text:
What to do when other professors place unfair demands on my students?
A recent question asked how students should deal with professors who "think their class is extra special". Putting aside the question of how good students are at judging what an appropriate workload is: how should other professors handle this?
For instance, I've had students whose previous class routinely ran late, causing them to be late for mine.  I once taught a class where several students had a professor immediately before me who decided, in clear violation of university policy, that their midterm exam would take place during a double length class period, which meant that would miss my entire class (which was in fact also my midterm).  (This is slightly less crazy than it sounds, because it was a summer course.)
Let's stick to the case where the other professor is actually violating university policy.  Students are usually very reluctant to try to enforce such policies on their professors, and I don't think I could in good faith encourage them to: even when there are written policies about these things, it's often unclear how a student would go about enforcing them, it's not clear that the relevant chair, dean, or provost actually would enforce them, and there's real potential for negative repercussions to the student.
I could be inflexible, but this seems unfair to the students, who are then stuck between two inflexible authority figures.  Even if I'm right and the other is wrong, students shouldn't bear the brunt of that.
Finally, I could seek to enforce the policy on the other professor, but as mentioned, it's not clear how one does that, especially if the other professor is in a different department.  (And since it's often relatively senior professors doing this sort of thing, at that point I worry about negative repercussions.)

"Students are usually very reluctant to try to enforce such policies on their professors": Of course: it's not student's business to enforce policies. At most, they can complain, but enforcement of policies is a faculty or department's duty.

Just curious, do you administer the same number of midterms as the other professor during the semester? Or do you administer more?

Dear Henry! This is an interesting problem. Did you talk to that professor about it (in person)? This is the first thing one should do before involving any power. Just man to man talk. Much better for personal relationships at any workplace. Might be the easiest and humanly thing as well, but sadly, people often forget about this possibility!

Get a copy of the institution's rules and insist to have them enforced.

I know of one university when the time table software is linked to the lighting system, so the lights (and projector etc) are turned off in the room just after the lecture is due to finish.    (The door locks are also integrated so an unbooked room cannot be used.)

@BenCrowell As a student, I think I would say a last ten minutes is more important than a first ten minutes. There's an argument for not wanting to miss intro/context, but I would reason that "well, it's 5 minutes before he actually starts, and the first 5 minutes will be much less complex than the last 5 of this". It would be very frustrating to experience this routinely though, I've personally only had to make the decision on odd occasions.

@BenCrowell I had this situation as a student. Often, the overrun was essential information for the homework, so simply leaving was not a realistic option.

Students normally look at the clock on the wall and get very fidgety in the 1-2 minutes after time, put away things, close bags, get ready to move. Get clocks on walls, make students autonomous.

Finally, I could seek to enforce the policy on the other professor, but as mentioned, it's not clear how one does that, especially if the other professor is in a different department. (And since it's often relatively senior professors doing this sort of thing, at that point I worry about negative repercussions.)

I see no alternative to "enforcing the policy on the other professor".  Seniority does not confer the right to violate university policy.  In my opinion you should not let hypothetical concerns about your career or your tenure case stop you from standing up for your students in a situation in which policy is clearly on your side: assistant professors are university faculty, not captives who hope to be rewarded in the future for their docile behavior.
The way to bring it up is to communicate with the other professor as soon as possible.  I would recommend speaking in person or over the phone, as email renders trivial a large variety of passive-aggressive behavior: e.g., they might not respond at all, leaving you to wonder how long to wait.  If you talk to someone face-to-face they have to either be reasonable or display their unreasonableness directly to you.  How do you look another faculty member in the face and say "I'm sorry that students will be missing your midterm, but it is critical that my midterm last double its scheduled length"?  You should come to the meeting knowing the relevant policy cold.  You should bring printed copies of the policy, but only take them out if things are not going your way.
You should continue talking to this person until you have conveyed that their proposal is against the policy, is specifically detrimental to your course, and that students are being caught in the middle.  If they agree to that or at least acknowledge receipt of the information and still are intransigent, then you should end the conversation, calmly, by saying that you will have to take the situation up with the administration.
I would then bring the matter to your department head and see what is suggested.  If the faculty member is in a different department then it may be in order for the two department heads to have a discussion.  If the department head does not take ownership of the issue you should ask whether he [I happen to know that the head of the OP's department is a "he"] wants you to take up the issue with the higher administration.  If not, then as an assistant professor this may be the place to drop it, but again you should communicate clearly that policy is being violated and students are suffering.  Or you could take it up with the higher administration: I might have done that as an assistant professor.  (As a tenured associate professor I would probably do it now, and would not worry about it jeopardizing my future promotion or dealings in the department.  On the other hand, the egregious behavior you described would probably not even be attempted at my large public university.)  Tenure and promotion is not a docility contest, and "He reported a rule violation" is not a point against someone's case.  I think honestly the issue is mostly one of your own peace of mind, so act accordingly.
You certainly have my sympathies: it sounds like the other professor is being both selfish and unreasonable.  It's hard to deal with unreasonable people -- you just can't reason with them! -- and if a situation arises in which it is primarily a battle of wills, then the unreasonable person tends to take the outside track.  The fact that you care about the students and the other guy apparently really does not could indeed make you blink first.  You may for instance end up having to give a makeup exam to some of the students.  If so you should clearly document every time you do that and have the individual students vouch for you as well.

+1 for talking to the other professor first. Sometimes the other professor means well and just doesn't know that it doesn't work out for the students. For example, many profs at my university did a 15min break in the middle of a 1 1/2h lecture to give the students time to get a coffee and some fresh air. However, when the physics department moved 4km away from the math department, the 15min less between the lectures turned out to be a real problem for the students - but the profs didn't know that, because they didn't have to get to the next lecture 4km away.

"... captives who hope to be rewarded in the future for their docile behavior" pretty much applies ubiquitously at every level of academia, sadly.

@Paul: I think your assessment is too bleak.  The pressure to be docile is nearly ubiquitous in academia (and in many other careers...), but we get to decide how to respond to that.  In the current academic climate, departments are seeking to tenure the overwhelming majority of tenure-track faculty (and tenure rates are indeed very high: I would guess over 90%).  An acquired reputation of being truly difficult to work with can be problematic, but not always agreeing with other faculty is really not, in all of my experience.

Where I did my undergrad, students' complaints were common, and now the dean has a zero tolerance policy towards extending compulsory lessons or exams beyond the allocated time. It takes them only one student complain to get involved.
The most immediate action they can take is just not allow the booking of the room, which is quite effective in itself; and also talking to the professor in question. In case of repeated transgressions, they can attempt other actions, like giving that subject to another department in the following years.
So, the best way you can solve this is to get the people in power involved, and show that the students don't need to go through many hoops to get their rights enforced.
If you want to ensure enforcement you need the students, because they are the only ones who will surely know when there is a collision. Make sure they know there are channels open for them, anonymous, and swift.

As a student, I have e-mailed a professor to point out the difficulty caused by his overrun habit. I was much older than most of the class, which had two consequences:

I needed the entire scheduled 10 minutes to get to my next class.
I had enough experience to know that sending the e-mail would not affect my grade etc.

Even so, I would have welcomed support from the professor teaching the second class.

Just curious: did you try to enlist the help of the other professor?

@aeismail Not explicitly. If I remember correctly, I did copy him on my e-mail to the overrunning professor, so he would know why I was arriving late for his lectures.

Not sure whether student councils are really so unimportant at other institutions, but once again I would advice you to address a student representative from that class (or otherwise from that year). Point out the specific rules they are violating and they should know who to address and how to get the rules enforced, after all, that's a huge part of what the student council does (assuming it's in the students best interest, which this does sound like, keep in mind to always highlight the advantages for the students if the policy is enforced). The advantage is that you are not 'attacking' a colleague and the student council will never mention your name. On top of that - if played well - it will even put you on good terms with the student council (after all, by pointing out the specific policies that were violated you saved them work), which might be useful if you ever make an unintentional mistake somewhere.

In all of my experience with American universities, student councils / student associations have essentially no role to play in issues like this.  Student associations can provide a voice for students to advocate for certain changes.  In this case the rules are already as desired; the problem is that they are not being followed.  It is not the student council's role to try to get individual faculty members to follow university rules.

Agreed with Pete. At least in the case of most American universities, this would be a matter for a department chair or dean (or provost) to resolve. The student councils have no authority over faculty members. The best the student council could do would be to go to the same people you could just go to directly.

@reirab: Absolutely true, except if you go yourself you will be conceived as attaching a colleague, if the student council takes this up it will be seen as students defending themselves.

