The Awards: 5

I've been named to the Department of Psychology's Honour Roll with Distinction for all three courses I taught last term. Thank-you to everyone, and special thanks to those who went to the trouble of giving written comments. I'm not going to post "best-of" student comments this time because (a) I've done that before, (b) there weren't many comments that, er...cry out for a response (most were constructive and helpful, which is great!), and (c) I don't want to reinforce anyone trolling for their comments to be posted in this blog (getcher own blog, eh?).

This time, I want to congratulate my colleagues who were named to the Honour Roll:

• Brown, N. (PSYCO 405 X5)
• Dixon, P. (PSYCO 258)
• Friedman, A. (PSYCO 212)
• Hurd, P. (PSYCO 400/409)
• Masuda, T. (PSYCO 241 B1, PSYCO 305)
• Passey, J. (PSYCO 105 B1, PSYCO 233)
• Schimel, J. (PSYCO 105 B4)
• Spalding, T. (PSYCO 105 B3, PSYCO 405 B2)
• Snyder, M. (PSYCO 403 B2)
• Westbury, C. (PSYCO 339)
• Wylie, D. (PSYCO 267 B2)

And those who were named to the Honour Roll with Distinction:

• Busink, R. (PSYCO 436)
• Caplan, J. (PSYCO 403 B4)
• Colbourne, F. (PSYCO 403 B1)
• Gagne, C. (PSYCO 532)
• Hurd, P. (PSYCO 414/505)
• Kuiken, D. (PSYCO 415)
• Lee, P. (PSYCO 105 S1)
• Mou, W. (PSYCO 403 B3)
• Mullins, B. (PSYCO 104 B2)
• Nicoladis, E. (PSYCO 323)
• Noels, K. (PSYCO 300)
• Passey, J. (PSYCO 241 S1, PSYCO 405 B1)
• Singhal, A. (PSYCO 377)
• Spetch, M. (PSYCO 485)
• Todd, K. (PSYCO 475)
• Varnhagen, C. (SCI 100)
• Watchorn, R. (PSYCO 323)
• Wylie, D. (PSYCO 405 B3)

Quite a list, isn't it? I think the criteria are pretty stringent (see below for details); that means the Department has a lot of great teachers. I am humbled to be included among them.

Here are the criteria for the awards:
1. The course section median response was equal to or greater than 4.0; for Honors with Distinction, the course section median response was greater than 4.0 and at least 45% of the students agreed strongly that the instructor was “Excellent;” For classes with fewer than 10 students enrolled, the majority of students responded “Agree” or “Strongly Agree”; for Honors with Distinction, the majority of the majority responded “Strongly Agree”;
2. At least 60% of the class responded to the questionnaire;
3. There were no abnormalities in the grade distributions (e.g., distributions skewed too high or too low);
4. Instruction was conducted in accord with the ethical standards of teaching as outlined by the APA and CPA.

Why aren't you studying?

The Value of Your Degree

I’ve posted about The Best Job in the World, according to a number of metrics. Now, a new study has been released, looking at the earnings of people who hold a bachelor’s degree.

Researchers at Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce analyzed US Census Bureau data on over 3 million bachelor’s degree-holders who graduated over the last 40 years. Specifically, they recorded the median salaries they earned in 2009; this means that they took a cross-section of people currently in the workforce (it didn’t just look at people who graduated in 2009).

I’m sad to report that the field with the lowest median salary is Psychology and Social Work (P&SW) at $42K (range: $29K to $53K). Sob. Below is the breakdown within P&SW (from The Chronicle of Higher Education):

The lowest is counseling psychology, ringing in at a paltry $29,000 per year. At the top of P&SW is I/O psychology (those who work in large companies, measuring and improving performance and/or wellness). I guess those companies pay pretty well; the pay is almost double that of the poor counseling psychology graduates.

But wait--what are those lowly counseling psychology-degree-holders actually doing? They’re not working as counseling psychologists. Why not? Generally, you can’t, not with just a Bachelor’s degree. Maybe they just got their BA and are now working in retail. On the other hand, you can work in I/O psychology with “just” a bachelor’s degree.

Also, the US economy isn’t in great shape. The data came from 2009, when the job situation was pretty grim--not that it’s great today. It’s possible that some people had their salary cut, or at least not increased recently. Still, the numbers above are based on full-time, full-year workers with a Bachelor’s, not part-time workers.

