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Is Publons a reliable reference to show peer-review experience in a faculty application?
I was invited for an interview for a tenure-track position. Since I was highly active in peer-review service, I highlighted this in my cover letter as well as my CV.
When an interviewer mentioned it (in a positive way), I emphasized that I have already included my Publons profile where my peer-review works can be checked. He said "I've never heard of it. Do you have any certificate or recommendation from the journals."
Then, I felt it was better if I did not mention Publons at all (it would look more normal). Was it a problem of my interviewer OR it is not common to include a peer-review profile in the application?
My impression was (maybe I am wrong) that if you simply mentioned it, we would believe you. Now that you want to prove it, you should do it in an official way.

I have never heard of Publons before reading your question, but can't help to think that maybe you could have explained better what it is during your interview, or simply quantified it in your letter or CV, for example: "reviewed # papers in the last # years, eg. for journals A and B", and then include the link to Publons if you want. Of course this is just my opinion, but I hope it helps.

This is basically like saying "I included my LinkedIn profile with all my skills on it" when the interviewer says "I've never heard of LinkedIn, do you have any reference letters endorsing your skills from former coworkers?" If you say "I have all my reviews on my Publons profile" that's treating it like a trophy which is a hard sell. Do more like @louic suggests. Use it as a record of what you did instead of proof of how well you did it. Even Review Endorsements probably won't carry weight as quality measure. Fill in the "how well" with stories and/or personal references.

Then, I felt it was better if I did not mention Publons at all (it
  would look more normal). Was it a problem of my interviewer OR it is
  not common to include a peer-review profile in the application?

I have seen a number of people (myself included) include a peer-review profile. In my case, it simply lists the journals I have reviewed for. At this point, it's actually more the list of journals I frequently review for.
I think the issue is more with Publons - in my experience, there hasn't really been a strong need for tracking credits the way they want, and I found it was more hassle than it was worth to keep it up-to-date (as if you have a Publons profile and highlight it, the implication is that it's accurate).
Essentially, I trust what you've told me. Because specific reviews, rather than the abstract concept of being an active reviewer, isn't really much of a consideration for me. It's a nice thing, and I appreciate seeing it mentioned as I do consider it a professional obligation, but Publons inherently wants there to be a quantitative impact based on volume and I...simply can't be bothered.

while I agree with your points, quantity is a representative of quality in peer-review. If your reviews are not high quality, the editor will not invite you frequently.

@Googlebot But it's not a 1:1 mapping function - for example, you could be an excellent reviewer of a topic that comes up relatively rarely.


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What is the real benefit of tenured positions for universities?
People are interested in tenured positions to have a secured job, as they do not need to worry about their contracts. Tenured position gives a professor security that s/he cannot get fired easily (e.g., simply not renewing his/her contract). But, what is the actual obligation for the professors? In return, what is the motivation for a university to offer tenured position, which is accompanied by less flexibility from HR point of view.
Apparently, tenure is just for the sake of academic freedom, and has no real benefit for the institution, except a one-way service to professors (probably satisfying more applicants). Am I right? Then, a university must prefer not to offer tenured positions at all, as HR has more freedom with non-tenured positions.

As a parent I would not send my child to a school that did not offer academic freedom to those teaching so there is certainly some benefit to the school.

Providing job security in the form of tenure also means that universities have to pay less. If you look at comparable research jobs that are similarly competitive, but don't have tenure (industrial research labs), salaries are higher.

@BenCrowell At research labs like Microsoft Research, the distinction is pretty minimal -- the biggest difference is that MSR researchers have no teaching responsibilities. Other than that, they spend their time doing the same thing CS professors at R1 universities do: conducting research and publishing papers, attending and organizing conferences, giving talks, etc. Tenured faculty move routinely from academia to these research labs, and  back.

Institutions offer tenure, not (just) because of high-minded abstractions like "academic freedom", but because it makes good business sense.  The benefit of tenure to the institution follows from the benefit to the individual:

From the faculty member's perspective, tenure makes it possible to pursue high-risk/high-impact research ideas without having to worry about having to keep short-term bean-counters happy.
This makes institutions that offer tenure more attractive to strong researchers because those researchers want an environment that best supports their ability to pursue their research ideas.
Such researchers, in turn, are very often also the ones who bring in the big grants.  Their high visibility also enhances the reputation of the institution, which attracts more students and alumni donations, etc. etc.

For these reasons, given two otherwise-identical institutions where one offered tenure and the other didn't, the one without tenure would find itself at a significant competitive disadvantage.

It is certainly the case that very strong institutions would not be able to attract the talent they do at the wage they offer without the added incentive of tenure. "Average" professors may be replaceable, but the truly exceptional are hard to replace, although they would have many other job options besides academia.

I think you might be misunderstanding the purpose of tenure. While your view from the teacher's side might be correct (wanting to avoid worrying about contract renewal) the purpose for a school to offer tenure is supposed to be putting an educator in a position where he/she can teach whatever they feel is best without worrying about being fired if the school doesn't think it politically appropriate. For example, if someone was teaching about communism during the 1960's in the US, the school might want to fire that teacher. Tenure shows that the school believes in scholarship over politics.
As a side note, recent studies show that this is not at all what happens. Students learn more from non-tenured teachers than tenured ones.
As to your question, the responsibilities are the same as any other professional position - do your job. You certainly can leave if you find better opportunities - it's not a prison, it's a job.

"Students learn more from non-tenured teachers than tenured ones." [citation needed]

@earthling might be referring to this: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/09/09/study-finds-students-learn-more-non-tenure-track-instructors

"found that the gains are greatest for the students with the weakest academic preparation." This explains quite a lot, doesn't it?

I didn't read carefully enough to form a legitimate basis to question that study, but the combination of a university president and management consultant on the author list of a study that subtly advocates increasing the share of adjunct faculty literally made me a little queasy.

@fedja Instead of expecting me to read your mind, why not just say what you think it explains.

@earthling Good point. My impression (from my own teaching and from classes I attended) is that a tenured guy like me adjusts the material and the level of presentation to the top third of the class while a non-tenured one aims way lower. Neither strategy is perfect. The top students learn more from me (though still get worse grades and tougher life) and the bottom students have much better chance to learn basic skills they are missing from my non-tenured colleague. The real problem is not tenure vs. non-tenure (either of us can use the other's approach) but the terrible spread in one class.

@wsc Is it really all that surprising that people who teach 3-5 large classes a semester teach large classes better (I'm almost certain this is the study's metric for "teaching") then people who spend a lot their time advising students, doing independent research, giving research talks, and teaching specialized material to advanced students?

@PVAL It's not surprising per se. My own point was a bit narrower, though. I understood the comment I questioned as well as the study provided in support as glorifying the adjunct system. Most of the adjuncts who taught my own service courses (I'm in physics) were overworked, underpaid, got no respect from their peers, and it showed in the quality of their teaching. This was fine with the university, because if someone was really good they'd try and get more pay or benefits and would be let go in favor of the next warm body. So color me skeptical.

@wsc A key part of that study is that most of the untenured faculty involved are full-time (i.e., essentially permanent, salaried) lecturers, not one-off adjuncts. So, it is not necessarily looking at the comparison that likely comes to mind when thinking of tenure-track versus adjunct faculty.

I think there are some odd accidental assumptions in the question. For the U.S. system, although there is substantial drift in the last 10 years, the idea was not only that people should teach what their best judgement indicated, without worry of censure or loss-of-job, but that also their research/scholarship should reflect best-understanding rather than politics... especially given the transience and partisanship of politics.
There is also the idea that in otherwise-profitable enterprises people might not want to put any effort into teaching at all, thus not want to participate in a "university" (with students), without an otherwise-extraordinary promise of more-or-less-endless job security. Some smart, able people, not terribly interested in money, beyond a certain point, can be ensnared by the "care-free" aspect of a tenured faculty position.
"Even" in the U.S., in recent years there has been a push to "contract" faculty positions, indeed. In happy times, these seem to be no worse than tenured positions. However, obviously, in the next economic downturn the administration will have the easy option of terminating as many contract employees as seems convenient.
Yes, this is part of the increased corporatization of U.S. (and other) colleges and universities. Of course, we should understand that we are at the end of a sort of "golden age" between the pre-WWI times that only the upper-classes' children "went to college", apart from seminary students, and after the post-WWII time where the "GI Bill" financed returning veterans' college educations to avoid flooding the job market... which was already in disarray after all the women who'd been "allowed" to work in factory jobs and such in wartime were expected (or forced) to quit and "go home"... so there was an artificial surge both in the numbers of college enrollments and in the socio-economic goals.
And more complications currently...

One more point is that tenure per se is a huge perk which lets the universities get away with the salaries considerably lower than in the industry and keep many smart people nevertheless, at least in the fields where leaving academe for industry is an option.

