After taking a look at some of the blog posts by other students and mentors, one topic came to mind that I thought might be helpful for potential students.

I am currently only four classes away from graduating from the University of Alaska, Southeast with my Master’s in Business Administration. I commonly get asked why I chose this particular graduate program by a variety of people, as it is a Distance Education Program – meaning I never actually get to meet my professors outside of a virtual classroom.

To me, the answer is simple: it fits my lifestyle and learning style. For most of us, graduate school is something we pursue after we have started a career. My job can be quite demanding and travel is required. I’m an avid reader and am quite independent. Also, I’m not married and don’t have kids at this point in my life, so I have the time to devote to a distance learning environment.  Classroom discussions can be useful, or a waste of time. Plus, let’s be honest, parking at UAA is a complete joke and UAF couldn’t pay me to live in Fairbanks.

One more factor to consider is the use of technology in today’s business environment. It is more and more common for organizations to enroll the use of teleconference or videoconference capabilities to conduct everyday business. Being able to convey a message accurately and appropriately to varying audiences via electronic communication is extremely important.

Some factors to keep in mind when choosing a graduate school:

1. What works best for your family life? Do you live in close proximity to your university of choice? Do you have children and/or a spouse to consider?
2. What works best for your professional life? Do you travel often for work, making class attendance poor?
3. What is your learning style? Do you often times solve problems on your own, or do you seek the assistance of those around you?
4. How much time can you commit to a program? Do you have the required ‘free’ time necessary to success in a distance education program, which usually requires more time than a classroom style program?

If you are considering enrolling in an online graduate program, just remember that the most difficult part is time management and self-discipline. You may not have much of a social life for a couple of years, but it will be worth it in the end!

http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/201201/backpage.cfm

The Back Page

Ten Mistakes for Physicists to Avoid

by James D. Patterson

James D. Patterson

Ed. Note: In 2004, James D. Patterson wrote an open letter to Physics Today¹ containing advice to the next generation of physicists. With several more years of accumulated wisdom, he presents some further ruminations in the article below.

Montaigne said “… you never talk about yourself without loss: condemn yourself and you are always believed: praise yourself and you never are.”² Nevertheless here is an update of a paper in which I discuss mistakes I have made. I suspect Montaigne is right, but I have long been retired so my loss is minimal, and is possibly compensated by gains of those who will consequently avoid my errors.

My main reason for writing another article is that I have new reflections on mistakes already considered as well as some new ones to discuss. I will get to all those in a moment, but first some preliminary observations.

What is judged a mistake depends on objectives.
A dean once told me he wanted me to be a success. That sounded good. Of course his definition of success was different from mine, so there remained an unresolved conflict. I think for him it meant more and larger grants. For me success meant time to do and teach the physics that I found interesting. Naively, I thought this would lead to a better world. However, I am not sure the current culture of seeking more (of something, I am not sure what) is an improvement. Being stubborn, by refusing to go in the direction you are pushed, may not always be wrong. You may be happier. There is nothing wrong with loving your field and making personal sacrifices to stay true to it. Fairly late in my career, I was a department head and was not aggressively pushing the department to seek as many outside funds as was desired by the university. An official in charge of university research wanted to get me fired, but I felt there was an imbalance in the emphasis on grants and I opposed him. I did endure a couple of very uncomfortable years in consequence.

An academic career is no longer necessarily the path of many physics majors.
Most current PhD graduate students will not go on to become university professors. There are not that many available positions. Many don’t want to anyway. There are other alternatives. I spent several summers in industry and national labs. In some cases I applied for more permanent positions outside academia. One mistake I made was in my résumé. I would list degrees earned, papers published, positions held and very little else. I don’t think I even listed grants awarded. For industrial résumés you should list the assignments you have had and what you achieved with them. Another aspect was pointed out to me by Jim Fergason, an inventor of the twisted nematic liquid crystal display. He was irritated by scientists who never gave any thought to possible uses of their ideas. Obviously this mindset is not attractive to industry.

Now for my list of mistakes. Most of my career was in colleges and universities; nevertheless many of the mistakes are universal. (Parenthetically I note two other short papers about universities and teaching.³ )

1. Moving Ahead Before Being Ready
At the University of Missouri-Columbia, where I got my bachelor’s degree, I was more interested in getting good grades than in mastering the subject. I did not understand, as colleague Lyle Feisel advised, that my job (to learn the subject matter) was more than my assignment (to get good grades). When I went to the University of Chicago to start graduate school, I was advised to take some senior undergraduate level courses first. I refused and went ahead with the regular graduate program. This was ill-advised. When I took the feared “basic” exam at the end of the second year I failed, partly because my grounding in fundamentals was insufficient. For example in the oral part, I could not give an adequate definition of what it meant to say that two waves were spatially coherent.

