Author Archives: Michael Manhart
The Nurturing Paradigm of Scientific Training
Uri Alon, a biophysicist at the Weizmann Institute in Israel, likes to tell a story about when he first became a faculty member. Already an accomplished researcher, he stepped into his empty new lab and immediately felt overwhelmed. Despite all … Continue reading
The Hidden Virtues of Wasting Time
For the benefit of the incoming graduate students, my department in college used to take surveys of everyone about what they would do if they were starting graduate school over again. (They called this “Starting Over,” and it was such … Continue reading
Breaking through the Jargon Barrier
While recently reading an article in an education journal [1], the word “frame” kept jumping out at me. The author, a sociologist, kept using this normally unremarkable word in a way that I found unusual and confusing. Soon, though, I … Continue reading
Today’s Students, Tomorrow’s Voters
For TAs teaching introductory classes, especially those with students from other majors whose motivation tends to be underwhelming, it’s easy to feel rather apathetic. Why should I care about teaching students who don’t really want to learn and, frankly, probably … Continue reading
Randomly Walking through Research
From reading papers, it’s easy to gain the following picture of what the research process looks like: someone starts at point A, a known point in the space of knowledge, then directly proceeds through various arguments and data to one’s … Continue reading
“Desktop Faculty Development” — the Tomorrow’s Professor Mailing List
One of the best online resources for graduate students, especially those aspiring to academic careers in research or teaching, has to be the Tomorrow’s Professor (TP) mailing list: http://www.stanford.edu/dept/CTL/Tomprof/index.shtml Managed by Rick Reis, a professor of engineering at Stanford, the … Continue reading
From Letter Seeker to Letter Writer
One academic skill that many folks first experience as graduate students, which I suppose goes hand-in-hand with teaching for the first time, is writing letters of recommendation. Up until now, we’ve always been the letter seekers, asking teachers, professors, coaches, … Continue reading
Identity, Goals, and Diversity in Interdisciplinary Research
While I was an undergraduate physics major, my interests and research experiences were quite clearly of the pure physics variety: particle physics, cosmology, astrophysics. There was never any question about my scientific identity or goals — I was unambiguously a … Continue reading
Amanda Dillon
Aaron Trammell
Brian Stromberg
Carolyn Ureña
Camille Reyes
Jennifer Yang
Kellen Myers
Michael Manhart
Pam Weis
Vukosi Marivate
Yuanzhen Gu
zlkatz
Alexandra Walczak