If I understand the question you're asking, there is no obligation for a tenured professor to remain at the institution that gave him or her tenure. Professors changing institutions happens quite frequently. In many cases, such moves occur because of career advancement—for instance, one might be offered a position in the university administration (chair, dean, or provost, for example).
However, in such cases, the professor typically has the obligation of "winding down" her group at the old institution "gracefully." Usually, that means that the advisor is still responsible for supervising any students that chose not to move with the professor. In some cases, depending on location, there may be teaching duties leftover—for instance, a tenured professor left my university here in Germany not too long ago to take a position in another country. He still had to return once a week for an entire year to fulfill the teaching obligations he had under German law. (Professors' minimum teaching loads are regulated in Germany.)

Just to add an international perspective: In Denmark (and some other, especially Northern, European countries), tenure is not unique to academia. Here an employer is obligated to offer you a permanent contract after three years or discontinue your employment; academia operates on this general principle. "Tenured" faculty here have permanent contracts just like someone working in any other field, as opposed to the fixed-term contracts held by postdocs, assistant professors, and temporary employees elsewhere in the marketplace. So, at least in some countries, tenure is a general workplace guarantee, not something special to university faculty.

In the U.S., getting tenure is often compared to "getting a union card" in that the job security of tenure is generally comparable to the job security of being in a unionized position, even though faculty in the U.S. are often not unionized.

Given the relative two fisted brutality of the unitary Australian system in industrial relations terms on the average (as opposed to "appointed") academic staff; and the early death of "tenure" in Australian contexts:

The only limitation on institutions offering positions is industrial
We can see this in field specific peaks of casually taught classes reaching 80%
And society wide casualisation of about 50%
Academics have incredibly low rates of militancy in the face of massive erosion of work conditions
"Research," the unique product of on-going appointments in Australia, has consistently been treated by institutions as a "Luxury" product (AUR reports on cross subsidisation of research by teaching).
Employer preference is the only basis on which any on-going positions exist, and this seems to be directly related to either Degree program related academic administration ("Who's in charge of the BA's pedagogy?") or to inter-Employer status game ("We have 100 more HERDC points than you, and are therefore a better university").

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A+ in transcript and GPA
In the past (historically), A+ was a bonus in transcript and had an effect on the cumulative GPA too, but it is no common these days (at least I do not see around). If some universities/colleges use A+ in the transcript, but it is equally considered as an A in calculating the GPA.
Is A+ obsolete in the US universities/colleges? or because they use it for rare occasions, we do not normally see it?
In other words, are there still universities using A+, and equaling it to 4.3 in calculating the GPA?

In undergrad chemistry, my professor emailed me after the course ended to say that "You have earned an A+, but [the automated grading system] does not accept anything higher than A". This A still translates to a 4.0, as does anything over 92%. 4.0 no longer means a perfect score.

In the past...A+... had an effect on the cumulative GPA — [citation needed]

@JeffE I have no solid reference for this. I just read/heard it long time ago. This is the reason that I asked this question.

@JeffE: University of Michigan does this. For example, see https://www.rackham.umich.edu/current-students/policies/gpa

How an A+ is treated varies from school to school. In the traditional American grading system, an "A" contributes a 4.0 to one's GPA, an "A-" contributes a 3.7, a "B+" contributes a 3.3, a "B" contributes 3.0, etc. In many universities, 4.0 represents the maximum possible GPA, and so an A+, although it may appear on the transcript next to a course, also only contributes 4.0 to one's GPA. At other universities (such as e.g. Columbia), an A+ contributes 4.3 to one's GPA.
None of this matters very much of course.

Except at large corporations, many of which still have GPA cutoffs for new hires.

Minor point, at Columbia everything is taken to another decimal point. A+ is 4.33, A- is 3.66, etc.

I think A+ is used, but not very often. For GPA purposes, A and A+ are usually equal, but A+ is a rarer grade. Sometimes, A+ is used for 96 and higher. Personally, 97 and higher would merit an A+ if I was doing the grading, but that's just my opinion.

I am a student at Arizona State University, I have a cumulative GPA of 4.0. However, my term GPA is 4.17 because I had an A and am A+! So, at ASU, if you got all A+'s you would have a Term GPA of 4.33, but probably still have a cumulative gpa of 4.0.

At the University of Oregon, you can get an A+. Only some courses actually offer A+'s, however, if you do receive an A+, it counts as a 17.20 QP's and a 4.3 (instead of 4.0) towards your GPA.

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What to do if one has had an unsuccessful PhD (because of others' fault)?
I was talking to a friend of mine, and he just feel in a deep depression due to finishing his PhD.
He will be defending in the coming weeks, and there is a high likelihood he will pass.
In his words, he doesn't really feel he has learned anything PhD worthy, he only has one Journal paper and no conference papers (in his area conf papers are not worth much anyway). According to him, one of the postdocs kept his research at bay by denying him access to the machines he need to do experiments (something CMOS related, not really sure what). And in his own words, the same guy basically did the same experiments he was planning and wrote a couple of papers.
Of course he tried to tell his professor, but apparently he couldn't care less.
By now, he just feels that he lost 3 years of his life doing a PhD. And he mentioned that he might sue the Professor/University for this.
I take his word for all of this, and I have no real means to corroborate it to be truth. But it kept me thinking about one thing.
Is a student entitled to sue/demand a reimbursement/etc if he/she feels like the past years have been an utter waste of time?
Is there any mechanism in your universities to do this?
I've heard of similar cases of professors abusing of students in the same way in some US Universities (big/fancy ones by the way)

I would urge him to avoid talking about suing.  It sounds frivolous to sue because he published only one paper, the postdocs hogged the machines and did some of the research he had hoped to do, and he doesn't feel he learned enough.  I can understand why this is upsetting, but the courts are not equipped to settle such disputes, especially when the outcome is not terrible in absolute terms (he is getting a Ph.D. in a reasonable amount of time and has published a paper).  It may be worth complaining about the advisor, using one of the mechanisms F'x suggests below, but probably not a lawsuit.

If I were your friend, I will just make sure I do the defense and graduate without any problem or bad relation with my advisor.. It is too late to change whats on the ground. Publishing one journal article is a good indication.. I believe many good PhD students are not satisfied with their degree outcome. They always look for better/stronger results.

Lack of publications in the PhD level is one of the main reasons for PostDoc positions.

@Paul I don't understand your comment. I thought that to get to a good postdoc you need to have goo record; and (at least nowadays) it's impossible to get a professorship without a few prior postdoc positions.

@PiotrMigdal: With fewer and fewer professorships available, one has to compete with those who have more research experience.  Post-docs enable one to publish more and thus become more competitive.

I have a close relative whose PhD fell through for similar reasons, and initially a suit was considered, but on talking with a lawyer the idea was abandoned. Perhaps consulting with a lawyer for advice to be sure is the best thing; but probably unlikely to succeed.

A PhD is essentially an apprenticeship for a career in research, if you can show that you have developed the experimental/theoretical skills required for this in your discipline and are able to design experiments, conduct them, sensibly analyze the results, then you have earned your PhD.  There is no requirement to come up with some conspicuously good idea as that is at least partly down to luck.  Learning to deal with awkward colleagues shouldn't have to be a useful skill, but it is a useful skill nevertheless.  Don't let it get to you, a career is a long term thing.

@DikranMarsupial: "There is no requirement to come up with some conspicuously good idea as that is at least partly down to luck." - well, that is debatable. A PhD can be considered as much a "regular" degree as a certificate of achieving a new discovery, unlike degrees such as Bachelor or Master. There does not need to be a "conspicuously good idea". Still, "advancing mankind's knowledge" (even by an ever so tiny amount) is usually a more or less explicit prerequisite for getting a PhD. And, yes, that does mean it's partly down to luck (which is one of the reasons you are advised on topics).

I had a similar experience. Your friend is screwed. I don't think there's any recourse with the university, and academia is competitive enough (though individual fields may vary) that you need to have a decent publication record to get even a postdoc.

@O.R.Mapper "well, that is debatable." this is going to vary from topic to topic, but if you know something is going to work beforehand, it isn't research.  The reason I wrote "conspicuously good idea" is exactly to make the distinction you mention.  The supervisor cannot guarantee to set a project where a conspicuously good idea is a likely outcome, but they should be able to set a project where making a contribution (an advance) is more or less a certainty (sadly wasn't in my case).  A PhD is a demonstrates your ability to perform a programme of research, it is not the outcome but process.

@DikranMarsupial: "if you know something is going to work beforehand, it isn't research" - I agree. "they should be able to set a project where making a contribution (an advance) is more or less a certainty" - well, opportunities for advances can be a certainty, but that still does not automaticallyean the candidate uses any of yhem (although they can be guided towards that end). "A PhD (...) is not the outcome but process." - still, if the outcome is explicitly required, merely the process that could have produced an advance does not suffice.

@O.R.Mapper I think you are reading more into my initial post than is actually there.  If there is an advance in knowledge available then following an appropriate process will find it with high probability, science does not progress by inspiration alone.  The purpose of a PhD is to inculcate a set of suitable research skills and the student needs to demonstrate that they have acquired them.  How this is demonstrated varies from one field to another, but it is essentially an apprenticeship in research.

