean. It's the point of an interview to get a personal impression of the candidate's behaviour and interaction with you, and of course that relies heavily on "conversations and recollections", even though you take notes on some key points. On top of that, the photo is already useful before any interview takes place, especially because there are even more candidates to keep track of in your mind. And besides, interviews typically seem to be conducted by about two people, anyone else involved in the hiring decision do not meet the interviewee.

In many countries (UK, US) it's very unusual and possibly illegal to request a photo on a CV and it's very rare that people put one spontaneously. In Switzerland however, it's still pretty much standard.
While there is growing criticism about the obvious bias issues associated with that practice, I'm not surprised to still see that requirement in Switzerland, even for academic institutions.
There are no real reasons for it other than a general slowness to recognize sources of bias in hiring in that region.
p.s. Switzerland is not part of the EU.

As per the standards in Switzerland, it will start to be discussed 25 years after the whole world has agreed that it created bias with no added benefit.

While asking for a photo might expose you to liability for discrimination claims, I find it hard to believe that it would be illegal. Can you provide a reference that it is illegal in the US or UK (I never know what to make of French labor law)?

@StrongBad you're right I'm not entirely sure about the illegal thing, I've edited my answer. I'd say in countries with Common Law, it exposes employers to lawsuits.

German CV's and the Europass CV standard both expect photos to be included.

@aeismail that should be an answer.

@StrongBad an action that “exposes you to liability for discrimination claims” is, by definition, illegal, in the sense that there is a law against discrimination, and the action in question is very likely to be interpreted as violating that law. There doesn’t need to be a special law expressly forbidding people from requiring a photo in CVs for such an act to be illegal. Of course, I am not a lawyer and this is my opinion only.

@DanRomik discrimination is illegal, but there are sometimes valid reasons to need a photograph of a job applicant (e.g., I work for the DoD and we have secured areas where we need photo ids).

@StrongBad tell it to the judge :-)

Usually at this point a lawyer comes through and says something like, "'illegal' technically refers only to criminal (imprisonment) cases, not civil (monetary) cases".

@DanielR.Collins my dictionary defines "illegal" as "contrary to or forbidden by law, especially criminal law". Also, consider that it is common to say things like "speeding on the road is illegal" when the violation in question is not criminal. So discrimination (in the sense defined in labor law and other laws like Title IX) can quite accurately be described as illegal IMO, and moreover, I believe it can lead to government fines and sanctions of various sorts in addition to civil lawsuits.

@CapeCode From the US EEOC:  (http://www.eeoc.gov/laws/practices/) "As a general rule, the information obtained and requested through the pre-employment process should be limited to those essential for determining if a person is qualified for the job.....Employers should not ask for a photograph of an applicant. If needed for identification purposes, a photograph may be obtained after an offer of employment is made and accepted."  I agree that this does not make it always illegal.  It does, however, land you in the "thin ice" section of the employer pool.

@StrongBad  I am also DoD. In my application process, my photo was not taken until after I passed my background screening and accepted the job.

@Adam off-topic, but we have an area that applicants want to see, but that visitors (and staff) need to wear visitor badges with a photo on it.

As part of  common academic job applications in France one must submit a copy of one's ID card or passport, which contains a photo. I am not sure about the CV, but given that it's somewhat of a moot point.

@DanRomik But discrimination (in the UK) is only illegal if it happens in very specific contexts. Discriminating based on skin colour an sex is illegal. Discrimination based on e.g. presence of facial tattoos is entirely legal.

@KonradRudolph agreed.

@quid not if the ID card is used strictly for administrative purposes and the hiring committee only sees the CV until first interview.

@CapeCode yes, if, but do you know it is done like this? (I am quite sure it is not done, e.g., as some request the format of "everything" in one pdf for submission. Highly unlikely the "cut" it apart later.)  Further regarding France see for example http://etudiant.aujourdhui.fr/etudiant/info/exemple-de-cv.html provides sample CVs many with photo.  Of course this just one newspapers advice for students applying for internship, but still it casts some serious doubt about your claim. What was it based on?

@quid upon further reading it seems that the law has not been put in practice. https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/CV_anonyme

Several countries in Europe do this, although it is becoming less common due to the obvious problems with bias, so you should not treat it as an extraordinary request. What will happen if you do not do it is hard to predict, but may range from nothing to your CV simply being binned.
My advice is to proceed as if failing to provide it will result in your application being binned. Most job openings have many more applicants than desired and simple criteria - such as failed to follow the application instructions - are a quick way to reduce the numbers. Anecdotally, when I was still in the UK, one of our professors was from Italy and had to be stopped from binning all the CVs without pictures as it was so completely the norm where he was from.
From a more cynical point of view: if you are white, and particularly if you are white and male, you likely have nothing to lose from including a photo.

In Italy it is usually required a copy of an ID (with photo: ID card or passport for foreign citizens), but not a photo on the CV. However, quite frequently, people attach a photo to the CV also. Being aware of different customs, I usually tell my students to avoid attaching photos when applying in the US or UK.

@DavidAldridge FYI it's the same in France which in my field (math) according to some more or less popular recent list has two of the top five departments worldwide, or something like that.

Maybe I live in a bubble, but diverse applicants (i.e. non-white and/or female) in my field have a strong advantage compared to white men. Without knowing particulars it's hard to say that white men have nothing to lose.

It's just a matter of cultural standard.
While including a photo may occur "mildly strange" to you (probably from a US background?) it is, for instance, in Germany as normal as stating your given name: You would just not hand in a CV without this information, even if (technically) it should not matter for the job.
The following is a quote from the "CV Recommendations for Students applying for Internships in Germany" from the Steuben-Schurz Gesellschaft. No emphasis added:

STRUCTURE: All German resumes include a picture either in the upper left- or right-hand corner.
...
Please include ALL of the following information.
1) Picture
All resumes must include a picture. This should be a face shot. Please make sure that this is a professional photo – a cropped picture of you at a party is not appropriate. Please scan the picture onto your resume before saving it as a PDF file.

"even if (technically) it should not matter for the job" - it depends on what should not matter. The choice of the photo can indeed tell something legitimately interesting about the applicant's professionality (as alluded to by the recommendation against "a cropped picture of you at a party"). I fully agree with a photo being "as normal as stating your given name"; Bewerbungsfoto (application photo) is even a set term in German, just like cover letter or CV may be in English.

It certainly matters when applying for jobs in industry in the UK. It's not at all unheard of for the applicant (especially one from overseas) to send someone else (probably with better language skills) to the interview.

Good answer, but it isn’t “just” a matter of cultural standard: it’s objectively aiding discrimination and unconscious bias (there are studies). So expecting a photo CV is a bad cultural standard (and one I’m optimistic will change, albeit very slowly).

@KonradRudolph: Given that your name usually gives a decent indication about your gender, the culture you grew up in, one should not exaggerate the additional impact of a photo. However, it does help to identify you for an on-site interview. And as alephzero wrote, there are people who try to get others to do their tests.

@Heinrich Regardless, there is an additional, substantial impact, as shown in numerous independent studies.

@KonradRudolph: Does that bias really vanish just based upon seeing the candidate's face a bit later (during the interview, or an online video-call), or outside of the application documents (LinkedIn, other publicly accessible appearances of the candidate)?

@KonradRudolph Yes, there is, undoubtedly, and I am not necessarily in favor of this standard. I am, however, well aware that there is also discrimination and unconscious bias on the base of sex, age, martial status, and even the given name. The cultural standard simply is where the line is drawn.

I live in Switzerland and in the last 6 Years I have send dozens of CVs, every single one with a picture. Some may not require it but it definitely is standard and if you don't send one it may look odd.
As for why, I don't really know. Its probably just the way it always been.