Henry,
IMO you best bet is to ask the other professor to help you out with an issue.  Explain that students are complaining that the "other professor" runs over.
The professor will then either engage with you in resolving the problem or will try not to engage.  Either way summarize the discussion back to the professor in an email and try to use the mutually agreeable solution.  You may have to try this a few times but if within one or two meetings you don't resolve the problem you can then escalate it to "upper management" with documentation of what has been tried.
If none of this works you could in clear conscious ask at the beginning of a course if your students have "that other" professor before you ad suggest that they not keep both.
Once you show the way other brave souls may follow suit and the peer pressure could evoke a behavior change where your voice could not.


text:
On the merit of text-to-speech system during manuscript writing
Background - I am an educative staff in an university. In my country, there is not a tenure system, but I can work here until the specified retired age. I am suffering from every kind of procrastination.
Situation - My lab students routinely write theses every year but in a local language other than English. I always feel extensive rewrite in addition to the language translation is necessary to submit it as a journal paper, which tempts me to the above-mentioned procrastination.
Let me ask a question to an academician who knows life-hacks well. I am thinking that a writing is a psychological battle with myself. Someone recommends me a text-to-speech (TTS) system. Would you also recommend I use TTS software? How easy is it to build such a TTS environment? Do you think such an environment encourages me to finalize those drafts?

I've edited the question on the basis that the original author liked my answer (below), so I think that interpreted correctly this is a valid question. I deleted the text that seemed to indicate they were just "shopping" for a solution, and boosted the general academic question.

I often recommend my project students use text to speech systems when writing their reports.  The part of your brain that is good at language is the speaking/listening part, not the reading/writing part.  Students often write phrases that sound obviously wrong if you just read them out aloud, and that often makes it easier to see why it is wrong.  TTS is an easy way to engage the speaking/listening part of your brain to check the output of the reading/writing part. The problem with reading it out loud to yourself is that again you are using the reading/writing part of your brain.

thanks for nice comment.

Apple devices have it built in, which I always used to use, but I have switched to using Speechify, which is more suited to this type of work.
It's helpful both in reading articles that you want to really understand deeply, and helps with editing. It is helpful to hear your work in another voice in order to be both self critical and ensure the writing flows well. But, at least in English, something that is perfectly grammatically correct in written form could sound odd when heard out-loud, so it's a good idea to not rely too heavily on TTS.

Can Speechify read Math equations ?

@Nobody I just checked and yes it does manage those alright.

I don't follow the logic of your question. It seems like you need machine translation more than text to speech. Assuming your dissertation students are a good source of material for publications you want your name on. I don't expect to publish very many of my own students' dissertations; I encourage the best to publish themselves, and try to get the ones who aspire to write publishable work to write not only in English but in Latex. Then you can focus on your own work, and just edit their articles if and when they get to that phase.
On the other hand, I have used speech to text to write sometimes, particularly when I had a typing injury. That can help.

source: Stack Exchange

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

sort: votes


text:
Importance of GPA and GRE scores for grad school admissions
I was reading the following article by Mathew Might. HOWTO: Get into grad school for science, engineering, math and computer science
I saw the following the paragraph

What doesn't matter
GPA? I don't care if it's 2.0 or 4.0. I won't even look at it. The school you went to? I'll judge you the same whether you went to Nowhere State U or a top-ten school. Transcripts? Never seen one. GREs? Irrelevant. Where you work/worked? Unless it's a research lab, it's not important. I don't think these items have much predictive capacity as to whether or not someone can complete a Ph.D.

Is Mathew Might telling the truth?
For me it's very hard believe that GPA, GRE scores and undergraduate school don't matter. I used to think that they play an extremely important role in grad school admission.

Related: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2897/will-a-good-gre-computer-science-subject-test-score-overcome-a-weak-academic-r

Is Mathew Might telling the truth? — That's an awfully provocative way to ask.  Matt is describing his own beliefs and behavior; he's not claiming that nobody cares about GPAs or GREs.

@JeffE while agreeing with you, probably the question has been badly worded, and the OP means do most of professors think this way?

I am not doing my PhD in CS or maths but based on my experience, I believe it's a yes and a no, more specifically:

I don't think these items have much predictive capacity as to whether or not someone can complete a Ph.D.

... is an accurate assessment of the situation. Being a grad student is sort of waking up in a different world, what you have done previously isn't really indicative of what you are capable of doing during your PhD. Most PIs are aware of that...

GPA? I don't care if it's 2.0 or 4.0. I won't even look at it. The school you went to? I'll judge you the same whether you went to Nowhere State U or a top-ten school. Transcripts? Never seen one. GREs? Irrelevant.

Sadly, I don't think this is all that common. How a professor chooses a student varies a lot, and I don't think your GPA etc will be irrelevant to some profs. Especially not if you are in a number-driven, cold-heart-competitive place...
What's more common however is that your grades won't be the only criteria. They will most likely not be a deal-breaker. You will most likely get a chance to explain why you did good on some courses and worse on others. Primarily you will get a chance to explain what you like to do with your career.

It is highly dependent on the program. Two programs that I applied to were polar opposites and demonstrate the variety in a very succinct way, I think.
School 1:

GPA south of 3.5? don't bother applying.
GRE quant scores south of 700(1)? don't bother applying.
Never published or fewer than 5 years professional experience? Seriously, why are you wasting our time.

School 2:

GPA north of 3.3 are preferred, GPA north of 3.5 will get preference, but we can work with you.
GRE scores should be submitted if you have them and they are still valid.
It is strongly recommended that you have relevant academic or industry experience

The only real difference between the program admissions is that school 1 accepted baccalaureates on a straight path to PhD and school 2 requires a recent masters degree in one of a few rather specific fields.
This was my experience but your mileage may vary. As I say, it's very dependent on the program.
(1) I don't claim to understand the new-fangled system, sorry.

were they both american schools?

Yes. Both are schools in the Washington DC area and both programs are comp sci/info sec.  One is a PhD program and the other a DSc.  Which is why, I suspect, that the programs have such markedly different approach.  If you're interested in more detail we can follow up off line.

I do not understand this : "GPA north of 3.3 are preferred, GPA north of 3.5 will get preference, but we can work with you."

Or should it be : "GPA north of 3.3 are preferred, GPA south of 3.5 will get preference, but we can work with you."

avi: I was speaking casually. It would have been better to say "The college prefers a GPA greater than 3.3, and GPAs better than 3.5 will get preference, however; there is not a strict minimum GPA." Does that help?

The more popular the school and program, the more likely it will use test scores and transcript grades as "screening tools" to weed out uncompetitive applications. However, there are probably reasonable thresholds that exist on both measures; exceed those, and your exact GPA and GRE scores probably won't be taken into much consideration.
Ultimately, though, GPA should play a much stronger role in GRE, if only in the sense that somebody who does outstandingly in the core classes but struggles in "general education" classes that don't pertain to the field will probably have an easier time than somebody who has a better overall GPA, but weaker grades in the major. GRE scores are only correlated with performance in coursework; I don't think it has much to do with actual aptitude for research (although it may have some correlation).

I absolutely agree with this. In my example above the first school is extremely competitive and the second is a teeny-tiny-local college. Good point about competition being a factor here.

GRE scores are only correlated with performance in coursework — ...if even that.

This depends greatly on the field. I have been in graduate admissions committees in two different fields.
Field A: the subject GRE in this field is a joke. The committee doesn't look at it, and doesn't look much at the regular GRE's. It's all recommendation letters and grades in the relevant courses.
Field B: the subject GRE in this field is very difficult. The committee is very reluctant to take anybody who scored less than the 90th percentile on the GRE. (Of course, you have to have good grades and recommendation letters as well.)

I'm mainly interested in mathematics.

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


text:
How will the success of my previous projects affect future funding?
I have two funded projects. One works great but the other is terrible (probably wrong postdocs and PhD students). When I send future proposals, my history is evaluated against the overall research output, right? There is no factor indicating one of my projects has failed, right?
I have two options:

Let the weak project fail and focus on the successful one to improve my overall research output. Then, I have a strong record of publications for the future proposals.
Use some funds from my successful project in the problematic one (e.g., hiring more people) to save it at the cost of sacrificing the successful one.

By the way, I am an assistant professor of chemistry (close to promotion) and the projects have been funded by European schemes, if it matters.

Are you sure you're allowed to transfer funds from one project to another? The research grants I've had all required that the funds be spent for the purposes described in the proposal.  If I wanted to do anything else with the money, I'd have to get permission from the granting agency.  Whether they would give permission is doubtful, especially if the other project is funded by a different agency.

@AndreasBlass I am quite sure that no funding system allows transfer from one project to another. OP probably meant to hire people for the first project but assign them to the second project.

@Googlebot pretty sure that would be fraud, if done without the agreement of the funding agency.

I cannot imagine circumstances in which choice 2 would be ethical much less legal.

Well, option b might not be ethical, but it is common practice. Many highly respected people in my field told me, "you should have 50% of the work for a project already done, so you can invest the people in writing new grants and preparing new topics - or helping out in other projects". I do not say this is a good practice, but it happens. And if you are having a larger group, financing all people without gaps is nearly impossible without such juggling of ressources. But my answer to the problem would be a third option: Invest more of your personal time in the weak project!