Some failing students (including me) were recommended to try again the following year, but I elected to finish my PhD studies at the University of Kansas. Perhaps another mistake was I was not willing to gamble that I would pass on the next attempt.

I also tried to do too much too soon as a teaching assistant at Chicago. When I was assigned to conduct a recitation section for the quarter on optics (using Sears’ optics book) I quickly became bored and tried introducing material from Sommerfeld’s optics book. Not only did this not help the students, I doubt that I understood what I was doing. Towards the end of the quarter the attendance in my section dropped to zero. This episode still haunts me.

2. Losing Focus
In my formative years. I should have practiced solving problems efficiently. I spent more time reading than working problems. I “knew a little bit about a lot of things,” but I didn’t know enough about how to apply the fundamental ideas of physics. A friend studiously worked every problem in Kittel’s solid state book, and passed the basic exam the first time. He focused on the physics, what it really meant, and how to use it to analyze phenomena.

3. Not Making Fundamentals a Working Part of Memory
I began to understand the importance of memorization when I took a group theory course taught by Prof. William Scott at the University of Kansas. A myriad of definitions were used in the derivation of results. The math graduate students knew these definitions and followed the lectures with ease. I didn’t and struggled. On a more elementary level, it bothers me when students don’t know simple things like the value of the sine of 30 degrees. The point of physics is not memorization, but knowing the fundamentals without constantly looking them up greatly facilitates communication.

4. Not Focusing on Physical Ideas While Obsessing Over the Mathematics
Experiment is the heart of physics. Many feel if you can’t measure something, the concept has no meaning. Connecting ideas with experiment, and reducing them to their essential physical core is hard, it takes time, and for this it is often useful to talk to people and gather essential crumbs, one by one. In courses and even in research (for example on the statistical mechanics of magnetic systems described by the simple Heisenberg Hamiltonian) I tended to avoid experimental results. This once cost me a job when in the interview I was asked how I had interacted with experimentalists. I had no answer. It was a mistake for me not to consider realistic materials upon which experiments could be done and ideas could be tested.

5. Not Fitting Goals to Abilities
We all would have liked to be Feynman, but there was only one. I wanted to work on advanced problems in theoretical physics before I was ready. I finally settled on more applied problems in solid state physics, but for a while I felt I was demeaning myself. I fluffed an opportunity to establish myself in semiconductors in the early days at Hughes Products, where I worked two summers in the fifties. The first summer I followed directions and wrote a report on crystal growth, but the second summer I tried to go my own way into more basic (I thought) areas. The report I produced was good neither by my standards nor by theirs. It was too early in my career and very unrealistic to go off on my own. As I matured, I realized I would be lucky to find problems in solid state that I could help with, and that all physics is intriguing when you begin to really understand it. Even today, despite the fact that I have written texts on solid state physics,⁴ I cannot say I have mastered anywhere near all the important ideas in that field.

6. Ignoring Personal Life
Like many physicists, I was shy around people. This caused difficulties, even in physics. A physics meeting in Rolla, Missouri began with a social gathering for the attendees. For reasons of insecurity I didn’t go. The next day when I gave my talk its validity was questioned. There was a good rebuttal, but I was too nervous to think of it. The chances are if I had attended the social gathering, in the course of informally talking about my work, the same question would have arisen and I would have dealt with it better. After I got married, at the relatively late age of 38, my wife helped me immeasurably in feeling comfortable in a social setting, whether related to physics or not. I should have sought more balance in my personal life at an earlier stage.

7. Using Secondary Sources
It takes work to track down results in professional journals, but looking things up only in texts often results in less complete and sometimes less clear answers. Of course the scientific literature is consulted for research, but it is also useful for classroom lectures. For example, the Quantum Hall Effect originally was hard for me to understand. Then, I discovered a review paper ⁵ and was able, after digesting it, to read the original literature. Texts may be handy, but shortcuts to grasping physics are few.

8. Always Rejecting Authority
I have a problem accepting authority. Perhaps I cannot easily put myself in others’ shoes. This trait has led me to cause trouble often for no real reason. I constantly interrupted a lecturer (who in fact was a good scientist) in my junior electricity and magnetism course, using the excuse that the text or his lectures or both had errors. Maybe they did, but that hardly made either unique. In any case, I was arrogant about it. Once he got so irritated he threw down the chalk and left the room. I shamefully admit now, I felt victorious. Later in my career, a college president encouraged the faculty to learn about computers. It was the early days, and he was leading us in the right direction. I wrote the few programs he required, but without enthusiasm, and with minimal effort. By resisting direction, I lost a chance to mature and be guided by someone with superior experience and knowledge.