Finally, those who hold higher-level degrees like a Master’s or Ph.D. earn more. According to the report, median earnings of those with a graduate degree in P&SW was $60K, moving P&SW up to the third-lowest field.

So, did you make a bad choice of major? Should you have taken engineering (overall median: $75,000)? Or computing science (overall median: $71,000). Maybe we’re just all in this for the love of it.

Why aren’t you studying?

The Random Facts 2

No, still no Twitter account. Why? I can't come up with a good name. Is “Sh*t my prof says” taken? So, more random facts (and some questions).

• First, the Taco del Mar by my house closed, then the Taco Bell closed. What have I done to offend the taco gods? I am currently leaving offerings of money at the nearby Mucho Burrito...

• never get three dental fillings a couple of hours before teaching a class

• Me: “What are you watching?”
  My wife: “Um, Keeping up with the Cardassians.”
  I wonder to myself, hmm...Elim Garak, or Gul Dukat?

• Is a public toilet seat still warm from the previous occupant gross, or kinda nice?

• Oh, and don’t hold anything over a toilet that you want to keep.

• Have Cadbury Crème Eggs gotten a lot sweeter since I was a kid, or have I just gotten more sensitive? That’s what I thought.
  

Do you have any random facts or questions?

Why aren't you studying?

The Spring Term, 2011

I've written about Spring Term before, describing my misconceptions about the kind of students who take courses in Intersession (Spring and Summer Terms), and about their reasons for taking them. This time, a little bit about one of the greatest challenges in taking an Intersession course: time.

Courses in Spring (and Summer) Term last for 6 weeks. Unless you've signed up for a 3-week Spring or Summer Term course. That's right: first day of class to final exam in 3 weeks. I've taught 3 weeks courses before, at another institution. It's 3 hours of lecture every day, Monday to Thursday. Then on Friday there's a midterm and another lecture to round out the 3 hours. It's brutal. Don't even think about taking two of these monsters at the same time. Your social life will go out the window and you'll have to catch up on your favourite TV shows later. It's just go to class, read the textbook, go to class, read the textbook. So, in contrast, a 6-week course doesn't sound too bad.

In 6-week courses, there's "only" 70 minutes of class every day, and an exam "only" about every 2 weeks. Let's compare (labs aside, assuming a full course load):

• "regular" Fall/Winter Term: 770 minutes (about 12.8 hours) per week in class (five courses)
• Spring/Summer Term: 700 minutes (about 11.7 hours) a week (two courses)

For me, here are my in-class teaching hours (not counting prep work, of course):

• Fall/Winter: 7.8 hours/week
• Spring/Summer: 11.7 hours/week

(Net result? I have to work harder in Intersession.)

The point of all this silly number crunching? Don't take Intersession courses lightly. Be prepared to devote your time appropriately--these courses still count toward your GPA. It's tough to concentrate on the yada-yada of your instructor when the sun is shining and the birds are chirping. *sigh*

If you've taken Intersession courses before, what are your tips for making it through?

Why aren't you studying?

The Earth Day

Happy Earth Day, Earth! And to everyone on it! (Sorry, astronauts on the ISS, you don’t count. But hey, you’ve got an awesome view out the window. Of the Earth.) It's good to have a reminder about the value of the Earth, our environment, and ways to protect it.

At work, I strive to be environmentally friendly:

• No recyclable paper gets thrown in the garbage. Any paper that goes into the recycling almost always has both sides used. I admit that I do use a lot of paper--exams, mostly. You wanna help me recycle exams? Heh, nice try. They all go to be shredded and then recycled.

• Dead batteries from the wireless mics I use get dropped off in an ECOS box, along with my empty printer cartridges.

• I turn off the lights in my office when I go to class; I also turn off the lights in the bathrooms in Bio Sci when I leave. (Sorry about leaving you in the dark that one time, guy in the stall. Oops!)

Am I a paragon? Of course not. Apparently, I’ve committed the worst kind of enviro-crime possible, twice: having kids. Um, sorry?

Speaking of family, here are some things we do:

• We don’t buy bottled water; every family member has their own reusable aluminum bottle (so no fighting over the one with zoo animals on it!).