What is the specific question to be answered here? Not clear

I think the much more interesting part of the question is how success/failure in a funded project affects future funding (and it is also the title). The tactics of partitioning funding of two projects should probably be a separate question.

While a common practice, that would be fraud.
Less fraudulent would be to bill everything that 'counts for both' to the stronger project, to conserve money to get the weaker projects done. (Equipment, staff meetings, etc).
For you, depends on how your department weights grants brought in vs. papers published. If they value grant money more, that you've damaged your chances of getting more is not something your should reveal, while papers are something you can play up.

It's hard to give a general answer, obviously different fields and different research areas differ in many important ways.
1) In my experience reviewers looks at overall past productivity vs overall level of support, not whether some specific past project was successful. Having some projects fail is the normal working of science. There are some exceptions, for example high profile projects like centers or inter-institutional collaborative efforts. In those cases there is certainly a strong incentive to declare success on a specific project.
2) In terms of what you should do: I think it is almost always a bad idea to throw good money after bad money (the "sunk cost" fallacy). If anything, I would move support from a failing project to a successful one. Again, there are certainly exceptions. Maybe the failing project still holds a lot of promise, and just a few months of effort by an experienced postdoc can push it over the hump. This is something only you can judge.

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

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


text:
The position I applied for was advertised as Associate Professor with Tenure, but now they’re saying it’s tenure-track Associate Professor
I am an associate professor, who has received tenure in the US in 2014. After receiving tenure, I moved to Europe to help my family with some health issues, and found an associate professor position in a country where tenure is 'by law' meaning the position cannot be revoked or taken away. I am now looking to return to North America, and have begun to apply for associate professor job openings.
I have applied for a position as tenured associate professor. I interviewed and was told I was selected by the department as their top candidate. However, the dean at the new institution just emailed me that the new position will be associate professor "tenure-track," meaning I would need to apply for tenure within 4 years.
Clearly, what I had applied for is not what I am being offered. In my view, there is a flaw in their advertising. The position description clearly stated "the University of X invites applications for a tenure-track Assistant Professor or Tenured Associate Professor in...."
While I understand that each university has its own interest in mind, this seems like a very bad start of a relationship. If I accepted this demotion, I would probably do so with some resentment. The University in question is academically equal to the one I first received tenure from.
I am seeking advice on how to respond to this proposition and would be very grateful to hear people's opinions.

It would help if you could provide details on the discipline (biomedical, engineering, ...). In any case, your approach depends on how much you are willing to risk being denied the job altogether.

The field is architecture.  My main issue is that this option was never even discussed during the interview, when all the conversations seemed to imply that I was applying to a position with tenure (as advertised in their posting). if this is a reflection of how the institution works, I would not have much confidence that the tenure process would be straightforward and fair.

Did you follow up with the dean about this?

@Mad Jack: How to follow up with the dean is the question as I understood it.

Thank you for your comments. I have not yet replied to the dean's email, which is only a day old. I wanted to first give it some thought. And I am more and more inclined to let them know that I would only move if the position is tenured.

Do you have a sense for whether this email was written just for you, or whether you were sent a canned "new hire" email--and maybe got the wrong version instead?

@Matt Right, there is the chance that you email the Dean and he/she says "whoops wrong email!"

Do you actually have an offer letter in hand, or is the dean telling you in advance what the terms would be if they made you an offer?

One possibility is that they considered you for immediate tenure, but didn't feel confident enough in your qualifications to grant it, so they're offering you a short clock as a compromise.
Keep in mind that immediate tenure is kind of a big deal - they're committing to you for life, on the basis of having met you for a few hours.  From that point of view, you could consider that you've been considered and rejected for the job you really wanted, but are being offered a different one: you can take it, leave it, or try to negotiate for something better.  But it wouldn't be a bait and switch.

As to "within 4 years", would you be allowed to apply for tenure sooner - perhaps after just one year?  You can have a discussion with the chair and dean as to what kind of time frame they think would be appropriate, and what you would need to do to be ready.

this is not a formal offer and it is specified at the bottom of the email. I understand your points. There is a risk associated with them committing to me. Just as there is a risk in being tenured at a university and leaving it for a temporary position. You are right that this is a different position than the one I am applying to. I just would have appreciated knowing before I made the oversea trip, and perhaps hearing from them during the interview, when the question of tenure was discussed as one of the things that attracted me to the job.

By my reading, I might guess that after interviewing you they considered whether to make an offer with immediate tenure, and they decided against it.  (You'd hardly expect them to make that decision before interviewing you, right?)

It might be worth considering that it's not necessarily clear who "they" are.  It's possible the department wanted to make an offer with tenure, and the dean is overriding that recommendation.  If that's the case, the department chair or chair of the search committee could be an ally in further negotiations.

very good point. thank you for your thoughtful advice. The last scenario is what I also imagined could have happened. If that is the case, it will become clear once I reply as Pete Clark suggests, that I kindly but firmly reaffirm my interest in their tenured position as it was advertised.

I'm a bit confused. You said the ad described the position as "for a tenure-track Assistant Professor or Tenured Associate Professor". Was it ever clearly stated which you were being considered for?

@J.Denworth wording referring to what was advertised is not polite and not likely to be helpful. A job ad is not a contract and neither they nor you are bound by it. Furthermore, the discrepancy is not helpful. If they offered you a "tenure-track Assistant Professor" you wouldn't accept it.

During the interview this was discussed and I made it unequivocal that I was applying for the tenured position. I have no intention to litigate this issue. I simply wanted to survey what other experienced academic would do when confronted with this decision. I inserted the few lines of text from the ad to provide more detailed information, but with no intention to accuse anyone

Based on what you've said,

In my view, there is a flaw in their advertising. The position description clearly stated "the University of X invites applications for a tenure-track Assistant Professor or Tenured Associate Professor in...."

Well...yes, you're exactly right.  It sounds like the department and the dean were not on the same page when the position announcement was posted.

While I understand that each university has its own interest in mind, this seems like a very bad start of a relationship. If I accepted this demotion, I would probably do so with some resentment. The University in question is academically equal to the one I first received tenure from.

Again, I agree completely.  You've had two different tenured positions, including one at a US institution of (you say, and I'm going with it) comparable academic quality to the one you're applying for.  You applied to this position and interviewed for it -- presumably taking some trouble doing so, since you now live in Europe and have family there -- based on the information you received in writing that it would come with tenure.  Only at the end of the process have you been informed otherwise.  Well...yes, that's a seriously alarming bait and switch.
In my opinion there is really only one thing to do.  You should respond by calling attention to precisely the facts you mentioned to us, especially that (i) the position was advertised as with tenure and that's why you applied for it and (ii) your last two academic jobs have had tenure, including at US institution X (you don't need to explicitly say that it's of comparable academic quality; I would leave them to claim otherwise if they want to), that you are very excited and interested in the job, but only under the original terms: you are not contemplating making an international move from a permanent academic job to a possibly temporary one.
In other words, I think the issue is serious enough to prevent you from taking the academic job...again, for exactly the reasons you say.  The type of employer who will not be held to what they told you before is exactly the type of employer to cause you N years of deep worry that they might not give you tenure, and nothing in your question suggests that you should subject yourself to that.
I really hope that they respond well to your holding your ground. Good luck!

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

Assuming starting with tenure is a must for you, you should let the advertised nature of the position go by, as it's not really relevant.  You just state that at your career level, you can't entertain an offer that doesn't come with tenure, and you hope that the offer can be modified accordingly.  This is absolutely your situation, there's no mincing of words, and there's no way a silly  argument about the semantics of their ad can start up.
Whether you thought because of their ad that the position came with tenure is also fairly irrelevant.  Either they see fit to ask their leadership about whether they can bring you in as tenured, or not.
Update:  In other words, treat the current situation like any other job offer where you're negotiating for an acceptable situation.  Thank the Dean for his or her offer, and say how happy you are about their interest in you.  Then say that you can't accept a non-tenured position.  Perhaps in this case, you might even add a terse apology that you didn't make that crystal clear earlier in the interview process (as this really comes down to a communications issue, and it takes two parties to have a miscommunication).

I appreciate your post. And as I explained to another the text from the ad was added simply to give a clearer picture. "False in advertising" was too strong a language to use. I got carried away. You are right, this is no different than any other job search.

I'd +1 this answer if you dropped the "asssuming" part. OP should not accept the bait-and-switch, IMHO, even if he'd been willing to accept the inferior offer had it been made to begin with.

@J.Denworth it's a hair different - because of the ad, you know how far they can go.  They've tipped their hand.

