Today’s episode of lazy-bloggers-solicit-guests-to-fill-in features Joel Corbo, a graduate student in physics at Berkeley. Joel and friends were disappointed by some features of the graduate-school experience, and (unusually) decided to actually do something about it — they founded the Compass Project, which supports excellence in science education, especially for women and minorities.
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My name is Joel Corbo, I’m a physics Ph.D. student, and I’m a little frustrated.
My trajectory through the US educational system has been a great one. I have parents who care deeply about me and my future and who believe in the value of a strong education. Because they cared, I went to an elementary school that laid a good foundation and allowed me to attend a high school that was more academically rigorous than many colleges (both of these schools were private, although the latter was also free). I also majored in physics at MIT.
My story may sound typical, at least in certain circles, but there are a few more details to add to the story. My dad is a recent immigrant without a high school education who worked as a maintenance man in the NYC Housing Projects, and my mom is the daughter of Puerto Rican immigrants and a lucky survivor of the NYC public school system. I was the first person in my immediate family to go to college. Statistically speaking, I shouldn’t have succeeded — but I did.
Looking back at my education, it’s obvious to me that a huge factor contributing to my success was the presence of people in my life who believed in me and supported me: my parents, my teachers, and my peers. Even at MIT, which is primarily recognized for the quality of its research (and rightly so), I found a physics department that openly cared about undergraduate education, where teaching was valued and done well and which fostered a community of undergrads who learned from and supported each other.
So, why the frustration? My relatively rosy view of physics education was shaken up not long after starting grad school at UC Berkeley (By the way, I don’t want to single out Berkeley as particularly flawed, as I’m sure its problems are shared by virtually every physics department in the US to one extent or another. However, I can only write about what I know and this is where I am). Back in the cocoon of the MIT undergrad experience, I came to believe that physics was awesome for two main reasons: (1) because it answers deep, fundamental questions about how the world works and (2) because it is a community driven, collaborative exercise that thrives on the effective sharing of knowledge among its practitioners. In my mind, grad school would build upon these dual pillars of awesomeness and help me become (1) a great researcher and (2) a great teacher.
The jury is still out on the great researcher thing, but it turns out that, in principle, grad school has precisely zero to do with becoming a good teacher. Oh, you can TA a class here and there, as long as that doesn’t get in the way of what grad school is “really” all about. The unfortunate thing is that the lack of value assigned to teaching seems very systemic, to the point of being embedded in the culture; perhaps this attitude appears to benefit physics in the short-term by weeding out all but the most “serious” students, but in the long run it does nothing but damage.
The damage done to grad students is fairly obvious. First of all, if they are not provided with encouragement and avenues to become better teachers, then they won’t improve their teaching skills as well as they could have. If you happen to believe that an essential part of being a physicist is the ability to pass physics on to future generations of students, to inspire them to follow in the footsteps of their intellectual ancestors, then it is hard to justify allowing people to graduate with PhDs who have not demonstrated the ability to do just that. Of course, this happens all the time.
Secondly, there are always some grad students, including me, who have a deep interest in teaching (I remember deciding in high school that the only way to know if I really understood something was to try teaching it to someone else — so I can genuinely say that education has been on my mind for a long time). When people with such a passion are met with disinterest or even disdain by the people they want to emulate (successful physicists), the blow to their motivation can be severe. After all, who wants to stick around when their interests and talents aren’t valued or supported? I’ve heard it implied (and sometimes even said outright) that such students aren’t “serious enough” about physics and therefore aren’t worth keeping around, but without a crystal ball, who can really say which student will end up making important contributions to the field?
Let’s put the grad students aside for now (didn’t we just talk about that?), and spend some time looking at how undergrads are damaged by this attitude. Teaching is the single most fundamental service an academic department provides to undergraduates, and if, on average, a department is not interested in teaching well, the implication is that it’s not interested in serving undergrads in any way. But serving undergrads is vital to the survival of an academic discipline, because some of those undergrads are that discipline’s future experts. As I stated above, I was fortunate enough to attend schools that did serve their students well, but I can talk about the opposite through my observations as a TA.
