text:
What steps can faculty and staff take to promote excellence in, and importance of, teaching?
tl;dr
Faculty don't think teaching is as important as their other responsibilities; how do we change that?
Long version
I've been working in academia for a long time and whenever I see instructors half-assing their teaching the go to excuses are that they have no time, or that it doesn't get any respect/grants/promotion/tenure/etc. I don't doubt they're busy, and I know departments don't typically reward teaching excellence (or punish teaching mediocrity...) but the students are suffering as a result.
How can we (faculty that care about teaching and staff supporting faculty) change this situation? What can we do short-term to make faculty care about teaching now and what can we do long-term to make departments care about excellence in teaching, and not just in research?
Note: I'm aware research brings in money. Keep in mind most faculty are adjuncts who aren't doing research but still have tenured research faculty that don't care about teaching as their role models.

Who is the we in this question?

Unless you actively select faculty who have a passion for teaching -- and SUPPORT them in teaching, rather than hitting them continuously with the publish-or-perish whip -- this can't change. You get what you select for and reward -- or you get something else and/or they go elsewhere.

Good question, @ff524. We is faculty that do care, and staff that support teaching faculty. Updated the question text.

@keshlam, this is my exact fear. I don't see any other way around it but I'm hoping the combined intellect of the internet can think of something I haven't. :-D

Find some way to get people competing for professor-of-the-month? It's not even about money; it's about RECOGNITION AND APPRECIATION (though applause from any employer rings hollow unless there's some money attached to it). You can try to provide that as peers, but that takes getting everyone to buy in...  At the very least, you need department chairs on board, so SOME perq's can be weighted in the appropriate direction.

The previous title came across a tiny bit "rant-y" to me, so I edited the title, but please fix my edit if you feel it doesn't preserve the essence of your question. (I'm trying to help, but I definitely don't want to misrepresent your intent)

Hmm.  Maybe we should have a different type of institution of higher learning from the research university which is predicated on an increased emphasis -- or even a primacy -- of teaching over research.  We could cut out graduate programs and thus concentrate on undergraduate teaching.  We could call it -- let's see -- a liberal arts college.  Do you think that would fly?

In other news: "research brings in the money" is true only in a very limited range of academic disciplines.  For the majority of academic departments (including mine: mathematics), money flows in the opposite direction.  Finally, speaking as a tenured faculty member at a university for whom teaching is less than 50% of my budgeted responsibilities: I find the assertion that I am a role model to adjunct faculty highly dubious.  They are not looking to me for teaching inspiration!

@PeteL.Clark: There is an entire other discussion to be had about student (and public) perception of trade school vs community college vs liberal arts college vs university. :-) As for adjunct faculty, my experience has been that adjuncts typically want to be tenured faculty, so they hold their behaviors as models whether they intend to or not. Surely there are always exceptions, but that has been my general experience.

I feel like the problem of many adjunct faculty wanting research positions but having to excel at teaching (and thus being unable to have tenured faculty in research universities as their role models) is a whole different thing than the simple fact that research is the primary job of tenured/tenure-track faculty in a research university.

@PeteL.Clark: presumably you could still be a good role model, though, compared with what the questioner is talking about. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that although teaching is less than half your budgeted time, you nevertheless don't "half ass" the classes you do teach. You just teach less than half as many classes as you would if it were full time :-)

@Steve: Part of what I am getting at in my comments is that in academia there is a spectrum of interest in teaching versus interest and research (and administration), and I want to emphasize that "horizontal" spectrum while the OP seems to be thinking in terms of a "vertical" hierarchy.  I (generally) pride myself on being a conscientious teacher for a research mathematician.  Most adjuncts would not add the bolded phrase, and this means that in many classes their teaching standards are, if not higher than mine, then certainly different (and generally more pleasing to the students).

I think there is a basic problem in the academic world of trying to push everyone into doing all three of technical work, teaching, and administration. In industry, those are normally separate roles, so each gets done by someone who is good at it, and wants to do it.

@lyonsinbeta Is it a public university ? (I mean financed from tax-payers money)

The problem is that "nobody cares" about teaching enough. If your research is lacking, teaching won't save your career. If you research is good, your career will be fine in spite of poor teaching. Are you asking about changing this culture, or about encouraging good teaching in whatever space is left after resigning to it?

@PaulBrewczynski: The one I work at now is, but I've been involved with private four year, and community colleges and the behavior is roughly the same.

@Superbest: I would like to see a cultural change ultimately, but surely there are things that can be done short-term.

I can relate to this. I have a 'teacher' who is extremely poor at what he does, but despite complaints to other teachers and at course review meetings (by both my class and the class in the year below us) nothing gets done about it.

Putting in place a better system for evaluating teaching than today's student evaluation forms would be a good start.  Getting serious about the assessment of student learning outcomes (rather than simply assigning grades) would also be extremely helpful.

+1 This is a thoughtful, on-target, and highly practical answer.

Any idea what a better system for teaching evaluation would be like and how we may be able to implement it in real life?

I agree that evaluations are important...but REWARDS are as important (perhaps more so). In the end, you get what you reward.

Yuichiro;  one approach used in many community colleges and some liberal arts colleges is to have other faculty members and department chairs actually observe teaching in the classroom and review the syllabi and other course materials.

Earthling; I agree that rewards are very important.  However, good rewards based on poor evaluations lead to people gaming the system (by e.g. attempting to bribe students with inflated grades in order to get better evaluations.)

@BrianBorcher Thank you for the example. That sure sounds like a better way to evaluate teaching. I think it'd make your answer much better if you include the example in community colleges. It'd be super nice if you explain how it could be implemented in a research university, which seems to be the situation OP is in but may make it difficult to put it in practice without facing opposition or making future hiring difficult, especially when others don't think teaching is as important.

Cultural change is hard.  If I was good at leading that kind of change I'd probably be working as a dean rather than toiling away as a faculty member :-)

Step 0: Talk to/with existing faculty. How do they view their teaching skill, it's relative importance, motivation to do better, what do they think would improve their own teaching and/or the teaching of others? I would hope the actual people on the ground know a thing or two more than some random fool on the internet (such as myself).
Step 0b: Probably prioritize what people actually think at your institution over what I'll say below. Further, educated people are generally incredibly resistant to having random diktats imposed on them (and professors who are renowned for valuing their positions autonomy all the more so), so you'll need people to buy into things and embrace things. That takes some great implementation skill, diplomacy, and care - good advice followed poorly is rarely a boon.  But with that said...
Step 1: Clearly, effectively communicate what is valued in the department/institution - to existing faculty, students, prospective faculty, and the world at large.
Step 2: Actually value those things - don't just pay them lip-service. Are meaningful teaching awards given? Are special posts/chairs given for teaching excellence, with funding and reduced other-than-teaching workloads optionally reduced? Can a person be a great teacher and a not-so-good researcher and expect to be respected and have job security comparable to a star researcher who can barely teach at all? Research/grants are often tied to equipment, labs, funding for students/assistants/projects - must teaching be solely it's own reward at your institution?
Step 3: Measure what's important. Is a respected teaching-quality rating system in place to poll students before/during/after courses, program entrance/graduation, etc? How do you know who is doing a great job and who's doing a bad one? Do people even know if they are doing a good job? Does everyone else know who's doing great things? Is student success/learning solely the responsibility of individual faculty to determine and measure - as though assessment were somehow trivial and easy to do - and thus one class/semester/teacher cannot be meaningfully compared or evaluated? Tight feedback loops are necessary for flow experiences and improvement - tighten the loop.
Step 4: Provide mechanisms for improvement. Feedback from students, constructive advice/encouragement/criticism from senior faculty - especially previously identified great teachers, funding for workshops/conferences specifically about education/pedagogy/teaching, bringing in outside faculty/speakers to speak and hold workshops, etc. Teaching is a skill, just like researching - it must be learned. As some people have very little teaching experience (sometimes having won fellowships that exempted them from teaching), it is generally unwise to just cross your fingers and pray people figure it out on their own.
Step 5: At the end of a semester/year, appraise the situation. What is going well, and what isn't? Make a plan to do better next year, implement the plan, and follow up again next semester/year. Do it again. And again. And again. There are no real shortcuts, just consistent hard work performed by many, repeatedly, over a stretch of time.
Step 6: Align decisions at ever greater (and lesser) levels to match what is truly valued. Student selection, graduate program admittance, postdoc positions, faculty hiring, tenure decisions - if teaching isn't important to the department/institution, it is strange to expect it to be treated as though it were actually important none the less. This doesn't necessarily have to mean everyone must be amazing teachers or else - just that it must be a factor that really does matter and holds value.
Warning: Anything that hints of punishment, job insecurity, lack of respect, or unpleasantness will lead to both intentional and unintentional gaming/sabotage/resistance to any process of improvement or assessment. Trust is valuable, hard to build, and incredibly easy to lose.
In the end, some people are naturally motivated and take it upon themselves to be better and better teachers. For those people you likely need only give them what they need and don't step on them or get in their way. But social systems are powerful, and can rob people of their desire and motivation just as they can encourage the better angels of our nature and inspire us. It must then be decided what system you have now, and what are you willing to and able to do about it?