Oh dear. Well, I agree with Pete L. Clark's take on the situation, but I feel it's important not to mince words and to be extra clear about what's going on: frankly, the only conclusion I can draw from your story is that the people you are dealing with are some combination of: unscrupulous, dishonest, acting in bad faith and/or incompetent.
Let me explain. The university that invited you to interview knew full well that you are tenured and are expecting a tenured position, given your situation as someone who has been tenured for over 3 years and is now on your second(!) tenured position, in an institution comparable to theirs in reputation. It seems inconceivable to me that they would think an untenured position would be remotely attractive for you. Thus, if they invited you to interview for a position advertised using the words "the University of X invites applications for a tenure-track Assistant Professor or Tenured Associate Professor", to my mind that means they are representing that:

they consider you (at least based on how you look "on paper") a qualified candidate for serious consideration for a tenured position, and
they know, and know that you know, and know that you know that they know (etc), that you would be traveling to the US for the interview on the expectation of being considered for a tenured position.

If you accept that this is so, how is this consistent with their subsequent behavior, that is, the communication you received from their dean? As I said, there must be some bad faith, dishonesty or incompetence involved. Possible explanations I can think of are:

The department invited you for an interview but never intended to seriously consider you for a position. For some shady reason, they want to go through the motions of appearing to try to hire you (or appearing to try to hire someone) but not really wanting to finish the job. They are expecting you to say no to their untenured offer.
The department wants to offer you a tenured position, but the dean is against it, maybe because of some internal conflict with the department. So the dean is disingenuously trying to propose to offer you an untenured position, assuming that you'll say no (or perhaps hoping he'll get lucky and you'll say yes).
At the time the department invited you to interview, both they and the dean thought they would be able to offer a tenured position, but because of some change in circumstances (budget cuts or whatnot) they are now unable to do so. Instead of admitting that you made the trip in vain, which would be embarrassing, they are pretending they were thinking of an untenured position all along.
Etc etc.

I should add that at my university, if we were thinking of offering an untenured position to someone who is already a tenured professor, we would make that very very clear to them before they come to interview to avoid a major waste of time and effort for them. It is clear to me (based on my experience having been a department chair for 3 years) that any university with competent people acting in good faith would behave similarly.
To summarize: this whole situation smells like bad news. You can consider accepting the untenured offer if you think that it's something you can live with and are willing to overlook being treated in this shady way, but personally I think that a rational response would be to politely explain to the dean that you are expecting an offer at a level comparable to your current position, and that if he/she is unable to make such an offer, you wish him/her luck in recruiting someone else - just on the off-chance that there's been some innocent mistake and they will be able to offer you a tenured position after all.
I wouldn't bother complaining or expressing outrage in your response to the dean about the rudeness of making you travel to the US under a dishonest pretext; these (most probably) unethical people are not worth trying to reason with - if they can't respond to your entirely reasonable request, just cut your losses and move on. Good luck!
Edit: when you email the dean with your polite reply, it might be a good idea to copy the department chair, again just on the off chance that there's been an innocent mistake and that having people other than the dean aware of what's going on will help correct the situation more quickly. I don't think that scenario is very likely, but it's best not to make assumptions.

I think you missed an optition. They invited the candidate thinking that they would be a good fit for the department and that they could make a competitive offer since they have comparable rank to the candidate's previous employer and have been told that tenure could be offered to the right candidate. After the interview it was decided the best offer that they could make to that candidate was one without tenure. This could have come from the Dean alone or the whole search committee. It does not mean anything was done in bad faith.

@StrongBad I disagree, if they were so unimpressed with a candidate with OP’s situation and history then they would simply reject him/her. See also the comment I wrote under your answer.

It's not bad faith precisely but: "We have the option of hiring a tenured associate professor, we considered all the candidates, interviewed a tenured associate professor and then decided he was the best candidate.... but he's not so good that we want to offer him the tenure he already has right away, although we think we'll give it to him a few years down the line." is a strange way to proceed.  If the best you can do is offer a demotion to your top candidate, it's a pretty screwy job search.

@PeteL.Clark are your expressions "strange way to proceed" and "screwy" not just polite, euphemistic ways to say "someone is being dishonest or incompetent"? If not, what other explanations do you have to offer for the "strange" and "screwy" ways these people are behaving?

@Dan: I don't have any other explanation to offer.  I also don't know exactly how job searches in all US universities and departments (e.g. architecture) work, so I leave a bit of room because of that.

I agree with @StrongBad. Rejection would have been a clearer way to go. And one that I could understand. This just seems odd. As I concluded in my first post, not a good start for a lifetime relationship. But judging by all of these comments, it seems clear that this way of operating is the exception. Not the rule. Thanks.

My bet would be that the administration as a general rule doesn't want to make tenured offers to people who currently don't have tenure, and either haven't thought through or don't care what that means for people moving internationally.  The associate without tenure offer is then a compromise between the department and administration.  No individual person is being dishonest, but there are multiple stakeholders and it's resulted in something strange happening.

The job search in the US can be a confusing process. It sounds like the position was being advertised for someone with experience ranging from an assistant professor tenure track level to an associate professor tenured level. For whatever reason, they have made an offer to you at the associate without tenure level. This does not seem to me to indicate a flawed search. It is just what it is. For example, in my field tenured associate professors are expected to bring with them considerable extramural funding. The offer might be a compromise between your seniority/experience and things as an international candidate that you are lacking. You need to talk to the Dean/Search chair to understand this.
Leaving a tenured position for a non=-tenured position is clearly a step down. To some, tenure is not the ultimate goal and increased salary or better quality of life (and possibly even decreased teaching or better start-up) can offset the loss of tenure. The amount you value tenure is something that you need to decide for yourself and then work with the Dean/Search chair to see if a mutually acceptable agreement can be reached.
One thing that I would be concerned about is that at many universities nontenured associate professors are rare. While a non-tenured offer with a one-year probationary period is fairly common, a four-year non-tenure period seems odd. I would want to know how often this occurs and what benefits that provides over an assistant level position and what benefits you will get when you get tenure. It is also absolutely critical that you understand which of your previous accomplishments will count towards your tenure review and how the tenure process works for associate professors.

The job search in the US can be a confusing process. Unless you mean this as a euphemism for "the job search in the US can involve interaction with some dishonest, unethical and/or incompetent people", I am afraid I will have to disagree with you. In the ordinary course of affairs when a job candidate is dealing with honest people, one would never encounter such "confusing" situations. You are being way too charitable with your assumptions about the hiring university's motivations. See my answer for a more detailed analysis.

@DanRomik I think it is much more likely that the Dean is honest and authorized the search at both the assistant and associated level in good faith. The Dean decided that the candidate the department put forward wasn't good enough for tenure. I believe had thereceived been a better candidate, the Dean would have offered tenure. Maybe I am being too charitable.

The Dean decided that the candidate the department put forward wasn't good enough for tenure. — If that's true, the appropriate response from the dean is to reject the department's proposed offer.

a four-year non-tenure period seems odd — I've heard of longer, offered and accepted in good faith.

@JeffE depends who makes the offer. For some schools the department puts forth the candidate and the Dean (or Dean's office) handles the offer. In my wife's department the rank is decided by the chair and search committee, but tenure decisions are out of their hands. The chair goes to the Dean and says we want to offer associate with tenure, if the Dean decides no tenure, then the department has to decide if they make an offer without tenure or do something else.

@StrongBad the dean’s actions are inconsistent with your good faith hypothesis. As JeffE says, if the candidate is so unimpressive to the department or dean, their logical course of action would be to reject them. Offering an untenured position to someone with OP’s employment is disingenuous and indicative of bad faith (or, being as charitable as I can, incompetence). It is as if they said “we don’t like you for the position we flew you out here to interview for, but how about working as a janitor? We think you could be great for that!”

@DanRomik I disagree. They made the "best" offer they could. I think it is worse to go we want to work with you, but we don't think you are going to accept the offer, so we are not going to make the offer. They are offering the same job with the same duties and responsibilities, the benefits are just less than what everyone hoped for.

@StrongBad  -- it's probably rare that somebody makes the "best" offer they could.    They make the "best" offer they think will attract the candidate identified for hire.

To add to Pete Clark's excellent answer, sometimes an institution will hire at the Associate Professor level, but with a pro forma tenure review after one year.  For various reasons, they are unable to hire someone directly into tenure.  However, with such a short review period, tenure is virtually guaranteed.
That does not appear to be the case here, with a four-year review cycle.  I would not recommend accepting this offer.  Regarding the immediate question, I concur with the advice to bring this up with the dean as a serious issue.

I did not know about the pro-forma tenure review option. The dean wrote " The tenure-track appointment is for four years. You are eligible to apply for tenure as early as one year after the date of first appointment. However, the normal time to apply is in the penultimate year of the tenure track appointment." The language does not sound like the 'pro-forma' scenario you outlined, or does it?