Many students arrive at their undergraduate institution with a substantial number of long-held academic “bad habits”, especially in the sciences. High school has managed to convince many students that physics is a dogmatic, memorization-centered subject. As a result, they don’t have the skills necessary to solve real physics problems, because all that they have learned to do is to pattern-match and to plug-and-chug. Still, popular science books and NOVA specials have kept them interested enough that many intend to pursue the physical sciences as undergrads. Once they get to college, however, their passion for physics is quickly squelched by a number of factors:
- Because they don’t have the skills necessary to problem-solve, model-build, and generally think like physicists, these students actually don’t know how to effectively learn physics as it is typically presented in a large lecture-based class. This doesn’t mean that these students are stupid, or somehow not worth teaching. It simply means that there are things they need to be taught other than “the material” in order to help them become better learners. Unfortunately, many of them come away feeling like they don’t have what it takes to be physicists (as though there is some intrinsic “physicsness” that they are lacking) and so they leave the field.
- The typical introductory physics sequence, at least at Berkeley, is very isolating for potential physics majors. The vast majority of people in those classes are engineering students who are there because their departments require that they take physics; they have largely no interest in physics for its own sake. This makes it very difficult for potential physics majors to identify each other — they are like needles in an apathetic haystack. This situation is exacerbated by the fact that even the physics department cannot identify these potential majors. So, these students end up isolated from the department, from upperclassmen physics majors, and from each other – that is to say, from the physics community – for the three semesters it takes them to get through introductory physics. However, an important part of the excitement of physics is the collaboration with peers, the shared goal of building knowledge through interaction and discussion and asking “What if”. Without that, it’s incredibly difficult to paint physics as an interesting field, to really sell the idea of being physicists to these students beyond the level that NOVA can, and so they leave the field.
- The problems of interaction and perceived lack of “physicsness” are magnified for a certain set of students: women and underrepresented minorities. At this point, so much has been said about the lack of women and minorities in all levels of physics due to the “leaky pipeline” that I don’t have much to add to the subject. For this discussion, the important point to note is that in addition to the issues that their well-represented peers also face, they have to face majoring in a field where they don’t see people like themselves. They arrive at the seemingly logical but erroneous conclusion that success in physics is unattainable unless you are a white male, and so they leave the field.
So, here are three of many reasons why undergrads might leave the field of physics – notice that none of these reasons have anything to do with these students’ ability to be good physicists. If the physics community wants to recruit the best minds into its ranks, it stands to reason that these impediments must be removed, but not enough people seem interested in doing so. Hence, my frustration.
[More below the fold…]
Well, kiddo: you’re frustrated, and it even sounds like your frustrations are reasonable (at least to me, since you and I are the same person). What good is that going to do? Were I alone in my frustration, probably nothing. However, it turns out that I wasn’t alone: there were other grad students around me who were also frustrated, and for similar reasons. Three of them found each other, and decided to do something about the problems that they saw: they started to work on creating a program called The Compass Project during the summer of 2006, and I joined the project a year later.
So, what is Compass? At its core, The Compass Project is a program whose goal is to address all of these problems, both on the undergraduate and graduate level, with the ultimate aim of strengthening the physical sciences at Berkeley (I admit, we are a little bit ambitious). Central to our work is a two-week summer program for incoming Berkeley freshmen who are interested in the physical sciences (targeted at women and underrepresented minorities). The summer program addresses many of the issues I outlined above:
- By bringing together a set of 15-20 incoming freshmen for an intense two-week education experience, Compass starts the process of forming the network of peer interaction and support that doesn’t form during the intro physics sequence.
- Compass’s teaching methodology focuses very heavily on collaborative learning and group work. The Compass instructors (who are all grad students – more on this later), act more as guides helping the students answer a realistic physical question (for our pilot year, the question was “What do earthquakes tell us about the interior of the Earth?”), rather than an authoritarian source of all knowledge. We focus on building problem-solving and model-building skills in our students, which are skills not explicitly address in traditional physics classes.