I have never seen a teaching-quality rating system that I could genuinely respect.

@BrianM.Scott http://www.ratemyprofessors.com doesn't make your cut? :P

@Chris: From the little that I’ve seen of it, I’d say that it makes Amazon book ratings look very professional. :-)

@BrianM.Scott Exactly - me either! Most sizable universities even have faculty trained in assessment, some even with active research in the field. Political ends seem to be the norm for crowding out useful measures in favor of skewed wastes of everyone's time. A small undergraduate research group could do better - gather suggested questions from students, faculty, and administrators, apply them, perform factor analysis, get feedback from everyone and revise. I'd wager a single cycle could produce better outcomes than what most systems use - and if you can't toss the old system, add your own.

You don't hire people who don't take teaching seriously, and if you do happen to hire them accidentally, you deny them tenure and kick them out.
More generally, you reward those who take teaching seriously and/or punish those who don't.  This means you give the former time (by reducing the number of classes they have to teach), money (by paying them more, giving them department funds for research, whatever), and/or other perks (nice office, free parking pass, first dibs on teaching the particular classes they'd most like to teach, whatever), and you don't give those things to the latter.

Denying faculty tenure (or even gasp firing them!) because they don't care about teaching sounds awesome, but also a huge culture shift. Where would you start to move the culture that way?

@lyonsinbeta: Academia doesn't change quickly, so you can't change this quickly if you already have a department full of people who don't care about teaching. Real change can only really begin with your next hire. In the short term, you can start with some of the stuff I mentioned. Find out what the good teachers want and do everything you can to give it to them.  Find everything that the teaching-slackers treasure that you can legally take away, and take it away, or threaten to do so if they don't shape up.

Addendum: obviously you should first try gentler methods such as talking with current faculty, etc., but the tenor of your question suggested to me that those preliminary moves were already tried and didn't work.

Reducing the number of classes that good teachers need to teach is not really nice for the students.

I'd -1 this if I could, because this is a really,really poor answer. First, having the bad teachers teach will just reduce the quality of the education at the university. Students won't learn  as much, they won't be as happy, and people will be less likely to attend (or re-attend) the university. Second, firing bad teachers isn't a good idea since it ignores the fact that there are two sides to University: the research side and the education side...

...A professor who is a fantastic researcher shouldn't be fired just because they're a bad teacher, since that's just hurting the research side of the university. I don't dislike the idea of punishing and rewarding professors based on teaching performance, but some of your suggestions for doing so just don't make any sense to me.

The fundamental problem is that research and teaching are two entirely different skills.  Imagine you're hiring a chef who is also expected to spend a third of his or her time waiting tables; the simple fact of reality is that specially talented individuals will rarely excel at both of these tasks.
You can't convince a professor to be a better teacher than they are - most simply do not have the personality type, passion, inclination, or even inherent capacity to be excellent teachers.  They haven't trained those skills nor have they required them to get to their current position in life.  It isn't what they were hired for, it isn't what they are good at, and it isn't what they have spent their lives wanting and learning to do.  Professors are hired to perform and manage research activities and are only incidentally required to also perform custodial teaching duties.  They would likely also do a terrible job if you required them to pitch in cooking lunch in the cafeteria twice a week.
At least in my part of the world, secondary school teachers are not even allowed to apply for a job without an appropriate degree in education.  This is to say that, in addition to having the required qualifications in the subject that they are teaching they are also required to be qualified teachers.  I see higher education eventually following a similar model - as teaching becomes more important, professorship must eventually branch into two or three largely separate streams.
With specialization being so critical in almost every other professional activity it is almost unbelievable that professorship is such a haphazard occupation.  While the training and demonstrated excellence for the position is almost entirely based on research and scientific acumen, professors are nevertheless required to also perform at least two entirely different functions - teaching and management.  Surely some PhDs would love to only teach while others would love to devote entirely to research.  Likewise, how many late-career professors could continue to produce invaluable research if not burdened by the need to both teach and project-manage a large research group; the very skill they excel at is squandered while their time is occupied performing things they are often neither good at nor that they enjoy.
If you want good teachers, hire teachers to teach.  If you want good researchers, hire researchers to research.  If you want well managed research groups, hire managers to manage them.  If you want chaos and headaches, pick some clever boffins and get them to juggle it all at once.  Occasionally you will get lucky and find professors who are excellent researchers, excellent teachers, and excellent managers but, in my experience, these are very rare creatures indeed.  Higher education would do well to reconsider its organizational hierarchy, I think.

Your first paragraph rankles me a bit.  Research and teaching are different skills, but they are not entirely different (and maybe even less entirely different!).  Your analogy between a chef and a waiter seems inapt to me.  The better analogy is between a chef and a cooking teacher.  You will be a crappy cooking teacher if you don't know how to cook, and if you do then you're doing at least one important thing right.

Also your comments that professors are only incidentally hired to teach does not ring true to me either.  This might have been true forty years ago; some professors might feel that it ought to be true; but it really isn't true anymore.  Most graduate students now receive substantial teaching training, starting in many with actual, formal courses (plural).  Being a professor is an interesting and challenging job precisely because it demands multiple skills.  But there are a lot of jobs like that, and claiming that you should hire people who specialize in one thing doesn't seem realistic to me.

@PeteL.Clark I've worked for several institutions of various size and focus and I have never seen "substantial teaching training" and have frequently seen zero. The vast majority of faculty (adjunct and tenure) I know are subject matter experts with no formal education training outside maybe a workshop or two. What sort of teaching training do you have at your institution? Is it required? Compensated? Culturally expected?

@lyonsinbeta: When I was a graduate student -- about 15 years ago -- I received training, including giving three lectures under someone else's apprenticeship, having one of them videotaped and then watching it with the trainer.  That was a memorable (and memorably harrowing) experience.  In my department (math, UGA) students there is a course for all graduate students to take before they can teach a class.  In fact, they must take it twice.  I'm not sure what you mean by "Compensated" here.

That's not an exhaustive list of the teaching training we have at my department; you can contact me for more information.  I wanted to add though that formal training -- in the sense of taking classes in pedagogy -- may or may not be necessary or effective (it depends, obviously, on what is being taught).  However anyone who has gone through 8-12 years of higher education has gotten some teaching training: they've watched so many teachers, both good and bad.  This was, for me, probably the most important part of my training.  Think of how few other fields have such extensive programs....

@PeteL.Clark This still leaves quality teaching to organically appear by chance rather than by design.  As far as I have observed, higher education generally does not provide an objective measure or requirement for teaching competence.  It is occasionally extremely bad, and these circumstances are usually detected and remedied (by virtue of a litany of student complaints), and sometimes extremely good (but neither rewarded nor particularly recognized), but generally falls into a wash of status-quo mediocrity.  Teaching is certainly not the raison-d'être for any professor I've ever known.

@J...: I’m retired now, but it was certainly my raison d’être. Much as I love mathematics, I’m a teacher first and a mathematician second. Just as some people are writers by nature — then cannot not write, even if they don’t get published — I am a teacher by nature: I cannot not teach.

@J...: Teaching is the raison d’être of many, many professors.  There are entire institutions full of professors who feel this way.  You are making a lot of broad claims about the nature of faculty and higher education.  It would be interesting to hear more about your background and experience.

@PeteL.Clark Certainly my experience is specific to my field, which is Physics and Engineering.  I spent 11 years in academia and these are my observations in disciplines where laboratory research is king - perhaps an inclination towards teaching is more prevalent in desk-research fields but I never got that impression.

@PeteL.Clark Surely for some research is merely a means to teach - for others teaching is a means to research.  For a few there is a love of both but, as I said, this is (in my observation) usually rare.  In the more prevalent former case, there is an inefficient use of talent.  As a mathematician you can surely appreciate this as a logical statement.  OP's plight, as evidenced by their question, is very real - I don't think that it is an uncommon problem in higher education.  Given this, a solution requires determining the causes of the problem - I propose the above as one of them.

@PeteL.Clark Consider that the alternative is to say that there is no need to "promote excellence in, and the importance of, teaching" because there is no problem - teaching is already excellent and it is appreciated as important.  If that's the case, then the question is fallacious and my answer is likewise demonstrably wrong.

@BrianM.Scott I believe you.  I also greatly enjoyed teaching and, on very rare occasion, had the privilege of teachers and professors who were probably much like yourself.  This doesn't really have any bearing on the discussion, however.  A sample size of one or two does not adequatly describe the mean or median of academia.

@J...You argue for increased specialization while ignoring the specialization that already exists.  "Surely some PhDs would love to only teach while others would love to devote entirely to research." There are institutions of higher learning where faculty only teach and others where they primarily teach and do research second.  If you want to literally do only research, okay, but you can't be a professor because that involves teaching by definition.  For what it's worth, the vast majority of the hundreds of math faculty I know very much enjoy teaching at least some of their classes.

It is obvious that teaching could be better almost everywhere: so could medicine, internet connections, pretty much everything.  Most faculty are involved in trying to improve the teaching in their department in one way or another.  But your suggestion of hiring faculty at research universities who do not do research: this has been suggested many times before and has been implemented at many universities (e.g. Harvard).  Sometimes it works out well; often it leads to lower-paid non-tenure track faculty.