Thanks! I have academic experience in Switzerland. I never encountered CV with a photo, that's why I was surprised. Quite possibly, I was an outlier.

Consider not sending a photo, but be prepared to send one on request.
Here in the UK, it has been proven by sending identical CVs with different names (and I'll find you the links if you want) that female applicants are invited for interview less frequently than male applicants, and that ethnic-origin applicants are invited for interview less frequently than  applicants with "traditional British" names.
With that in mind, many recruiters are extremely wary of anything which could look prejudicial to equal-opportunities hiring.  Best practise in most places is to not include photos, questions about ethnic origin, questions about religion, and so on.  Whether an interviewee gets hired is another matter, but at least the recruiter can demonstrate that their approach to inviting candidates for interview is relatively colour-blind.

No. Consider not sending a photo, but be prepared to have your application rejected.

Assuming UK in the answer. OP is asking about Switzerland

@FábioDias In fairness to Graham, the question claims that the position is in the EU, and the "switzerland" tag was added in a later edit.


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How accurate are published papers?
I'm an undergrad trying to publish findings on the accuracy of consumer-grade motion sensors for IEEE. I've searched for existing literature on this topic, and I've found some interesting articles. However, I'm not sure how accurate these papers are.
Once IEEE publishes a paper in a journal or conference, has IEEE deemed the paper's findings as accurate?
That is, has a paper passed science's often-vaunted "peer-review" once that paper has been published?
I realize this question applies for my research and any other research published by a respected organization like IEEE or Nature.

It has surely passed a peer review process, but I don't think it means what you think it does. "Peer reviewed" means just that. It's not evidence of correctness or a guarantee or anything remotely like that. Even mathematicians (many of whom think referees should check correctness very carefully, which may not be the case in other fields) don't blindly believe results just because they're published in a reputable peer reviewed journal.

@Yuichiro: Not a guarantee, certainly, but to say that publication in a reputable general is "not evidence of correctness" seems a bit much.  Also, mathematicians sometimes blindly believe results when they are published in sufficiently reputable journals.  When and how much they do is a quite complicated issue, I think...

@PeteL.Clark Good point. By "not evidence," I meant that it's not conclusive evidence or the smoking gun. It can indirectly suggest  a result is correct. So I agree it could be called evidence of some sort if you say other somewhat reliable indicators like the authors' solid track records are also "evidence." The latter point you made touches too complicated an issue for this comment section, I think. But, let's say, what would your answer be when asked if you blindly believe a paper just because it's published in Annals? If it's not simple yes, I think we're not disagreeing.

Professors don't get tenure by repeating other group's experiments to check for accuracy.

No. The publisher does not and cannot guarantee the correctness of the papers. Also the peer-review system is not perfect.
That being said, even though a single paper might have some chance of being wrong, as studies are replicated, and follow up studies verify and extend the conclusions, the scientific community can build up stronger claims.

...and should not...

Depending on your field, average quality may be ... questionable (especially on conferences) and follow-up verification next to non-existing. In particular, in very active areas (i.e. such with lots of publications) it's generally understood (from what I hear) that "peer-review" means little more than "was read twice", if that.

In addition, scientific papers (try to) push the boundaries of knowledge. There may be pitfalls/influencing factors that neither authors nor reviewers are aware of because they are still unknown.

One paper specifically looked at Why Most Published Research Findings Are False and stimulated a lot of discussion around the topic.
EDIT to provide more context, as requested in comments.
The paper (published in PLOS Medicine, which defines its scope) uses statistical methods to examine the probabilities that specific study types in biomedical research will yield significant results that end up being published.
Some quotes:

the high rate of nonreplication (lack of confirmation) of research
  discoveries is a consequence of the convenient, yet ill-founded
  strategy of claiming conclusive research findings solely on the basis
  of a single study assessed by formal statistical significance,
  typically for a p-value less than 0.05.

  most research questions are addressed by many teams, and it is
  misleading to emphasize the statistically significant findings of any
  single team. What matters is the totality of the evidence. Diminishing
  bias through enhanced research standards and curtailing of prejudices
  may also help. However, this may require a change in scientific
  mentality that might be difficult to achieve.

  Despite a large statistical literature for multiple testing
  corrections [37], usually it is impossible to decipher how much data
  dredging by the reporting authors or other research teams has preceded
  a reported research finding. Even if determining this were feasible,
  this would not inform us about the pre-study odds.

While some details of the methodology have been disputed, the gist of the article – that replication of studies is crucial to establish facts, and that the current publication system is biased against replicable research in many ways – has been widely acknowledged well beyond biomedicine, and the paper has triggered a wave of studies examining this range of systemic problems that the paper highlighted.

Not to say these aren't great references, but could you describe them a bit in your answer?  Some people may be accessing this site through a channel that, for one reason or another, blocks the websites you linked from, and though they are recent and active links, you should safeguard this answer from suffering from Link Rot.

@gnometorule I believe the answer, I'm just saying it would be improved with supporting quotes.

@gnometorule In general on SE sites, answers should stand on their own; links are supplemental.

@Zibbobz I edited my answer to provide some details about the paper.

Publication in a peer reviewed journal is only the start of the road to the acceptance of an idea by the research community, not the last.  Peer review should really only be regarded as a basic sanity check of the paper and not relied upon.  Once the findings of a paper have been replicated, or used as the basis for further research, then we can be more confident that the paper is correct, but it is still the readers responsibility to make sure they judge the paper for themselves.  If a paper has been cited a large number of times (without the citations being refutations! ;o), then that suggest the work is probably sound.  Uncritically trusting a paper because it has been peer-reviewed is essentially an example of the "argument from authority" fallacy (in this case the anonymous reviewers being the authority).  While peer-reviewed papers are more likely to be correct than, say blogs, there can be no guarantee of this, and it is best to maintain a skeptical attitude.

Citation count is not a great metric for the reliability of a paper. Papers are often cited uncritically -- often just because the author needs to flesh out a narrative and make their own pet theory seem plausible. I've seen this in my own field -- a paper was published in Science that should not have gotten past peer review. Yet this paper has received a large number of citations -- mainly from people in a different field who just liked the conclusion. There are only a few citations from within the field, and these were rejections of the paper. The large citation count just demonstrates a fad

@adam.r no metric is perfect, however citation count has the advantage of being available.  While some papers are cited uncritically, the evidence that they have at least been cited suggests that they have been subject to more scrutiny than papers that haven't.  To say that a large citation count just demonstrates a fad is pretty insulting towards the majority of well cited papers that are well cited because they are worth citing.

I did not say that citations are typically due to fads, just that some papers gain many citations due to fads. (and I did vote-up your answer). My point was to provide guidance to the interpreting that number. For instance, high-profile journals like Science are more likely to get fad citations than workhorse journals. Fad citations also show up soon after publication (with no time for replication), but solid papers get citations for many years. No statistic is perfect, but the only way to get better stats is to understand the limits of existing stats.

@adam.r fair enough, sorry for the misunderstanding.  It is also true that there are a fair few papers that get frequently cited for a number of years with algorithms that don't really work very well in practice.  I did say that being highly cited only suggests the paper is "probably sound".  At the end of the day the only way to find out is often to try it for yourself and see if it works and we need to retain skepticism.

Marupial: No problem. My original comment ("not a great metric") was open for interpretation.