- Compass introduces these students to the physics department very quickly. Through interaction with the Compass grad students, the Compass undergrads learn that physicists are real people, with real problems and real struggles, just like them. They get the message that they are valued members of the physics community as soon as they arrive on campus, and many of them choose to self-identify as physics majors before their first semester is done. We hope that as Compass grows, this sense of ownership will lead future Compass students to act as nuclei in their intro classes around which potential majors who were not in Compass can aggregate.
- The curriculum for the summer program is developed and implemented entirely by grad students. This means that Compass provides a tremendous opportunity for grad students involved in the program to hone their teaching skills in ways that simply aren’t possible without that level of freedom and control. Additionally, Compass provides a space where a passion for teaching is actually valued and encouraged, and therefore serves as a seed for the creation of a community of grad students. For many (including me!), the friendships formed through that community are invaluable for actually making it through grad school.
As though the summer program didn’t already keep us all busy, Compass also has several components that extend throughout the academic year, with the goal of supporting the Compass undergrads throughout their academic careers. Among those are (1) a mentorship program that pairs each Compass undergrad with a grad student to help them navigate the challenges of college, (2) a set of office hours, staffed by grad students and upperclassmen, to provide Compass students with academic help, (3) a lecture series where physics faculty describe their research at an undergrad level (this has been well-attended by Compass and non-Compass undergrads alike), and (4) pure social activities. So, yes, our goals are ambitious, but so are our methods for achieving those goals.
So, how can you help support this fantastic program? As I alluded to earlier, Compass was founded quite recently (our second summer program is happening this August!), and is entirely run by physics grad students. Right now, the main problem that Compass is facing at Berkeley is a lack of financial support (apparently times are tough in Sacramento as well as in DC), so we are trying to get the word out about our existence and the good work we are trying to do. So, if you think our program is worth supporting, spread the word! Tell your friends in important places about us, let us know if you are interested in hearing more or helping out, and, if you are able, donate some money to Compass. Every bit of help we can get is vital to keep this program going.
And if you happen to be a grad student at some school, and you happen to feel frustrated about these issues too, don’t despair. Consider starting a program similar to Compass at your school (and by all means, tell us about it). You’d be surprised how many good things your frustration can create.
Joel –
Thank you for your post. I have many of the same frustrations, though I come from a different field – psychology. I teach a course in research methods (and I love psychology research) but have some difficulty convincing my students that 1) research and statistics are not as difficult as they think and 2) that research (and statistics) can be fun! And I think introductory psych courses suffer from many of the same problems as you mentioned, because they focus on memorizing theories and terms rather than teaching problem solving and using creativity. So then when students make it research methods, they don’t have (and don’t think they can develop) those skills they need to use psychology knowledge to solve practical problems.
The one problem psychology does not have is the gender difference, though in the past, the majority of women became counselors and the men in the field became the researchers/academics. I do think that’s changing now.
Anyway, your post has convinced me that I just need to keep trying. Thanks again!
It would be useful to add a link to Sean’s article, “The Purpose of Harvard is Not to Educate People”. The comments there discussed some of the underlying factors behind Joel’s complaints.
Thank you, Joel, both for being who you are and
for addressing this serious problem.
I fear we are going to have a future full of drones
whose idea of a major life goal is a new sports car
or designer outfit. Oh heck, it’s happening now!
Of course that will just make it easier to be led
and controlled by the government. A planet full of
sheep who don’t know when they are being led to the
slaughter and don’t care.
Joel,
I am a physics undergrad at the University of Florida and I feel like the factors you mention above are spot-on. Although I can’t associate with the third factor as I am a white male, I find it very frustrating as an undergrad that there is no real ‘physics community’ here. Even in the ‘enriched’ introductory physics courses (which are supposed to be populated mainly by majors), there is no real connection outside of the lecture hall. Also, the physics we are learning is, although somewhat advanced for intro-physics, it is still mainly generalized theory with no appreciable emphasis on problem-solving. It seems that this type of educational process is exercised over much of the sciences as my chemistry courses have operated in the same way.
I wanted to become a physicist mostly because of the ‘awesome’ things I have seen on NOVA and have read about (especially through this blog). These things inspired me to want to look for the deep, fundamental truths of the universe, but thus far, it seems college has turned this almost romantic quest for knowledge and understanding into, like you said, an isolated, plug-and-chug endeavor.
