Archive for September, 2010

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Rankled Rankings

Wednesday, September 29th, 2010

When I was applying to Ph.D. programs in 1996, I consulted the National Research Council’s rating of anthropology departments. The data were relatively fresh, the rankings were clearly numbered, and I had the confidence that they had been compiled by a neutral observer.

After a long wait, the new ratings have been released. Unlike the previous version, these rankings are unlikely to settle any debates. They rely on departmental data from 2005, they employ mind-boggling complex methodologies, and end up with wildly disparate conclusions.

As pointed out in Inside Higher Ed, by reporting confidence levels and not absolute rankings, the results end up conveying very little. The Communications Department at UT Austin could be the #1 program in the country or the 69th. Nonetheless, Boston University already trumpeted the performance of its departments on its website.

The problem is, BU reduced a very complex system to a single number. The NRC refused to endorse one system of ranking over another, so BU can be accused of selectively highlighting the most favorable outcomes. For instance, Geography, one of BU’s top-rated programs in terms of faculty research, sends only 35% of its graduates onto academic jobs and has one of the lowest percentages of female faculty in its field. As exhaustive as the NRC data are, without a clear understanding of what constitutes academic excellence, the rankings question will go unanswered.

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Reluctant Learners

Tuesday, September 28th, 2010

Yesterday, Angela Jackson and Rachel Stark, both internal medicine doctors, facilitated a workshop on how to engage reluctant learners. Thanks to our new podcasting capabilities, you can listen to a condensed version of their session here.

One of their main points was that reluctance is a modifiable state, not a permanent characteristic. To illustrate that, Angela asked us to remember a dull lecture we had to sit through during our training. We might have been reluctant then, but we continued on to academic careers.

Another helpful distinction was tallying the different kinds of reluctance. There's the student who texts, rolls her eyes, or doesn't prepare. At the same time, there are know-it-all students who presume to have complete understanding of the material when they don't. They described the "minimizer," who gives just the briefest answer to a question. For each of these cases, the response might be different.

Whatever the approach, the group agreed that some action is required. Too often, difficult students just get ignored and passed on to the next teacher without any remedy. That does a disservice to the student as well as her classmates, who should receive clear signals about acceptable behavior.

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Inside Peer Review

Monday, September 27th, 2010

I just read How Professors Think by Harvard sociologist Michele Lamont. In the book, Lamont goes behind the scenes of peer review by observing the deliberations of several nationally competitive grant panels. All universities talk in vague terms about valuing excellence, but in these concentrated deliberations, academics make plain what constitutes excellent work.

In interviews with 71 panel members--all seasoned professors--she asked what clues they look for in a grant proposal to signal excellence. Five qualities came up in over half the interviews:

  1. Significance (mentioned by 92% of respondents)
  2. Originality (89%)
  3. Clarity (61%)
  4. Methods (58%)
  5. Feasibility (51%)

These priorities indicate that the best proposals nail the big questions first. The applicant should start by asking, "Why does the research matter?" and "What is novel about my approach?" If those questions get answered clearly, then the proposal has won over the reviewers' sympathy.

Lamont's ethnography took place among panels evaluating humanities and social science awards, but its lessons hold true for the medical sciences as well.

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Posted in Faculty development | 12 Comments »

Workshops

Friday, September 24th, 2010

The Center for Excellence and Innovation in Teaching holds weekly workshops on topics related to education. Some of their topics for the fall include tips for engaging students, working with multicultural learners, and adapting clicker technology to the classroom. They meet Wednesdays at noon on the Charles River Campus. With the shuttle service, it's easy to get back and forth.

Closer to home, the School of Public Health offers practicum workshops throughout the year. Some are focused on job hunting skills for their master's students, but others--how to convey scientific knowledge to the public, how to create a research poster--are relevant for faculty as well.

Human Resources runs a regular training program as well. Their workshops tend to focus on issues around hiring and managing, but also include more general professional skills like time management, motivation, and even grammar. They alternate sessions between the Charles River and the Medical Campus.

The Office of Medical Education in the School of Medicine will be hosting two workshops this fall. Both have to do with clinical teaching.

Finally, the Department of Medicine offers its own faculty development series. Our next session will be on Monday, September 27 at noon in the Wilkins Board Room. Angela Jackson, MD and Rachel Stark, MD will address "Effective Techniques for Engaging the Reluctant Learner."

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The Ph.D. Pipeline

Thursday, September 23rd, 2010

The Council of Graduate Schools conducted a survey of nearly 700 M.A. and Ph.D.-granting institutions in the United States. The headline finding was that for the first time more women than men received doctoral degrees. The data reflect graduation rates in 2009 and show just a slight edge for women (50.4%) but reflect a large increase over just the last ten years.

Like many reports, the real surprises come when you break down the data. It turns out that the fastest growing field of new doctoral degrees is "Health Sciences." Of those receiving Ph.D.s in health sciences, some 70% are women. On the other end, just 22% of engineering Ph.D.s go to women and 27% of math and computer science Ph.D.s.