The accuracy of published papers varies dramatically and can not be assumed. Specifically in the case of IEEE, it's a huge organization with lots of conferences and journals. Some of them tend to be more strict about what they accept than others. Some of the papers I've read from IEEE made me wonder whether they went through any peer review process at all, as the language wasn't even comprehensible. Even in the most respected journals and conferences, though, results should not be assumed accurate. You should use your own judgment to evaluate the logic and arguments presented (i.e. to ensure that their conclusions really do follow from their premises/experimental results and that their experimental designs seem reasonable) and, where feasible, repeat the experiments to verify their results.
At any rate, the peer-review process that papers go through for publication is not a verification of the results, even in the most respected journals. The peer-review process consists of other authors looking over the paper and pointing out any perceived weaknesses in the arguments presented, noticeably incorrect results (i.e. math errors and the like,) and/or formatting and language errors. In some cases (especially for more general conferences,) the reviewer isn't even in the same research field as the paper (e.g. an RF engineer might be reviewing a paper on power systems or an AI researcher might be reviewing a paper on computer networks.) IEEE publishing a paper is basically saying "After a cursory review, one or more members of IEEE think that this paper doesn't appear to be complete trash and likely has some academic value to someone," not "IEEE asserts on the basis of its reputation that this paper's results are correct."
The process you seem to have in mind - other researchers repeating the experiments to verify the results - is a completely distinct process from the peer-review process required for publication. This process usually doesn't start until after the paper is published. This is generally true for all scientific publication, not just IEEE. Mathematics is something of an exception in that they attempt to present actual proofs rather than scientific results in their papers. That is also often the case in the algorithms and logic side of Computer Science. Even in those fields, though, you should check the proofs yourself, not assume them to be accurate just because they got published.
Especially where it is not feasible to reproduce a paper's results yourself, it is perfectly acceptable to cite that paper's results in your paper as a comparison. You just need to make sure that you cite it as something along the lines of "<authors of other paper> found that their system achieved X performance level, while our experiments show that our system achieves Y performance level." That way, it's clear that you're not claiming to have verified their results, but that you're merely comparing what you saw from your system to what they claim to have seen from theirs. Of course, if it's actually feasible for you to test the other system yourself and present your own experimental results for it, that's better.

It may be helpful to note that the process of verification may be best represented in review papers, where the author has taken pains to put each publication in the context and illustrate which findings were the basis for subsequent studies, and which theories held up to multiple independent tests. Still, some review papers are junk and amount to little more than a scientist waving his own flag as a fundraising exercise.

@adam.r Exactly how the verification process works varies somewhat by field, though, which is part of why I omitted that discussion (aside from it probably deserving its own question.) IEEE (as the name implies - The Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers) is more focused on engineering than on pure science, so the process tends to be somewhat different than in the physical sciences.

In addition to other good answers/points, there is also the phenomenon that a result might seem approximately correct, and not looked at toooo critically because it didn't seem to really matter much... but met basic professional competence criteria, etc. If it happens to be the basis of other innocent/boring work, things can pile up on assumptions of correctness that have not been "stressed" at all. Then, if some more-serious/interesting development arises that depends on all that, people will reconsider everything in a much more serious way. Obviously! But, and until, that latter degree of "interest" has occurred, I'd worry that the chances are "higher than we'd like" that there're problems in a given result. Possibly reparable problems, especially in "routine" stories, but repair might often require a more expert appreciation of the situation.
Summary: if a result has been "stressed", not merely cited, one can have some confidence. But even if often-cited, but only by uninteresting/inconsequential papers, who knows?
And, as people have noted, many journals (in mathematics) specifically tell the referee that it's not their responsibility to check for correctness, but more/only for "suitability". (A status issue, among others, ...)

Many papers in medicine, biology, psychology, social sciences, etc rely on statistical confidence levels, and so come with an explicit statement that they cannot be seen to be 100% accurate.
A typical confidence level is 95%, which means unfortunately that you can expect roughly 1 in 20 conclusions to be incorrect. So these are fields where duplicated or reinforcing results are important.

That 1 in 20 is assuming that they did the statistical analysis correctly...

And that no publication bias towards positive results has been applied.

The perverse thing is that - even though they are so important - confirmatory results are very hard to get published in top tier journals, since the results are then easily discarded as not novel.

More generally, pretty much all science does this (using confidence intervals rather than proofs, that is.) That's how science works. Science doesn't give you proven results; it gives you statistical evidence to support your hypothesis. In non-science fields, though (like math and the math side of CS,) papers do often contain actual proofs.

At the very least, we generally make assumptions and are - unconsciously - looking for them. One particular manifestation is P-hacking. See Dr Derek Muller explanation on this:
Most Published Research Wrong?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=42QuXLucH3Q
Also, incorrect use of Variance Reduction Techniques, random number generators and meshing can contribute towards inaccuracies.

It is natural that reproducibility becomes a concern.

When graduate student Alyssa Ward took a science-policy internship, she expected to learn about policy — not to unearth gaps in her biomedical training.
She was compiling a bibliography about the reproducibility of experiments, and one of the papers, a meta-analysis, found that scientists routinely fail to explain how they choose the number of samples to use in a study. “My surprise was not about the omission — it was because I had no clue how, or when, to calculate sample size,” Ward says. Nor had she ever been taught about major categories of experimental design, or the limitations of P values. (Although they can help to judge the strength of scientific evidence, P values do not — as many think — estimate the likelihood that a hypothesis is true.)

Reproducibility: Seek out stronger science

A P value of 0.05 does not mean that there is a 95% chance that a given hypothesis is correct. Instead, it signifies that if the null hypothesis is true, and all other assumptions made are valid, there is a 5% chance of obtaining a result at least as extreme as the one observed. And a P value cannot indicate the importance of a finding; for instance, a drug can have a statistically significant effect on patients’ blood glucose levels without having a therapeutic effect.

Statisticians issue warning over misuse of P values

Let's put this way:

They are not certainly-accruate enough to be valid and accurate for you to base your paradigms on without a lot of additional results and publications - but
They are certainly-accurate enough for you to be able to entertain the opposite claim without presenting iron-clad arguments and/or experimental results to counter them.

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text:
Does it look bad if letter of recommendation comes from an emeritus professor?
I wonder is it a good idea to ask for a letter of recommendation from a emeritus professor who I took his course and knows me well?
I was wondering is it bad to get a letter from someone who is not in Academia anymore?

The best reference is the one that is both honest and based on extensive firsthand knowledge of your qualities. Emeritus status would seem irrelevant to me.

Or perhaps even a positive- someone with emeritus status presumably is experienced and hopefully still has a good reputation.  I'd be concerned if the recommender has been retired for a long time and not active since retirement.

I think the answer to your question hugely depends on your application and resume.
If you are having advisers  who are writing you strong letters of recommendation (for instance, your masters thesis advisers or professors you have worked in their research group and have publications with them), then you will probably do not need a letter from a professor with whom you'd only passed a course.
On the other hand, if you have not worked with a professor, probably your advisers of your thesis, then you really need a letter of recommendation from a professor that knows you and you had passed his course. So that emeritus professor can write a good letter of recommendation for you. Of course, it is better that nothing.
To the best of my knowledge, students usually need two or three letters of recommendation for their PhD applications.

Yes. I can get two good letter but I was wondering is it bad to get a letter from someone who is not in Academia anymore?

@user59419 Emeritus != "not in academia anymore". Many Emeritus professors are freakingly active in various positions, now that they don't have to teach undergrads and sit through long faculty meetings anymore.

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text:
Is it possible to get into a top-10 engineering graduate program without publications?
I would like to know if it is possible to get into top 10 engineering schools for MS/Phd program without any publications?

I am not sure, but answers for masters admissions may differ from the PhD admissions.

Yes, I can tell you for a fact that I have witnessed this happen.