Don't focus so much on success, focus more on learning. Most probably you have little influence on how success will be portrayed around you. ( It's basically big media companies who have that capability. ) But you do have much influence over your own learning.

There sure are cases, every now and then, of researchers (professors or other) abusing students in various ways. As everyone, I have heard stories, and I know at least a couple of people who have been put in dramatic situations during their PhD. However bad the behavior of the advisor is, it turns out that there are multiple venues one can try, during the PhD, when the alarm flag is raised. These depend on the institution and type of employment, but they include:

Going to see the PhD program director, explaining your situation (diplomatically) and asking for advice (read: help).
Finding a friendly researcher/professor in your department, and ask him for advice (and possibly help) with your issue. They know the people and local “politics”, and might have efficient advice.
Your employer's HR department
Going to your professor's hierarchy (department chair, dean, …). As a last recourse, file a formal complaint.
Get someone to speak for you: a union representative, a member of the local “PhD association”, etc. That can help if you are worried about the fallout of intervening directly.
Changing your plans to work on a more “independent” research. In your example, your friend was denied access to a given experiment. If the experiment had broken down beyond repair, he sure could reörient his research, so the same thing could be done in the case at hand (I'm not saying it's easy).
Walking out (or, as JeffE would surely say: don't walk, run!)

Regarding legal action: I don't think this avenue can lead anywhere, unless there is factual evidence of gross misconduct or unethical activity. The burden of proof relies on your friend, and I think it will actually be harder to complain after the fact if he did not raise his concerns formally during his PhD.

I am not a lawyer, but I suspect that a legal case would also be difficult without factual evidence of concrete harm to the student.  I'd be surprised if "a complete waste of time" would be considered concrete harm.

While I completely agree that getting advice/help from other faculty is useful, formal complaints to department chairs or HR are more likely to help future students than the student lodging the complaint.  No, that's not fair.

I agree with @JeffE, personally I dont see any legal dispute. OP finished PhD in normal time (3years) and published one paper ( according to most program normal requirement )

If it is likely that he will pass, your friend should go for the defense first, every other aspect put on hold. As for a court case, it is risky; they will have to prove that they were harmed intentionally or through negligence (I am not sure the latter counts in a supervision process - I am not a lawyer!).
They will also have to prove that the postdoc basically took the ideas from them. This is quite possible and definitively does happen, however, keep in mind the possibility that it might have been the other way round: sometimes students underestimate how much they have absorbed from the research group and their superviser and believe that they have had an original idea, whereas they only had the final "flash of understanding" about what their supervisors and group colleagues have been talking about for months.
An emotional situation may cloud their self-judgement with respect to their contribution and taking it to court is not recommended, unless they are absolutely sure their idea was taken and they can prove it. Even so, it might not be a good idea, because these are murky waters. I have known a case of a student being upset at their supervisor only to come back a period later - with more life experience - to complete a joint paper broken off in anger, because he understood how much the supervisor had contributed in the first place.
Finally, not every PhD is a success story in terms of concrete scientific achievements - this may depend on talent, luck, circumstances. However, if your friend passes, they have achieved a PhD in 3 years and, no matter what, that's a pretty good achievement. Some PhD's (esp. in Europe) drag on for 6-7 years, others never materialise. So, while it may not look like it at this point, after the PhD, things may look brighter to your friend.

For some students the most powerful type of learning is if they think they had the original idea. Not many things will make them devote themselves as much to research as if they get that feeling. But as you mention the drawbacks can at least short term include these kinds of perceptions.

Learning is not an instantaneous event. You prepare and practice your brain for growth and development but there is a lot of inertia involved and it takes time. He will probably gradually realize what the studies has made him able to do, say over a.. 5-10 year period, maybe. Studying is planting the tree. If fertile land and skilled gardener and good care it will slowly grow, become majestic and sprout flowers or whatnot.
Heck some courses I took even 10 years ago I don't realize until now what some of the clever comments during professors lectures were about until this or last summer.

I am not sure at what stage of PhD your friend is. Has he finished the number of years necessary to do the PhD? If yes, he can submit the thesis. One really need to find the fault in the system if he/she want to sue a PhD supervisor. Once he finds the faults of Professor with supporting concrete evidences he/she could be on safe side. If your friend has decided to sue a PhD supervisor at any stage of PhD, beware of rules and regulations of university. In PhD, when you submit a thesis, the first thing comes is the acceptance or the rejection of thesis from examination. If your thesis is accepted by the examination committee, you can go for examination. If it is not accepted, you can not go for examination. In case of the rejection of PhD thesis, they will inform you about the reasons of rejection. Go through them carefully. Find out the faults in their own research articles and their own books or dissertation. Write them in a contradiction report. Send it to them. You must wait for the appeal decision of the university. If you are not satisfied with their decision you can go to the court.

-1. Looking for errors in papers of the committee members is a ridiculous suggestion.

well it is not at all ridiculous. It is the way it should actually happen. Our PhD thesis is based on others work, sometimes it is based on the work by our own professor and his group. Definitely the work is cited with the references. When you write references in the thesis, the examiners do not object the results. If you write their work in your own language, without citing a reference, they may object it. If they do it, in the contradiction one can easily catch the things. However this can be the violation of infringement, So it is a risk but it works for sure.

Another -1: yes, it is ridiculous.  The papers of the thesis committee need not have any logical connection to the subject of the thesis.  Even if there was some mistake in one of these papers that was intellectually pertinent to the subject of the thesis, the advice makes no sense: that it built on faulty work of others does not make your thesis correct.   From a practical standpoint: this is such dangerously wrong-headed advice.  Please do not pretend that you have any experience with successfully suing university professors in court.  That is really irresponsible and immature.

well now this is ridiculous. Then there should be no reason for the thesis rejection at all. On which basis the thesis are rejected? The published work can also be wrong. It is clear indication that the prof himself is not knowing the subject. Is this a blog created by professors or PhD candidates? if my doubt is true then I can understand you.

You've lost me entirely.  No specific thesis rejection is being contemplated here: the OP did not say anything of the sort.  "On which basis the thesis are rejected?" This question has been addressed on this site before.  If after reading what's already here you still have questions, please feel free to ask a followup question.

well if you look at the post, it is clear that the person is thinking a lot before going for the examination. This is the reason I have written the details about how the procedure could go in case of real trouble. There is no reason for the universities to make him fail purposefully. If anyone does it, there is a procedure as I described. I do not have any option to dislike any comments. Others can dislike my comments but I can not do the same here. I wish I could have done it.

It really sounds like you have no experience with writing  a dissertation at all. If you are already a week or two from your defense (date set on stone), your dissertation is probably already approved by the committee, unless you dance a polka on their desk, the final defense is mostly ceremonial in my experience in three countries (US, UK, Japan).
Your answer is outright a confusing one.

Leon palafox:  I just saw your message after a long time. Well, most of the mentors take the PhD students for improving their own CVs and writing their own papers. Its a stealing of work dude. I am a successful PhD holder now. Its a trend now a days. They dont give right people the PhDs  so that they can be enslaved to work forever for a same guy. If anyone has an ability to get new ideas very often, they are refrained form going for PhD defense.  Changing the topics frequently is one way to achieve that. It sounds like you dont have real experience in PhD.

Strangely enough it depends on the legal system, as that describes the burden of proof. My advise is go see a lawyer... But...
I have had a harrowing experience with what l can best describe as a macho thesis advisor, a personae dramatica. Much of the assault was verbal, but that does not mean that there is no evidence. I have annacodotal emails, he even sent me threatening Emails and lied to my mum! shitty behaviour.
Instead of attacking the problem as if it's is you against the world, think about it differently.