One lesson we can take from the study is that if women are now receiving the majority of Ph.D.s in biological and health sciences, at least half of new faculty hires in those fields should be women. If women's representation in the medical sciences faculty does not accurately reflect the supply of graduates, then we need to look at our recruiting and hiring practices for bias.

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Med Ed Reform

Wednesday, September 22nd, 2010

This week in Washington, DC the Association of American Medical Colleges and the American Medical Association are hosting a conference on the state of medical education. Coming 100 years after the publication of the Flexner Report, the conference also coincides with several proposals to reform how medical faculty teach.

Several panelists have critiqued the standard model of medical education, which relies on prolonged exposure to a predetermined content. They favor quality over quantity and more flexible models of learning. Speakers have also suggested placing more emphasis on outcomes. This would require more rigorous assessment of teaching and careful attention to what kinds of jobs graduates take.

So far the talk about reform has stayed mostly at the level of talk. The focus on flexibility and quality is not controversial, but implementing them may be. As long as faculty get rewarded for teaching the way they always have, little change will reach medical students.

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LGBT Campus Climate

Tuesday, September 21st, 2010

Campus Pride, a nonprofit organization that advocates for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender students and faculty, has released the 2010 State of Higher Education for LGBT People.

The report draws on surveys from 6,000 students, faculty, and staff at colleges across the United States. The respondents described a "chilly" climate on campus that included higher than average rates of harassment and discrimination. Transgendered campus members in particular had negative experiences at their institutions.

The study's lead author noted that less than 8% of accredited colleges and universities have an inclusive LGBT policy. Such official language both sets an expectation of civility and enables aggrieved students and faculty to seek redress.

Here in the Department of Medicine, we administered a survey about resources for LGBT faculty and patients. The responses show a generally tolerant environment but with additional education needed.

Posted in Faculty development | 7 Comments »

Depression

Monday, September 20th, 2010

Medical students exhibit signs of depression at higher rates than a matched sample of the general population. And they show greater evidence of mental illness as their medical education continues.

One positive aspect of this troubling trend would be that medical students enjoy greater access to health care. But again, the data show otherwise. Despite their proximity to medical services, medical students are less likely than their peers to seek help for their condition.

A study at the University of Michigan Medical School published in the Journal of the American Medical Association explores why depression is prevalent among medical students and why they choose not to treat it. The web-based survey found that most students viewed depression with a stigma. Acknowledging their depression, they felt, would cause peers and faculty to see them as less able.

Unfortunately, this picture of an ultra-competitive environment where any admission of weakness is taboo characterizes many doctors' medical school experiences. As faculty, we should be attentive to the health of students as well as patients. One way to do that is to talk openly about depression and mental health as a way to lessen the stigma.

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Science and Administration

Friday, September 17th, 2010

Susan Henry, a successful geneticist and administrator, is stepping down from a deanship at Cornell to return to the teaching faculty. She reflected to The-Scientist.com about juggling university service with science. Some of her recommendations apply to all faculty in an academic medical center juggling competing demands.

  • Schedule time for your own work and defend it. The administrative tasks tend to expand and often seem urgent because someone else is relying on you to finish your part of a project. It's crucial to block off a half day each week or a couple of hours each day to devote to your own intellectual work.
  • Ask for advice. Few academics receive any training to be managers or administrators. Nor do we have the luxury of learning on the job over time. Fortunately, universities are full of chairs, deans, and leaders who have experience in service. Talking to them is a way to accelerate the learning curve.
  • Make yourself visible. It's easy to allow your time to be consumed by meetings with other campus leaders. But, as an administrator, your job is to support everyone's professional development. You have to attend seminars, receptions, and even drop in on colleagues' offices to stay connected.

Administration is often seen as antithetical to science, but I'm realizing in my role that researchers depend on a healthy infrastructure to accomplish their goals. To work together, it helps if administrators come from the faculty and retain their connections to scholarship.

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BMC Cuts

Thursday, September 16th, 2010

BMC chief executive Kate Walsh has been holding a series of town hall meetings to discuss the hospital's dire financial situation. As reported in the Boston Globe, BMC faces a $175 million shortfall. Walsh will lay off 119 workers to help stem the deficit, but she recognizes that simply eliminating services will undermine the hospital's mission.

Like many other industries, higher education and non-profit organizations have been buffeted by the economic downturn. BMC has been hit particularly hard because its patient population tends to have public insurance, which redeems the hospital less than it costs for care. This crisis is emerging during an already stressful period for academic medical centers with increasing pressures to produce greater clinical volume.

The Faculty Development and Diversity Committee is considering ways to help faculty manage uncertainty. The brainstorming is just starting, but already, we agree that clear lines of communication can help overcome the rumor mill and make workers feel included. Just knowing what the stakes are and what changes will be implemented will help faculty feel more empowered to cope with these stressful times.

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