I hope your program changes this for your students, and when I become a grad student, I hope I can make the type of impact your group is making.
Good Luck!
Joel,
I felt it was my duty to point out one minor error in your post. While it doesn’t change any of the points you made (and, as a fellow grad student interested in teaching, I agree with most of them), Berkeley does in fact have an introductory physics sequence specifically designed for students interested in majoring in physics, the H7 series. Unfortunately, not all prospective physics majors take the H7 series, and the campus advisers do little to nothing to promote the series. While the sequence is quite difficult, if all of the students interested in physics took a course more like H7, focused more on learning how to solve problems and thinking “like a physicist,” I suspect far fewer students would be turned away from physics. I know this is somewhat of a Berkeley specific item, but I hope that as part of your program, you encourage the students to take as many classes with an H prefix as possible (they can also be found in the math department).
I applaud your efforts to make changes in the system. Unfortunately, I think the problems with grad school are the most pressing and I don’t think they will be easily solved. I have finally managed to replace my idealized view of the academic world with the realistic view of economists that “people respond to incentives”. The whole incentive structure is set up in favor of research over pedagogy and that makes people neglect pedagogy. Why is it set up this way? Even if physics started in a world where research and pedagogy were equally respectable (maybe in Newton’s time?), there would still be an initial bias towards research because it is easier to measure. When someone publishes a new result, everyone has to acknowledge it. But it takes a lot more intellectual fortitude to claim that a new explanation of something is the best explanation yet written, or that a certain professor’s course is better than the all the rest. It seems that pedagogical explanations are only revered when the author has already gained fame through research. For example, The Feynman Lectures, which actually happen to be terrible as a freshman-level introduction as is evidenced by the preface which indicates that the class was gradually drained of freshman who were being replaced by grad students and professors.
This inherent bias towards research is exacerbated over time. Professors become programmed to churn out papers, sacrificing the pedagogical quality of their courses, which causes the true intellectuals to turn to mathematics or elsewhere. If an intellectual student does stick with physics until graduate school, he or she is faced with the option of becoming an “operator” or dropping out. Sometime during grad school, the last remnants of philosophical interest in physics are suppressed or weeded out of the physics community.
The only way to fix this problem in the long run is to change the incentive structure. In the absence of economic and political factors, there would be a natural bias towards pedagogy due simply to curiosity. But there is no way to isolate a community from such factors, so the only solution is to manipulate these factors to work in our favor. Or perhaps a better way of putting it is to prevent the current system from manipulating the factors against us. The easiest quick fix for this is to change how professors get paid. For example, suppose a professor’s pay was divided into three main parts: a base salary of $30 K, a supplement for each student enrolled in their courses (maybe $1 K for lower division and $5 K for upper division), and a bonus based on their course reviews. Assuming that the latter was the largest of the three for a good teacher, this would be a strong incentive to teach well.
I also think all the “free money” floating around causes a lot of problems. Professors spend so much of their time begging for their share of the loot stolen by the government through taxation. Most physicists blindly assume that such “free money” is necessary for basic science, but there are plenty of other morally acceptable sources of money such as tuition, patent licensing, and voluntary donations. Though this may sound absurd at first, I actually believe that science would be better off without public funding. Professors could put an end to the eternal process of lobbying for funds, and just get back to work. Think of the consequences. First, more students would go into theory since the economic playing field would be leveled. Second, imagine a professor who wanted to do a big experiment. They wouldn’t spend the next several months writing grant proposals and talking on the phone to politicians. Instead, they would design a new course to increase profitability or find a group of professors to pool funds with. Or they might create a website for public outreach to solicit donations. And as Milton Friedman would tell us, if those professors are paying for their experiments out of their own pockets, they are going to be much more likely to spend that money wisely. As for expensive experiments like the LHC, if they can’t be funded without the use of violence, then is it really the right time to perform them? As usual, economics can tell you the solution to the problem, but the real challenge is convincing everyone else to listen.
Kudos to Corbo for not just complaining about the quality of his graduate school education, but for doing something about it by founding the Compass Project!