I was admitted to a top-10 PhD engineering program (per us news) without ever having published (nor any formal technical writing for that matter). My GRE's weren't top 20 percentile either. My industry experience and side projects related well to my advisor's interests. I spent 30+ hours on my one-page personal statement. Easily another 80 hours in visiting professors, requesting recommendations, reading publications from profs I might like to work with. I think my experience is rare, but give your absolute best in the application process, then give some more and you might be surprised: Yes

In my experience, most undergraduates, even excellent ones with strong research potential, do not publish.  The reason is simple: undergraduates usually have to spend a lot of time on classes and don't have much time available for research, even if they're very good at it.  The likelihood of both producing a significant publishable result and seeing it in print before applying to grad school is simply not very large.  Even if you do get a publication, it's not obvious whether it's due to your research talent or due to your supervisor placing you on exactly the right project.
That said, getting involved in research as an undergraduate is the best thing that you can do if you have interest in graduate school.  Not only will it put you in a position where a professor can give you a good recommendation for your research work, but it will also help you figure out if you actually want to subject yourself to the grueling realities of a Ph.D. program.  And who knows, you might even get some publications!

The admissions process for graduate school is complicated. I am not aware of any admissions committee that requires prior publications to be accepted. Admissions decisions are not so much based on the presence/absence of publications but on the extent to which the application demonstrates an ability to conduct research. Prior publications can demonstrate an ability to conduct research, but do not necessarily guarantee it. The lack of publications does not mean you cannot conduct research, but does mean you need to demonstrate research potential in another way (e.g., letters of recommendation).

Is there such approach in assessing students for scholarships?

@EnthusiasticStudent it wouldn't surprise me if some societies offered scholarships that required students to have previously published in their journal, but in general at the beginning of graduate school, prior publications are not the best indicator of future success.

In my experience, it mostly depends on GPA -- mine was 3.5.  I really think you need close to a 4.0.  I had plenty of capability to conduct research (a variety of side projects expressed on my résumé plus D1 athletics), but got rejected at all the big schools, so I'm at the #50 in my field.  Well surprise, surprise, two years in and I'm almost already done with my PhD and I have the most publications out of all grad students in my class.  GPA matters a crapload.

Faculty on the admissions panel for a department typically assume that undergraduates did not do any of the "heavy lifting" on any paper they are on. Rather, they assume the PI/grad student/etc. had the idea, did most of the experiments, wrote the paper, and that the undergraduate may have assisted in parts of the experiments that were routine. This may not be the case, and if so is hopefully said in the letter of rec. But it is what is generally assumed (and honestly, what is typically true).
So to answer your question: no, publications are typically not required for admission to a good PhD program.
Some fellowships (NSF, Hertz, etc.) do have a bias towards published undergraduates however, although it's also not a requirement.

Faculty in those institutions have their own research agendas, and yes, there are very awesome undergraduates who do not have any publications who land the dream of the Ph D. And this is a top institution I have observed my friends get into without the publications. This said, the work performed in undergrad is your CV. The projects that you chose to undertake for grades, the extracurricular activities you chose to participate in--- everything about you that you choose to present in the application process determines how persuasive you are to the potential faculty member.
The more that your interests and skills match the needs and research agendas of the professors, the better chance of convincing them that you're worth their time and money.


text:
How important is the GRE for top engineering schools in the US?
I am wondering how important is the general GRE exam for top 10 schools in the US in engineering? Do they use it as a factor to admit students or it can be only used for funding or none/both of them?

For engineering, the GRE is used primarily as a screening tool—and very weakly, at that. Having excellent letters of recommendation and a strong transcript can very easily overcome weak GRE scores, while a perfect GRE score won't save a candidate with a weak transcript or bad letters. Also, of the sections, the math section is probably given the most weight by admissions committees in engineering, since it's viewed as the most relevant.
As for funding, the only reason I could see the GRE being used is to "verify" English-speaking ability for teaching assistantships. I've never heard of the GRE being used to determine research funding.


text:
When applying to graduate school, is it a good idea to email professors to express interest in joining their research labs?
I live in US and I am applying to graduate school.I wonder if it is a good idea to send an email to graduate school professors and mention that you like their research and would like to join their research labs?

While you live in the US, you didn't specify whether you are applying to schools only in the US. And the answer depends.
Outside the US, especially Europe, quite frequently PhD positions are funded by individual professors. In these cases the hiring/admission decisions are made almost entirely by the professor in charge of the "group", and so the answer to your question is an "Of course!" There simply is no way to get your foot in the door otherwise.
In the US, or in countries where a US-style system is the norm, the admission of graduate students are made in committee, and it is not necessary to contact specific professors in the application process. This, however, is not to say that establishing a faculty contact won't help: sometimes it will at least earn your application a more detailed look, and sometimes you will find a person willing to advocate on your behalf during the committee meeting.
In either case, be thoughtful when you craft your e-mail. In the US and elsewhere alike, professors often get e-mails exploring the possibility of doing a PhD. So make sure to do your homework! If you write a letter to Professor X asking about studying Subject A with him, and he has in fact left Subject A and had been working on Project B for the past 5 years, at best he would politely decline and at worst you may have created a bad first impression. Same thing goes for a bland letter stating "I like your research". By default academics are suspicious of empty platitudes: make sure to discuss your background (to show that you are making a somewhat informed judgment) and state what it is particularly that you like about her research.
Furthermore, note that in some/many US schools, incoming graduate students for PhD programs do not formally choose an advisor until one or two years into the program. This has to do in part with the belief that the students should be allowed to see all the opportunities available to them, and the professors have some time to assess the students, to mutually make educated decisions about their partnerships. So you should also weigh your own feelings: are they strong enough that you absolutely must work with this one professor? Or do you have broad enough interests that you may want to hold off deciding until you learn more about the subjects?
Lastly, if geography is not a barrier, instead of just an e-mail expressing interest, you can also consider writing and asking to schedule a face-to-face appointment. Even if you end up not working with the professors, more often than not you will learn something and get some very good advice from the discussion.

Please, please, please: 1) Use formal titles and not Mr/Mrs. or first names; 2) spell-check; 3) don't use colloquial language or assume I'm your buddy; 4) remember to remove the name of the previous university from the template when you update it for mine; 5) it'd really help if you actually did read at least 1 article that I've written. Yes, I'm a grump, but it's from getting way too many poorly written introductory letters. A bad letter is much, much worse than no letter.

Note that is the US, many professors say on their website, "Do not email me directly if you are a prospective student who hasn't been admitted yet." Emails to these professors will not be welcome, regardless of what you write in the email.

@ff524: indeed, that is a very important part of "doing your homework".

@RoboKaren: I would not really care anything about any formalities, but a big +1 for "read at least 1 article".

@JukkaSuomela My students (undergrad and grad) call me by my first name so its not about me, but I have doubts about the professionalism of someone who would write a first contact letter so informally.

Its a very good idea to write to the professor you are interested in working with. However, its very important to do your research and find out everything about them. Do use formal language. And show some insight into their work... "I read your research paper on..., I think it has many applications, and we can expand the research to include.... and my background in... will be helpful". But don't be critical of the work.


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Should you mention your ranking in specific courses in statement of purpose?
I would like to know if it is good to talk about your outstanding ranking in important courses in your statement of purpose.
For example, is it good to say I took "Quantum physics" in the second year and my rank was 1st out of 100 students? Or to mention a list of courses where my rank was 1st or 2nd among many students in the university?
The reason I am asking is because your transcript does not give the complete story of how well you were doing in your courses. You might get an A, but so did 20 other people.

IMO, ranking doesn't really show anything at all. Ok, you may be top of the class, but we know nothing about the rest of the class. In the UK, I have never been told my ranking compared to the rest of the class, only the grade I have personally obtained.