In summary; I don't mean to be harsh, but I find your answer lacking nuance and experience.  In particular, you don't seem to be at all aware of the synergistic relationship between teaching and research.  Many seminal texts originated as lecture notes from a course.  Teaching students is part -- a huge part -- of training new researchers.  And so forth.  You seem to be focusing on an extreme point of the academic experience.

@PeteL.Clark And I would say probably the same of your point.  Professors who write seminal texts are an extreme point - they are certainly not the norm.  The European model of research institutes provides a good example of research-focused establishments, American style community colleges the opposite (teaching focused). The majority of quality higher education, however, (especially in STE(M)) still follows the old paradigm of professors hired primarily for research but given duties to teach. I think this is the milieu where OP's question is coming from and I think it applies quite broadly.

@PeteL.Clark I don't mean to suggest complete and rigid specialization, of course, but for researchers who do have teaching duties it would be sensible to require formal specialization for that task, especially for teaching undergraduate students in large classes.  Why not require a B.Ed./B.Sc.Ed. for professors who are required to teach?  Seems sensible to me.

@J...: Seems a step in the wrong direction to me. Most of the good high school teachers with whom I’ve discussed the subject felt that with just one or two exceptions their education courses had been a waste of time.

@BrianM.Scott Fair enough.  From another angle, however, one might argue that it isn't the good teachers for whom the courses were necessary...

In a nutshell: Competition between departments
for students and funding
can be one of the important reasons
to cause departments to care about the quality of teaching.
I give the following anecdote to illustrate the above principle.
In my undergrad institution,
which is outside the US and is fairly large (~30 K undergrads),
the introductory math classes taken by engineering students
were taught by professors in the math department.
I had heard from people in the math department that
some in the engineering department
wanted to teach the classes themselves,
so as to gain more funding and be able to hire more headcount (faculty).
Because the math department did not want to
lose this funding and headcount to the engineering department
they sent their best teaching professors to teach the intro math courses.
This allowed the math department to defend their position and say,
"We're doing a good job teaching this course,
as evidenced by good teaching evaluations,
so why should you rock the boat?"

This assumes a direct connection between student numbers and money back to the department... which is less and less often the case these days. E.g., my own math dept in effect runs at a loss TAing calculus and lower-division math, because we do not recoup much of the tuition. The higher-ups get the tuition money, and they choose how much trickles down to us...

Much mention has been made of Reward for good teaching, but I would like to suggest an old fashioned and out-of-date idea: Punishment. If someone fails to deliver on their contracted responsibilities to the agreed quality and standards, then they need to face the consequences of their actions and decisions, resulting if necessary in formal disciplinary proceedings. It is not like their students are going to get another chance, so why should the teachers?
However, this means taking responsibility for setting those standards and auditing progress to ensure that they are met, which is something most facilities seem reluctant to do.

Was this down voted because someone doesn't want to be punished for being a bad teacher, or because someone doesn't want to take responsibility for setting and enforcing expectations?


text:
Sending a second reminder to a professor about LORs, after the first reminder
As graduate school application deadlines roll around this season, I believe this site would get a lot of questions concerning letters of recommendation, including sending reminder e-mails to professors about this.
My question is now what is the best approach to sending a second reminder to a professor concerning writing an LOR? A couple months ago, after having discussed my graduate school plans with the professor, they agreed to write his letter and have me send them the e-mail link to the LOR. I sent the first reminder last week, but they did not respond. And this professor is normally responsive in e-mails about other things, such as coursework and advising. I suspect the professor is beyond busy, and I hope that is the case; I just hope they haven't forgotten about the LOR or changed their mind about it.
I would like to add further that my two other recommenders have already submitted their LORs. I am still waiting on this professor now. Should I mention this in my second reminder e-mail to them, if I should send that second reminder at all? What should I be saying in the e-mail, to politely remind them for the second time?
Any input helps.

A week since your first reminder is somewhat on the short side - personally I would wait a couple more days (maybe two weeks since the last email) to send another email.
A week before the deadline is a good point of time to send a reminder. There is no need to state that this is a second (or nth) reminder. A short email, roughly of the form 'thanks again for agreeing to write a recommendation letter for me. I just wanted to quickly remind you that the deadlines are one week away. Please let me know if you need any more information from me. Thanks again for all your help, etc.' is sufficient.

Be sure to be specific about the deadline.  "One week away" isn't really enough in the second reminder.  Something like, "I hope you will be able to get this done by the deadline of Friday, February 16."

Yes--definitely specify the deadline.

I wouldn't re-follow up in just a week unless (a) the particular prof usually sends you "Thanks for the reminder; I'm on it"-type responses for this kind of thing or (b) the deadline is quite soon.
When you do follow up, I find it helpful to include a specific question (to prompt a response), such as "Should I resend the link?"
If you want to give them a bit more of a nudge, send your second reminder as a reply to the first, so that they'll see they already got a reminder.

Send a polite email. Also contact by phone. But do not hesitate to show the needed urgency. You might also want to request a fourth person to be ready to submit a recommendation for you, in case this one doesn't do it, finally, due to whatever reason. Waiting till one week before deadline is too risky.
(P.S. Three years back, I was in a similar situation. Only one professor, who was usually quick to respond to any email, was holding back due to some reason. Ultimately, close to deadline, I had to request a fourth professor who immediately obliged. )

I would definitely recommend against contacting a 'standby' letter-writer. No one wants to be fourth choice.

No one wants to be 4th, but I guess quite a few should be ready to help out, in case a student's admission is in danger. Also, one can have a set of 4 profs, say, and each of them can initially be requested for 3 institutions. If one denies later, the other may chip in extra

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text:
Reasons for dramatic differences in pay for adjuncts?
I recently came across a survey of pay for adjunct faculty at California community colleges. It doesn't surprise me that rural schools pay less than urban ones, but there are some pretty amazing discrepancies between schools that are close together geographically. For example, the highest pay for a part-timer with a PhD is 50% lower in the North Orange County district (where I'm full-time faculty) than at Mt. San Antonio College. These two schools draw students from adjoining areas, and are 25 minutes apart on the freeway. Community colleges in California basically get their money from the state's general fund these days (not from property taxes, as in the past), so funding per student should be equal.
Are these wild contrasts present all over the world, or are they a specific to community colleges in California? Why do these huge differences exist? Are they evidence that this labor market is one that economists would describe as inefficient, with people not being able to make rational choices based on accurate information? I wonder if they simply reflect the political and fiscal attitudes of the schools' boards of trustees.
related: Why is it that adjunct faculty positions pay so little?

Highest pay is probably very misleading. What's the median? The survey doesn't say, and so isn't really all that helpful..
It's entirely possible that the highest-paid part-time person at Mt. San Antonio is a doctor teaching a health science course or a lawyer teaching a business course which the North Orange County school doesn't offer, and so market forces may have dictated a higher salary to the part-time person who teaches it.
Trying to draw conclusions from the outliers in a data set is very difficult if not impossible and inadvisable at the very least.

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text:
Must graduate applicants who will need funding submit financial statement for I-20?

I am applying this time for graduate admission in physics at Utah.  In the online application they require a financial statement.  Does graduate admission require it too, even though I must need a TA/RA?

A financial statement is required by the US for visa eligibility for all international students applying for standard student visas. It is not needed for admissions decisions, as stated in the form you've uploaded.
The purpose of the statement is to show that you will be able to support yourself (and any dependents) while you are in the US. If the university offers funding, you will use that as a source of support on your I-20. If the university funding does not fully meet all your financial requirements, then you will need to show that you can handle the rest of your expenses through other sources.
You don't need to worry about the I-20 until after you've been admitted. The university will give you more information then, including how to submit the necessary documents and what the official program expenses are for visa purposes.

When I applied, I emailed and asked about the financial statement for the one university that required it (Ohio State), and they told me to upload a document stating basically:
Personal funds: 0$
From university: (Tuition + standard stipend for the given program)$
I suggest emailing them and asking what they prefer you to do.


text:
What incentives do professors have to serve on dissertation committees?
It seems that there is no requirement for professors to serve on even a single dissertation committee. (This is so at least at my US university and I believe is common practice worldwide - please correct me if I'm wrong.)
So why would any of them do it, other than out of the pure goodness of their heart? It seems like purely volunteer work.
(Of course, one can imagine professors being eager to serve on the committee of a John Nash or a Ludwig Wittgenstein, if only so that their names appear as a footnote somewhere in the history of science, but most of us are not Nash or Wittgenstein.)
[Personal anecdote: I am asking this question because I've been having some trouble filling my committee. Many professors simply respond that they have no time, are too busy, etc. I am left feeling like a pathetic beggar grovelling for favors, even though I may be paying hefty tuition fees, which presumably helps pay at least a little for their salaries.]
Addendum: I simply wanted to give a little context for my query, but it was perhaps a mistake for me to add the above personal anecdote.
I'd prefer answers to stick simply to the question itself, which to repeat, is quite simply this: "What incentives do professors have to serve on dissertation committees?"
Perhaps we can leave to avenues other than StackExchange the opinion-based debates about whether the current situation is ideal or whether I personally have a moral defect and should change my "client" mentality.