Does the school have a contractual system in place with the student and thesis advisor? In my previous UK school, that is not the case, so in most common law jurisdictions and quiet a few civil law jurisdictions too, that is a no no...
Case law, yes ask your lawyer to look into case law, in fact it's so easy nowerdays, you can do it by yourself. You need to find some precedent, even in civil law, which generally has a rule, that says contracts that cause undue hardship are illegal, and when there is no contract, and you have suffered undue hardship because you were unable to complete your thesis, tends to be sufficient evidence.
Malpractice suites in medicine and the police turn around the expertise embedded in a expert, or someone with special skill and experience. The school has a greater duty of care under common law and under certain civil law jurisdictions, that is an avenue to pursue.
Increasingly in many jurisdictions, when it comes to experts as thesis advisors, the burden of evidence has come down, and you can use here say, and indirect evidence. So this line of mechanistic thinking is wrong. The law is not black letter, and if it is, then it would surely be unjust.
What are you aiming for? Be like a Vulcan and think about it logically. My thesis advisor, was sure of his superior position, and that he could bully me around, and lie to me in my face, that is a breach of conduct, and that is easy to prove. If it's sexual, then it's even easier. You should not think about suing to win, you should think about suing to damage someone's career and the reputation of the school instead. It's a bit like opting for a constant stalemate, like in chess, to prolong the game, and await your opportunity to strike. Then, mind the Star Trek cliche, a legal case can said, to be revenge, and that is best served cold.
You should look at the schools previous record with dealing with thesis advisor problems... Like in my previous school they swept everything under the carpet, even plagerism, and used the data protection act in the UK to avoid dealing with a problem, you have them! When a institution hides behind privacy issues, and does not deal with the real issues, they are not fair or just.
Read through the student booklet and if it says, that they will fairly and justly deal with complaints and they have not, even with small complaints then they are breaking their own contract with you. In our student book it says, l must go to make the complaint to a staff member, and and and... And they would resolve it fairly, but if they blame you, and don't listen, in your and other peoples case, there is a pattern of political game playing and failing to do the right thing. A lot of the contractual relationships can not be put down on paper, and is open to interpretation. You may not be able to sue your thesis advisor, but you can sue the school for they employ him, on grounds other than the thesis advisor.
Think about it this way, you can damage your opponent. A lot of the education you receive, is based on an unwritten contact for services. And even if there is a contrAct, you can poke holes into it. Maybe you can sue them for an unsafe work environment, and force the lab to be closed down. If l were a school, l would be very upset, but you, as an innocent whistle blower with a slightly alter our, but ethically just motive, well the law will see you in a good light. Also if the school fails to give you an adequate answer to a problem, or does not help you, but protects the to hear that is a good grounds to sue on.
Remember in law nothing is the way it seems... Smoke and mirrors.

you are thinking about it all wrong, remove the emotion, and think about maiming and hurting your opponent. My thesis advisor is very confident he is safe because of his position, well he has another thing coming. Not through anger and emotion, but through cold hard logic, find a flaw in the system and pursue that, and do it to damage the schools reputation. If they damage you, you damage them back using the law, and above all doing the right thing, because as institutions they must not think they can get away with abuse.


text:
Where does the US Department of Education report university graduation rates?
Where can I find the report that states the fact below, quoted in a CNN article?

Only 40% of middle-class college entrants who were high school seniors in 2004 had secured bachelor's degrees by 2012, according to the Department of Education.

I can't find a particular report that contains your exact quote, but the statistic could easily be derived from data that is present in the "Digest of Educational Statistics" published by the US Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics:
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/
In particular, see table 326.40 in the "current" edition which gives this percentage separately for students who started in 2 year and 4 year institutions and for students from families in various income ranges.  To get the 40% statistic quoted, you'd have to combine the rates for students in two income ranges and the statistics for students starting at 2 year and 4 year colleges.  These range from 17.6% (for students from families with income between $45,000 and $69,999 who started at 2 year colleges) to 66.7% (for students from families with income between $70,000 and $99,999 who started at 4 year colleges.)
The statistic shouldn't be surprising. Keep in mind that not everyone who enters "college" is seeking a bachelor's degree- many will want only an associates degree or certificate of some sort.  If you limit your attention to students who enter four year colleges (and presumably want a bachelor's degree) and who come from higher income families ($100,000 per year and up) you get a much higher rate of 77.5%.  Both family income and starting at a 4 year college are important factors.


text:
Student missing exam for “medical reasons”
I have a student who failed an exam I gave three months ago and was supposed to show up for a remediation exam this week. The date was announced long in advance, and the student neither showed (all the others did show up) nor warned me. Now, she is asking for a new exam date, saying she was absent due to “medical reasons”. She produced a certificate that she was seeing a doctor at the time, but nothing indicates that it was an urgent need (rather than, say, a scheduled appointment).
How would you handle such a case? I asked the administrative staff at my institution, and they told me to proceed as I saw fit. Should I ask a more specific justification? In what form?

Just because the medical appointment was not urgent doesn't mean it could have easily been at a different date. Medical doctors can also be very busy, and if saying no to a proposed appointment time means postponing the appointment by a month or more, it might be medically sound to schedule it during an exam anyway. However, she could of course have informed you in advance if that's the case.

Also, in your system, what are the consequences of failing her? Does it mean she has to quite her studies? Be delayed by a year? In The Netherlands students failing an exam can simply take the next regular exam. The consequences of failing are quite important for the decision on what to do.

Why don't you just ask the student if the appointment was urgent or just scheduled?

@gerrit To be clear: if she tells me upfront that the appointment was scheduled, and she didn't care to ask me how to work around the issue beforehand (but only showed up after the fact), I will fail her for sure. I would consider it a completely inappropriate behavior.

I'll also go ahead and say it - in my mind, a professor has no business asking "why" behind someone's medical care. It has a very high chance of going rather badly, but you in the seat of deciding what's "sick enough", etc.

@Fomite Agreed. Doctor-patient confidentiality is important. Some have medical histories that they would rather not discuss with anyone, and that goes doubly for having to discuss it as justification; that's not really fair to the examined.

@F'x: I'm usually pretty liberal about medical excuses, especially the first time.  However, I have also told students that a doctor's note was not enough; I needed a letter from the doctor stating that the student was medically unable to take the exam at the specified date and time.  I do not need to know the reasons; that's between doctor and patient.  The doctor with the very busy schedule might decide that "busy schedule" means medically unable, and that's OK.  What's important is for a medical professional to decide.

@BobBrown a note is not enough? If I were a doctor, I'd reply to you with something like this letter from a doctor in Canada. http://twentytwowords.com/canadian-doctors-perfect-response-to-employers-who-require-doctors-notes-for-sick-days/

Jeremy's link (above) fixed: https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/2ow0ee/canadian_drs_reply_to_companies_requiring_medical/

Is there an easy way to indicate that the appointement was urgent? Wben my doctor writes me a note, he never indicates this -- there is no "checkbox" for urgent and how should he know that some instructor cares about the urgentness?

It seems you have the answer with regard to procedure. The question now is what you should do in terms of "fairness" or ethics.
Educators and students should approach the work from the same perspective - for the student to learn. Academics should not be punitive, nor should they be a race to the bottom between the "good kids" who do everything right and hand their work in on time and the "slackers" or "hot messes" who can't seem to get anything in on time (flanked by the excuse-makers who suffer heavily from the Dunning-Kruger effect). The most pleasurable students to teach are those who truly care about the subject matter. Unfortunately, a lot of students forget this and are instead overwhelmed by the stress of grades, lack of structure, etc.
Your best bet is to have a frank discussion with the student. Is she currently in danger of failing the class? Is she a borderline case? Whatever you do, don't assume that she's being manipulative. Instead, tell her that you would like to reschedule, but you're concerned that this might happen again. Ask her how she thinks she's doing in the class and what she would like to have happen. From there, talk options. Does she have the option to just drop the class (at most places, faculty can get around deadlines rather easily)? What is her worst case scenario? Is she prepared for the final? She should have the option to take the exam, but it might be a good opportunity to talk about actions she can take to prevent this sort of thing from happening in the future. Talk about learning from failure and taking measures to prevent this in the future. It's possible she's a pathological liar, but it's also possible that she's a kid who needs more guidance navigating the adult world.
No matter what, you ought to give her a chance to take the exam again and open communication about her status in your class. Invite her to your office hours to talk and tell her to email you back if she can't make it. If she fails to respond, then you have to fail her, but making sure that it's an emotionally neutral experience is probably your best bet.

@Ben It's absurd to decide what to do based on her behaviour before understanding what caused this behaviour. None of us are entirely responsible for what we do. Genes, culture and context all have a much greater influence on what we think and do than anything else. Furthermore, even if the student is indeed a flake (crazy or eccentric), that doesn't stop you from being her teacher and being responsible for her education inside your classroom.

@Shawn And you extend that behaviour to all students who fail a class, I'm sure, not only to those who offer an inappropriate reason?

@sgf I'd say you extend this behaviour to everyone as much as possible, this line of reasoning applies pretty much everywhere in life

In my experience dealing with these types of things correctly takes more time and effort then letting them slide. Continue scheduling exam times for her until she takes the exam or the incomplete automatically converts to a fail. I would even reuse the last remediation exam instead of making a new exam. I would only schedule the exam at times that are convenient for me.

Excellent answer.  People can and do have legitimate medical emergencies.  Assume the medical need was both sensitive and an emergency (for example, emergency medical treatment for rape).  Don't talk about it except a sympathetic I hope you are feeling better.

The good thing about this answer is that if the student still fails the course, then it is entirely her fault.  She can't blame you for not giving her another chance.  However, she might have gotten some tips from those who did take the remediation exam, and giving the same exam to her would give her an unfair advantage.

My problem is that she's got more time to prepare for the remediation exam than other students who already took it.

@scaaahu yes she is potentially gaming the system and getting an unfair advantage. I just don't think it is worth the effort to prevent it.