9. Letting Anger Rule Behavior
In mid-career, I went to Florida Institute of Technology and was assigned to teach a class in advanced undergraduate mechanics. Because of my predilections the class tended to be rather mathematical. At Florida Tech there were both physics and space sciences students. My lectures seemed to be appropriate for the former but the latter were used to a more qualitative approach. One student began coming late. I lost my temper with him and started to lose control of the class. Later I became department head there. There was one faculty member who did not publish much and was stuck at the associate professor level. He began to blame me and verbally attacked me in one department meeting. Again I lost my temper. This led to problems in the department which eventually reached the Dean’s ears. I had a rocky path for a while. In both cases when I lost control of myself, I lost some control over others and more importantly, some of their respect. Being strong seldom means being angry.

10. Not Keeping in Physical Shape
In the late 70’s I got invited by Prof. Gerald Jones to Notre Dame for a year as a visiting professor. I arrived fat and tired. I had wanted a dog for some time and got one. I began taking him for walks and also watching my diet. Physical discipline led to losing weight and also helped increase my mental organization. The year went quite well in research, teaching, and life. I discovered that letting things go slack in one area often leads to slackness in other areas including physics.

So there you have a representative, if not exhaustive, set of suggestions. If you are a young person, just getting started, I hope they prove to be of some use.

1. James D. Patterson is Professor Emeritus, Florida Institute of Technology, Melbourne, FL.
2. James D. Patterson, Physics Today, 57, 56 (2004).
3. Michel de Montaigne, Four Essays, Translated by M. A. Screech, Penguin Books, New York, 1991. From “On the Art of Conversation.”
4. J. D. Patterson, Am. J. Physics 54, 201(1986), and 58, 423(1990).
5. James Patterson, Bernard Bailey, Solid-State Physics Introduction to the Theory, Second Edition, Springer-Verlag, Berlin Heidelberg, 2010.
6. H. Stormer, Rev. Mod. Phys. 71, 875 (1998).

Here are a few thoughts that come to mind:

1. Get involved on campus in areas you are passionate about. Although studies should be your top priority, college and graduate school campuses have a wealth of opportunities to develop leadership and pursue interests outside of the classroom. You will meet new friends, feel more connected to your campus and be involved in fields that excite you. Who knows, this experience could open up doors for employment or academic opportunities in the future.

2. Take classes you find interesting! Of course you have requirements, but every degree has electives too. Building classes into your schedule that you WANT to take is fun and helps you develop a love of learning.

3. Take care of yourself. Eat well, sleep well, exercise and give yourself breaks. This is huge and helps manage stress. (Please refer to my previous blog on managing stress).

Ok, there are 3 places to start with. What other habits have you found helpful?

http://www.iltf.org/sites/default/files/2012%20Summer%20Internship%20Announcement.pdf

Good Luck!

Here are some helpful websites regarding FAFSA and federal student aid:

Federal Student Aid:  http://studentaid.ed.gov/

College Goal Sunday:  http://www.collegegoalsundayusa.org/studentsFamilies/bring.htm

Alaska College Goal Sunday:  http://alaskacollegegoalsunday.com/FAQ.php

If you need help filling out the FAFSA, attend a College Goal Sunday event for free!

Alaska College Goal Sunday….Free help is available in Alaska at College Goal Sunday on February 12, 2012. Click on this link for locations around the state:

http://alaskacollegegoalsunday.com/information.php .

National College Goal Sunday …. If you are outside of Alaska and would like to attend a College Goal Sunday event for free help filling out your FAFSA, visit the national website and see if there is an event happening in your town.  Their website is here:

http://www.collegegoalsundayusa.org/studentsFamilies/where.htm

by Hannah Heimbuch in the Arctic Sounder  … http://www.thearcticsounder.com/article/1151sinking_teeth_into_dental_career_kiana_woman

Just after the New Year, Jana Schuerch will return to the Northwest Arctic with her fiancé and three children after two long years away for school. She returns with new credentials and a hope that she can bring better health care to the home she’s been missing.

Schuerch’s youngest daughter and adopted son were only a few months old when she was accepted into the dental health aide therapist program. Still, Schuerch knew it was an opportunity she couldn’t turn down.

“It was a little hard, leaving my friends and my family here in Kiana, and knowing I’d be gone for two years,” Schuerch said. “But it was rewarding going through the program knowing I’d be able to come back and help them.”