..."though I may be paying hefty tuition fees". You should really abandon "this client mentality" just because you are paying tuition. Even in countries where public universities are free, they are still paid by taxes (e.g. the students, their family and the rest of the taxpayers).

So one should pay $40,000 a year and be grateful to society and the faculty for providing one with an education?

@Kenny LJ: I would have assumed that dissertation meant PhD until you mentioned paying $40,000 of tuition.  Are you really in a PhD program and paying $40,000 of your own money for tuition?

@PeteL.Clark: It happens that I am not paying $40,000 a year. But there are certainly PhD students at my university who do pay $40,000 of their own money. (Or their parents'.)

Follow-up: without arguing whether or not people should have, or have a right to have, a "client mentality", for example, in the scenarios in question as in many other human interactions, asking a favor with one tone gets an easy "yes", while in another gets an immediate "no". A questioner can affect the outcome/answer of the question. E.g., if someone asks a favor in a fashion that acknowledges that it is a favor, that's one thing, but if (what I construe as) a favor is asked for as if it were a debt I owed, I might easily decline.

Very much pertinent: Why do academics write peer reviews? And: Why do research faculty pursue administrative positions, such as dean, provost, president, etc. ? Do such positions spell the end of one's research?

It's worth keeping in mind that, to a close approximation, tenured faculty aren't required to do much of anything.  In this respect serving on dissertation committees is not that different from another other professorial duty.

It is expected that a PhD student 1) participates in department life and in particular communicates with the faculty 2) generates interesting research. These are not excused by having paid a fee (the "product" you pay for is not success, it's access to resources). If you have done 1) and 2) and have started planning your defense and dissertation on time, then you should be able to put together a committee. As a side note, if you have done 1) and 2) you should also be able to get your research funded.

The professors serving on one committee will also have their own students, who they will want to see graduate (even if you assume pure selfishness they want their recrords to look good). Those students will need to be examined as well so in a sense it's mutual assistance, but time-deferred.  Also good relationships between academics are how a lot gets done: this is a fairly easy way for an academic to build relationships with other (perhaps more senior) professors.  So while generosity is important in this sort of thing, it's not quite that simple.
As an aside, you might like to ponder the effect on such well-established networks and systems of treating academics and their research groups as business units in a corporate entity.

I'd like to add that many collaborations between professors start because they first communicated with each other as part of a PhD student's dissertation committee.

In my experience, in the U.S., faculty are expected to serve on such committees now-and-then, but there is no specific rule, no specific compulsion to serve on any particular committee, and no reward for serving on more rather than fewer. In fact, such committees are time-and-energy consuming, to various degrees, so such service is easily viewed as a net loss in material terms.
That is, yes, it is fundamentally out of a sense of generosity and service, rather than compulsion.
Even for faculty who are generally inclined to agree to serve on such committees, the possibility of declining any particular invitation allows one to avoid situations that have ill portents: no one wants to be on a committee that has to cope with serious problems in a thesis, or serious problems in a student's attitude or capacity.
In particular, scheduling can often be a decisive problem: faculty will not want to cancel classes or meetings with their own PhD students or trips to conferences or vacation-time ... merely to accommodate lack of foresight about scheduling. Peoples' schedules fill up far in advance, and simultaneous scheduling of several faculty is a highly non-trivial matter. A lead time of _at_least_ a few months is wise, and also gives a more civil window for genuine feedback and critique of a dissertation, as opposed to the sort of last-minute railroading-through that I have seen far too often.
And, given that faculty rightly view such service as volunteer work, if a student approaches them with an attitude that implicitly assumes otherwise (e.g., the "client" model), that situation easily falls into the "ill portent" case, and is immediately avoided.

At many institutions a full draft of the dissertation must be submitted 1-2 months prior to a thesis defense. However, even at these institutions, this rule may not be followed so strictly.

@MHH, indeed, there is supposedly such a rule at my university, too, but far too often I've been presented with a document at the last moment, with "no time for revision", etc.

I have never heard of a department where staff are required to serve on dissertation committees. In some cases committee members are co-authors on the resulting papers, but this is country and field dependent. Similarly in some cases committee members get "credit" during tenure and promotion reviews. As in most things academic, it really is about the "goodness of our hearts" (or our selfish desire to be involved in research).
Constructing a thesis committee should really be a joint venture between you and your supervisor. Making sure students have the thesis committee they need/want is one of the core responsibilities of a thesis supervisor. If they are unable to fulfil this duty, then you may want to reconsider your supervisor. If you are having trouble finding a primary supervisor, that is a very different issue.

At the place where I graduated, committees where formed by the Dean of Studies. Of course you could explain that a certain time etc. is really bad for you, but you certainly couldn't always (or even in the majority of cases) say "no".

At some institutions, promotions and salary increases are based on certain categories like "research, teaching, and service".  Dissertation committee service might bolster the "service" component.  But of course one might serve on other types of committees, or do other types of service, either within the university or outside the university.  Refusing one particular type of service (such as dissertation committees) won't hurt you, but refusing all types of service just might.

I also think that many professors find that serving on a dissertation committee (learning some new material) is much more interesting than some of the other more political/administrative committees that count as service.

Minor quibble: 'Dissertaion' in the second sentence.

corrected dissertation

I am not a faculty member, but a scientist working in industry.  Nevertheless, I have served on university dissertation committees a number of times, and I find it quite rewarding for a number of reasons.  In particular:

I am generally scientifically interested in the work that the student is doing, and get to have a hand in ensuring its quality.
Good students frequently go on to become new colleagues and collaborators.
Serving on a committee strengthens existing collaborative relationships.
It is just plain satisfying to help mentor an enthusiastic young researcher.

Thus, even without the more structured expectations, responsibilities, and quid-pro-quo that comes with a faculty department, I find that there are sufficient reasons to serve on a dissertation committee.

How about to learn and be exposed to new concepts and ideas? Or to get a publication or two with little effort and time? It can also foster new collaborations with other faculty in and out the department. It can create stronger ties within the department, but also sometimes conflicts in committee meetings. (There are some funny stories about these...)

"How about to learn and be exposed to new concepts and ideas?" Yes. "Or to get a publication or two with little effort and time?" No!

@PeteL.Clark: I personally am not acquainted with such professors, but I certainly have heard of stories of professors who do enter into a bargain where in exchange for being on a committee, they get their names on any future publications. (The bargain is certainly not explicitly written on paper and may not even be an explicit oral agreement, but can be tacit and depends on the power the professor has.)

@KennyLJ if the committee member did not participate heavily in the research design or manuscript writing, what you describe is certainly an unethical arrangement. If the arrangement is to collaborate and write a paper together that is a different story. Probably both happen, but I sure hope the latter is more common.

@Kenny LJ: Bad things happen.  But they shouldn't, by definition of "bad".  My "no" was meant in the sense of "No, don't do that" rather than "No, that is never done".


text:
attendance date of my BS and MS course
I have completed my graduation from Bangladesh. And i am applying for graduation study at USA. All of the universities mentioned to write the attendance date  of my BS and MS course. But there are not any official record  with me and even in my certificate. But  i can see in my certificate "publish date of results" and session mentioned. The university where I studied took  6 years to complete 4 years course.  Now what date will I write there?
Will I write what I assumed ?

You should write the date you started and the date you finish. It's OK that this cannot be certified by your university "officially". Your official transcript should show the dates of the courses your took along with their names and the grades your got.

I do  not remember all of the dates but months. Even the university  doesn't have the precise course ending date.

@UnlimitedDreamer: Normally months are sufficient (just as they would be on a CV or resumé).


text:
Why do some admissions applications ask where I've been living and what I've been doing for the last few years?
What are the intention of the question ?

US state universities frequently charge lower tuition to in-state residents. The form states that if you do not fill in all the information requested, you will be classified as a non-resident and be charged the higher rate. Check the U of Utah's tuition system here.

so in the below form, i would not need to write down anything as I am not a resident in the USA now?

So it would appear to me. To be on the safe side, you could contact the university and ask them. They will probably know more about their admission system than random strangers on Academia.SE...

@UnlimitedDreamer:  I'd fill in the country of legal residence rather than leaving it blank.  That makes it perfectly clear that you do not expect in-state tuition.

As an alum of the school it appears you are applying to (University of Utah) I can confirm what Stephan Kolassa said about lower tuition for in-state residents.  One thing that should be mentioned is that after attending a specific university for a while you may qualify as a resident of that state and thus, after attending a university for a certain amount of time, you can eventually become a resident and be charged in-state resident tuition.  I don't know how this works for international students though.


text:
How to find out the first name of a professor whose home page lists only first initial?
This is probably a soft question. I am interested in complex analysis, and I want to ask the first name of this person, S. Ponnusamy, whose name I wish to mention in a paper.
What is the best way to go about asking such stuff?