@emmalgale that is true, but you need to know the relative skill level of the rest of the class, and the difficulty of the course, in order to really understand things (case in point: in one course, I was disappointed with my grade so I asked the lecturer how I placed in the class - which made me happier). But I think this information is superfluous and hard to convey without bragging. If you get an official award for being top in your year group, then that belongs to a bullet point in your resume.

Thanks but how can I prove to professors in the graduate school that I am good in my major courses. Doing research is not enough since so many students are doing it.

How would you even know your ranking in those classes?

Doing research is not enough since so many students are doing it. — [citation needed]  Try doing good research.

I'm assuming that you're talking about Ph.D. admissions, rather than masters' admissions, which often play by very different rules from department to department and institution to institution.
Comparing classes across institutions is virtually impossible, to the point where some graduate schools require you to state the textbooks associated with your undergraduate courses in order to evaluate you.  A better way to think about how grades relate to Ph.D. admissions is as a negative filter: if you have iffy grades, then you will not be considered.  If you have excellent grades, then you will be placed into a large pile of other excellent students, which is then sifted to see who also has interesting potential to do something besides problem sets.
As such, rather than putting down a rank, ask yourself this: are any of the classes you performed excellently in ones where the professor might be willing to write a letter recommending you for insight or creativity or something else beyond mere mechanical brilliance?  That will go much farther toward getting you admitted.


text:
Is it possible for a grad school applicant to cancel a letter of recommendation once it is submitted?
I asked my professor to send a letter of recommendation for me because I worked for him and I did great in his course. He submitted his LOR and I receive the confirmation email from the graduate school.
However now I am afraid that he might not write a good letter or I could ask a more reliable person to do that.
Therefore, I am wondering is there any way to cancel your letter of recommendation once it is submitted?

Why are you suddenly afraid he might not have written you a good letter?

Interesting question.  I've never heard of anyone asking an admission committee to disregard a letter that was already sent.  It seems kind of unlikely they would honor such a request (in fact I'd think it would make them even more curious what the letter said).  Of course, even if it is possible, it's almost surely not the best way to address the OP's doubts.

Nate Eldredge raises a good point, and exposing the fact that you're afraid of the letter might be worse than having the committee read the letter. Now you'll have them wondering what skeletons you have in your closet. If I take your question literally, in that you're only afraid he won't write a good letter (as opposed to being afraid he will write a bad letter), I think that asking that of the exam committee will do far, far more damage than a mediocre LOR.

The very requirement is built on the idea that they are looking for honest reviews about you. Even if it is not 100% the best opinion about you. What argument could you have at all for such a request? Do you imply your professor is not honest? If he honest, the comity has every right to know what he has to say about you, you like it or not.

If your professor did not feel he could write a good letter of recommendation for you, he probably wouldn't have agreed to write the letter in the first place. (Based on answers to other questions on this site, it seems that most professors in those circumstances won't write a bad or mediocre letter, they will instead suggest that you ask someone else.) So you probably don't need to worry about it.

@NateEldredge: Why not post your comment as an answer? It is answer I would like to vote for.

@BenjaminMakoHill: Vote for Anonymous Physicist's then: he/she has said it more concisely.  I didn't post as an answer because I don't really know anything; it's just educated speculation.

It probably is not possible.  If it were possible, you should not do it because making such a request will imply the letter is negative.


text:
Can publications on research conducted before I started my tenure-track position count towards tenure? Do they need to have my new affiliation?
I am joining a new school as a TT Assistant Professor soon and I know I will be on the 'tenure clock' and have to publish manuscripts in certain prestigious journals. I have two pending publications in high quality journals that would certainly help a lot with this. In both, most of the research was done before I joined the new school, but will be published after I officially join.

How do these papers get counted? Do they need the new affiliation in order to count towards tenure?
Is it acceptable to change my affiliation to the new school?

They will probably count, but you really need to ask your department chair or some other knowledgeable person at your new institution about this. It is pointless to speculate, you need an authoritative answer about such an important question.

Seconding @DanRomik .  That's going to depend on each university's policies (some will count papers published during graduate school, for instance, and others won't).

You can try negotiating this.  Definitely one should find out before signing a contract.

Unfortunately, I'm not in a position to renegotiate this since I signed the contract a few months ago. This may be helpful for others though so thanks for the tip.

There is substantial variation between universities, and to an extent departments within a university, about what counts towards tenure. The best way to find out is to ask your department chair, a mentor, or someone on the tenure and promotions committee about what counts.
That said, there are ethics regarding what affiliations should be listed on publications. If your "pending publications" are in press or far along the review process, it would be unethical to switch your affiliation. If you are still writing the manuscript, or the reviews require a major revision, and you do additional work while at your new university, then it would be appropriate to add an additional affiliation.


text:
What if the typesetting process puts a paper overlength?
What usually happens if the typesetting process for a paper puts it overlength? I imagine if the conference has an extra page charge, this will be applied; but if the conference has a hard maximum limit for pages and the paper is squeezed to fit it, and the typesetter makes some formatting changes that puts it over the limit, what happens?
Will the conference allow the author to make some adjustments to fit the paper into the limit? Assuming the formatting issues were an honest overlook and not purposely trying to circumvent the limit!

In what field? In my field, authors typeset conference publications themselves. Only things like page numbers etc are added after submitting the "camera ready" version.

Computer science, in my case. Most of the conference proceedings I read are published by Springer, IOS Press, etc.

In all cases that I've encountered, it is the author's problem to deal with. Clearly self-typeset articles are easy - fix it before you send it in. In the dark(er) days of journal publishing, the journals had guidelines on things like the number of words/figures/whatnot, but if you stayed within the guidelines and it still typeset too long, well, you had to cut it down a bit to fit. Fun times looking at the paragraphs with a short last line to figure out which word or two to cut out to save a line...

I know that authors are almost always responsible for typesetting their own article, but what about cases where a physical copy of proceedings is made? Does the publishing house create the hard copy? What happens if the article goes overlength during this process?

@ff524: While that is typically true in my field, as well, there is the caveat that some publishers like Springer insist on bloating references to other Springer publications with info such as a full list of editors. Possibly, the OP "suffers" from the same issue.

Not quite relevant, but I had a colleague who had a paper returned unreviewed because it was too many pages.  He reprinted it in a smaller font, and had it accepted without revision.  Of course, this was when manuscripts were submitted and reviewed on paper.

In my experience, my co-authors and I typeset articles ourselves using a template provided or referenced by the conference and submitted in PDF or PDF plus source form if the source is LaTeX. Overlong papers are often rejected by the Program Committee before being sent out for review or are asked to be reduced in length to meet the standards. If the paper is to be typeset by a publisher after the conference for a proceedings volume, there may be some wiggle room, but not much.
One goal is to not allow the authors to make substantial changes after the deadline. PCs have to be careful about allowing one group of authors to make too many changes after the deadline because they were overlong. This isn't fair to others authors, and so many PCs are strict about length restrictions.

This is what I was asking! :) I probably should have made it clearer in the question! So if a paper is accepted and the camera ready copy is accepted, but it is overlength during typesetting of the proceedings volume (for example, for a physical book) there is some wiggle room?

@SJB, maybe, though "camera ready" means that there should be no additional typesetting since it should be ready to go. This has never happened to me because I take the length restrictions very seriously. It would be embarrassing for a journal if they changed the length of an otherwise compliant article during some additional typesetting done to something that was supposedly camera ready. My response would be "I sent you something that was ready to go. Please print it as it was, or allow me to remove one word of my choosing without changing the meaning."