I would further add to this that, in my experience, a job offer with such a pro forma tenure review is usually made when the candidate has not previously held a tenured position, or not previously held one in the US.  (And especially if the candidate has no previous teaching experience, for example if they're being hired from an industry position.)  But none of those seem to apply here.

@MarkMeckes, I disagree.  Some institutions are forbidden from offering anyone a position with tenure, hence the pro forma review.  However, in this case it doesn't seem like a pro forma review.

@vadim123: That's true, and I meant to be referring to institutions that aren't in that situation; I should have been clearer.  But since the OP applied to a position that was advertised as tenured...

So... all this talk of "some places can't offer a Tenure position out of the gate" - if that is the case... why is it not advertised as solely tenure track? Why mention "Tenure Track OR Tenure"? "OR" means they can offer it out of the gate and him being offered Tenure Track is a deliberate decision - NOT a limitation by "rules". If it IS a limitation - then that's false advertising.

I agree with that last post, it is negotiable, noting that sometimes the process does take some time (as per the pro forma discussions) and may not be successful. My guess is that the 4-year clock suggests that the department or leadership is worried that coming from Europe you will not have considerable (recent) experience in the U.S. funding process or that they want to see proof that you will succeed. If I were in your situation, I would not move from tenured into a 4-year clock even if given strong assurances that granting tenure will "not be a problem".  As to negotiating, I would highlight your success in U.S. prior, including award of tenure, and highlight your plan of attack for funding your lab. Plus, if you were top pick at the current institution, you likely can be top pick elsewhere. Finally, when moving (if you choose to), ask your current institution for a leave of absence; if things go bad, you can consider going back.

The only verbiage you present from the university is:

"the University of X invites applications for a tenure-track Assistant Professor or Tenured Associate Professor in...."
  [bolding mine]

That sounds to me that applications that are submitted will be considered for a Tenured Associate Professor or a tenure-track Assistant Professor. Perhaps there is more information that you are leaving out, but based on what you have presented, I don't see any reason to be confident that a tenured position would be offered. If distinction was important to you, you should have asked for it to be clarified.
As for how you should respond, you should decide whether you are willing to accept these terms. If not, then tell them that you are not willing to accept anything short of tenure, and be prepared to not get the job. They might be able to work something out, but don't count on it.
Also, "demotion" is not an entirely accurate term in this context, since it is not within a particular institution.
EDIT:
In English, words often distribute over "and" and "or". For instance, in "You can have soup or salad", "you can have" distributes over "or", giving the implicit meaning "You can have soup, or you can have salad". What distributes depends on context and can be ambiguous. You seem to have interpreted this as "the University of X invites applications for a tenure-track Assistant Professor or applications for Tenured Associate Professor in...." That is, some applications are for a tenure-track Assistant Professor, and some applications are for Tenured Associate Professor. However, without this distribution, it can be interpreted as meaning that each application is for a position that will either be tenure-track Assistant Professor or Tenured Associate Professor. The university could have been more clear, but you shouldn't have just assumed that the interpretation that favors you is the correct one.

OP was offered neither a tenure-track assistant professor position nor a tenured associate professor position.  The position offered was tenure-track but non-tenured associate professor.  Only the most tortured parsing of the ad's language would include that precise offer as a possibility.

You seem to imply that Assistant Professor and Associate Professor are equivalent. Is that true?


text:
How can I prove that the head of the lab did not have contribution to my work?
I performed part of my PhD thesis in a lab outside my university. After deciding to publish the result, the head of the lab did not give me the permission to publish it. He wanted to be the coauthor, himself and one of his students. But they did not have substantial contribution to the project. They allowed me to use their lab and their materials. he blocked my work totally. I do not have permission to publish the results just because I do not want to give credit to them since they did not contribute to my work. According to ICJME, technical help does not make eligibility to be the coauthor. Their lab knew these standards and accept them. However, the problem is that I cannot prove that their help was not that much to make them eligible to be coauthors. Even my supervisor believes that I should consider them as coauthors because he thinks that they helped me during my stay in their lab. Also, he thinks, like many other people, that it is a custom to consider the head of the lab as a coauthor.  Does anyone have suggestions for me? How can I unblock my work?

What field are you in? 'Giving authorship' for lab use and material use is the custom in some fields. We could discussed if this is good/bad, but if it is customary, you can't do much.

So using their facilities (and training and procedures and...) was not substantial? Simple - publish the paper without using any data obtained there. Sounds like it should be easy to do that, right?

@Emilie : my field is Biotechnology. I was working on an enzyme mutation.

@Jon Custer: They did not train me. The head of the lab never spent time on my project. I just use their lab facilities. I cannot publish without those results since those results are most of the results I obtained. They also told me that they would send my samples for a measurement to another lab, but they did not. They caused that my samples lost their efficiency.

Well, I'll be blunt - if you came to my labs to perform work you would have my people as co-authors. The equipment isn't up and running and ready to perform leading edge work all by itself. It takes knowledge and expertise. Maybe the stuff you used could be found anywhere and just works all the time. But, likely not.

@Jon Custer: even if I knew how those equipments work since I had learn about them before my PhD? The facility that I talk about, are not specific and do not need special knowledge. Also,  I do not think that technical help means substantial contribution to a work.

Creating, maintaining, and operating a lab that can carry out relevant experiments that actually get technical results is a non-trivial undertaking in many cases. You relied upon the lab being functional. There was an agreement that you could come in and use their equipment, which you needed to get your results. You needed their technical expertise, and used it. Perhaps you knew how to run a sample through a machine. But, the machine being there, and being ready to provide correct results was dependent on the expertise in the lab.

Let us continue this discussion in chat.

Sorry, I don't think you can do much at this point. These things should be negotiated before any resources are shared. Nothing is free, and different people may expect different forms of gratification- reciprocation, acknowledgement, authorship. You are entitled to having your opinions about this, and the correct time to voice them is at the beginning of the labwork/collaboration.
It is possible that your advisor has a prior understanding with this lab that you are not aware of. If this is not so, share your misgivings with your advisor and seek to learn his/her reasons for conceding authorship. With that knowledge, you can avoid such a situation next time.
This time, 'unblock' by giving credit.

This is definitely something that should have been discussed, and agreed upon prior to entering their lab. However, the past can't be changed, so finding a way to move forward is prudent at this stage.

You want to publish your results
You will be first author.
You used the facilities of the lab you were visiting which are maintained by the head of the lab and potentially another of his/her students.
The head of the lab is customarily (but not always) last author.
Perhaps there is room for negotiation; add the head of the lab, but not his/her student.
Learn from this experience and be clear, IN WRITING, about publication intentions in situations when you are visiting another researcher's lab.

At this stage it really does seem you have two options.

add them as authors (or the compromise mentioned above) or;
don't publish.

Best wishes!

Not only that, but choosing not to publish is going to be seen as very anti-social and could seriously burn bridges with this lab because it seems like the OP doesn't understand how authorship works.

Depending on what the data in question is, and any prior lab agreements on who gets to publish with it (or data related to it), the answer may still be a flat out "no" end of discussion.

Agreed @AzorAhai , negotiation and compromise at this point, to save not only OPs reputation with this lab, but potentially others, is probably necessary.

Agreed @JonSG , but it seems the problem is that there was no conversation upfront meaning there is no agreement in place. It is extremely unwise not to consider authorship when joining a lab; as a visitor or not! Additionally, even OPs supervisor thinks they should be added as authors. Personally, I am not against massaging the situation for a positive outcome for all involved.

@SeriousAboutPsych, Ok, I understand. but according to ICMJE (icmje.org/recommendations/…) they do not eligible to be the coauthor. I do not understand if that lab accept ICMJE standard, they still wants to be coauthor. If we agree about an standard we should follow it in practice. When I asked them about type of their help, they could not answer it properly.

@bina Your question doesn't say you all agreed a priori on ICMJE standards. If you did, you should add that info to the Q as it is very important.

@bina unless ICMJE is explicitly agreed on beforehand, then I wouldn't put much store by it. It takes more than a set of recommendations by some editors to change 50 years of ingrained community practice.

In general, it is impossible to prove a negative. However, the lab with which you worked may be able to show that what they did meets the requirements for co-authorship.
But I would consider the issue from the following perspective: everyone else—including your own supervisor—is saying that you should consider them as coauthors. Given that they are more experienced than you are when it comes to publishing, it would be reasonable to follow their advice.
The most important thing for you right now is that you are the first author on the paper. If you believe that there was no value added by working in that lab, as someone suggested in the comments, then you can demonstrate that by excising what you did with them from the paper and seeing if it's still viable. If you can do that, then you can just go ahead and submit the paper without their contribution or permission. If you can't, then perhaps you should reconsider what is possible and reasonable.
(One final thing to note: the ICMJE guidelines are recommendations, not rules.)


text:
Should we chair a session in which we present?
In a prestigious conference in my field, I am asked to chair a session. However,  in the same session, I have my own paper, should I chair this session?

