One of the motivations for improving STEM education that I’ve briefly noted before (e.g. here and here) is the expectation of lots of future jobs requiring STEM skills. This is important, though I think it’s less important than conveying an appreciation of nature that a scientific perspective brings, and imparting skills that allow thinking “scientifically” … Continue reading “China needs workers…”
I try to avoid simply linking to some other post or article without adding commentary of my own. But I’ll do this now, for this essay on Scientific American’s blog: The Awesomest 7-Year Postdoc or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Tenure-Track Faculty Life, By Radhika Nagpal http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/2013/07/21/the-awesomest-7-year-postdoc-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-tenure-track-faculty-life/ It’s on a topic … Continue reading Advice (“The Awesomest 7-Year Postdoc”)
This coming Monday I’ll give a presentation to parents of incoming freshmen, part of the university’s new student orientation program. I’ve done this before, even though I’m a bit unclear on what the goal of the event is. Nonetheless, I again agreed, largely because I think there’s generally a lack of dialogue between the public … Continue reading On classes
During the summer my and Eric Corwin‘s weekly group meetings (our groups meet together) depart from our usual format of presentations of our own research and brief summaries of journal articles to instead tackle some broader topic. Last year, for example, we covered a good chunk of Introduction to Modeling for Biosciences by Barnes and Chu, … Continue reading Microcontrollers
Perhaps thinking about STEM education is warping my mind, since I found myself a few days ago discussing with my 7-year-old how the Empire in the Star Wars movies was generally inept at engineering, building fragile Death Stars and large walking vehicles that are easily tripped. K. has apparently decided to use engineering for good, … Continue reading The Dark Side of STEM education
Since I’m a physicist who works on biological systems and cares about education, what could be better than a special issue of CBE Life Sciences Education on “Educational Initiatives and Research at the Intersection of Physics and Biology?” (OK, lots of things — I’m not that boring a person — but humor me.) I’ve read … Continue reading Physics, Biology, and STEM education
A colleague sent me this interesting report / survey on connections between education, employment, and contentment and disappointment among recent college graduates: Voice of the Graduate, McKinsey & Co. , which relates a bit to issues of STEM education that I wrote about earlier. The opening paragraph: There’s a paradox facing American society today. The … Continue reading STEM education, employment, and happiness
Whales, apparently, learn from one another. That’s the message of this paper in Science last month on the transmission of feeding tactics among humpback whales. There are lots of fascinating things in the article, some of which are news to me but have been known for a long time to people who pay attention to … Continue reading Whales, culture, and graphs
I’m happy to note that tomorrow’s Physics Department colloquium will feature Heinrich Jaeger from the University of Chicago, co-invited by me and Eric Corwin, who were both graduate students of Heinrich. He’s both brilliant and imaginative, with research spanning such things as making soft robots , granular materials in general, complex fluids (as in the … Continue reading Seminar: May 23, 2013
I’m likely to become involved in an organized effort to improve the persistence of STEM majors at the University of Oregon. (STEM meaning Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, and persistence meaning completing a degree rather than switching to a different field.) Less than half of the undergraduates who start out as intended STEM majors graduate … Continue reading STEM persistence
The Eighteenth Elephant 