This is the "safest and easiest" course for the professor: no risks for challenging the medical issue, no risks for giving a different exam. It's imho not the most fair course though: a new exam should be fine, but since she had a bit more time, it could "randomly" be  a bit harder, too.

I'm not entirely in agreement with putting up a harder exam because you suspect the student is putting up a false excuse. The truly fair and ethical thing to do would be to denounce a doctor for providing a false statement and the student for breaching what's most likely a fault in the code of conduct.
Giving her a harder exam, just because of a hunch is unfair if she truly had a medical condition. If the student was really sick, she probably wasn't able to prepare better and is physically/mentally at a disadvantage due to said illness.

@EstebanBrenes I agree.  Too make it truly fair, you would have to force rich students to skip meals before the exam and inject all the healthy students with the same diseaes plagueing the sick students.  Or you could just concede life is unfair.

@DanielE.Shub: I was also thinking that this is just a way to get more time to study, "Gaming the system", but then I realized, schools is about teaching.  When they know the material, they pass.  If they don't they fail.  Why is speed part of that?  For projects and homework they can do on their own time I understand time limits as a measurement.  But for an exam?  If they study more and learn the stuff good for them!

@EstebanBrenes: No, the truly fair thing to do is to fail the student.  Giving one student extra time to take an exam, absent extreme circumstances, puts them at an unfair advantage over other students.  ["Wait, why does she get to take the exam late?  I could've gotten an A if I'd had another month to study.  Uh... I was sick.  I had lupus, yeah, lupus, that's the ticket (cough cough)."]  Students have all the time on the world to learn the material; this student is asking for extra time to improve their grade.  Not the same thing.

@JeffE, it's not unfair if both students with the same circumstances get the same amount of time. It's no less fair than allowing other students to finish their exams after the first person has handed theirs. After all, you're giving them extra time. Why does that case slip under the radar, then? You overestimate the benefits that extra time could give a student.

@EstebanBrenes That's a false analogy; you're comparing apples and oranges.  The student who finishes early is not being denied extra time.  He chooses not to use existing time already provided to him.  The other students are similarly not being granted extra time relative to the early finisher.  They all always had the exact same amount of time.  Both to prepare for their examinations and to complete it. They all operate within the provided constraints.

@zibadawatimmy, honestly the distinction is really irrelevant. The other students also had the opportunity to get sick, however, they choose not to get sick and instead take the exam at the scheduled time. The fact that the entire class didn't claim sickness to improve their grade shows that there's really no benefit; which is what I was trying to illustrate with my rather loose and abbreviated example. The core point being that if you're sick or ill; that extra time is non-existent hence it doesn't invalidate the constraints.

@JeffE who exactly are you to decide what is an extreme enough illness that lets someone retake exams? If a student has a real/valid note/university-appropriate forms, from a real doctor, that's the end of the discussion.

@mbrig I’m the instructor of record; it’s my responsibility to make a judgement call. Fortunately, there is an appeals process; if my department head or dean instructs me to offer a makeup exam, then I will of course  offer a makeup exam.

As a student, if my classmates are sick, I am more than happy for them if they can take the exam later even if they have more time. At least in my part of the world, students think this way, I believe.

I would allow rescheduling, but be sure to use a different exam.
As some other answers indicated, one probably does not want to get embroiled in the details of the student's medical situation, and it may be inappropriate, besides. (I think it would be illegal in the U.S. to ask for details beyond a general note from the doctor.) Thus, one simply cannot have the information to know whether missing the exam was frivolous or not.
With regard to communication, yes, in principle one imagines that the student would have been able to contact you in advance to explain that (s)he'd miss the exam. But, again, without prying, one cannot know.
Yes, the odds may be good that the situation is due to student negligence than medical emergencies... and we should hope so, in the larger scheme of things. But, since we cannot be sure, my choice would be to treat the situation as a medical emergency, whose details I will not know. And allow further exam retake.
As to whether allowing further exam retakes is fair to the students who've managed to do things on schedule... if there was a genuine medical emergency, we are attempting to compare incomparables. If not, my consolation is that, in my experience, students who miss exams due to their own negligence or disorganization similarly fail to "profit" by extra chances.
Thus, I take claims of medical/personal emergencies at face value, and do not restrict re-takes of exams.

+1. I would like to comment that when I was in school, retakes of exams were always more difficult under the assumption that at least some of the people getting a doctor's note for the sniffles just want more time to prepare, or maybe want to hear from their peers the sort of material presented. After the policy was implemented, there were remarkably fewer doctors' notes presented for excuse due to illness (and no related increase in illness outbreaks on campus.)

At the university where I teach, a student who fails to show up for a registered exam will be given a failing grade unless he or she presents a medical excuse. I suspect it works similar where you are (given the system you're describing).
In this case, I think your best bet is to offer an additional remediation exam, but also indicate that there is a time limit to the extensions she can take—if she has not passed the exam by the end of the semester, a "did not take" or failing grade is to be submitted instead, as appropriate.

When I was in this situation, I just allowed the student to reschedule, but that the exam format would change to an oral exam.
I've found (after a bit of practice) that oral exams are a great way of deciding grades or making pass/fail decisions.  I even started to use them in my regular assessments.
The content of the oral exam should be based on the remediation exam that the student missed, but can be more free-ranging in terms of what extra questions you can ask.
I also suggest allowing the student to have a companion present in the exam room. The companion can be there, but cannot speak (unless asked by you). Many students get freaked out by oral exams if they haven't done them before, so allowing a trusted companion to be there often (somewhat) alleviates their stress.

I'm completely puzzled by the “companion” suggestion. I mean, my 3-year old still goes to school with his teddy bear, but I don't suppose I have to accommodate a 20+-year old student for their fear of oral interrogation. In two years, she will have to find a job, and I don't suppose she can ask friends to sit in her job interviews :)

@F'x - To many people, oral exams and job interviews are two completely different things (for one, job interview questions are more often subjective rather than objective, like exam questions usually are), and trigger two completely different emotional responses. For example, I can do a job interview just fine, and be relaxed the whole time, but I'm often shaking from nerves by the end of an oral exam and far more nervous going into it.

@Shauna they shouldn't be… I believe they really exercise the same qualities in a person

nice!
this reduces the workload of the teacher (in preparing a new exam) and is arguably more difficult (adressing the fairness issue)

@F'x: It's a completely cover-your-ass issue: particularly if the student is a different gender from the examiner, you want a witness to see that things are above-board.  I stated it from the student's perspective, because I really have seen grown men (college students) cry when trying to answer relatively basic questions in front of a whiteboard.

@PeterK. it's really sad. I do hold one-on-one oral exams now and then with students, and if the venue is relatively quiet, I will leave the door open for this very purpose… but only if that's reasonably possible

@F'x - What you believe and how a person actually reacts are two totally different things. And they may exercise the exact same skills, but the environment and circumstances are different, and can be different enough to cause a different stress response. Pavlovian-like responses have nothing to do with logic and intellect.

Oral exams are not a fair method. For a neurotypical socially adept student it will only be slightly harder, but for anyone with social anxiety or performance anxiety, or a host of other conditions, it will massively increase the difficulty. Examples: Hearing impediment, smaller short-term memory, language differences, etc. Having a written copy of the question to refer to and the ability to make attempts and think about the question before committing to an answer are a significant help and you're denying the student those.

@JKreft Absolute rubbish. I’m hearing impaired and have no problem. There is always a written version to refer to, so that all students get the same information.

@PeterK. You're confusing "your personal experience" with "everyone's experience". Not all oral exams come with a written copy of the question.  (and in general, most true oral examinations include follow-up questions.) You're not the only hearing impaired person in the world and many of them have had difficulties with oral exams unless precautious were specifically taken to alleviate that problem.

@JKreft Not really. I’ve taken advice from many academics in Europe where oral exams are the norm, and dealing with the things you suggest is a solved problem. I was personalizing it to me to help you understand.

Our disability experts disagree. The problem with polling colleagues is that they're experts in their field, not experts in pedagogy or how disabilities interact with it. You'd get a very different answer if you surveyed a group of people trained in education who specialize in disabilities in education. Even if you presume that oral exams can be done completely fairly, you're missing the point of my comment  which was that using one as a makeup for a written exam is unfair because of the increased difficulty of an oral exam over a written one especially for non-typical students.

Ok. In that case, I see your comment as a very, very small percentage of students. Most such students I have come across work with the university office dedicated to supporting them and make their wishes clear, including problems with assessment types, durations, and timings. You seem to be talking about those who don’t make their wishes clear.