Saminathan Ponnusamy

http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=u5T0rO0AAAAJ&hl=en&oi=sra

If his home page does not list his first name, perhaps he does not like to use it.  So perhaps you do not need to use it.  Bear in mind Indian names are often different from Western names, in that they traditionally have only 1 name, and some have been forced to have 2 names by Western culture.  Some Indian mathematicians have only 1 name (e.g., Harish-Chandra), and some (one of my friends) officially have 2, but only use 1.

If you are at a university that has access to MathSciNet, then you can look up any one of his publications (listed on the web page you linked to), and then click on his name to find out that his first name is Saminathan.

MRef https://mathscinet.ams.org/mathscinet-mref is a free limited version that you can use for the same job, if you provide the text of a citation that gets parsed correctly and produces a single match in Mathscinet's database (tricky to achieve sometimes, but if you insist you can get a match for at least one of the papers of that author).


text:
Where to locate authors’ names in sentences?
Is it or is it not good practice to make an author the subject of sentences in a paper? When should their name be central, discreet, or absent in the sentence? Here are five variations showing different approaches, four of which include the author’s name. Are there particular identifiable use cases for these styles?

Johnson argued that this will never work.
Per Johnson, this will never work.
The argument was advanced by Johnson that this will never work.
This will never work (Johnson).
This will never work [42].

What?  Of course it's good practice to use names as subjects.  Why is this even a question?

JeffE, FWIW, a researcher i trust told me he had a strong preference against it, so i wanted to ask the group.

There is more here than style: the first and third options mean something quite different from the fourth and fifth.  In the former cases, what you are asserting is that someone else argued for X.  In the latter cases, you are asserting X and using the citation as evidence/support/proof.  (That I can't quite tell where the second one fits into this dichotomy is a strike against it.) In an academic paper, that is a not so subtle difference.
I find the style question less critical.  It is a matter of general good writing rather than anything specifically academic or it is specific to the journal at hand (so we need not discuss it here).
Of course you can use an author's name as a subject of a sentence: you can write what you want, you know!  As a matter of style, to my ear the first option sounds good, the second option sounds weird, and the third option sounds weaker and wordier than the first, but maybe the surrounding text gives you a good reason to write it that way.
The difference between options 4 and 5 is just a difference in citation style.  First that is very field dependent; in my field (mathematics), we would do 5 rather than 4; in much of the humanities it would be the other way around.  Second, unless your choice is so so strange that it prevents your readers from finding the references in your bibliography, the whole issue can probably wait until your paper gets accepted, in which case they'll either do it for you, tell you exactly what to do, or tell you that you did it wrong (and ask you to fix it).

I hate references which are by number only. I much prefer alphanumeric references.  And the first time you use an important reference you should use the author's name also, e.g.,  "...will never work (Johnson [42])."

@Kimball Unfortunately, you will typically get zero input into this decision for peer-reviewed papers, as it is almost always dictated by the venue in which you are publishing.

@jakebeal I know, this is one of the few things I don't like about AMS journals, for instance.  But whenever I post things on my own (arXiv, webpage), I use something like alphanumeric so you can guess from the citation who is being cited.

@Kimball: There is actually a subtlety here that in math, whatever else we do, a formal citation is enclosed in square brackets [Ki15] (and I was referring to that as much as anything in my answer) but the grammatical status of [Ki15] is slightly fluid.  I think it is  a good practice to drop the authors' names the first time you make a citation (unless you're rattling off a long list), but whereas the [Ki15] can be tucked in at any convenient point in the sentence, the name should be part of the sentence.  Thus: "a result of Kimball [Ki15]", not "a result (Kimball [15])".

(I also hate number only references.  And I agree that you often don't have a choice.)

I prefer (superscripted) numerical references, but in general the numerical types are not part of the sentence. So you might say "This is a fact[12]" in most cases.  You can also use "Einstein stated that this is a fact[12]" or some similar form where it's important to do so.  Sometimes you have to use "The data was taken from reference 12".  Note the lack of square brackets -- in this case "reference 12" is part of the text.  Thus numerical styles can support both a full range of cited assertions without breaking the flow of the text.

@Chris: I generally agree, but there is some leeway.  For instance I might write: "for the proof see e.g. [Ki15]".  (This means that you can use the paper as a source but it is not canonically or uniquely.)  I would not write "for the proof see e.g. a paper of Kimball [Ki15]".  Also, I don't know what field you're in, but in a math paper including free-floating numbers is a dangerous thing to do.  One good argument for [Ki15] is that it couldn't be anything but a bibliographic reference, whereas even [12] could be multiplication by 12 on my elliptic curve, the equivalence class of 12....

@petel.clark I'm in applied physics so it's a much smaller issue but it's still possible for a superscript to look like a power (also for alphabetic footnotes). In my case is easily avoided by not putting a reference immediately after a formula or result. That would be harder in maths of course.

I hate anything except alphanumeric references.  Those things in brackets are footnote markers, not nouns; every sentence should be readable-out-loud grammatical English without them.  On the other hand, people should be given credit their work, not papers, so of course you must use their names.

@JeffE Why are they footnotes? The way they seem to generally be used in math are as short strings referring the paper, and can thus be used nicely as part of a sentence. This provides a lot more flexibility when one would like to specify more precisely how the cited paper is relevant, or for example wants to point out differences in notation.

This provides a lot more flexibility — Nonsense. "Thurston [8] and Jones [2] use the following different notation." They're footnote markers because they evolved from actual footnotes; see any mathemarics paper published in the early 1900s. The bracket notation [5] was introduced because typewriters can't type superscripts; this is also the origin of the notation a[i] to represent subscripts in source code. Also, Halmos said so.

Version 2 seems stilted; 3 is an unnecessarily verbose use of the passive voice. The choice between 4 and 5 is really a matter of the journal's style guidelines rather than an active decision you will get to make as the author.
So the real choice here is between 1 or 4/5. The key thing to note is that you sentence draws attention to an actor and an action through your choice of subject and verb. (See Joseph Williams, Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace for a superb discussion of this and many related principles)
In 1, the actor is "Johnson" and the action is "argued".  In 4/5, the action is "This" and the action is "will not work". Thus if your intent is to draw attention to the fact that Johnson made this claim, as you would e.g. if discussing a history of ideas, version 1 might be preferred. If instead your intent is to draw attention to the claim itself, and the reference to Johnson is simply a matter of good scholarship, 4/5 will be preferred.

In addition to other good points made, there is the question of whether you wish to assert a thing, or only assert that someone else asserts it. That is, if you write "Johnson asserts X." then (from that sentence alone) it is not clear whether you agree, disagree, or are neutral. If, instead, you write something like "One might consider X. For example, see [Johnson]." then you are at least tentatively asserting X, with Johnson for corroboration. This distinction might matter more than style... although I'd agree that avoiding circumlocutions and verbosity is generally good (=more readable).

To me, formulation 1 would appear useable only in special contexts, such as

Johnson argued that this will never work ([Jo97]), but later Miller found a way to get rid of the obstacles in many important cases ([Mi04] and [Mi04a]).

In other words, you want to express Johnson's opinion without sharing it (and of course you back this up with citations). In general, 4 or 5 seems to be preferred (e.g., [Corvus])


text:
Plural or singular for a multi-authored paper
Suppose Jackson and Kim wrote a paper in 2014. When I cite this paper, should it be

Jackson and Kim (2014) show that ...

or

Jackson and Kim (2014) shows that ...

I am not sure enough about a general rule to write an answer, but to me, the construction "Jackson and Kim (2014) shows that ..." looks equivalent to considering the citation reference a word in the sentence in other citation styles such as "[1] shows that ..." or "[JK14] shows that ...", which I have seen criticized as bad style in reviews.

This is a special case of a more general problem about 'plural' names for specific organisations/groups, which often comes up (and is different in the UK and US, to complicate things) - for example, https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/138238/are-vs-is-for-proper-nouns-which-sound-plural-such-as-band-names
Generally speaking, either is legitimate - it depends in part whether you think of "Jackson and Kim" as the name of a single entity, the paper, or as referring to two individual researchers who happen to be mentioned together. You can also avoid this entirely by using the past tense - "Jackson and Kim (2014) showed that..." is the same whether you think of J&K as one entity or two. (Ditto for "found", "proved", "refuted", etc). This would be my personal preference.
Ultimately, though, all questions of style in academic writing can be answered with "have a look at what other papers in the field use; if you're thinking about a specific journal, have a look at what's common there." If they all use "show" for multiple authors, you probably want to use "show"

As a matter of basic writing style, this comes down to whether you intend the authors, or the paper, to be the actor in your sentence.
If you are writing about the actions of the authors, you should use the plural:

Watson and Crick (1953) use only two pages to describe the structure of DNA.

If you are writing about the action of the paper, use the singular:

Watson and Crick (1953) serves as an example of how a breakthrough paper can launch its authors to academic stardom.

Usually the issue is not so clear cut, because usually we are simply describing the results from the paper rather talking explicitly about its authors or about it as a document. In this most common case, the usual convention is to treat the authors, not the paper, as the actors and thus use the plural.