Two bits of legitimate typesetting that could occur after camera ready that shouldn't change the length of a compliant article: updating the page numbers in the header/footer. Correcting the header/footer to have the right journal name, special issue name, or proceedings volume name. This all should have been close enough in the template.

@BillBarth: Springer usually extends references to Springer publications with space-hungry things like a full list of editors (and, depending on the number of such citations, this can easily mean the article grows by half a page or more), and this happens after acceptance, after submission of the (from the authors' point of view) camera-ready version. Therefore, this kind of overlength will not be caught by a program commitee or by reviewers.

If Springer asks for a camera ready copy and then changes it, then they shouldn't enforce page limits too strongly. I'm guessing they don't. It's usually the conference that has the hard limit since without it some authors would be at an advantage or disadvantage. I the publisher messes around with your paper after the conference, there can be no advantage.

It used to be the case that proceedings articles submitted to
a Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science volume were published
in unchanged form.
Regrettably, this has changed. Since a few years, Springer sends
the LaTeX files submitted by the authors to some copy editing office.
The copy editor inserts a copyright notice on the first page,
checks the bibliographic entries, and possibly makes some further
changes to the formatting of the submission. This has some
undesirable consequences. One of the consequences is that
the authors have to spend an afternoon checking
the PDF proofs that are sent back by Springer
by visually comparing them to the original submission
(and no, the modifications introduced by the copy editors are
not always sensible).
The second consequence is that the copy editing process may
change the number of pages required for the paper.
In fact, I've seen proceedings volumes where virtually every
paper had been carefully
formatted by the authors to fit into exactly 15 pages,
and where virtually every paper
used 16 pages after the copy editor had inserted the copyright notice.
But in all cases I've seen so far, this was nothing that
the authors or proceedings editors had to worry about.
In fact, making the authors or proceedings editors responsible
for changes introduced by the publisher would be absurd.

This should be embarrassing for Springer.

The ACM template contains variants of its copyright statement.

tl:dr. it has no consequences since the changes introduced by copy editors are the journal's business.

I have had a similar experience with a paper for an IEEE journal. The paper was already overlength and we agreed to pay the overlength fee, but the editing on the publisher's side added one more page (meaning higher overlength fee). Their system counts the overlength fee from the number of pages of the edited manuscript, so we would likely have to pay for it. The overlength was quite big, because some minor edits caused a heading to overflow to next page which moved some other headings and so on...
Nevertheless, we were allowed to make a relatively big correction to the edited version and got the paper back to the original number of pages without any problems.

authors: Анна Коваленко


text:
Should I email old supervisor about my progress?
I might collaborate with an old supervisor in the future and would like to keep in touch. Is it a good idea to send an email to him about the progress I've made in my career?  Also, what's the best way to approach this? I feel like emailing just to talk about myself is a bit narcissistic -- is it?

I often send (links to) preprints and ask for comments (if it's related to what my advisor did).  I also sometimes ask questions and go back to visit him.  Though the visits and contact, we eventually began thinking about a couple of projects together.

Isn't that what LinkedIn is for? Let them pester everyone to join to learn about what you're up to.

Email old advisors on a regular basis. You can update them on your progress and they can update you on theirs. Seems less narcissistic to ask what they've been up to. They might also send along opportunities like review articles, etc.

I just did that, and I often do. If I'm honest, I don't do that as much as I should. Anyway, unless told otherwise, which, imho, would be rare, that should be acceptable/desirable.
Of course, you won't just talk about your stuff, but ask about his/hers. You do have common interests after all.
Professors are people too! There is no secret in talking to a fellow professional that you know. And, of course, never send a professor a lengthy message.
Be polite, be direct, and informative...

As a supervisor, still being in interaction (on their own  initiative sometimes) with former students, MSc & PhDs is one of my greatest pleasures.
Still planning (long after supervision) joint work, collaborative projects with your supervisor should be welcome quite positively. Even for sheer information. Good supervisors, teachers, most of the time, do this job to elevate or guide. They usually are happy when they have succeeded. They are often happily surprised. Apparently, this does not happen so often, and they cannot know. Students forget.
You can cope with narcissism by "sharing" or "returning" your progresses to a person you estimate for what s/he brought to your line of research. Whenever this happens to me (so very rare), I am happy.

If you liking to show your former supervisor how far you got now gets considered being "narcissistic", it shows that something's really broken in the general value system. Of course, profs like to hear about their students succeeding! And it's perfectly normal and healthy to talk about that to people that will be happy seeing you succeed, whether your parents, grandparents, good friends and profs. It's not showing off to people who don't know you and have no reason to delight in your successes.

@Captain Emacs "narcissistic" was in the OP. And this is an "inner feeling", for which I tried to offer reformulation. I was slightly concerned with the "send an email [because] I might collaborate" part. Thankfulness could be free of charge.

@ Laurent Duval Yes, indeed, I referred to the OP using the term, not you. I find this term overused these days. But you have an additional point that the OP is not entirely spontaneous here.

I enjoy getting periodic updates from former students. It's nice to think that I've made a positive impact in their lives, and it's nice to hear that they are doing well professionally. And I've sent periodic updates to my advisor every now and then.
As for the best way to approach it, and it not coming off as narcissistic, I'd simply recommend that you keep it brief. Don't delve into lengthy details; professors are busy people! Keep it short and simple. Of course, you can always wrap up with a line like this:

If you're interested, I could give you the particulars. Feel free to get in touch.

Then wish them a good day and include your contact information in your signature block.

Yes, do it.  Of all supervisors you've had, there's just this one that you're thinking of reaching out to.  That means this supervisor is special.  If this is the only supervisor you're caring to follow up with, then that's a compliment.

Also, what's the best way to approach this?  I feel like emailing just to talk about myself is a bit narcissistic -- is it?

The best way to avoid making it sound like you're only talking about yourself is to avoid only talking about yourself.  Mention someone else, too.  For example, the supervisor you're mentioning.
Let them know that one of the topics you really want to bring up, because this topic is quite important, is this: thank you.
Really, ex-supervisors don't get told that nearly enough.


text:
Are professors required to perform research as a necessity to teaching?
In my country, in order to teach mathematics (or any subject) to college students one doesn't have to have a PhD. Just a good academic record in the masters level of one's subject and one must clear a (reasonably difficult) national level teachers eligibility test in one's subject. Having a PhD and research publications is a bonus but not mandatory.
So my question then is - would it be necessary to do research once you have secured a permanent faculty position? By necessary I mean, will I face any difficulties in teaching or explaining concepts and ideas to students if I don't spend some time doing research, publishing papers, learning and asking new questions in a given field?

depend of your country...

One point of view is that it depends on your country and regulations. Other point of view is that no one can do high quality teaching without any research beyond a certain level. You should be active in your field, visit conferences, and do it, not just talk about it.

It depends on you and the students. I know very good scholars who teach very bad, and some not so productive professors from research point of view which teach very passionately and support the passion in any student, even in those with problems.

I'd note that several comments and answers address a different issue, namely, whether there is an external expectation of "research" to be credentialled to continue to teach. In fact, the question seems to be the more interesting, if less immediately pragmatic, one of whether it is possible to be genuinely competent in teaching if one does not "do research".

This isn't enough for an answer but: I have always found teachers to be much better if they can give example and share stories from their ongoing work. I like to challenge myself, and seeing where some can apply knowledge that is taught in a course is great. So all in all, I prefer teachers who have strong ongoing research and are vocal about it in their courses.

I think you belong to India, remember one thing doing PhD is long term decision you have to do it if you are planning to get into college or university. I have wasted my 10 years in deciding whether to do PhD or not but now I am doing it after long gap of 10 years and I am really enjoying it very much and my teaching has improved a lot after pursuing PhD.