Hi Joel! I remember you from MIT. I graduated from the physics department just one year before you. I’m glad to hear that you’re doing this diversity project. I’m sure our MIT professors would be proud.
I sent the link to your website to our department chair and she got wildly enthusiastic about the idea. Hopefully, some form of “Compass” will come to Yale, too.
Sincerely, Terri
It’s all logical. Physics graduate programs don’t emphasize teaching because teaching physics is a waste of time. Those that are any good don’t really need to be taught, those in need of good teaching will never amount to anything. That may sound harsh, but it’s the truth.
Re: Kuas at 3:35 pm
Clearly, all contributions in the field of physics, related to physics, or requiring any kind of pedagogical background in physics (in other words, most other arenas of science and medicine!) have been made by approximately a few dozen physicists who, over the past few hundred years, have not required any teachers.
Please get over the outdated and downright damaging Western ‘cult of the genius’ attitude, and the incorrect notion that studying physics is only for those few planning to make a major, paradigm-changing contribution to theoretical physics, or for those otherwise planning to live in the ego-massaging realm of the isolated ivory tower.
Most physicists have needed good teachers at some point. But more importantly, most non-physicists — like all other scientists, teachers, physicians, academics, engineers, and so on — have needed good teachers at some point.
It is to the benefit of all of us that physics education and science education is improved. It is to the benefit of all of us that our future biologists, astronomers, teachers, civil engineers, and doctors, in addition to our future Edward Wittens and Richard Feynmans, have a grasp of physics.
It is a real disservice to emphasize that (mostly Westernized, I note) aspect of the physics culture that focuses on slavish worship of some idealized notion of the lonely geniuses who needed no one else. By far most of the work in physics, and in most sciences these days, is done in large collaborative efforts by bright men and women who value excellent teachers who could lead them on to real insight.
Excellent, well-thought-out education is never a waste of time.
Don’t speak for all of us, Kuas. As a physicist, I fully support anyone and everyone who wants to improve the prospects of education in the sciences.
I should note that there seems to often be a split in attitudes on this subject, between two crowds:
1. The group who believe that physics, and the other sciences, should play a major role in improving the prospects for humanity, and who consider it a duty not to forget that physics is not an island;
2. The group who believe that physics is primarily an intellectual battleground and competitive arena in which the goal is to find out who is “best” and “cleverest” and will “amount to something.” In other words, the physics is no longer about the science!, it’s about the people doing the science.
I have never been a fan of the cultism surrounding the big names. I don’t enjoy the obsession with celebrity that characterizes physics anymore than I enjoy many people’s fixation with Paris Hilton. It is a game of celebrity, gossip, and often of competitive backbiting. It is about apes thumping chests, and grabbing their genitals, showing their place in the dominance hierarchy — no longer about the science.
I think a lot of us are here to work, to do good science and to enjoy doing good science, to do something helpful to the rest of the world, not to play politics or ego games or to “beat others.” If that be the case, then educating others is part of our duty.
May it be so that all of us are able to leave some work on this planet that has been useful to others.
Re: Kuas
There is nothing logical about what you just said. What do you mean by “those who are good”? Did they get good by themselves? Were they born with a “physics” gene that allowed them to magically learn the subject without any outside help? You know full well that the world does not work that way. New knowledge doesn’t emerge out of nothing – it only comes from knowledge that has already been constructed by those who came before you. Without them around to nudge you along, you wouldn’t know where to start. Heck, even the ability to learn efficiently is not innate – it has to be taught.
Ask yourself honestly: would you have been able to get where you are (wherever that is, it sounds like a pretty bitter place) without a single teacher? And then email a few well-known physicists and ask the same question – I bet you will find out just how wrong you are.
6. Chris Clark on Jun 12th, 2008 at 2:12 pm writes:
“As for expensive experiments like the LHC, if they can’t be funded without the use of violence, then is it really the right time to perform them?”
Violence?! Do you really think that the LHC was funded by having the CERN director general rob banks and mug little old ladies? [incidentally, the LHC is an accelerator; the individual experiments at the interaction points are: ATLAS, CMS, ALICE, and LHC-B]. Note also that support for research in fundamental physics worldwide is tiny [tiny!] compared to the world’s annual expenditure on armaments, so you are certainly right that violence is expensive. But I would suggest that international collaboration at facilities such as CERN works to strengthen international ties, and helps decrease international tensions, in as much as it is a demonstration of what can be accomplished if people and nations cooperate and work together.