Watson and Crick (1953) demonstrate the double-helical structure of DNA.


text:
How to overcome my resistance to lecturing?
I am in a situation where I have several adult students for an all-day career training program that runs for about a year. So, they and I sit in the classroom most of a normal work-week. I decide when to get up and lecture. Although I tell them to raise questions any time, they rarely do unless I ask.
I enjoy speaking in front of the class, but because it is not on a particular schedule, I usually find that I have trouble motivating myself to get started. I don't have employee reviews or a mentor. My feeling in class is similar to how I have never gotten used to making phone calls: every time, it is like jumping into cold water, it never gets any easier. (I would rather talk in person. I am almost 50, by the way, and male.) How do I get beyond this basic motivation hurdle?

I used to feel the same. Now I love lecturing, but still hate making phone calls. Practice, trying to make it an enjoyable experience for all present, knowing the material, planning interaction, ....

Lecturing is only one of many ways to teach, and certainly not always the most effective. If it doesn't appeal to you, consider developing a teaching style based on something else (projects, activities, ...)

Perhaps it is like a social anxiety situation. When I have a clear role or job to do at the time, I just do it. But when it is ambiguous or I have to decide, often I have trouble.

I don't know how you're running your training session, but when I've done "non-traditional" classes, I go around and talk to the students.  They either ask questions directly or it's clear that they're stuck on something, and when several people have this issue I just start explaining to them at the board and usually everyone else listens.  (These were small classes.)

@NateEldredge has the correct answer; except not sufficiently strongly worded.  The evidence I have seen says lecturing is never the most effective method.

@AnonymousPhysicist: Thank you. I have seen the research on effectiveness. I only lecture about 10% of the time :-) My "lectures" amount to pointing out salient things in the books and giving background from personal experience, adding things that are not in the materials. The students like the "war stories". The question here revolves around WHEN to get out of the chair and talk, rather than what to say or how. I used to be reluctant - it is a motivation issue for me, not a matter of organization. It is getting better.

I don't enjoy lecturing either and yet my student reviews ask for more lectures even if I prefer discussion. What I've done for some classes is prepare a portfolio of 15 minute mini-lectures that are on one specific point, targeted, succint, and within the attention span (maybe) of 18 year olds.
You might also want to create a similar grab bag of canned material so that when a particular topic arises, you can easily lecture on it.
Otherwise, the only other way is to practice. I've realized my own aversion to lecturing is something I need to work more on, so I deliberately designed a large lecture course that was 100% lecturing, rather than the smaller seminar courses that I prefer.

I like your suggestions. When things are scheduled I feel a bit of anxiety, but there is no question of going ahead. It is when I need to choose the time to present something that I have trouble. Maybe it has more to do with confidence, or knowing what my role is at any given time?

Since these are all day sessions, why don't you plan to have mini-lectures at set times - say 11a and 3p. That helps break up the day and if they are planned times, then people won't mind if they are a bit off topic so you won't have to worry about segues.

Context switching between friendly discussion leader (userland mode) to lecturer (hypervisor mode) is tough, but that's why they pay us the big bucks. :)

Why not schedule some of them? Put up a weekly schedule of lectures based on what the students are working on. You could even brainstorm with the students on what they'd like to hear. Also, do they have preference on when they would prefer lectures? First thing in the morning, just before lunch, not after lunch (too sleepy), etc.

I guess that scheduling the coming week makes me confront the "when to stand up and lecture" issue head-on. Usually it is fairly obvious, but other times I have to make a judgment call. At those times, my resolve is often low.

Consider you are your first student: a Latin saying says "Docendo discimus", or "The best way to learn is to teach" (attributed to Frank Oppenheimer). I am amazed how I still find simpler or nicely illustrative ways to explaining stuff I have been teaching for years. Which in turn help me understand them better. And you can turn that into an exercise of Learning by teaching (allow students to prepare and to teach lessons, or parts of lessons). Or into a book?

Your "problem" is very unusual.  Most people love to hear themselves talk!
Which leads me to a creative proposal.  How about if you ask your students to prepare some short presentations, too?  Then you wouldn't be the only one taking a turn standing at the front of the room explaining something.

It has gotten a bit better. I just started a new session with more students and so things are lively now. Also, my general level of anxiety has fallen a lot since I posted the question.

Glad to hear it's better now.

Preparation (or "class prep" as many call it). Write it down.
Schedule in advance when lectures will be given (perhaps on a monthly or quarterly basis). Write down notes on what you will say and present. Some people practice this in advance (personally, I just practice it mentally a bit). Keep records and write down modifications, improvements, and refinements.
I often do the same for phone calls with strangers (particularly on touchy subjects). Write down a short script or some notes and read from that to get started. A little prep time always makes a big difference.


text:
How do I get back into mathematics after graduating with a BSc 14 years ago?
I've always loved maths but for numerous reasons I bounced along in general/non-profit admin/management. After maternity leave I have found myself at the bottom again and seriously thinking how can I get back on track. I'm 37 and I graduated in 2000 with a UK BSc in Math 2:1. Anyone I chat to (non-mathematicians) always say, "it will come back to you," "go for it," etc. but what do they know? What do those working in maths think? I was especially drawn to discrete maths, logic and computability. Where are the doors?

Are you looking to work in mathematical research or in a mathematical part of industry?  Mathematical careers have expanded a lot since 2000, especially in data science, mathematically based marketing, and mathematically based pharmacology.  There are new tracks to take that weren't available before, and many people prefer them to academia.

@NeilStrickland I think that MathOverflow is preferable to MathStackExchange for this question, though academia.SE is preferable to both

Whatever you choose to do, don't underestimate the amount of time it will take to get back up to speed, especially if you're thinking of doing an MSc in mathematics. You may find that you're rusty on the details of many advanced courses. Take some time to revisit those courses, refresh your memory and see what you still like before making a decision.

Plenty of jobs for maths teachers in the UK. You should look into doing a one-year Post-Graduate Certificate in Education (PGCE).

Sarah, why not just register to an MSc? It will give you an opportunity to refresh your memory and your skills and to test yourself. Also, if you'll do well, you should be able to get support letters and might even open the door to a PhD in the same place.

To do mathematics professionally you should enroll to a graduate school. I know at least two similar cases where people enrolled to a graduate school after a long gap and became successful professional mathematicians (one of them in UK).
Of course there is also a way of self-education. But the choice depends on many other factors, for example whether you need to support yourself and/or your family etc.

I think this depends very much on whether you want / need to earn money with
doing mathematics or not. If you don't need to earn money with it, just go ahead and
enroll to a graduate school. Though if you do need to earn money with it, you may find
this pretty difficult if you start now with just a BSc.

There is also the question of tuition fees...

My point is that I don't want to earn money by cooking, but I'd stop short of paying people a lot of money to take lessons in cuisine

If I'm in your shoes, then I would enroll to a computer science graduate program (first MSc and then PhD if everything goes well). Every computer science department offers courses in the areas that you're interested in. Then, if for some reason you get bored doing research, with your background, you should be able to find a job in industry.

yes, and you could enroll in a computer science department that lets you take math classes.  But CS is more versatile and opens doors in all the sciences, as well as many other fields.

I suggest that you start by finding someone who does discrete mathematics or something similar on the website of a nearby university.  Alternatively, you could find an MSc admissions tutor.  With a modest amount of luck, you will find someone friendly and helpful who will be willing to spend half an hour talking through the options with you.  They will be able to ask mathematical questions to gain some sense of how much you remember, which will be required for any realistic advice.

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


text:
What majors study both computer and maths?
I would like to apply for a Master degree.
I'm looking for a major that study both Computer and Maths.
Can anyone tell me what such major are?

Computer science is essentially a kind of mathematics, although it doesn't actually study computers.  Also, a lot of fields use computers these days, so it might help if you clarify how you want computers to be involved.  (And how you want math to be involved, for that matter.)

You could try some areas of applied math or theoretical CS.

I don't know in which country you are studying. However, in the UK this depends on the university itself and the Msc program they provide. What part of computer science do you like? Is the programming part or other popular topics (e.g., big data, etc.). Also what you want to do after Msc?

Combinatorics maybe ?

Also, if you have skills in both computers and math you are pretty much equipped for any sort of scientific research.  You could think about applying your skills to problems in, say, physics, or biology.  Of course you would have to learn those subjects too, but you'd have a nice head start.

As an example, the University of Oxford (UK) as an MSc program in Mathematics and the Foundations of Computer Science, which not only has courses in computer science and mathematics, but in particular also offers courses on the interplay between these areas.

If you like applied, Computational Mathematics could be a good option.

Many scientific fields nowadays rely heavily on computation (physics, statistics, biology, etc). You could go into any of these with a computational focus in mind (develop new computational methodology, algorithms, improve speed/performance of existing algorithms).

I'm not sure what your prior experience/work is, but if you have a little experience in Computer Science, another option is Cryptography.
Though it's usually not an explicit major, one typically studies it through a given Mathematics program, and if you concentrate on the applied side of things (i.e., writing actual algorithms and performing time/space analyses of them), you'll be deep enough in the weeds to be forced to learn more Computer Science along the way.


text:
Writing a report/paper etc. - How to deal with citations that have poor English?
I've tried looking for suggestions on the internet to my question but haven't found any useful information.
I'm writing a paper and I'm quoting/citing various books, journals etc. However, I'm coming across of papers that are relevant to my paper that I would like to take quotes from, but were either originally written in another language and have been poorly translated, or were written with bad English to begin with.
Can I quote/cite the papers with corrected English or put the quote as-is? I'm worried if I don't correct the spelling mistakes/poor grammar etc. that the reputation/validity of my paper will be impacted. On the other hand I don't want any corrections I make in the quotes to be considered plagiarism. What should I do?
Edit: I'm writing a literature review section for the paper, if that is relevant.