To answer your last question, Should I ask a more specific justification?, I think not.
If you do so, it may constitute a case of intrusion of privacy. She has the right to not tell you any details. And it does not matter what form the justification is. Besides, you might not be able to verify it.
If I were you, I would fail her. You did everything you could including announcement in advance and the administration allows to do so.
Also, you need to look at this issue from other student's perspective. It's not fair to them if you allow her more chances because she would have more time to prepare for the remediation exam than other students who already took it.
Edit
Everybody deserves a second chance. The first line of this question, I have a student who failed at my exam three months ago. I suspect that's why the remediation exam was there for.
In the OP's question, the student missed it without prior warning. She wants it back. It's her responsibility to convince the prof that she has good execuse for missing it. However, nothing indicates that it was an urgent need on her document. The prof wasn't convinced that she had a good reason. So, he asked the question, can he request for more info? He really shouldn't because of privacy concern. The burden is on the student's shoulder, not the prof's.
I would agree that in the general cases, the prof should not fail the student just because of his/her medical conditions. However, in the OP's question, it was a remediation exam already. IMO, one is enough. You missed it. Do you have a good reason? No?

I don't see how it is not fair to the other students. They earned the grades they earned. Even if this extra time means the student goes from an F to an A, the devaluation of the other students marks is trivial. If the student only goes from an F to a C, which seems much more likely, the devaluation is even less.

@DanielE.Shub The exam was already a remediation. If it were a regular exam, I would consider a remediation exam for her and other students who had failed.

I quite disagree with failing her. For all we know the doctor's appointment couldn't be moved. Appointments may involve meeting several specialists in one go and moving those could mean moving it for months — which may be a bad idea if a medical situation progresses negatively.

Students who wish to use their medical conditions as justification for failing to meet the standard terms of assessment have no right of privacy. This should not be a concern.

@JackAidley That is an absurd statement.

If I understand correctly, your student had previous knowledge of her appointment, and I do agree that perhaps it was an appointment that was hard to get (some doctors or conditions may justify it).
I agree that you should not pry, and respect her privacy, and she is entitled not to tell you.
Now, that said, it seems as it was not a medical emergency, so she had full knowledge at least a day ahead of said appointment. If we were living in 1970/80s with no cellphones/email/sms, etc, she might have some justification on not notifying you. But we are not, she should have sent an email (out of sole courtesy for the time you already set apart so she does not fail).
If it were me, I would fail her, it gives 2 messages, you should do well on your first try and, if given a second chance, you cannot get really picky, it also teaches to respect other people's times. (Oh my, three lessons in one go, that is more of what she gets if you keep giving her chances)

"it seems as it was not a medical emergency" but we can't be sure.

I've had friends in this situation -- the thing about medical problems is that some of them are quite chronic (and thus, what happened before could happen again), as opposed to the one-time medical emergency that the system seems designed for.
Compound this with the hardness of getting THAT doctor for THAT date to prevent medications from running out or to avoid being dropped by that doctor, and even a prescheduled appointment becomes a non-neogitable enterprise (although if that were the case, I'd think she could have warned you!)
Let her retest, but I see no need to redo the exam unless you have reason to believe she is using this as a way to cheat or otherwise buy time.
If she does it again, well... you can keep retesting, but I've known professors that failed someone for less. At that point I think it's more a case of whether you like this student enough not to autofail her for something unrelated to the actual material.

While the involved doctor most certainly is not allowed to tell you why she was there, I wouldn't be too surprised if they (or their receptionist) might confirm if the appointment was made long ago or not. That will of course not protect you from them being somehow related to your student and lie, but it's hopefully unlikely.
edit As mentioned in the comments, the doctor/receptionist is not obliged to provide any information and may refuse to do so for their own sake. You could ask your student for a prove if she claims it was not planned long ago, but then again, in dubio pro reo.
You could ask her to either wait until the next year's exam (if possible), or invite her to an oral exam quite soon - after all, the visit to the doctor is supposed to have been spontaneous, so she should be prepared enough to manage that while you can infer whether the student was trying to gain time or not.
And while it would suck to later learn she lied, it would suck even more if you turned out to be wrong. She'll have enough other exams to prove her honesty, I suspect.

If I were the involved medical doctor, I would not release any information pertaining to my patients unless my patient asks me to do so. I would argue that the student should ask the doctor to call the prof. See my updated answer.

@scaaahu That's a good alternative. I'll edit that in, too

She's had plenty of opportunities to study and prepare for the exam.  My response would be something like "Have a seat and take the exam now."  There's no reason for you to be at all flexible about rescheduling and no excuse that the student can have for not immediately taking the exam.  Having the student take (and most likely fail) the exam would settle the issue once and for all.

The student in question had already failed the exam once, (and would thus most likely fail on a second attempt.)  The "medical issue" wasn't an excuse for the original exam that the student failed, but rather  an excuse for missing the scheduled second attempt.  My suggestion was that rather than refusing the student another chance to retake the exam, the student should be given one last  chance to retake the exam immediately- there's no reason to draw this out further.

Why do you assume that the student fails the exam most likely only because she failed once before? By this reasoning, why does your institution allow to take an exam twice? Moreover, the student could have something different to do in the next hour (and you also) - only because she once had a medical problem she does not lose all her rights immediately. I do think that under some circumstances, for example if the student got raped, and you force her to sit still and take an exam, you could end up in the newspaper as very inhumane professor, so be careful!

In my school, redo exams have a maximum grade of the minimum grade to pass. The idea is that if a student can't pass the first time, they best they can do is 'just pass' and not more. For medical reasons, maybe consider the first redo an actual first attempt. However, the latest seems like a bit more than reasonable (someone that sick should stop attending classes and focus on her health).
So, I would give her another exam but her maximum grade would be the minimum passing grade.

I grew up from the same system as your school. I wonder if the OP's location allows such rule redo exams have a maximum grade of the minimum grade to pass.

In case anybody wonders what system I had been in. Those students who's got 60 points or more out of 100 are considered pass. Those who's got 50-59 will be given a redo exam (only once). Those who pass the redo exam will get 60. Those who fail or miss the redo exam will fail. Those who fail the redo exam or got <50 in the first place will have to retake the class. A very fair deal to me.

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


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How do you address unknown peers in email?
This is one bit of academic etiquette I'm not sure about. When I write to another researcher, a peer (we're both professors). I've never exchanged with before and never met him but I know of him (and he probably knows of me).
Erring on the side of formality, I write to him “Dear professor Mortimer”. I sign with my first name, because that's how I've always signed my emails (there's a formal signature block below, with full name and contact details) and I think it indicates a willingness to be called by my first name (which I prefer, but I don't want to force people one way or the other).
Is that going to be well received? Will people take the hint? Or should I just start using first names from the start? (it does sound weird to write “dear Philipp” to someone you don't know)

You might refer to my answer to a similar question.

@earthling indeed, we follow the same convention… but does it work? do people usually take your hint?

@F'x I find it depends on the culture but for the most part, yes, people do take the hint.

It is of course never wrong to use the title of the person to whom you write. In general I think it is fine to use Dr. since that is the degree most have. This may not work so well in cultures where titles are more of an obsession or where hierarchy is still well established. If the person writing is a professor, then you are of course writing from the top position and so you will either direct letters to someone at the same level or lower. This simplifies things compared to if you, yourself were not at the professor level.
As an editor of a journal I often use the term Colleague instead of Dr. this or Professor that. This is because the tile may not be completely obvious from the manuscript and I do not permit myself time to Google every author to find out. Since I am also a professor, it feels relatively safe to call everyone a colleague.
To sign off I often use my first name except if the mail has some formal aspect where, if it was a letter, I would have used my full name. In all my e-mail correspondence, I have found almost without exception, that once I sign with my first name, the mail reply will inevitably greet me by first name and be signed by a first name. I try to be a little sensitive about it but not overly so; I have "my" culture, the person I correspond with his or hers and none is above the other in my view. So In any correspondence I will open the first mail with Dear Colleague or Dear Dr. So-and-so. If the response is signed by first name then: titles away. Otherwise I will countersign correspondence with first name to break the ice.
It seems e-mail is often more forgiving than regular letters or traditional contacts. I think internet has an informal context which implicitly signals to everyone that it is less formal. I have not seen research on this but I can see, for example how students can ask quite blunt questions over e-mail while almost trembling and excusing themselves when standing at my office door (not that I am in any way trying to be intimidating).

Using titles may sometimes be not that easy. E.g. in Germany you would write "Sehr geehrter Herr Prof. Dr. Smith" while in other countries one never uses the "Dr." if a "Prof." is present. Moreover, I've heard that some people would even prefer to see their kind of Dr. (e.g. Dr.Ing.).
In cases I am not sure about the title I usually go for the full name, i.e. start with "Dear James Smith,". If you know the full name this is not wrong and I think only very few people will mind if no titles are given.

There are people who would mind you using Dr. instead of Dr.Ing., but who would not mind you not using titles at all? The mind boggles…

Actually, in Germany, both "Frau Professor Smith" and "Frau Prof. Dr. Smith" could equally be used without problem.

@aeismail That's true, indeed.

@F'x Indeed confusing. However, omission of some postfix of a title may get percieved as "he thinks I am a ordinary Dr. but I am a Dr.Whatever.!"