“if those professors are paying for their experiments out of their own pockets, they are going to be much more likely to spend that money wisely.”
My observation [as an interested theorist] is that experimentalists pinch pennies like crazy, because any money saved can be ploughed back into: supporting another graduate student on the experiment; buying new CPU’s for the analysis processor farm; hiring another undergraduate for a summer work term; et cetera… They do this because at the end of the day, it’s all about trying to get as much science done as possible, given your resources… [and yes, the vast majority of my colleagues really do care about, and are excited about, the science that they do].
So pleased to see forward thinking college students who are planning for responsible education. Although strong science education gets lip service for high importance – reality appears not to support the crusade.
As a veteran (36+ years) educator of younger students, I know that we need knowledgeable thinkers at many levels of the educational process. Some physics majors may end up teaching in middle and high schools and not in research. I hope we can find some soon. The long term result of fine teaching at many levels will certainly serve us a greater benefit than a few physicists who may or may not make broad contributions to our society.
Purposeful thinking and modeling logic for problem solving is necessary at all levels of education. Learning how to question and self-talk through a problem solving exercise is paramount in both science an mathematics.
Keep up the fine work ot improve ‘the system’. If your institution and others begin to take notice, perhaps a new era will evolve.
Thank you.
In the current educational system, we only start to teach real physics to university students when they are already 18 years old. They are required to master everything from classical mechanics to Introduction to String Theory in 4 to 5 years time.
So, if we want to improve physics education, it is more efficient to do so by teaching physics to high school students. Why not make physics an optional subject and teach topics such as classical mechanics, special relativity, quantum physics, statistical mechanics, electrodynamics and the necessary math subjects like calculus, linear algebra, functional analysis, etc. to 14 to 18 year olds?
Excellent program, and nicely thought out.
From my experience, I didn’t really meet any serious peers at my university until well into my junior year and its something I regret. There was occassional problem solving days, but I generally did the work myself b/c the other students were behind my level (my highschool was harder than pretty much the entire undergrad experience) mostly b/c they couldn’t follow what the proffessor was saying.
Meanwhile many of those people have gone on to nice careers in the field, so I regret not knowing them better and im absolutely positive they would have advanced much faster with programs like this had they been given the opportunity. I had erroneously lumped them in with all the nat sci requirement individuals I had known just one semester or two previously.
As for teaching perse. Unfortunately its a fact that in smaller departments, things like etaching excellence is an afterthought, pretty much b/c they feel the need to compete with larger institutions in the all important research area.
People have been talking about it for decades, but alas there is no great solution. Generally i;ve found grad students/TAs are better teachers than most tenured professors (especially the foreign ones, who unfortunately sometimes have language barriers).
Still programs like this would perhaps help ease the pain a little bit.
Kuas,
It is a logical argument – and you conclude your premise. If you believe that then it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because the only ones that succeed in the field are those you didn’t exclude. It also happens to be false. The great minds had great mentors; to find this out do some research:)
A mind is easy to destroy, and many great ones are lost.
Kuas has been maybe a bit too brutal, but he has put his finger on it. It hurts of course. The only “learning” worth the name is that done on your own. Graduate school is the place where “swim or sink” slaps you in the face, full force. Some people react, some others “grow frustrated”. Natural selection is a wondrous thing.
Actually … no. The truth is that some people get slapped in the face, learn to succeed all by themselves, and go on to great careers. Others get slapped in the face, decide that there are more pleasant ways to live their lives, and choose to do something else. Still others are challenged, but receive some sort of useful guidance or support from people around them, manage to make a few adjustments, and go on to great careers.
Different people respond to different combinations of harsh challenge and helpful encouragement, solitary discovery and structured learning. Pushing away a substantial fraction of talented students out of some misguided notion that science should resemble boot camp might flatter the macho fantasies of the survivors, but it doesn’t produce the highest quality scientific workforce.