If the conference has asked you, there is no reason not to. Of course, chairing can mean different things depending on the conference. It may be just introducing speakers or keeping them to a schedule, or it may be actually chairing a discussion. There are other possibilities, I suppose.
I don't foresee any conflicts in such a situation, though you may want to accept or defer any responsibility for it depending on your comfort level.

In my case, it is introducing speakers and keeping them on time (including me in case I accept). And yes, the conf. has asked me for it.

Good idea to turn the stopwatch over to another while you speak. Speaking last might also be easier to manage.


text:
Does the academic community perceive letters and short articles differently from longer articles?
There are some journals that accept short articles of 2 to 4 pages.
I have submitted (and had accepted) such a letter (Cannot specifically name the letter) which is 2 pages in length but it is a SCI-E journal.
How would such an article be viewed by the academic community? Is there a big difference between the two?
Similarly, how does academics view journals that only publish such short articles?
Thanks.

Could you be clearer on what you mean by 'standing' of a letter? Do you mean is it considered a worthwhile thing to do? (Note that Physical Review Letters and Applied Physics Letters are well regarded.)

By 'standing' I mean how does the professors, academics see such publications while considering offering post-docs or job offers.

I’m sorry, but we can’t comment on the effects of individual journals.

The arguments and conclusions of a paper should stand on their own, no matter the length. After all, Fermat caused quite a stir with one line written in the margin of a book. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermat%27s_Last_Theorem

Thanks, @aeismail for change in title. It looks more academic now. But still, I don't understand why is this question on hold as it is a genuine question. How else do I get to know the answer to the question I have?

I’ve removed the hold.

There's an interesting study of ecology papers by Fox et al., finding that at least in that field, longer papers tend to be cited more. The explanation they advance, however, is that longer papers contain "more and a greater diversity of data and ideas," not that scientists feel more warmly about long papers than short ones. Also, the effect size they found was small, with less than a 2% increase in citations per 10% increase in page number. This suggests that padding out a short paper with extra analyses is not an efficient way to raise its profile.
(Short papers, of course, can be very influential: the first paper to accurately describe the structure of DNA was almost exactly one page.)


text:
Can I accept two funded offers from universities and decide later after April 15?
I am an international student. I received several offers, but I am interested in two options:
1) Option A: It is my top choice. However, it gave me only partial tuition, so I will need external sources of funding. The resolution of these sources is going to be in June (federal funds), several months after the April 15th deadline.
2) Option B: It gave full tuition and a monthly living stipend. I am very grateful to the university.
For both programs, I have until April 15 to accept offers. I have been reading about April 15 Resolution and it has complicated me to make a decision. Since both schools gave me financial aid, I think there is a problem in there about accepting an offer concerning financial aid. As far as I understand, in Option A, if I pay my deposit fee I accept their financial aid. Nevertheless, to attend Option A I will necessarily need external funding. If I don't receive it, I will not be able to attend Option A.
I already have an opportunity to study a graduate program in US (Option B). I would not like to be in the scenario of rejecting a good and safe opportunity and not have external funding, that would mean not to attend graduate studies this year. I would love to go to Option A, but I am restricted to external factors as funding.
Is there any advise you could give me in this situation?

Some students take a break or intermit to top-up their funds with a job...

No, you cannot do this.
According to the April 15 Resolution of the Council of Graduate Schools, you cannot accept multiple award offers simultaneously. You are not committed to any offer signed before April 15, in that you can submit a written statement declining a previously accepted offer. But you cannot accept multiple offers before or on April 15, and changing offers after that date requires a written release from the school with whom the offer that was “in force” on April 15.

So, there are only two options: 1) accept safe offer or 2) life is about risks. Right?

Basically, yes.

Question is, how are they going to know? Following some dumb rule for the sake of following dumb rules is dumb.


text:
How can I get involved in grant proposal reviews as a graduate student?
I need to get some more experience with writing grant proposals, and I know that professors are often invited to review them.  How can I get involved in it while still being just a graduate student?

Possible duplicate of http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1498/how-do-you-earn-opportunites-to-review-journals-or-conference-papers

@Suresh: You're right... this is a close match to the other question... Perhaps I'll limit it to research grant proposals rather than papers, so that my question is more distinct.

Reviewing grant proposals as a student is tricky, at least in some fields.  The NSF is highly unlikely to ask a grad student to review proposals (it might theoretically be possible for a brilliant student who is almost done with their Ph.D., but I've never heard of it happening).  Furthermore, faculty are not allowed to show proposals they have been asked to review to their students (it may sometimes happen, but it's breaking explicit rules regarding confidentiality).  Overall, in pure math grad students basically never review grant proposals.  I can't speak for other fields, but I'm skeptical that grad students ever play a major role in reviewing proposals.
Instead, I'd recommend asking your advisor to see the other side of the process.  They could share their own proposals, and perhaps even reviews of those proposals or drafts of upcoming proposals.  They could also ask collaborators whether they had any proposals they would be willing to share.  This isn't quite the same as reviewing proposals yourself, but it could still give you valuable experience with how grant applications work.

Once you're faculty (or eligible to write grant proposals), you can often request to serve on panel review committees. But till then you're unlikely to see proposals "in the raw" because of the strict confidentiality rules that @AnonymousMathematician mentions.

Receiving an invitation to help out at a NSF or NIH study session is highly unlikely and logistically difficult. However, I would try to get involved with study sessions for an University driven call for proposals. Alternatively, you could get involved with a course that does a mock grant proposal as part of its coursework. I just submitted a mock proposal recently and I'm sure that the TAs will be forced to look over my work and get practice in the process.

You can't get experience serving on a grant proposal review panel as a grad student.  Sorry; that's just how it works.
However, there are other ways to get experience with the grant proposal process.  The number-one way: talk to your advisor/PI and ask them.   In particular, ask them if you can be involved with the next grant proposal they write.  Ask them how you can help.  Maybe you can read a draft and offer comments.  Maybe you can brainstorm with them.  Maybe they can outline a piece of it and you can try writing a draft of a section.
Also, you can ask to see copies of past proposals they've submitted (both funded and unfunded).  After you read the proposals, you can ask your advisor for his/her own assessment of the proposal, and even ask to see the reviews of those submissions from review panel, compare to your own assessment, and use this feedback to improve your knowledge.
Quals proposals are another great form of practice at this sort of thing; they require some similar skills.  Spend time on your quals proposal and try to make it outstanding.  Read other great quals proposals.  Offer to give feedback to your fellow students on their quals proposals.  Learn as much as you can from that process, as some of those lessons will carry over to help you write better grant proposals.  Similarly, getting good at writing a research statement (for a job application or a fellowship application) is a useful skill that has some overlap at formulating and writing grant proposals.  Of course, these are not the same as proposal-writing, but the experience will serve you well.


text:
Is it self-plagiarism to copy & paste from my own published paper to my grant application?
If I copy & paste sentences from my own published paper to my grant application, will it be considered self-plagiarism? Is it forbidden? The grant application is not published anywhere; this is an internal submission for the  grant agency.

Is there a reason why you can't properly quote, e.g. in the sense of "I'm asking for money to further investigate a problem I already discussed in [1], where we found the following interesting questions: (quote)"?

I'd agree that citing is better. Even it's fine for this round (which I think it is fine), in future you may share this grant with your teammates or students, who may lift a couple sentences from the grant for their paper's introduction, it'd be nice to be reminded at that time to avoid accidentally plagiarizing.

Many questions about plagiarism answer themselves by keeping in mind the following (working) definitions: plagiarism is presenting someone else's contribution as your own contribution; self-plagiarism is presenting (your own) previously published contribution as a new contribution. (Of course, what counts as a contribution depends on the discipline and the context; what is considered boiler-plate in one can be a genuine contribution in another.) For a grant proposal: Any text not describing your new contribution for which you apply for support is not covered.

I think the question identified as a duplicate is a bit broader than the question asked here. I think we need a dedicated question for this specific use case. Thus, I vote to re-open. I'd be happy to offer a bounty.


text:
How should I choose which graduate programs to apply to for the PhD?
This fall I will be an senior mathematics major at a small public liberal arts university. I'm trying to finalize the list of schools to which I will apply (to PhD programs in pure math), but I am finding it somewhat difficult. I know that I am not a candidate for admission at top-tier universities. My school is relatively unknown outside of its state, and the professors who will write my recommendation letters aren't very well-known either (although they do publish somewhat frequently in their respective fields). I have taken two semesters of abstract algebra, one semester of real analysis, and two semesters of topology, and received an A in all. By the time I graduate I'll have taken another semester in real analysis and a course in complex analysis, plus several other applied and discrete math classes. I haven't taken any graduate courses since my school doesn't offer them, but I have completed a research project with one of my professors in the area of math which I hope to study in grad school. My GPA is around 3.85.
I think (and please correct me if I am wrong) that I should focus on applying to "mid-tier" programs, but I find it very difficult to determine which programs are at this level. I know that one student from my school was accepted at a program ranked in the 40's by the U.S. News math grad school rankings.
Essentially, my question is this: Do the U.S. News rankings accurately reflect the selectivity of programs, and if so, is there some point in the rankings at which schools become "mid-tier" or at which I would be competitive for admission?