Offered through the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium, the program trains and places dental therapists to work in rural communities, communities like Kiana, a village with about 480 residents.

Schuerch said the Arctic has always been home, and really the only place she and her fiancé Charlie want to live.

“I was already planning on living here forever and raising my family here,” she said. “I like living in the village and I want my kids to live here.”

Starting Jan. 3, Schuerch will serve a six-month preceptorship in Kotzebue under a supervising dentist. From there she will move her services back home to Kiana, where as a certified Dental Health Aide Therapist she will offer preventative and some restorative care to Kiana, Selawik and Noorvik – for starters.

It’s taken some moving around and more than a bit of hard work to get to this point. Schuerch spent the intensive program’s first year in Anchorage through a University of Washington partnership. She then spent a year in Bethel doing clinical work. Add to that three children – now ages seven, two and two – and there’s more than a little juggling to be done.

“It was hard trying to figure out how to balance my home life and my school life,” Schuerch said.

She said the year in Bethel, where they didn’t know anyone, was especially hard on her and her family.

Now that she has graduated, Schuerch said the move to Kotzebue for her six months of supervised work is an exciting prospect, not only because they’ll be close to friends and family, but because of the new level of work she’ll get to experience.

“I’m excited to go to Kotzebue and focus on being the provider and working with my patients,” she said.

During her clinical year of school Schuerch said she shared all the assisting and housekeeping duties with her fellow students. Now, while a supervising dentist will check all of her work and preparations, Schuerch will be treating her own patients and focusing solely on providing care.

“This is to make sure I can come out to the village on my own and do the work,” Schuerch said.

That work includes preventative care, cleanings, exams, fillings, simple extractions, community outreach and working with schools and pregnant mothers.

The Maniilaq Association sponsored Schuerch’s participation in the program, and she said there are similar resources out there for other villagers looking for opportunity.

“There are scholarships and people willing to help (people) get through school,” Schuerch said. “There’s so much they can go out and accomplish. They can leave for a few years then go back to help their people.”

What have others experienced in asking for letters of recommendation?  What did people find as an effective means of getting good letters of recommendation?

——————————————————————————————————————————–

Advice on Letters of Recommendation

Although grade point averages and standardized test scores play a central
role in graduate admissions and job opportunity, most graduate programs and
employers do not base their decisions on numeric scores alone. In fact, highly
competitive programs may simply use these scores as a screening device to reduce
the size of their applicant pool. In such a situation, letters of recommendation
can be extremely important.

In general, the best letters of recommendation are from people who:

• Have worked with you closely (e.g., a research supervisor)
• Have known you long enough to write with authority (e.g., academic advisor)
• Have relevant expertise (e.g., professors in the case of academic
  applications)
• Are senior and well known (e.g., a departmental chair)
• Have a positive opinion of you and your abilities
• Have a warm and supportive personal style

Because the choice of letter writers is important, it’s best to begin
cultivating personal relationships with potential writers early on. Also, if
you’re not sure whether prospective letter writers have enough experience with
you or have a positive enough impression to write a good letter, there’s nothing
wrong with asking them whether they would be able to write a strong letter.
After all, if you’re going to compete with people who have uniformly glowing
letters of recommendation, a mildly positive letter from someone who doesn’t
really know you can actually do more harm than good.

Another issue is whether letter writers should attempt to address weaknesses
in your application. For example, if you received a low Quantitative Graduate
Record Exam score due to a family crisis immediately before the test date, your
letter writer might mention this and argue that the “A” you received in
Statistics is a better measure of your quantitative skill. This strategy can be
very helpful in some situations, but it is also a double-edged sword that can
draw attention to weaknesses in your application. Thus, you should discuss the
pro’s and con’s of this approach with your letter writer before adopting such a
strategy — each situation is unique, and there is no single best way to
proceed.

Once you have 3-4 letter writers and a game plan for what you’d like the
letters to say, there are two more things you can do to increase your chances of
success:

