Monday, October 5, 2020

Student paper accepted!

The paper by my undergraduate Shawn Knabel was accepted. I tweet stormed about it. I have certainly helped large swaths of it but I can say with absolute certainty it’s his paper. He responded to the referee entirely on his own. 


It’s an amazing achievement. It’s a very solid paper that looked at the aspects on how one identifies strong gravitational lenses in surveys using spectroscopy, citizen science or machine learning. And how little these three techniques agree. 


This brings me to the other pet of the process: how much of the struggle to get this thing out had nothing to do with the science. The grant that was supposed to pay for it ran out and could not allow for extensions, the referee kept finding new fault where there was none (the main result of the paper didn’t change over 6 referee reports. At some point it felt like hazing. If you were the referee and read this: I hold you in low professional esteem. 


And that brings me to the issue in the astronomy community: why is this considered ok behavior? The “I had to endure this as a grad student so...” attitude. The thinly veiled disdain for science done at state schools or undergraduates. Or horror of horrors both. 


But this success means I should keep pushing. A paper is an excellent equalizer for my undergrads that want to go graduate schools. I disagree that US graduate schools now effectively expect this but it offers a clear avenue for how to get my students into them. 

Sciencing in times of Corona

 I’m trying to get a science done. This is anything from getting grant proposals set up to telescope time proposals, helping students do their science projects and trying to finish the occasional paper myself. 

Let’s admit to ourselves at least here that this is very likely more than we could finish in a good year. And this is not a good year. 

Yet we feel that as a field, or tenure committee or whatever, there is a nonzero chance collective amnesia sets in and we all fear of being labeled “unproductive”. For 2020 and 2021 (this is going to last longer and take time to recover...). 


S lets see what I have in the hopper:


8 scientific papers at 50+% complete. Many almost ready to go to coauthors or with comments or referee reports. Yeah. That should go down. That’s too many. I should finish some. But...


5 student projects that could/should be papers. That’ll take more work but is very beneficial to these students. I should get cracking on those. But they are overwhelmed and so am I. 


I agreed to write a book a few months ago. There is a draft. For me it’s a challenge to stop writing about certain things apparently. Still. Need to wrap that up. 


NSF Astronomy & Astrophysics grant proposals. These are huge with lots of moving parts. Stressful to pull together and shepherd through the University and NSF bureaucracies. I’ve...Eh... started. 

Students count on me to get them funding for their phds. And support undergrads. Oh and myself and my family. Summer salary. Eish. 


The James Webb Space Telescope proposals are due on November 24. In a giant “don’t care” by this project they just put it on the last day of just about everyone’s classes. May as well write “for Ivy League use only” on the side of this thing. But I’m stubborn so... yeah preparing some. 


This is not only hard. This is functionally impossible. So time to pair down, punt and of course “good enough” all of this. 


Teaching in time of corona

I have no clever tricks to make this all easier. This is just a collection of my thoughts now that I’m halfway through the semester. 

I am teaching a 100 level astronomy class for a relatively small class (25) using our planetarium. And a 300lvl python/computing class in a well equipped computer lab. 


So I have well equipped classrooms. With microphones. And in one case already set up recording equipment that is pretty high end. 


First up: it’s exhausting. Accept that the room with social distancing and masks gives little to no feedback. And online classes even less. Pour energy in, wonder the whole time how it’s going. 


Secondly: ruthlessly organize. The number of moving parts has increased dramatically with a bunch of small tasks such as uploading recordings and slides, making sure pre/in-class materials are available to students. So set up a schedule and stick to it. Class equipment goes into the “teaching bag” together with spare masks and sanitizer. 


Thirdly: prepare and work ahead. A lot. I went in expecting to get sick by now or something else massively going wrong. I still expect it. So all the pre-class material was already in blackboard before the semester started. I’m uploading the 300lvl classes ahead of time. As soon as I realized that these were just going to be recordings...the asynchronous also applies to the preparation! Which is good because the end of the semester brings the crunch of JWST and NSF major deadlines. So I’m up to week 11 recording these and I plan to finish recording for the semester next week. I’m sure the building will burn down soon after. Or something. 


Expansion: the work-ahead approach was one of the main takeaways I had from the spring. The asynchronous part should not mean that students can catch up later but also allow for them to work ahead to fit their schedule. 


Not that I’m smug about this. I am doing this because I expect more things to break. Soon. 


Next: flexibility. Students are not doing so hot right now. Even if every class now takes 10% more effort, that means they are over-taxed. And that is before one or two of their classes started descending into pure chaos. So. Flexibility is key. Deadlines, how many assignments will get you full marks. Etc etc. Oh and extra credit assignments. Lots of them all over the place. 


Prepare for all online. This is part of flexible but basically build a completely online course (everything in one spot) and teach in person as long as circumstances allow. Weirdly. I’m still in-person. Ok. But ready to switch. 


Hybrid/Hyflex. No. Just no. It assumes perfect internet for everyone (ha!), No emergencies (Haha!), and that instructor can be in two places at once (oh haha very funny). It. Does. Not. Work. 

I noticed this when certain committees were online/in person mix and then it falls to the people in the room. 


Foregiveness: it’s ok. Oh the kids did not learn about that? Oh well. The foregiveness goes towards yourself too. Science is suffering badly (next post). It’s ok. 2020 (and likely 2021) are mulligans.