• In my house, I’m famous for eating food that’s past its expiry date. Long past. Hey, I hate to waste food. What's a little borborygmi?
  

• Every garbage day, I put out more blue bags than garbage bags--in fact, no one else on my block puts out as many blue bags as I do. It takes me over an hour a week to clean, rinse, sort, and otherwise prep all of my family’s recyclables.

Here’s a funny story. Before the City of Edmonton’s Blue Bag curbside pickup recycling program, there was the blue box curbside pickup recycling program. Not only did you put your recyclables in a, well...blue box, you had to sort everything, too: cardboard vs. plastic vs. clear glass, etc. So when the recycling-pickup person came, they tossed the cardboard into one compartment of the truck, plastic into another, and so on. One recycling day, the recycling-pickup person had (oddly) left behind a large piece of cardboard. When I picked it up, I saw that they had written me a note of appreciation, thanking me for the good job I had done sorting and arranging my recycling. Aww! Thanks, recycling-pickup person!

Could I do better? Absolutely. I could bring my own rechargeable batteries to use in the wireless mics. I could try to always remember to shut off the computer and turn off the lights in my classrooms, if it’s the last class of the day. I could buy products with less packaging to reduce my recyclables.

What are you doing to help save the Earth?

Why aren’t you studying?

The End of Term

Just a quick reminder, in case you've forgotten: the end of term is approaching.

Yeah, yeah--terms papers this, studying that, yada yada. But there's another reason to remember the last day of term. I ask that, if you have any concerns about the marking of any assignment or exams in the course, you bring them to me or the TA before classes end. I'm going to be heads-down marking term papers, and your TAs are students with exams to prepare for, too. Although I've asked them to keep their usual office hours up until the final, they may just have to write an exam during one of their office hours.

Yes, according to Department of Psychology policy, it is your right to wait up until some unspecified time before the day of the final exam to bring your concern forward:

"With the exception of term work for which students did not receive feedback before the posting of final grades, students must initiate a request for reevaluation of term work with the instructor prior to the day of the final exam or in the case of courses without final exams, before the posting of final grades."

So on or after the day of the final exam, however, pfft! that's it. Even if we made a marking mistake, we are not allowed to change it after that day. If there is a significant concern, please don't wait until the last minute. Note that this doesn't apply to simply asking questions to clarify something; you can do that at any time--even after the course is over.

Why aren't you studying?

Teh Wrnog Mnoth

Only a week into this month, and already this isn't my month. It must be someone else's month. Let's see what's gone wrong so far...

• Major virus scare: I thought a rootkit had infected all of my computers. This happened to my office computer in 2008, so it's not unprecedented. My email app was very slow, so I got a packet sniffer to check out my IP traffic. What are all these connections to 1e100.net!? (Oh, um, I get it. "1e100" means a 1 with 100 zeros behind it: a googol. Get it?)

• So, no virus, but Gmail is insisting on rebuilding my All Mail folder every time I start Thunderbird, downloading 30,000+ messages. That'll slow things down a bit. Darn you, Gmail!

• Wrote an important email, and misspelled the address. It didn't get bounced back until hours later. Darn you, Gmail!

• Getting my coursepack together for spring term, I photocopied a couple of chapters of a book. Then, instead of emailing me the results as a PDF, the photocopier ate everything. Twice.

• Due to an apparent glitch in HERO (the UofA's online ethics submission/review platform), my ethics application was not reviewed. Instead of taking 5 days, it took 5 weeks. In the meantime, my hands are tied, and I can't get started on my research project.

• Ordered a couple of things online--both companies sent me the wrong item. Grrr!

• My PVR stopped talking nicely to my TV over HDMI. Banged my head against the wall (actually, the floor) for hours on that one. Decided to switch to digital cable and get an HDPVR. It didn't talk nicely to my TV over HDMI. The good-humoured tech who came to take a look at it liked the fact I knew what "HDMI" was. But he still couldn't fix it.

• Tried to get a delicious Nestea from a vending maching right before class and was denied. I got my money back, but it wouldn't give me any delicious Nestea. (And no, I don't want that Brisk crap.)

• Daughter #1 made me spill my coffee this morning. Oh, the humanity!
  

Notice a pattern? (OK, except for the last one.) Yup, technology is giving me fits. I'm not superstitious. But if this is your month, you can have it back.

Why aren't you studying?