What field is this?

Multiple: Engineering, Electronics, Computer Science, etc.

It is not common to have verbatim quotations in those fields, regardless of the quality of the original source. Just explain it in your own words.

Generally, in a lit review, you summarize the findings and relevance of past work. Do you need to quote them verbatim? If so, you can quote the work and then indicate [sic] after the quotation, which lets readers know that the poor language is not your own, but the original author's.

It the material is technical in nature, then you should not be quoting verbatim in the first place.  Instead, you should be paraphrasing the information in the paper, which should not be affected by language problems.
If, on the other hand, you actually do need to precisely quote, e.g., for a work on the anthropology of science, then you should use "sic" to indicate that the errors represent a faithful transcription of the original.
An example of its use:

Sir Puffington was a tireless if somewhat incoherent advocate of faster-than-light travel:
  "Why should Her Majesty's subjects be so arbitrarily limited, when Vulkins [sic] and Star Trucks [sic] are not?"

Did you come up with that quote yourself? :D

@Michael I only use the finest home-grown organic word salad.


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What are pre-print repositories for math and physics alternative to ArXiv?
Are there other widely used academic pre-print repositories other than ArXiv? My interest is especially towards mathematics and physics.
If possible, one characteristic that I'd like to find in other pre-print repositories is the possibility to update the paper without leaving the older versions online and a better organized "author page" (and, as a note, I personally don't like Research Gate or Academia.edu, which also, as far as I understand, shouldn't be considered pre-print repositories).

Why do you need one?

@TobiasKildetoft Curiosity: ArXiv is so well-known and widely used, so I was wondering if there are other such websites which are equally known (but unknown to me).

Having an alternative website would be counter-productive to the purpose of arXiv. Almost all researchers in the relevant fields upload their pre-prints to arXiv (where allowed by the journal). They might not bother uploading to two different repositories.

https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ is an open archive supported by the CNRS (National Center for Scientific Research, the French public research agency). Note that articles published on HAL can be automatically transferred to arxiv.

There is also Mathematical Physics preprint archive: http://www.ma.utexas.edu/mp_arc/

@Moriarty While you are right, this argument can be brought against pretty much any second version of a service, and yet we see alternatives to pretty much anything spring up all the time.

@xLeitix I agree that competition is good, especially in the for-profit sector. But other services (i.e. NASA ADS) are well-integrated with arXiv. An arXiv alternative would need to resolve the resulting fragmentation issues in order to be widely accepted by the community.

Some people don't want to post on arxiv because they're kooks, and arxiv has mechanisms for discouraging kooks. That's why vixra.org exists.

@xLeitix You generally expect alternatives that don't offer a solution to a problem with the dominate player to have a hard time. I've been happy with arXiv for my needs, so I don't see the handle a up-n-comer needs. But maybe I'm missing the obvious.

MP_ARC is still going, and respectable, but it doesn't seem like what you're looking for.

In mathematics and physics arXiv is by far the most used and reputable.
Of course, there are thousands other ways to self-archive your paper using not dedicated solutions (like personal website, GitHub, etc) and some general (like FigShare).
Yet, when it comes to pre-print services, they only one I am aware of is http://vixra.org/. It has policy of accepting everything; however, it has reputation of crackpotism (as arXiv is popular and editors rarely reject from it, so for the majority if researchers there is no reason to choose viXra (unless as a protest or something)).

Are you suggesting that vixra paper I read which solved two Millennium Problems in the same paper, might not be legit?

"[Moderators] rarely reject from arXiv" is an easy impression to get from the comfort of an institutional email address for which the requirement of endorsement is waived. For the general public, posting on arXiv can be a significantly taxing experience.

@E.P. That is not related to being rejected by moderators. That is a formal requirement that the moderators are not involved in. Once you have that endorsement, you will be unlikely to get rejected.

@TobiasKildetoft The answer makes an explicit claim that the only reasons to post to viXra are "as a protest or something" instead of a more accurate assessment of "because most people cannot post to arXiv at all" (or only after significant effort). It's easy to lose sight of that from the comfort of the ivory tower but the only thing that that accomplishes is that we look like ivory-tower types.

@E.P. Doing research already takes significant effort. The extra effort to get endorsed in minimal compared to that, and I have yet to hear of someone who had an actual contribution to make and who was not able to get endorsed.

@TobiasKildetoft Assuming that there were people with actual contributions to make who were not able to get endorsed, how likely would you be to hear about it? Or in other words, is it not possible that there is a selection bias acting on your perceptions of the topic? How certain are you of your bayesian priors? I agree that the actual numbers are likely to be very low, but it's still self-serving to pretend that academia is all meritocracy from a position where the bureaucratic barriers have been waived, and I don't think it's a particularly good look as compared to an honest assessment.

@E.P. Given how often I see people talk about how hard it is to get endorsed, I would assume that if there were good examples some of those people would have mentioned them by now.

@Tobias Kildetoft: I don't know if I qualify as a "good example", but I've previously mentioned (in a comment directed to you, in fact) my difficulties, at least in the general mathematics section.

Try the PeerJ Prepreints.  https://peerj.com/preprints/
Here is what I copied from their website:

A PeerJ 'PrePrint' is a draft that has not yet been peer reviewed for
  formal publication. Similar to preprint servers that already exist
  (for example arXiv.org), authors can submit draft, incomplete, or
  final versions of articles they are working on.

One archive that seems to be gaining some traction (possibly more so in Europe) lately is HAL (mentioned in Taladris' comment above).  I don't use it personally, but I've been finding a few preprints in my area there recently. Here is their English description:

The open archive HAL
HAL is an open archive where authors can deposit scholarly documents
  from all academic fields.
For the attention of the authors
The deposit must be made in agreement with the co-authors and in the respect for the policy of the publishers.
The deposit is subject of a control, HAL reserves the right to refuse items that do not meet the criteria of the archive.
Any deposit is definitive, no withdrawals will be made after the on-line posting of the publication.
Text files in pdf format or image files are sent to CINES for long-term archiving.

While it seems you cannot get rid of old versions, it has what I think are somewhat better "author pages" than the arXiv, e.g., this example.  (You can differentiate people with the same last name and first initial, unlike the default in the arXiv.)

It seems like the new improvements being made to arXiv should help some of the issues with distinguishing authors, though I have not played around that much with the beta version, so I don't know how much they have changed in that regard.

Shamelessly copy from https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/295/14341, just tailor it a little bit.
The OSF provides a general open preprint infrastructure that is connected to a range of preprint services. Importantly, it is not owned by a commercial publisher.  It supports a number of discipline-specific preprint services many of which use the ArXiv name under licence.
The list of preprint services is growing over time.
For further information go to: https://osf.io/preprints
In general, no matter what the discipline you can post to OSF preprints: https://osf.io/preprints/
More discipline-specific preprint services using the OSF framework are being added on a regular basis: https://cos.io/blog/public-goods-infrastructure-preprints-and-innovation-scholarly-communication/
Useful features of OSF-based preprint services

Strategy for long term archiving
Integration with Google Scholar
Integration with OSF projects which allows you to link other materials such as data, code, and materials
OSF is a not for profit entity run by academic researchers (contrast this with SSRN, Figshare, ResearchGate; i.e., no ads and goals aligned with academic community)
The functionality of OSF preprints is improving on a regular basis. See features road map
You can choose a licence
You can link to the DOI of the subsequently published manuscript.

Nice to know about OSF.


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Is Scribd widely used in academia?
Scribd is surely a huge website, but I was wondering if there are some data on its usage in the academic world as a means for sharing lecture notes or research notes.

The undergraduate awards publish all their entries on Scribd

I don't think Scribd is widely used by academics.

I've seen answer keys and entire prior tests uploaded to Scribd with answers. With the good comes the bad, especially given how (at least when I used it last) they ask for an upload to allow you to download.

I use it a little, and one of my colleagues uses it a little, but I don't get the impression that it's widely used. The application I used it for was the following. I have written textbooks for use in some of my courses. They're available for free online. About 70 other people are using them. At a certain point, I decided I wanted to do a fairly major revision, which would completely break compatibility with the earlier versions of the book. (There's a different order of topics, for example.) I didn't want the old versions cluttering up my web site and creating confusion, but I also didn't want to force my users to switch immediately to the new version (or at all, if they liked the old version better). So I just put the old ones on scribd.
One of my colleague uses scribd for his course notes, for a somewhat different reason. He simply doesn't want the hassle of maintaining his own web site, paying for webhosting, etc.
For both me and my colleague, one of the considerations was that our school's computing resources are flaky, inadequate, and Windows-centric. People might also prefer not to use a school server for something like a textbook that they want to make clear is not the intellectual property of their employer.
One of the problems with using scribd for these purposes is that scribd has been searching for a business model that will allow them to make a profit, and therefore they keep changing their rules and the way they present themselves publicly. For example, I've heard complaints from people that (at least at one point in time) scribd seemed to be trying to force them to pay money or contribute materials in order to access files.
It is probably not realistic to think of scribd as a permanent place to store documents (cf. arxiv.org or archive.org, where there is some expectation of permanence).
Another educational purpose for which I use scribd is illegal according to the laws of some countries. There are a lot of classic papers in my field that are very important and useful educationally, but are still under copyright in many countries. Some of the old ones are not even available from the publisher in digital form if you're willing to pay; they haven't been digitized, and the only way to access them is by going to the basement at a big university where they keep very old journals. Sometimes when I go to the trouble of obtaining one of these papers, I scan it and post it on scribd.