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What is the difference between department and faculty?
Some universities have independent departments, but some put departments under supervision of a faculty. For instance, a university has fifty independent departments, but another has 5 faculties containing departments. In the former, the Dean of Faculty is intermediate between the department chairs and the university administration.
I understand that most of these structures come from the university history, but how these structures affect the department performance, and why universities prefer different structures, instead of a standard one (which should be most efficient).
For example, what is the different of Department of Computer Science in one university, and Department of Computer Science in another university which is part of Faculty of Engineering?

As a rule, universities in the US don't have sub-organizations called "faculties"; we generally call them "colleges".  The academic employees (instructors, researchers, and academic administrators) constitute the faculty.

@JeffE I know that in the US terminology, college or school are used; but my question, in general, is about the pros and cons of having such sub-organizations, regardless of their names.

@JeffE: Harvard has a Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

The distinction between "faculty," "department," and "school" depends a lot on where you are. As Peter suggests in his answer, a faculty can be a collection of "departments." However, a faculty in Germany (for instance) consists of a number of "chairs," each of which is closer to a professorship in a department than an actual "department." Thus, the faculty is effectively halfway between the American "department" and "faculty" in its function, as it combines some of the hierarchy and responsibilities of each.
The reason for having multiple subdivisions is that there are often many university functions—including personnel and budget decisions, facilities management, teaching, and so on—that can vary widely across the entire university, but significantly less among certain departments that have a similar focus. For these departments, it makes sense to combine these duties in a central administration, rather than duplicate the effort across multiple departments.

I quite like this answer, except for the comparison to "an actual 'department'". "department" is a very vaguely defined term in general, and in particular, its definition (or various variants thereof) is being discussed in this very question, so using the term as a point of reference is confusing. Maybe "a 'department' as used by many American universities" would be less ambiguous. (The background of this comment is that various German universities indeed split "Fakultäten" ("faculties") into several "Institute" ("institutes"), each of which can contain one or more chairs/groups, each ...

... headed by one professor. In that nomenclature, "Abteilung" ("department") is sometimes used as a synonym for "Institut" ("institute"), and sometimes as a synonym for "chair"/"group" (but never as a synonym for "Fakultät"). Thus, the statement "a faculty can be a collection of 'departments.'" would fully apply, somewhat contradicting the "However, a faculty in Germany" in the next sentence.)

The faculty is a collection of departments. In my system we have the Faculty of Sciences, Law, Humanities, and Social Sciences. In addirions there can be Faculty of Theology, Arts, Languages, Educational Science, Medicine, Pharmacy and probably many others.
The term Faculty is known from the University in Paris already in medieval times. It was a way in which major fields distinguished themeselves from a genral body of learning. The faculties of Philosophy, Law, Theology and Medicine can be found back to the 13th century. As the universities grew and knowledge became more specialized departments started to form within these faculties and we now have the system of faculties as an administrative level in many university systems. Departments are, however, relatively modern creations from the late 19th century.

Sometimes using one word or another is seen as more prestigious or as more independent than another. In one place I was at, they made a big deal of changing their name from "Department of Computer Science" to "School of Computer Science".
Similarly, some people perceive one Faculty as more prestigious for the purposes of undergraduate recruiting. In many Universities in North America, computer science moved from "science" to "engineering" and my father perceived that computer science departments in "engineering" were more promising than those in "science" (as at the time engineers made more money and had more job opportunities than scientists). Of course, the real reason that this happens is often a question of autonomy, funding, and mutual interests behind the scenes.
In the end, the question of "For example, what is the difference of Department of Computer Science in one university, and Department of Computer Science in another university which is part of Faculty of Engineering?" is very, very difficult to answer and I would argue that the differences are much more dependent on the actual "department" than on what faculty/college/administrative area it's under. In North America, most departments (especially computer science departments) are relatively autonomous and do not rely heavily on their college for assistance - it's simply a bureaucratic layer through which funds go through.

In the Nigerian University system, a college has several faculties under it. A college is headed by an elected provost while an elected dean heads a faculty. Departments are under the faculties with an acting or substantive head (HOD).

In Spain, "Faculties", "Schools" and "Departments" (literally facultades, escuelas and departamentos) are legally defined in articles 8 and 9 of the "Organic Law" (ley orgánica) that governs universities. One might summarize (paraphrasing the law) the technical distinction as that faculties/schools (these are essentially equivalent) are charged with organizing teaching and academic processes, while departments are charged with realizing teaching and academic processes. What a department teaches is determined by the faculty/school in which it teaches, but how it teaches the material is determined by the department. The power to create or destroy faculties/schools resides with the regional government, while the power to create or destroy departments resides with the university. A faculty has a Dean (decano), a school has a School Director (functionally equivalent to a dean), and a department has a Departmental Director. A department can belong to several schools/faculties in the same university (for instance a mathematics department can be responsible for the teaching of math in several different engineering schools in the same university, although there are also universities in which each school has its own mathematics department). While the overall organization is similar in concept to what one finds in US universities, it is more rigid in the sense that the powers, competencies and responsibilities associated with each administrative structure are fixed by law.

Around here (Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María in Chile), we had "facultades" under a dean, some 10. For example, chemistry had chemistry (the science), chemical engineering and later (as an offshot from chemical engineering and mechanical engineering, mostly by historical reasons) materials science. Others, like electricity had just electrical engineering, and science had mathematics and physics. Around 1975 it was reorganized into three "facultades", engineering, science and business administration (the last was essentially an external institution under the umbrella of UTFSM for legal reasons relating to the right to grant professional degrees). Note that science had three departments (mathematics, physics and chemistry) while engineering had some eleven. Around 1990 the "facultades" were dissolved, and we have just departments. The Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez (essentially the business administration "facultad") had regained its independence before. Our current departments are more or less the "facultades" up to the seventies.
As you see, this is mostly an internal organization issue, which very well can change, and names vary.

Faculty is equivalent to College. For example, Faculty of Science contains several departments e.g. Department of Biology, Dept. of Chemistry, etc. This is the same as College of Arts and Science which have several departments e.g. Biology, Physics, etc.

Did you read the comments under the question?

I don't think this is true in all cases. As described in aeismail's answer, this is strongly location-dependent. Here at CMU, if you told someone you were in the "faculty of computer science", they would have no idea what you're talking about.

authors: Νικολέτα Σεβαστού


text:
Supervised self-study
Imagine an education model in which teacher/supervisor/mentor does not teach the syllabus to students. Instead, just pushing them towards key topics, and students must study by themselves. The teacher only control/supervise students to keep studying in right direction, but no professional teaching.
This is something like supervising academic research projects at graduate level.
I am curious if there is a pedagogical model/category/method of this kind for education (at lower levels)? For example, is there any example for teaching by this method in any school or university around the world? If yes, what is it called? I had no appropriate keyword to search for it.

Nice question. I believe it largely depends to the level of students (the course level). First year students need more teaching than supervising.

@seteropere definitely, it depends on the level. I am just curious if a model of this kind is used for any course at any level. There are approaches, but I have not seen any serious consideration. For example, delivering a main course by this method.

Is this the kind of method you were wondering about? http://www.ascd.org/publications/newsletters/education_update/dec95/vol37/num09/Student-Directed_Learning.aspx

I would love to study in such a department

Problem-based learning is one approach that fits your description. From wikipedia

Problem-based learning (PBL) is a student-centered pedagogy in which students learn about a subject through the experience of problem solving. Students learn both thinking strategies and domain knowledge. The goals of PBL are to help the students develop flexible knowledge, effective problem solving skills, self-directed learning, effective collaboration skills and intrinsic motivation. Problem-based learning is a style of active learning.

A related approach is inquiry-based learning, which allows the idea to be used on a much smaller scale than problem-based learning, which, based on what I have read, tends to be rather resource intensive and require vast amounts of planning from the teaching staff.

very nice approach. I know this can be very effective for CS students not sure about the other fields.

PBL is usually too specialized (on a narrow topic of a specific problem) to fill the syllabus of a course. It would be interesting, if there is a course somewhere which is taught by PBL scheme.

@ALL: do you mean course or degree programme? There are plenty of individual courses taught using PBL. These cover CS, engineering, medical disciplines, and possibly more. Let Google be your guide.

@DaveClarke I mean course, but core courses, not elective.

As a matter of fact, I think there is not enough trust in this method comparing with traditional methods. Thus, universities do not take the risk to use such innovative methods to alter the safe traditional system. Such method are more supportive than be part of the main system. To my knowledge, of course.

Apparently, problem-based learning is very common in Finland.

Actually, renowned Maastricht University's College uses PBL for ALL their courses! http://www.maastrichtuniversity.nl/web/Schools/UCM/TargetGroup/ProspectiveStudents1/ProblemBasedLearning.htm

Some students (medicine) I know had PBL courses. They complained that PBL was very inefficient: The bottomline was that it would have been a good supplement (like excercises) to normal courses, but it is not a good replacement for proper lectures.

