Astronomy Chairs' Meeting October 19,2002 Rosemont/O'Hare, Illinois Notes by Linda Sparke The notes from our discussion have been reorganized by topic rather than by time sequence or who raised the topic . Those raising potentially It have not identified embarrassing problems, e.g. work ethic among the graduate students, have not identified. UNDERGRAD INTRO COURSES About half the represented universities had lecture-only format; half had recitation/discussion sections. New Mexico includes a lab which fulfills a science breadth requirement. Wisconsin has an add-on lab to fulfill quantitative-reasoning requirement. Delaware and UC Davis use advanced undergraduates as TAs. They are cheap ($1000 per semester for 2 sections) and enthusiastic, but there's little intellectual quality control. University administrators like the idea of making big classes interactive by using technology, but nobody had a notable success story to report. Does anyone offer a web-based course?? UNDERGRAD MAJORS AND GRAD SCHOOL TRANSITION Physics Background Undergraduate institutions can't provide as dense a physics major (Williams) as research universities. Some undergrads switch late into astronomy (Vassar), don't have time to take enough physics. Research universities report significant problems with incoming grad students under prepared in physics. Students with scores below some level in physics GRE (50% to 20%): views differed) do badly in Ph.D. program, but above this level, higher scores don't mean more success later. One-year remedial physics program would bring under prepared students up to the level needed to begin Ph.D.: compare foreigners coming with MS degree. Iowa State has tried provisional admits in this mode, students supported as TA. Wesleyan terminal MS serves this purpose. REU Programs NRAO will award small time blocks for class projects: e-mail Ulvestad or Barry Clark 2-3 months ahead. U/g majors take substantial one-on-one faculty time, but Deans don't recognize this. REU: after the first and 2nd summer course, this may not help students in later grad school. NRAO and Arecibo find that including a few grad students helps to bring the undergraduates up to speed. Alternate Majors Tracks Should we have a less-physics (non-honors track) undergrad major aimed at K-12 teachers, planetarium directors, etc.? Australian National University has a science communication' course (website ?) which turns out bureaucrats & admin people. Virginia has a non-honors track. Columbia tried and it failed: students were low-quality in general, not just in physics/math. GRAD ADMISSIONS Students with scores below some level in physics GRE (50% to 20%): views differed) do badly in Ph.D. program, but above this level, higher scores don't mean more success later. At a few institutions foreign grad students are using Astronomy as a back door to Engineering, Computing (UNM). Some places had trouble recruiting good grad students, especially women. The fraction of women may be increasing now. Some programs admit more students than can succeed in Ph.D. and weeds' them: most don't seem to. Inviting students to visit doesn't seem to be successful in getting them to accept offers of Ph.D. places. Signing bonuses are given by about half the departments. There were mixed feelings about this. Graduate students shouldn't choose a place for the money; but moving costs are high and it's a powerful inducement. When university sets salary rates, it can be the only way to pay a competitive amount. TA/RA pay: TA rates are sometimes lower than for RA. Some places supplement TAs with a partial RA, or raise percentage appointment. FEDERAL GRANTS Money awarded doesn't cover the cost of doing the work, so we all write twice as many proposals: HST, NASA, NSF all guilty. Would we do better with block grants like physics group? GRADUATE & POST-GRADUATE PROGRAMS Princeton teaching postdoc': mainly university funding. Northwestern has postdoc who is part-time at Adler Planetarium. No data yet on whether these help holders into faculty jobs. Columbia doesn't ask first-year grad students to teach, but to do research. This worked only when compulsory research seminar run by two faculty was started. Hawaii not teaches more graduate courses than any one student can take: how to ensure students get a broad training? Some complaints (4-5 people speaking, plus nods: only one we're ok') about graduate students not working in the department in evenings & weekends. A few have taken part-time jobs in addition to RA. Princeton asked their students why: after upgrading phone (from single line for all students) and office computers, more students came in. Some (e.g. UVa) had a student on graduate admissions, reading the dossiers: seeing the standard of entering students raised awareness that you have to work. Get students to sign letters promising not to divulge information. FACULTY ISSUES Salary compression Some Deans have been convinced that it's cheaper to retain a faculty member than find startup money for a newcomer. Informal polls of other institutions have also persuaded Deans to correct salaries at ranks where they were low. Public Outreach (E/PO) and Science Education Astronomy in K-12 School In middle school, it's often limited to seasons and moon phases (Pasachoff). This has propagated into state standards and has become a major component in some college courses. Is this what a college course should cover? Rutgers high-school outreach: teacher and 4-5 students come to campus for 4-week course in, e.g. x-ray astronomy. They outline a research project, carry it out over the next year, return in following summer to present results. Participants definitely benefit but it's not clear it helps the schools in general. Should we push for an Advanced Placement exam in Astronomy? AAS Education Committee has written to ETS: Pasachoff will follow up. Other EPO Virginia and Arizona have faculty members in science education. Performance evaluation for promotion and retention is based on teaching, grant funding, publications & outreach activities NSF programs increasingly required a thought-out E/PO component (e.g. CAREER, Astronomy & Astrophysics Postdoc Fellowships). Some of us don't like pushing everyone into doing E/PO, but Congress is pushing on NSF to do this, so an AAS statement may not be useful. Often public outreach becomes an unpaid additional burden on faculty time. BEING A CHAIR Training: Columbia does 8 2-hour sessions with the people that a chair has to know; also handbook on procedure. Illinois had 2 days in a retreat', 1 day with Dean & Associate Dean. Iowa State: session with Dean, one with Provost, finally one on budget that was useful. Rutgers: new chairs meet with panel of experienced chairs; mostly useful. Texas: one day Delaware & Virginia: chairs caucus (without Dean); Chair meetings without the administrators can be useful. Princeton: a group of old chairs was asked what do you wish you knew when you started?' - useful. New Mexico State: a week with the new Dean. Could be cut to 3-4 days, but (unexpectedly) useful. Wisconsin: session with Dean, then 3-4 mornings on specific issues. Other training available, but you have to chase it. FUND RAISING Vassar alums paid for an on-campus observatory. Rutgers raised $0.5M for SALT telescope. Williams: had Keck $ but that's over, now must raise more. Texas, Wisconsin: have Board of Visitors, with help from university development people. Texas charges board members a participation fee. NUTTY DEANS When central administration has a dumb idea; - push research & grants under their nose - lay low & wait for them to forget, since compliance isn't in fact rewarded Deans have pushed for interdisciplinary hires and split hires between departments. Nobody at this meeting had yet made such programs work well for them. Doug Richstone has survey of what's taught in grad and undergrad Astronomy courses. He also has a salary review NEXT TIME/FUTURE: Be clear what will & won't be attributed in a public document (e.g. on web). Ask each attendee to send a single page and make a booklet to hand out? Background and boasting' can go in there, so our discussion can go straight to problems'. ACTION ITEMS Decide on what salary info we want to gather for our next meeting. Do we want to collect data as Midwest Physics chairs do? We'd have to map their website over for our purposes; would require resources. Chairs won't do the considerable work to gather their info unless they know the project will come together to feed useful data back. (Can AAS pay for student help for a chair who takes this on?)