This is a very hard question to answer, as everyone can only give their viewpoint.
I can therefore give you one viewpoint. I am a lecturer in Computer Science at the University of St Andrews, and until seeing this post I'd never heard of this website. Having just gone to the website, it seems to just be a book subscription service, which costs $8.99 a month, with no obvious academic purpose.
I can't see why you would expect me to use it, and I certainly don't intend to start.


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What tense to use when referring to self publication in a monograph chapter?
I have a question regarding what tense form should I use to refer to an earlier self publication in a monograph chapter.
For example, if I want to say (in the chapter), "most of the results were published in [1]", is that OK? Or should I use the present perfect tense?

I would generally go with "are published", since "were" would suggest to me that the results are no longer published. In some odd situations "were" might be better, for example, "the results were published online [1], but the website has been taken down". Similarly, in a case like "the results were published in the first edition [1], but have since been removed", I think "were" might be better since although the results are still technically published in the first edition, the point is to note that they are no longer published in the second edition.

Yes, writing  "Most of the results were published in [1]." is OK.
Bonus tip: Don't treat citations as nouns / noun phrases.  Instead, if you delete the citation, the entire sentence should still make sense and be grammatical.  Thus, better style is to say "Most of the results were published by Smith et al. [1]." (for example).
For more elaboration, see http://www.read.seas.harvard.edu/~kohler/latex.html#refnoun, which is part of Eddie Kohler's excellent tips on scientific writing and using Latex.

A sentence like "Most of the results were published by Smith et al." without the reference might be grammatical but it doesn't make much sense (who is this Smith?). Citations treated as nouns are fairly common in the scientific literature, and it seems to me that the reasons against this practice are rather weak.


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How often do mathematics professors move up from mediocre schools to good ones?
How often do mathematics professors move up from mediocre schools to good ones?
For example, let's say someone did some ok research at a postdoc and then went to industry for 10 years and afterwards got a professor position at a very mediocre place where they started pumping out solid papers over a few years.
Given that they had the talent to get a top 50 research school position on a traditional route, what are the chances that they get there in this situation?

To address your second question, provided they know people and can get very good letters, they have a good chance of moving up to a better place, though it may or may not be the same level of school as if they had gone the traditional route, for various reasons.

I think it will be hard for anyone to answer this question in the literal terms it was posed, i.e., by giving you a numerical probability.  I don't know how to compile a list of all mathematicians meeting your requirements and/or those that went on to top 50 universities.
Let me try to answer more qualitatively.  People do move from one university to another, most commonly before they are tenured, but mobility at all levels is increasingly common: a substantial minority of all tenured math faculty move to a different tenured position at least once over the course of their careers.  (One way to try to quantify this would be to look at the Mathematics Genealogy Project; if someone has supervised more than one student at multiple institutions which are not in close proximity, it is likely that they moved after tenure.)
I don't know if you've heard, but things are very competitive now.  I am at roughly the 50th best math department in the US, and the people that we've hired in the last decade are doing a lot better than "solid work"; most of our recent hires are internationally renowned in their fields.  If you're going to hire someone more senior, then you'll have to pay them more and you worry that they will not stick around as long, so in most cases they have to be better than the stellar younger hires.  Exceptions include departments who want to found entire research groups; for this you really need a senior person, and that person's leadership / mentorship / overall activity and connections in the field may be more important than the excellence of their work.
So to be taken seriously as a senior hire, someone needs to have excellent work beyond even the impressive going rate for a younger hire.  These are the parameters independently of how long they spent away from academia: hiring committees will look at the best work a candidate has ever done and compare it to their work in recent years.  You don't need some minimum number of total papers, and you don't get credit for time served.  If you've done several really great things in the last few years, the last millennium portion of your CV is not really relevant.
Let me also say that although I am painting a picture that transitioning to a top university is a hard road, it is certainly not an impossible one.  I can think of at least one person in my field who took several years off to work in his family business far away from any academic epicenter.  When I knew him he was back in academia with a pretty decent position that I, if I'm honest, kind of wondered how he'd landed.  Ten years later he is at one of the world's top universities and has won many awards.  How did he do it?  By doing great work.  Really great work: as in, resolving major pieces of very famous conjectures.  It's just that easy...and it's just that hard.


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Question about phd interview gone wrong
Recently I had an interview for a phd in computer science. In the application I was able to choose multiple thematic categories, so I decided to apply for complex event processing, as well as robotics. During the interview I was asked to explain the reasons that I decided to choose these categories. I tried to explain that I am interested in applying AI techniques in data stemming from multiple heterogenous sources and that I believed that both of these categories would give me such an opportunity. Although the methods that I would use to do this as well as the application I would develop would be different for each thematic category. However I believed, that this would not be a problem. The interviewers though seemed dissatisfied with my views though. One of them suggested that I lean more towards the complex event processing thematic category. They asked me then whether I would be interested in applying complex event processing in medical applications (since I have an MSc in Biomedical engineering) or some other area of application such as finance. I replied, that I am more interested in exploring the methodologies involved than the actual application and that both the cases of finance and medical data excite me. However I think that the interviewers were possibly dissatisfied with my answers as I did not seem to come to a closure regarding my decisions. They then replied that a PhD is a process of researching a subject in depth... They also mentioned, that although in my CV I had done several things in the past related to computer science (such as jobs, conference papers and journals) they all were quite different from each other. This could possibly indicate that I was more interested in learning several things instead of giving special emphasis in one area... I replied to this by saying that the fact that I took advanage of some opportunities in the past did not necesserily mean I would not be willing and motivated enough in researching a subject for a long time.
However I feel dissatisfied with the responses I gave in this interview. The reason is that I realised that if I had a gun pointed at my head in order to choose a topic, I would choose the application of complex event processing in finance data. So I want to ask the following:
I am able to talk to one of my interviewers. Would it be a good idea to tell him that I realised that if had to choose only one thing, that would be the application of complex event processing in finance data and I would forget about robotics or the medical modality as they only seem nice alternatives (with the exact words described above). (I have no previous experience though in these areas ... but I feel really motivated in researching this topic)

Needed to say, depending on who pays you and on what your field exactly is, being unfocused is not necessarily a bad thing. From my masters and PhD so far, I've got 5 papers in two sub-fields and none of them cites another one, in this sense "focus" means "focus enough to actually produce/finish things". But I don't know if this is common in your field of interest.

I think you clearly sensed the concern that the interviewers might have with a candidate who is capable but seemingly unfocused. PhD completion rates are fairly low and one contributing factor is the motivational slump that occurs after a couple of years with very little light at the end of the tunnel. One way (that committees try) to avoid these unfortunate scenarios is to select candidates that are intrinsically motivated by their topic: whose passion for the subject itself will sustain them through the bleak slog that is methodology.
The problem is basically that, as you say, if someone held a gun to your head you could commit, but your advisor is not allowed nor obliged to do that. You need to decide independently whether you are honestly, deeply motivated by the desire to tackle hard problems (and make very little progress) in your subfield.
If it is the case that complex event processing in finance really is the field that will get you through years of low pay and minimal recognition, then you could send a follow up email along the lines of "Thank you for your time. I appreciate your consideration. Upon reflecting on our interview the other day, I feel I may not have appropriately conveyed my interest in SUBFIELD_X, which I think is important for VALID_REASON_Y" However, you should not be terribly surprised if this doesn't dislodge a negative opinion.
Edit: I should of course add that in many, many cases the specific (METHODOLOGY x SUBFIELD) that you are deeply passionate about today, will not ultimately be the one in which you complete a thesis. This is okay, as long as the passion carries over.

Thanks for the answer... Coming in touch with scholars I realised that most of them find it as you say necessary to be deeply passionate about the subject you choose from the very beginning. Although I may not have their experience, I currently disagree with that view... I believe that when you work too much on a project you will find several aspects of it that you love by understanding its details and devoting time to it. I believe that the process of a phd is quite exciting on its own despite the effort required.I see it as a way to improve vastly one's analytical analytical thinking skills

@Obelix As the girl on the tortilla commercials says: why not both? I enjoy my work both because I am deeply concerned and fascinated by the topics I study and because they offer me continuous opportunities to improve. Nevertheless, if the admissions committees have the impression that you only want the training and don't really care about the field, they may be justifiably concerned.

I did not state one should not enjoy the topic along with the training... but I believe that this comes later, after having started...