As a current student, I warn you that the worst professors I've ever had are the ones who do a lot of cutting-edge research. I don't know if it's because they've lost enthusiasm for the basics, they've become worse at explaining things without using their more advanced jargon, or some other reason. They just were worse teachers for anything except the most advanced courses in their specific field.

As a former student, I warn you that by far the best teachers I ever had were also highly productive researchers. However, this does not appear to be true in the department where I teach; some of the best teachers do research; others don't.

Over the course of a long career in teaching, the nature of your instruction will necessarily need to change as both our scientific understanding of the world and our society change.  This is especially true for undergraduate and graduate instruction, where the knowledge is more specialized and changes more quickly, but I would argue it is also true for much of one's earlier schooling as well.
To be a good instructor, then, I think that one absolutely must keep up with the evolving nature of one's field.  But does that require doing research?  I don't think so (except, of course, for advising graduate students who are required to do research).  Remaining involved in research is definitely one of the easiest ways to keep up with a field, but it's not a panacea either: research is typically extremely focused and narrow, and being up to date in one's particular research sub-field does not necessarily mean you will learn about everything relevant to instructing your students in a course that is only related in the more general sense (e.g., a platinum electrocatalyst researcher teaching introductory organic chemistry).  One can consume information about research without producing it oneself, however, and many other forms of professional education are also available.
Bottom line: doing research is a great way of keeping up with your field, but not necessarily sufficient and not necessarily the only way.

I think many areas don't really c change anymore. Has there been new findings in Newtonian mechanics in the last 50 years?

You might be surprised! Consider, for example, the ongoing work on chaos in the solar system or low energy transfer orbits, both of which take advantage of the ongoing improvement of numerical integration methods and computational hardware.

One of the primary differences between tertiary education and K-12 is producing knowledge. At the K-12 level, teachers share knowledge but normally do not create new knowledge. At the university level, professors do share knowledge but they also contribute to the conversation by producing original research. In other words, the growth of knowledge is one of the main purposes of higher education.
Different institutions have different expectations of research at the tertiary level. However, it is often considered unusual not to take part in some form of research occasionally at the university level,  even if your primary occupation is teaching.

What does K-12 mean? Primary & secondary education?

"Kindergarten to 12th grade" in the US parlance meaning primary and secondary education as you surmised.

@TRiG 3 levels above a dog (K-9)

You may not necessarily need to do research to be a good teacher - but depending on where you go, getting a "permanent" position may have its own requirements of research. In the US at least tenure is usually tied to some level of research involvement, which ranges from "you need to be a top researcher" to "you need to get your name on a few minor things, but it's possibly less than you did for your masters", all the way to no research requirement (more typical in small liberal arts places, community/junior/tech colleges, etc). But lets say you got a position and you just want to be the best teacher possible.
To be the best teacher possible, the use of research may heavily depend on what exactly you teach. If you are teaching the first two years of typical math - college-level algebra, geometry, calculus, probability - as far as I'm aware that material has not, and likely will not, be changing from year to year and new research findings in those fields won't much change low level courses. Some of my favorite teachers in this area actually have told me they don't like research and that's a large part of why they sought out the opportunity to teach such classes, and I can't really imagine how having done research specifically enhanced their ability. Low level math classes are usually just so incredibly far from research that I can't see how experience in research would be indispensable.
On the other hand if you are teaching applied math in areas like data analysis, machine learning, statistics, etc - keeping up to date on the newest approaches and techniques would be extremely important to ensure your students are getting the education they'll need for their chosen field. Similarly if you are teaching just about any other high-level class, much of the material can be inspired or based on insights from research.
Finally, if your students might possibly want to seek involvement or even a career in research, not being actively involved in research can restrict your ability to help them down that path. If you will be asked or expected to advise independent study, or teach classes specific to things like research methods in your field, you may find your effectiveness impaired by your lack of experience and ongoing involvement in research.
If you don't fit into any of these special-cases, and the reality on-the-ground in your region/country allows you to be a teacher without research, then I don't think research will be strictly necessary for you. But for many people in many different regions, research is often a requirement to some extent - from a minor requirement to an absolute necessity.

The idea of professors as mentors and teachers (for those who look to continue in academia) is definitely a reason to continue in research - I would have been lost without my professors guiding me when I decided on my career path.

will I face any difficulties in teaching or explaining concepts and ideas to students if I don't spend some time doing research

This is actually a very interesting question. The blanket answer is that no, it isn't necessary, but it helps a lot.
In order to be a good teacher, you need a deep understanding of the material, and the only way to make sure you understand it is by using it in practical applications. Research is particularly suitable because you are banging your head against problems at the boundary of knowledge, so you need to know more than just the topic you are working on. For example, if you apply mathematics to a biological problem, you need to understand the maths, the biology, and be able to bridge the gap between them. That means, not only understanding your mathematical objects in theory, but how they translate to the real world.
Researchers also face ill-posed problems constantly. In my research, I am using techniques developed in computer vision to biological problems. The underlying problem, in abstract terms, is pretty similar; but due to the nature of my problem, I face certain limitations that don't exist in computer vision, so I need to squeeze my brain a bit more to get results. With this hindsight, I will be able to teach my students a wider picture. Note that this kind of problem isn't quite evident if you just read the papers.
Doing research also forces you to keep up to date in fast moving fields, so you can keep your courses up to date and useful.
Lastly, one of the tasks of teaching is designing the syllabus. Doing research helps you find out what is important in the applications. This is particularly important if you are teaching maths to not mathematicians: the focus and content of an algebra course that an engineer and a pure mathematician need aren't the same, and you shouldn't blindly follow a textbook designed for a different background.
You can get all this knowledge in other ways than research, like working in industry applications, or just following the literature.

There are many factors that can make you a great teacher: creative instructional design; a good stage presence; the ability to explain complex concepts in an understandable way; the ability to relate to students and read their body language; patience, motivation, and feedback; and subject matter expertise. Teaching is part motivation and inspiration, and part knowledge transfer.
Research can help with a few of these (most notably subject matter expertise, but it can also hone your abilities to explain complex ideas, and your ability to relate to and motivate students). In that regard, research can make you a better teacher. However, it can also hinder your ability to teach well, if you get so focused on your research that you don't spend a lot of time preparing your lessons or giving timely feedback.
Hence, the two main roles of the professor – teaching and research – might work synergistically for some, but, for others, one might get in the way of the other. A lot of it depends on the professor's ability to juggle roles and manage time.

Will I face any difficulties in teaching or explaining concepts and ideas to students if I don't spend some time doing research, publishing papers, and learning?

Perhaps not; maybe you can be a gifted instructor in the classroom even without doing a lot of research. However, as others have already pointed out in their answers, there's a good chance you won't be as valuable to your university if you forego that side of your responsibilities (which is why publishing often plays such large a role in tenure decisions).

As a supplement to other useful answers: I think the issue is not about "research" as necessary background for good teaching (apart from bureaucratic requirements), but engagement as background for teaching.
That is, I'd claim that intense, ongoing engagement with a subject is necessary for effective (and apt) teaching. We might imagine that "research" has constraints that force us to most accurately or practically engage, rather than delusional or arm-chair engagement. This may be substantially true, but it is certainly not absolutely reliable.
I think it's not so much "creator of new knowledge" that may help one be a good teacher, but, rather, "utilitarian engagement" with the subject, where the sense of "utilitarian" is "to be able to do more of [the subject]". Or applications to other scenarios. Not just "application to didactic situations"... which, without being "informed by" practice, certainly will not reliably reflect practice.