I think you should apply to the schools where the professors do the research which you are interested in. You don't want to be in the best school in the world studying something you don't like.

Yes, the rankings (roughly) reflect the selectivity of the program, as far as I know.  Your choice to focus on mid-tier programs makes sense.  (I think defining mid-tier as starting in the 40s is plausible, though I suspect you'll get conflicting answers from different people.) However

Don't confuse the quality of the program overall with the quality of their specialty that you hope to study.  Their specialty program could be much better or worse than the program overall.  In math departments (as opposed to, say, some computer science departments), students are typically admitted to the department, rather than to a professor's research group or a specialty area.  Taking advantage of this could get you into a specialty program that's rated higher than you "deserve".
Don't exclude a school just because it's too highly rated.  It's good to apply to a wide range of schools, some "reach" schools that you think it unlikely you'll be admitted to, and some "safety" schools that you would be quite surprised not to be admitted to.  All sorts of factors influence how likely it is you'll be admitted to a given school in a given year, many of them completely unknowable to you.  For example, maybe a new faculty member will be coming and looking for students (or maybe one will be leaving).  Maybe the program has all their TA positions tied up with current students who haven't finished yet, or maybe not.  Maybe a dean wants to grow the program, etc.  Many of these things you just can't know.  Most likely, you won't get into MIT, Harvard, Princeton, or Stanford.  But once you get into the 20s, 30s and below, the outlook is less clear.
Focus on fit, rather than solely on ranking.  Think about where the school is located.  If you plan to live there for 5 or 6 years, you don't want to hate the place.  This can include proximity to your family or friends, climate, scenery, nightlife, etc.  If you know what specialty you want to study, the school should have at least 1, but hopefully 2 or 3 folks that you would potentially like as an adviser.
Focus on aspects of your application that you can still change.  With a transcript no stronger than yours, I got into a top-25 school.  The cool part is that for the specialty I chose, they were top-10.  At this point, most of your transcript (and much of your application in total) is fixed.  But you didn't mention your GRE scores.  (The surprising thing about the GRE is that you can do pretty well if you're just really good at Calculus (through multivariable), Dif. Eq., and Linear Algebra.)  I think my subject test was something like 65th percentile.  That's not terribly good, but I think it was enough to convince the admissions committee that even though I was coming from a small LAC that no one had heard of, I did know something.  The other thing I did, which I highly recommend you try, is get a letter of recommendation from a faculty member at that school (where I was admitted).  I wrote code for him for 3 or 4 weeks (about 30 hours/week, I think) during Christmas break of my senior year.  In exchange, he wrote a recommendation for me.  I'm sure it didn't say that I was a math wunderkind, but whatever it said added just enough to my application to get me in.

+1 for point 3! This is one of the main deciding factors for us (I have a wife, and a daughter on the way, so the neighborhood is almost more important than the selectivity of the program.)

@Dan C: What is a good way of looking for the "right" professors besides looking up the math faculty of each department? Also, I'm international so looking for connections from professors, that I know, is almost non-existent.

@TheLastCipher I'm not sure I understand your question.  By "right" do you mean someone to do research under? or someone to get a rec letter for (as in 4.)? or something else? Having connections is huge. I went to grad school in the city where I grew up.  I don't remember how I got the connection that led to the rec letter, but I think it was through a contact of my father. (My undergrad adviser did not have a strong academic network.)  I would suggest that you look through the math faculty of each department.  It is a lot of work, but potentially has a big pay off.

@TheLastCipher If you don't have good contacts, I would recommend first getting a masters degree, at the best place you are admitted with funding. (It is less important that your choice for a masters program satisfy point 3, since you will likely be there no more than 2 years.) Use the time during your masters to attend conferences to try to build your network (with any guidance you can get from your faculty mentors).    Then, using those contacts, you may have a better idea of where to go for a PhD program, and who you could work with.

@Dan C: By "right" I meant to do research under. Thank you for the advice!

Dan C's answer is great, and I just want to echo some points and add a few things to it.
First, I'm not sure why you've decided you're not a candidate for a "top-teir" school. It sounds like you've been successful in your coursework, and you can likely get strong letters of recommendation. If you don't bomb the GRE, you can certainly get into a "highly-ranked" school! I went to a college just like the one you describe, and my friends and I all did fine when it came to grad school admissions -- one of my friends got into a "top ten" department, and we all got accepted by schools in the top twenty or thirty. So don't count yourself out simply because your school is small and relatively unknown. And, most importantly, if you do get into a prestigious program, be sure to base your decision to enroll on more than the US News rankings!
(I've used the quotation marks above because the rankings are all a bit questionable, and one should really consider the strength of a department in your field of interest, like Dan C said.)
Regarding the professors who will be writing your letters of recommendation: They may not be heavyweights in their fields, but chances are they know some people of influence. Take a look at some departments, get a feel for what you'd like to study, and possibly with whom, and then talk to your letter writers. It may happen, when you mention your interest in working with Professor X, that your letter writer was roommates with Professor X in grad school. These little personal connections won't get you admitted, but they will help ensure that your application gets a fair evaluation despite your school's relative obscurity.
Good luck! Aim high.

I'll just note that my credentials weren't so different from yours when I graduated from college (obscure liberal arts college with little track record, etc.) and I got in to Berkeley, Michigan and Northwestern.  Of course, I can't actually compare our cases (and this was a decade ago), but I don't think you should hesitate to apply to, say, Wisconsin, or UT Austin or Rutgers (depending on your regional preferences).  If you doubt it, you can always contact the graduate coordinator and ask if they think you're a plausible candidate.
As Dan says, a good range is the best approach; apply at least one place you can't quite believe you'll get in, and at least one place where you feel absolutely confident, and a few in between.  This stuff is indeed incredibly unpredictable, but there are a lot of slots in reasonable graduate programs, and fewer good candidates than you might think.

I'll only address the question of deciding what "mid-tier" means. There's one coarse classification that could be helpful to you.
There are 48 math departments considered as Group I under the AMS classification (the older one, deprecated as of last year but the most useful one in my opinion). There's obviously a lot of variation within this group, but I think it's safe to assume that the programs at these 48 schools are stronger than the 56 math departments in Group II. (The bottom of Group I is probably not separated from the top of Group II by too much, however, so don't stress too much about the cutoff.) However I have a lot less confidence in the division between the bottom of Group II and the top of Group III; in this region the AMS's case for switching to the new groupings seems quite strong to me.


text:
Publishing as an undergraduate student: can/should I list my university affiliation?
I have done some research during the past year on one of the topics I am studying. Now I have got some nice results which I think I should publish. I think I can write a conference paper based on my results; a journal one might be too difficult at this point.
I have conducted the research alone, and have not received any help from any faculty members. Now, when I'm writing the paper, I came to consider for the first time am I allowed to publish under the institution I am studying in? I mean, I can list my university as my affiliation, even though I'm just an undergrad student, right? .. I could not find anything on this from the university rules, so I guess its "quiet information".

am I allowed to publish under the institution I am studying in? — Of course you are!

Ask one of your professors or the administration about what the best course of action is.
Most likely, you should publish as affiliated to the university as the work was conducted while you were at university. In any case, you have nothing to lose by doing so.


text:
What is the best way to merge subfigures and convert to a required format for submission to a journal?
I'm currently preparing a paper for publication and so trying to construct the figures. I'm finding it more difficult than making figures for a report mainly because journals expect one figure file for each figure, regardless of whether it contains subfigures or not. This leads to some problems/hurdles:

I can't use LaTeX's \subfig package, so I have to manually place an (a), (b) and (c) on the figure and keep track of the caption if the ordering of these changes.
Journals' rules about figure submission vary quite a lot, some can take pdfs, some want vector graphics, others raster.
I have to somehow merge the output from various programs into a single file; for example diagrams made with Tikz make up the same figure as a graph plotted with python's matplotlib.
With having to merge subfigures in such a way, my workflow becomes quite convoluted if I have to modify one of the subfigures, and then regenerate the single figure file.

Why not ask at TeX.see since it seems like you want a technical answer. Seems like a perfect job for the standalone package/class.

@StrongBad Thanks for the suggestion, but I did want to make my question as broad as possible, I merely used my own experiences as examples to illustrate my point. I hope it doesn't come across as if I was asking for technical help in this particular case.