Sorry, Juan. You know you’re my dawg, but I have to keep things honest.
Hi Joel,
I agree with your points about undergraduate education, but I’m a little more dubious on what you’d change about graduate school. You write:
If you happen to believe that an essential part of being a physicist is the ability to pass physics on to future generations of students, to inspire them to follow in the footsteps of their intellectual ancestors, then it is hard to justify allowing people to graduate with PhDs who have not demonstrated the ability to do just that.
The way I read that, you propose to replace (to some degree) the weeding out of people who aren’t “serious enough” about their research, with people who are too serious. That seems like a bad idea to me; people who are great researchers but lousy teachers make substantial contributions to science. Although obviously it’s preferable that that they make these contributions from non-teaching jobs, they still need their PhD’s. (It’s also worth noting that they may be great mentors of graduate students without being any good at teaching courses.)
Having a doctorate is ultimately about the ability to understand and work on physics, not necessarily the ability to teach it. It always has been; I doubt that your professors at MIT learned to teach because that was a huge priority when they were graduate students, and I doubt that that’s what they emphasize for their graduate students today.
What’s not true is that being a professor is only about research; it is a teaching job by definition. What needs to be changed is not how graduate school works, then, but rather faculty hiring and tenure. If part of the job is to teach, faculty members should be required to have demonstrated abilities in that part of the job. I fully support taking that requirement seriously rather than just giving it lip service.
Next you will ask me where potential faculty members will learn to teach, if they are not required to do so as graduate students. My answer is, frankly: on their own initiative, and very possibly their own time. This isn’t as harsh as it sounds. I’ve done it (although it’s harder from Switzerland), Sean’s doing it by blogging among other things, you and the other people on Project Compass are certainly doing it. In fact, most of the graduate students I know at Berkeley are involved in teaching or outreach in one way or another. Great!
In my ideal world, people who wanted to be faculty members would know they had to be able to teach. If they didn’t pick up those skills somewhere, they would lose job opportunities, and it would be too bad for them–graduate students may need mentors, but they don’t need to be held by the hand that much.
I want to make clear that I think teaching is important, and my respect for those who work on it, but I think you’re barking up the wrong tree by blaming the education of graduate students. Being a skilled teacher shouldn’t be required for being a physicist; but it should be required for being a teacher of physics.
Seth — your points are good, and indeed non-teachers shouldn’t be penalized, however having been there I can say that graduate school is a better place for this than as a postdoc, which are unfortunately the only two options prior to faculty in the present system. I think the program is a very good idea (and I have sent it around to a few colleagues in my department), hopefully NSF (and equivalent funding agencies in the case of other countries) will give it a bit of funding, since it unfortunately isn’t free.
I’m a recent Berkeley grad: EE, with a not-quite minor in physics. It’s been a while since I’ve taken the 7ABC sequence, and I haven’t devoted much time to pondering about my experience, but here’s a few thoughts.
Textbook. I can’t say I’m a big fan of the intro textbooks, the sort that are full of pictures and colors. They don’t teach you how to approach problems — they do a few examples and then put equations in bolded boxes. The books used in the H7 series are great, but more difficult.
Mathematical maturity. It takes some time to get comfortable with manipulating expressions and tying them to physical concepts, especially if the math knowledge is raw.
Requirement mentality. The 7 series is required for all engineers, so there’s a lot of “gotta slog through this class” thinking that can be infectious.
Berkeley intimidation. My impression is that Berkeley emphasizes mastery of a subject, which is how it should be. But then the midterm comes around and the average is a 30 or a 50, which can be demoralizing.
GSIs. I personally had great GSIs, but other people I know were definitely not so lucky.
I should say, though, that all the upper-div classes I took were awesome.
Private donations probably won’t hurt either. They have a donation bin set up through the Berkeley BigIdeas (http://bigideas.berkeley.edu/donate/193 – it looks similar to DonorsChoose, but limited to projects at UC Berkeley), and I just threw in my 2 cents (a little more, but literally) :-). Now if I can get my company to match it, that’ll make it all the sweeter.