I will chime in on the two questions you ask, in reverse order:

[...] will I face any difficulties in teaching or explaining concepts and ideas to students if I don't spend some time doing research, publishing papers, learning and asking new questions in a given field?

Probably not.
You can think of it in terms of this rather simple model: The 'amount of knowledge' you will be passing to your students as you teach a course will be finite. Learning does not happen immediately - you do not instantly absorb the contents of a book that is put on your desk. Your students will need time to digest the material, and they have a finite amount of time to spend on lectures and studying. Especially for introductory undergraduate courses, the 'amount of knowledge' that you can convey to your students will be a fraction of the knowledge in a field. While you obviously need to have good content knowledge to teach well, you do not need to be expanding the frontiers of a field to be able to teach a course in it.
Obviously this is a very simplified model - to be able to teach well at the university level, you should have practical experience in the subject, keep up with recent developments (including teaching methods), etc. There are many activities that will contribute to the quality of teaching, and research could indeed be one of them. But I would argue that it is not necessary.
I'll refer back to the model and conclude with two examples: You can be a researcher who has command over 100 units of knowledge in a particular field, but if you do not have good teaching skills, you will struggle to get even 5 units across as you teach a course. Conversely, a good teacher who knows their field only half as well (50 units) could be much more efficient and their students could end up with 20 units of information at their command.

[...] would it be necessary to do research once you have secured a permanent faculty position?

Probably yes.
Unfortunately, most universities do not buy into the reasoning above. It is often the case that the 'permanent' faculty position will require that you do a good amount of research and publish. In many universities research is the priority for full-time faculty.
One good resource that I have found on what life is like for faculty is Philip Guo's writings on the subject. He is an assistant professor in computer science, but his experiences do reflect what it's like for faculty in other fields as well. I suggest you check out the following articles:

How I've been spending my time as a first-semester assistant professor
What I would've wanted to know as a first-year assistant professor

This of course is the general situation, and you will surely find exceptions somewhere.

RE: Unfortunately, most universities do not buy into the reasoning above. I don't think it's a matter of "buy in;" it's more a matter of prioritization. We don't like to advertise this too much (particularly to the parents of incoming freshmen), but one could argue that the university's primary mission is research, with teaching as a close second. It's not a matter of "units of knowledge;" it's a matter of who can bring in research dollars PLUS have the ability to manage those research projects even while teaching an undergraduate course from time to time. That's the harder bill to fill.

In the most general sense: No.
This depends on country, region, and institution. For example, in the U.S.: 4-year research institutions will (by definition) likely require a PhD and an ongoing research commitment to obtain tenure. On the other hand, community colleges will most like not require a research commitment, even for tenure, and it's possible that those positions can be filled with a Master's or even a Bachelor's degree in some cases. (On the other other hand: Where I am at CUNY can demand a PhD and research component even at its community colleges for tenured positions; while a small number of Lecturer positions do not have that requirement.)
Current example for a tenure-track appointment at a NY-state community college in mathematics, "Bachelor's and master's degree in mathematics or closely related field is required":
https://www.higheredjobs.com/faculty/details.cfm?JobCode=176283373

I must say I'm quite surprised at the salary, at least for New York (and I realize this isn't New York City, but it's still in New York state). I would have guessed $15,000 higher.

"College" means different things in different countries (and even in different parts of some countries). In Australia, depending on where you are, it can mean:

A private high school
A school specifically for the last two years of secondary education
A post-secondary education provider that does not grant degrees
A residential accommodation for students at a university

At none of these institutions are teaching staff expected to have PhDs.
In other countries, "college" can mean:

A tertiary education provider that does grant Bachelors degrees, but does not grant PhDs or engage in much research. PhDs are often not required to teach at these institutions, but may be expected due to heavy competition from well-qualified candidates who do have PhDs.
A university. Academics at universities are usually required to have a PhD or at least equivalent research experience, in part because they are usually expected to engage in research as well as teaching. There is also the argument of the "teaching-research nexus", that teaching is enhanced by having teachers who are at the forefront of their fields and engaged in active research.

An answer from the American liberal arts tradition, with historical links back to the Scottish Enlightenment and further back to Calvin's Geneva...
The primary goal of a university education is philosophical.  One learns what knowledge is, the different forms knowledge takes in different subjects, with an in depth engagement in understanding the particular way knowledge is produced in a particular community of inquiry.
This means teaching, not just facts, but the entire context that makes a fact a fact.
If you're not engaged in scholarship (which might not mean traditional research) in some way, it is hard to see how you can keep an understanding of why we consider certain statements true.

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What are some examples of "service activities" for the inexperienced/up-and-coming academic?
I am looking for an assistant professor job in engineering. While working on my Ph.D., I had the chance to mentor graduate students in my research group (suggesting experiments, helping them analyze results, etc.), and I also mentored an independent studies student for a summer. Would these types of activities even loosely be considered as "service activities" by a search committee, or, if the question comes up during an interview, just say that I don't have any such activities to mention? If the latter, what are some good ways to respond?

I believe mentoring graduate students is not service; it is a standard component of being a postdoc or professor. However, you should include it on your CV under a section called something like "students mentored" and then list their names.

@MHH: Thanks for the suggestion of including "students mentored" on my CV.

As for the question in the title, some common examples would be organising a seminar, helping to organise a conference or workshop, or serving on a committee.
I don't think that the activities you mention are generally considered 'service'.  They are definitely activities worth mentioning in other contexts, though.
If you really don't have any experience in 'service activities', then perhaps a good way to respond to questions about service would be to admit that you don't have such experience so far, but express interest in gaining such experience (with specific details of the kinds of service you are especially interested in).  I have no idea whether this is good advice, though, as I'm only a postdoc myself and have never been on a search committee.

As a grad student, you're not expected to devote much time to professional service.  Even assistant professors are usually intentionally spared time-intensive service roles.  Expectations increase as you become more senior.  I was never asked about service in an interview for a post-doc position, and your postdoctoral supervisor would probably rather hear that you don't have time for service because you spend all your time on research.
I think the only service activity you should naturally expect to be involved in is that of refereeing papers, but that generally won't happen until you have one or more accepted publications.
You might also organize a minisymposium at a conference -- that's considered service and is a great excuse to get to know researchers in your subfield.

I'm not sure if this is specific to the US, but on many graduate school admissions, search, or internal program related committees, there will be a graduate student representative serving alongside professors. I have seen people put this as service.
You can also volunteer to preside at conferences, organize sessions, or serve on journal editorial boards, review as an ad-hoc reviewer if you have opportunities to do so.
Another way of showing general commitment to the field and scholarship, at least in the humanities and social sciences, is contributing book reviews for journals (or other publications with book review sections). This will not go under the "service" section of your CV, but under a separate "book review" heading and will be a nice way of showing commitment to the field.
However, I have also heard warnings against overdoing these things, especially when you do not have a good enough publication record. It can be seen as proof of inefficient time management, and not having one's priorities straight. As book reviews are not peer reviewed, and easy to get, they can be seen as "fluff" to your CV, if you have too many with not much else going on.

As a current graduate student there are 3 primary ways in which I provide service to the academic community and mention them on my cv.

Reviewing articles in journals and conferences. I regularly review for a top journal in information science and a couple of the top conferences in HCI (Human Computer Interaction)
I am the student member on our department's PhD admissions committee. My responsibilities include evaluating prospective applicants with the rest of the committee, matching applicants with interviewers and organizing the PhD visit day.
I have been a student volunteer for top conferences in my area. Some of my other colleagues have been student volunteer chairs for said conferences or they have been in the organizing committee for such conferences.

These are only my personal services to the academic field and my department recognizes and honors these services as an integral part of being a scholar (teaching-research-service).