Possible duplicate  http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1095/software-to-draw-illustrative-figures-in-papers

@user3087409 I removed your comments to the mods in order to keep the question clear. Please feel free to post your comments as comments.

so I have to manually place an (a), (b) and (c) on the figure and keep track of the caption if the ordering of these changes – I know, this is mostly my opinion: But in the vast majority of cases, I find it more user-friendly not to use these indicators at all but to refer to “Fig. 5, left” or similar. This way people know directly where to look or even remember the respective part of the figure and their flow of thoughts is less broken.

Journals' rules about figure submission vary quite a lot, some can take pdfs, some want vector graphics, others raster – The PDF format is capable of containing pixel as well as vector graphics. I have not encountered any journal that seriously requires pixel graphics; see also Why do some publication venues prefer TIFF over some vector formats? In general, I do not expect you can go much wrong with PDFs.

@Wrzlprmft: 'I find it more user-friendly not to use these indicators at all but to refer to “Fig. 5, left' or similar" - while this may be a matter of preference, the point that the OP has to "keep track of the caption if the ordering of these changes" still stands.

@O.R.Mapper: Sure, but the problem of manually placing such indicators is gone.

@Wrzlprmft: Ah, I didn't realize that's a problem. If I am supposed to provide one PDF for the entire figure, I would have LaTeX render that PDF file while still using the subfig package or something equivalent.

@scaaahu - See chat.

I don't know how well this will apply to you because I don't use tikz much. But if you can save them as say a pdf, this might work for you.
I use illustrator (but inkscape is similar and free), and I link in the files so that if there is an update to any component it will update. And I merge them all together.
Then I can just save it as a pdf or svg (or whatever format the journal wants). I found this a little cumbersome to start off with, but now that I'm used to it, I have a hard time reverting.

This is a nice use for linking that I hadn't thought of. How well does illustrator/inkscape keep edits, i.e. if an image has to be rescaled/cropped in order to fit into the figure, and the linked component is updated?

Illustrator can handle rescaled images (keeping dimensions true to the original figure) as of cs5 I believe. But I don't think inkscape can.

Use \subfig and typeset your document as you wish.
Save it as a pdf.
Within the pdf select the figure and crop everything else (on a mac you can use the select tool and then command-K in preview).
Save the cropped figure as a .pdf or .tiff (or whatever is required).
Replace the \subfig command with the cropped figure. It will look exactly the same (you may have to adjust the size) and will conform to journal requirements.

I'm not sure this will conform to journal requirements - often journals will want higher resolution files for their raster formats. Also, I think this will degrade vector graphics to a raster format, which should probably be avoided.

I keep separate files for every subfigure, which may be created using different means.
I use LaTeX to create a pdf for the entire figure, which combines the subfigures. In this way there is one pdf file corresponding to each figure. The tex file is to arrange the subfigures according to the desired layout, as well as to place the (a), (b), (c). I use overpic to do the latter. The package textpos is useful for the former.
In the tex file for the document, the figures are inserted using the usual includegraphics command, and for each figure there is one includegraphics command.
Not sure if this helps. Probably you are already doing this and are looking for something more efficient.

I have used Matlab and Sci-Lab for creating graphics so far. In Matlab, I have also made the process of data analysis automatic, with minor interventions in the input parameters. Next, I have converted the data in separate files(*.txt) to be read after by a new program which creates the final figures. From my experience, Matlab provides the best quality in EPS, and is also good for data analysis but is not free. Sci-lab is good for graphics and free, but for analyzing data is very slow and time consuming. From what I have seen, R also is a good candidate for plots and have the biggest number of line styles(when printed on grayscale), but I have not worked with it.

There's the usual automation tradeoff: https://xkcd.com/1319/
In practice, I end up using Inkscape (Illustrator if your school has a license, I guess) to manually put figures together from different parts for the final submission.  This allows export to PDF or TIFF, and hasn't given me too many hassles.
If you are going to be regenerating these figures all the time, i.e. there's a big collaboration and everyone will be submitting new versions of these figures, or if you have a paper with 100s of figures, it might be worth it to develop a script using ImageMagick to connect all of those different pieces together, using montage and labeling: http://www.imagemagick.org/Usage/annotating/
However, the circumstances where this is a good use of time are going to be pretty rare!  (Also note this is going to be better for raster output.)


text:
How much information should I divulge about on-going unpublished research at a conference?
I'm developing a paper right now based upon some of my preliminary results, and I'm attending several conferences to present and get some feedback on my results from other experts in my field.  A thought occurred to me that because my work is yet to be published, I there is a potential for others to steal my idea and publish before I get a chance.
I'm probably over-thinking this, and there is little chance of it actually happening.  But I'm curious how frequently this happens in scientific domains.  Do people go to conferences to steal ideas?  If it does happen, how can I best prevent it from happening?  Obviously, I want to share my ideas with the world, but I don't want to lose a chance to take an idea into fruition.  What should/shouldn't I share about my research before it is published?  Should I simply wait until my paper is accepted before I go on the conference circuit?
Update:
My field is computational science (not to be confused with computer science).

This really depends on the research culture in your field, your academic career stage (student, postdoc, pre-tenure, or tenured), how close your ideas are to fruition (= publication), and the specific people you talk with.  Have you asked your advisor?

I agree with @JeffE you should at least specify a field. The answer for biochemistry will not be anywhere close to the answer for mathematics.

If you have coauthors or an advisor, you should definitely check with them.  This is the kind of thing that can make a collaborator or advisor very upset if their idea about it is different from yours.

I wonder if there's a nice social networking research problem here :) - given a finite speed of dissemination, and a finite risk of unauthorized replication (followed by dissemination), which version of the meme will  "win" by taking over more of the graph of connections :)

@Suresh: If only I had the time to pursue it :)

As some comments note, answers will vary dramatically by field, but it seems better to have a bunch of answers for different fields to one question, instead of having people ask the same question a dozen times for different fields.
For math, if you're talking about a completed, submitted paper that hasn't been published yet (say, because it's still being refereed), you should feel free to talk about it; the submission date proves your claim on the result, so it can't really be stolen at this stage.  (Also, you already put it on the arXiv, so it's already public, right?)
Suppose you're still writing the paper, but the results are completely solid.  There are good reasons to tell people about the result: you may be want to discuss ideas for how to build on your paper, you may want to give people a head's up that the theorem is coming---say, so they can use it to prove things themselves, and you may want to establish a partial claim on the result in case someone else is doing the same thing.  There are also good reasons not to tell people: even though you're really awfully sure the result is solid, there might still be mistakes; routinely announcing results well in advance of the paper can negatively affect your reputation; someone could use your ideas to write their own paper faster.  (There's an interesting phenomenon where once people know a theorem is true, it becomes easier to solve; sometimes a problem is open for a long time, and then abruptly solved multiple times in a short period.)
Taking these together, I'd advise not to announce a result until the paper's finished unless there's a strong reason to do so.  This is particularly true early in your career, when it's more likely that you'll mistakenly believe a proof was really-definitely-totally finished.  (I was given this advice when I was in grad school, and while I haven't followed it 100% of the time, I've never regretted following it.)

re math: I know an author who got an important result. He put it in the arxiv and submitted it to a big journal. Within the year while the paper was being refereed, another group generalized his result and, acknowledging his preprint,  got their result published. The original's author paper was rejected, and thus became unpublishable.

@MartinArgerami Wow, I have never thought something like this could happen. My supervisor is not very fond of arXiv and discourages me from using it and I have decided to use it once I (hopefully) complete my research program. But this part scares me a bit.

@Hap: it's an extreme case and each one has to make their own decisions. For whatever it's worth, most people in my area put their papers in the arxiv while submitting to a journal.

This will really, really depend on the field you're coming from - or even the sub-field. Take two examples:

Mathematical epidemiology: If I present a paper with a nice infectious disease model, with the equations, the parameter values, and some numerical results, but I haven't tackled anything analytical yet, you could very well - if you could get all that down - beat me to publication.
Observational epidemiology: I could tell you everything about my study but, without access to the raw data, you'd have to go find your own multi-year hospital acquired infection cohort to study. Good luck with that. And if you still beat me to the punch? Well, I probably deserve that.

Generally speaking, for in-progress stuff, I present enough for people to know what I'm doing, comment on it, etc., but not enough to fully replicate the experiment without coming to me for more information. For example, some folks I'm working with struggled with whether or not to present a theoretical result without its implementation done yet, because someone could scoop us with the implementation. We decided for the audience I was presenting to, that was...unlikely. For another audience? They'd get the theory in broad strokes, but without enough information that the theory alone is enough of a springboard to run with the paper.

I say give all the details and don't hold anything back. Most researchers do not want to enter a first to publish race from that far back. People tend to work on similar topics so getting scooped is bound to happen. This doesn't mean your ideas were "stolen". I think you are less likely to get scooped if you let people know everything you have done and where you are going. This lets people get out of your way or approach you about collaboration.