@ mgary (#5)
It’s true that Berkeley has an honors version of the intro sequence; I didn’t mention it because this post was long enough as it is, but I am definitely a fan of the H7s (most of my TAing has been for the H7s). Those who succeed in the H7 sequence definitely do learn the “thinking like a physicist” skills, and the sheer difficulty of the courses tends to build community among the enrolled students as they realize that they need to collaborate with their peers to effectively learn.
There are some caveats, though. First is the one you mentioned: the H7 sequence is not well-advertised. Secondly, I’ve noticed from talking with upperclassmen that once people leave the H7 sequence, that community tends to break down; I think this largely happens because there is no set order to the upper division classes, so people do not end up taking the same ones at the same time. Finally, not everyone is academically prepared from high school to jump into the H7 track, although they can start in the regular 7 sequence and switch into H7 later.
All that said, Compass has encouraged people in the program who seem prepared to try the H7 sequence (of 11 students so far, 4 went into H7 immediately, and another 2 did regular 7 for a semester before switching to H7 for this coming fall), and they have been happy with the experience thus far.
@ SethZenz (#20)
Hi Seth!
Actually, I would propose replacing the weeding out of people who aren’t “serious enough” with the weeding out of no one at all. This idea of “weeding out” in a graduate program doesn’t make sense to me. If a department chooses to admit a student for graduate study, presumably it believes that student could make a good physicist. Furthermore, grad students cost the department money. Why would a department admit a student, pay for them to hang around for many years, but not try to support them in becoming good researchers (never mind good teachers)?
It seems to me that if someone decides to leave physics (or any other academic field, for that matter), it should be because they find something more interesting to do, not because (1) they couldn’t find a sane advisor, (2) they found an advisor, hated their research, but felt trapped by time pressures and didn’t find a different project to work on, (3) they had endless funding issues, (4) they experienced any of the other arbitrary events that fall under the category of “weeding out”.
I’d also like to take this opportunity to discuss an issue that people like avoiding: mental health. Mental health problems affect a significant fraction of graduate students. For those of you who like data, check out the Berkeley Graduate Student Mental Health Survey from 2004. In the executive summary alone you will discover that “In the last 12 months, 45.3% of respondents had experienced an emotional or stress-related problem that significantly affected their well being and/or academic performance.” and that “9.9 % of respondents seriously considered suicide in the past 12 months.” Mental health is a significant issue, and I doubt that it is helped by the “weeding out” process.
You’re right (assuming I am interpreting you correctly) that it’s ultimately up to individuals to decide that teaching is important to them and to therefore spend time and effort on it. I also don’t think that learning to teach should necessarily be a large component of graduate education (although requiring everyone to TA for one semester, for example, isn’t particularly burdensome). What I do think needs to be changed is the general negative attitude towards teaching that seems to pervade physics academia.
It would be sufficient, I think, if physics departments could excise the attitude that good teaching isn’t important, that it is a waste of a student’s time, that students interested in teaching aren’t “serious enough”, and so on. It would be even better if they provided real avenues for students who are interested in teaching to improve their skills (a lecture series on physics pedagogy, or a faculty member who can act as a “teaching mentor”, or similar things). The problem with the current system is that it’s not even neutral towards teaching – it’s against it. And that means that students who want to teach will encounter obstacles, or at least will find their teaching inclinations to be undervalued. What’s the use of that?
I can’t imagine how this requirement will ever be taken seriously if the attitude I just described doesn’t change. However, if it does change, it will likely also lead to more support of grad student teaching as a natural consequence. Sounds good to me.
@ everyone supportive
Thanks! You’re awesome!
Occasionally, departments do make an unavoidable (or avoidable) mistake and get a grad student that is not qualified. While this is generally largely the department’s error rather than the student, it wouldn’t be fair to the high quality of the other students’ PhD’s to make sure that absolutely everyone who is admitted to a graduate program uniformly must get a PhD. Often the way it is dealt with is to make sure the student qualifies for a masters and then point to other options (in a few cases, the door). A PhD student leaving physics after a masters probably shouldn’t happen in more than ~10% or so of an incoming PhD class, IMO. And then occasionally, a student just won’t finish his/her dissertation. Some coaching is needed in those cases — however the department cannot do this for the student.