At the Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, NY, USA. There are two ways in which this can happen. We have an independent study in which the student will learn about a topic with some guidance from a professor and write a paper about it, this has a broad variety of possibilities only some may fall into your category. One thing that everyone does is a senior design or capstone project where there is generally a faculty adviser but the student works to apply what you he or she has learned and present at the end of the year. This is in many ways similar working on a thesis, but as an undergraduate will take less time and be less intense. This is used in at least in the engineering school and physics department.
There is somewhat a third way, but does not contribute to the students transcript unless the student specifically does an internship for a research group. This is undergraduate research, and the student will contribute to research projects ongoing at the university that have faculty overseeing. In this scenario you may be mentored more by graduate students than faculty or staff.


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How to find the leading researchers in a new field
I'm in computer sciences, in applied Machine Learning. I often have to switch applications and I find it cumbersome trying to discern the really good and bad works by doing a large survey.
Whenever you are new in a field, how would you direct your survey to find the people doing seminal work in the area, for example in the specific case of Latent Dirichlet Allocation in Computer Science, you can always go to a 2003 paper by Blei, Jordan and Ng. While if you are a seasoned researcher of the area, you already know this paper is relevant, how a newcomer would find such paper?
Do you ask experts in the area? Do you go by number of citations (I often find this deceptive, particularly in Bioinformatics)
I'm interested in this because I'm switching applications now, and I would like to know which group's work I should be following or which person's papers I should be reading.

Leon, I'm afraid the question as currently worded is awfully  subjective. The “people doing most of the interesting work” will just not be the same depending whom you ask: what's interesting to you might not be to me, what's groundbreaking to you might be purely conjectural to me, etc. If you're asking “what's a good metric of ‘interesting work’”, I don't think it fits the format. Maybe you can reword it to ask something closer to “what are metrics other than h-index to measure ‘influence’ in the academic world?”, which fits the site better (I think).

Voted to close as not constructive.

The question is IMHO relevant and I see its point, though needs to be reformulated. I vote for not closing this question. Will try to answer as well.

In my opinion an answer that "especially in such cases the "leaderships" is subjective" is an objective answer. I vote to reopen. Not for everyone it needs to be obvious.

@PiotrMigdal it's not an answer to the question asked (how). The question is subjective, and we don't judge the answers, but the question :)

@F'x True. Perhaps I have some scripts in my mind which automatically stackify a question (and in general, I prefer to first reformulate and close if only if it cannot be reformulated or the author opposes it). The question itself touches an important and interesting issue (but yes, in the current form it is hardly answerable).

@PiotrMigdal IMHO, most researchers are looking for solutions/problems that are not found yet. Thus, every researcher is leading in his own topic in that sense. Although comparing the research results is still somewhat subjective, but it would be more answerable than saying who are leading, particularly in a new field. Every researcher is leading to a different direction (frontier) in a young field. Only time can tell who are leading to the right solutions.

Everyone, thanks for the useful comments, I edited the question to try and make it more concise. I hope it works this way.

Problem is that you hamstrung yourself by eliminating the only correct strategy: doing a long literature survey yourself. You wish to rely on proxies, and sometimes surveys can do that for you, but other people's opinions of "good" and "bad" are just that: opinions.
The only way to really get a sense of good and bad is to read a LOT, think a lot about what you read, discuss with people who might know more about the area, think a lot more, read more, and repeat.

I've learnt than relying only on doing long literature surveys by myself was a bad idea (and I've learnt it the hard was; a few times). The reason is that you can easily miss a pearl just because it has not key works you are looking for, or is older, or is not cited enough (there is no way to lookup most citations at more that 1 level).

very true: hence the "discuss with people" part :). I do that even now at conferences to get a sense of what's going on in different areas that I can't monitor myself.

Well, one slightly unorthodox method for finding these might be to find the "society" representing the field, and find who their recent award winners are—particularly if they have "young investigator" awards that will recognize work considered to be of significant impact.
The relative advantage of this approach is that it it represents the consensus of people working in a given field; the disadvantage is that the consensus may be of only a handful of members on a committee. But these are people who in principle should know the ins and outs of their field better than most.

I don't understand the downvote.  Could the downvoter please comment?

I guess the answer was too unorthodox. . . .

My personal technique is to read the introduction to a number of research papers and find the most commonly cited papers/authors/author groupings. This will tell you who is the most "influential", i.e. whose work is driving the field and causing others to perform research branching of their original findings. This is similar to examining publication count, but more useful in that you can see how broadly the citations are applied, and judge from context whether the citation has merit.

IMHO, the research work should be around good publications not good "people" even if they are highly cited. In almost any field you will find introductory papers and surveys discussing the problems and the current state of the art. Those are the beginning. If you find the text referring to something interesting to you; visit the references mentioned in that section/subsection/paragraph. Also, well-known journals usually have special issue for new/hot research areas.

Practical advise is to use platforms such as "ScienceDirect" or "Web of Knowledge". If you have institutional access, you can read every journal of a selected field. By the time you will read the same names repeatedly. Also helpful is to look through conference-papers and other documents prepared for conferences.


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Presenting the publications of a research group online
I'm looking for advice on presenting the research publications of my group on our webpage. Most groups seem to go with a simple publication list, sorted by year and maybe publication type. But there are also more elaborate implementations up to browseable publication directories (e.g., http://www.math.rutgers.edu/~sontag/papers.html ). What would be your recommendation for creating an online presence for research publications that is

informative and useful for readers,
visually pleasant, and
easy to maintain for us?

I'd also be interested in links to websites that you see as role models for this issue.

If you use Drupal, see http://squobble.blogspot.com/2013/09/new-drupal-web-site-for-our-research.html

Related: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/719/tool-to-manage-and-or-make-available-a-list-of-my-publications-on-the-web

You could use BibBase.org. It's a free web service that I created with the aim to solve the problem you describe. I was originally motivated by the third point (easy to maintain). As input you can use a bibtex file, Zotero, or Mendeley, and unlike bib2html you don't need to rerun any program after making changes to your input. Visitors can resort by different criteria (author, year, keyword, number of downloads, type), get the bibtex source entry (even when not using bibtex as input), and subscribe to an RSS. Here is an example: http://www.isi.edu/integration/karma/#publication
(Disclaimer: I'm the creator of BibBase.)

My dreamed interface puts on the left a list of topics, a list of authors and possibly some other list (venue, maybe). Clicking on them filters the papers that appear on the right.
The papers on the right are in a table that can be sorted by year or title (or possibly something else, number of cites to that paper maybe). On each row there are two icons, one is a PDF icon that leads to the PDF file, the other one is a TeX icon that leads to a GIT repository with the TeX source.
All this can be done (for instance) in Javascript with the data coming from a JSON file that would be the only thing you would need to update to maintain this, so it's quite maintainable. This is my dream. Reality is very far from it, but it may serve as inspiration to you.


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How to highlight the importance of past positions in CV?
When addressing the past positions in a resume, although titles somewhat describes the role, they cannot clarify the importance of positions.
For example, listing a past position of department chair indicates administrative duties at department level, but it depends on the department. Definitely, chairing a small department with a few faculty members and annual enrollment of 30 undergraduate students is different from a well-funded department with tens of senior faculty members and several PhD programs. However, if a reader does not know that specific department, the term department chair is the same.
This is even more serious when it comes to differences in terminology. In a university, a faculty can be equal to a department, and somewhere else a faculty can be in the size of a university hosting several large departments. Even terms of mid-level administrative positions in academia do not always have the same meaning: e.g., dean, director, chair, head.
How do you fairly clarify the importance of the job you had?
It is possible to add a description, but as it is not very common, it may cause an impression of overestimation.

I think you are making an assumption that past experience as a dean, director, chair, head is important.

@DanielE.Shub definitely when applying for an administrative position, they are crucial. Of course, the importance of any point in a CV depends on the reader (for what purpose he is reading that).

@DanielE.Shub Would you say this assumption does not correspond to the real situation?  Is such past experience not important?

If a title or position is unclear, or an institution is possibly not well known, just explain it in a few words:

Director of Supersonic Operations department (15 researchers) at Small U.
Time-management officer, Funny Inc. (in charge of scheduling company-wide meetings)
Information officer, U. of North Virginia (CTO-like position, managing computing resources for 10,000+ students and staff)

Be as concise as possible, but give the reader some idea of the scope of your activities. And if the position is clear or well-known, just don't add any details.

very practical approach!

@All in general on the SE network +1 and thank you type comments are discouraged since you thank people with votes.

@DanielE.Shub I didn't mean thank, but highlighting the type of answer, but I will follow your advice.

This is exactly as it is done in industry. Leading a team is different so you should say if you lead a team of 2 or if you lead a team of 50.

You can put a short (maybe four or five word) explanation in the CV item itself (or more if you think it's really important).  You can also give more details in your cover letter about exactly what responsibilities you had.  Another option is to ask one of your letter writers to explain; this is a common approach for things like personal reasons for wanting to leave a job, etc.