1. Give your writers plenty of time so they
   aren’t forced to slap together a quick letter or miss any application deadlines.
   A minimum of three or four weeks is customary and will allow you to check back a
   few days before the deadline to ensure that the letter has been sent or faxed.
2. Give your writers a well-organized, thorough packet
   of materials with all the elements clipped together or contained in a
   single large envelope. Ideally, these elements should include some or all of the
   following items, depending on the letter’s purpose:
   • A current copy of your academic transcript showing the courses you’ve taken
     and the level at which you’ve performed. This does not have to be an official
     copy; a photocopy of your record is fine.
   • A copy of your academic vita or résumé (for information on how to create an
     academic vita, click here).
   • A pre-addressed envelope for each letter — regardless of whether the letter
     is being sent through campus mail or the postal mail — with postage affixed if
     the letter is being sent via postal mail. If there are graduate school letters
     that should be returned to you in a sealed envelope, be sure to write your name
     and the school’s name on the outside of each envelope. Many letter writers also
     appreciate self-adhesive envelopes that don’t require licking or wetting to
     seal.
   • Any forms that are supposed to be submitted with the letter. If there is a
     form that goes with the letter, complete as much information as possible
     (everything except ratings, evaluative statements, signature, and date). For
     example, type or neatly write the recommender’s name, title (e.g., Associate
     Professor), and full contact information (e.g., telephone number, fax number,
     postal address, email address). That way, your letter writer can focus strictly
     on the recommendation itself.Note: If you’re asked to indicate whether or not you waive access to
     the letter of recommendation, be sure to answer affirmatively (that you do waive
     the right). Answering otherwise gives the appearance of not trusting your letter
     writer, and it dilutes the effectiveness of the letter. 

      

   • A cover note briefly listing:
     • Your contact information in case the letter writer needs to reach you
     • A table or list of deadlines covering all the letters that you need
     • Your career aspirations and the type of position you’re applying for
     • Information or points you would like your letter writer to emphasize
     • Summary of work/projects you did with your writer (including dates)
     • Any other information you deem relevant

By adhering to these general guidelines, you will increase the chances of
getting good letters of recommendation and ultimately securing the position you
seek.

In what ways has technology been implemented into your college or high school classrooms to get you to become engaged in the lesson?  I would be interested to hear the different forms of technology being used across the country.  And better yet, did you feel the tool being used was effective compared to the classic equations or blackboard chalk talk?

Below is a list of links from the University of Michigan for implementing technology in the classroom.

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http://www.crlt.umich.edu/tstrategies/tstt.php

Teaching Strategies: Technology in the Classroom

This page provides links to resources with guidance for enhancing teaching
and learning by using technologies. The articles in this section outline both
the benefits and drawbacks of incorporating technology into teaching and offer
practical tips on using technology tools.

Examples of UM
Faculty Using Technology in
Teaching

http://www.crlt.umich.edu/inst/techexamples.php

UM Faculty and a summary of how they are using technology in their
teaching.

Implementing the Seven Principles: Technology as Lever (Chickering
& Ehrmann, 1996/2008) http://www.tltgroup.org/programs/seven.html

This article describes how technology tools can be used to advance the “Seven
Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education.” There is an addendum
from 2008 at the bottom of the page highlighting new ideas and additional
readings.

Examples of Teaching and Learning with Technology (Penn State,
2007)

http://tlt.its.psu.edu/suggestions/ArtsHumanities/

This website has links to examples of technology use in humanities, arts,
math, and science courses and discusses issues related to using various
technology tools. Includes examples of using wikis, blogs, online video, and
other emergent tools in the college classroom.

Scott
Moore: Using Technology and Collaboration to Engage Students (2009,
video)

http://www.crlt.umich.edu/faculty/Thurnau/ThurnauVideos.php

Scott Moore, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Business, discusses how he
revised a course to increase student motivation and engagement using
project-based learning and technology tools, such as blogs and wikis. Navigate
to Prof. Moore’s class website: http://bit330f08.wikidot.com/. Dr. Moore is
Director of the BBA program at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of
Business.

CRLT Occasional
Paper #22: Teaching with Clickers (Zhu,
2007)

http://www.crlt.umich.edu/publinks/CRLT_no22.pdf

This paper explores student and faculty attitudes toward using clickers in
the classroom, and outlines the benefits and challenges of using this
technology; includes 14 recommendations for using clickers effectively in
teaching.

EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative’s (ELI’s) 7 Things You Should
Know About… Series
(Educause.edu)

http://www.educause.edu/ELI/ELIResources/7ThingsYouShouldKnowAbout/7495

The EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative’s (ELI’s) 7 Things You Should Know About…
series provides concise information on emerging learning technologies and
related practices. Each brief focuses on a single technology or practice and
describes: what it is, how it works, where it is going, and why it matters to
teaching and learning. Includes over 30 briefs about tech tools such as Lecture
Capture, Screencasting, Twitter, and Live Question Tool.

See also:

Teaching with
Clickers

http://www.crlt.umich.edu/inst/responsesystem.html

Instructional
Technology

http://www.crlt.umich.edu/inst/inst.php

Teaching Strategies: OnlineTeaching

http://www.crlt.edu/tstrategies/tsot.php