Monthly Status Reports (A random walk through how I run my lab, Item 4)

In the business world, or in "Office Space," everyone has seemingly heard of the TPS that must be submitted to your boss at arbitrary (but far too often) frequency. More annoyingly, the TPS often appears to remain unread serving only to occupy one's time with busy work. So it is with ironic amusement that I rediscovered this tool so as to improve the efficiency of my lab. After all, theorists are out-of-the-box thinkers who don't want to be constrained by the mundane, right? And yet this monthly task is exactly the extra structure my students needed to maximize their progress, liberating them to not even see the "box."

For nearly two years, I have asked my students to submit a Monthly Status Report (MSR). It includes only four components: accomplishments, accountability, goals, and pain-points. The goals include not just what is to be done in the next month, but also their overarching plans. In accountability, they summarize what was performed with regards to the previous month's goals. If they succeeded with all of their goals, then that serves to calibrate a more ambitious plan for the following month! The pain-points provide a quick summary of which items I might need to help them with or which I am overdue on. (Yes, I also need help keeping all the balls in the air!) The MSR needs to include items regarding their educational plan, and not just their research projects. To this end, I ask them to include a running clock of the time spent as a graduate student or postdoc. The clock increments by one month each time, of course. The total number, though, reminds us to track professional development activities appropriate to the student's educational timeline. The key to insuring that this is not a totally pointless exercise is that the MSR is followed by a 1:1 thirty-minute meeting discussing progress and charting out meetings and tasks for both student and me to follow up on. I've found that this "meta" meeting is critical to ensuring that both the student AND her or his projects succeed. When I had a smaller group, the MSR wasn't necessary, but now it's critical. I have found it to be more effective than the annual Individual Development Plan (IDP), if the latter is done exclusively, because the IDP is yearly and that feedback isn't often enough. Indeed, the MSR makes the IDP easy for students to complete and increases the effectiveness of the IDP.

Again, the MSR is a simple tool from business school 101, but don't scoff it if you want to help your students increase their productivity and maximize what they learn in graduate school. The key is to use it as a vehicle to hold a frequent and periodic conversation between you and every one of your students!

Engaging with Your Audience No.2: Think-Pair-Share

What’s wrong with delivering a research lecture as a sage at the stage? It is after all the format that research seminars have always been delivered in. It's also the equivalent of TV's talking heads. In the humanities, the lecturer typically reads from carefully crafted prose while sitting in front of a desk at the front of the room. In the sciences, we go comparatively rogue by standing and presenting extemporaneously using our slides to provide visuals and pacing, but otherwise remain standing far in front of our audience. Either of these delivery mechanisms are stately, befitting the seriousness of our enterprise. Unfortunately, it also creates a barrier between the speaker and the audience. Using interactive approaches does more than keep your audience awake, it also helps them internalize the material.

My current favorite teaching modality is the so-called think-pair-share method. It can be implemented using clickers, but it's just as easy to use a sheet with large preprinted letters or even with hands showing varying numbers of fingers. I often use the latter when I give research seminars. It's an unexpected request of the graduate students and professors. Perhaps not surprisingly such an audience is inclined to make it a competitive sport in which they are most concerned about getting the right answer. If my answer doesn't agree with theirs, they will sometimes argue to the contrary. I actually don't care if they get the right answer at the start, but rather that they become engaged in finding an answer and subsequently learn the answer. Similarly, in my classroom, it also helps break the stress of lecture while giving my students an opportunity to reflect not just on the question but also the entire narrative of that day's lecture.

I'm sure that my implementation of think-pair-share is noncanonical. I start by reading the question. I then poll students. If nearly everyone gets it right, I summarize the correct reasoning behind the answer and move on. If not, I will ask them to pair with a classmate, and give them some time to discuss. If they collectively get the right answer after a second poll, then I summarize the rationale and move on. Otherwise, depending on the question and the distribution of their answers, I give them an opportunity to share with the class, give them hints, repoll, etc. Eventually, we're all on the same page, but more importantly the process itself allowed them to learn the concept. Thus think-pair-share is neither an assessment tool nor an extra part of the lecture. It is the way in which we discuss a particular concept for the first (and likely last) time.


N.B., I’m also not afraid to interact with my audience through visual metaphors such as stunt punching a volunteer audience member (as described in an earlier post), or using them as props in describing Brownian motion...

Engaging with Your Audience

How far are you willing to go in keeping your audience awake during your seminar? Are you willing to punch one of your audience members? Well not quite punch them, but as in the picture accompanying this article a near miss. Or perhaps you use the Socratic method, hoping that someone will answer? Educational research has shown that active-learning modalities are the most effective way of teaching in the classroom. As lectures are meant to teach the audience about your research (or whatever topic you are describing), why not use them there as well?

At a seminar in UCSD a couple of years ago, I was asked a question concerning the velocity implemented in steered molecular dynamics. The issue concerned how the environment around a protein is affected by the speed in which a protein is literally pulled through it. This is analogous to a fist hitting your mouth. If the fist moves slowly enough, hopefully your mouth will have time to open and adjust itself allowing the fist to fit. But if the fist moves quickly, your teeth will likely be broken. To demonstrate this, without the benefit of this prior explanation, I ask for a volunteer (as I did extemporaneously at UCSD, and then later at Cal State LA where Carlos Gutierrez volunteered as is shown in the accompanying photo) and stunt punch him or her. The students (and the volunteer) are clearly surprised about the action and all are generally relieved that no one was hurt. More importantly, the visual metaphor helps them to better understand the algorithm. Many of them subsequently relay the visual metaphor to their friends and colleagues, undoubtedly also struggling to explain the connection to the science of the seminar. This requires audience members to commit the concepts to a longer-term memory. And this fits with my goal for my seminars which is to help students and colleagues learn and remember the science that my group is advancing. Sage at the stage may be comfortable and without risk, but engaging with your audience offers better rewards!

Keep your outline to yourself! (A random walk through how I run my lab, Item 3)

The best talks (presentations) are the ones that look completely unrehearsed, but for which the speaker's extemporaneous talent somehow causes them to hit every high and low dead on. That can only be achieved with tremendous preparation. To that end, I encourage my students to practice their presentations often. I ask them to present at least once, often twice, in one of our research group weekly meetings, to present it in front of my research group (without me present) at least once more, and to send me the slides several times for feedback. Depending on the importance of the venue, I also ask them to practice it in my office. In that setting, I often video record them. This ensures that they are not as relaxed as they would be in a one-on-one setting. It also gives them a recording that they can use to self-analyze their performance. Repetition alone is not enough because inherent mistakes will persist unless they are checked. As such, it is important that every practice presentation be followed by a lengthy critique.

Here follows a necessarily incomplete set of suggestions on how to deliver a better science presentation:

1. Lead with an example that is cool and illustrative of the problem that you are solving in your work. (Make sure to tell the audience the problem that you are trying to solve!)
2. Tell the audience your solution of the problem early on. This is not a detective story.
3. An outline slide should consist of phrases unique to your presentation. There is no need to have a bullet called "introduction" because you are evidently already doing this. There is no need to have a bullet called "conclusion" because everyone in the room knows that you will eventually stop talking. Don't have a bullet called "method"; instead write the name or names of the unique methods that you are using. 
4. Don't wear anything that will distract the audience.
5. Don't wear anything that will distract you. 
6. Your presentation is an opportunity for you to teach the audience about the work that you have done. It doesn't matter if there are one or more Nobel Prize winners in the room. You are the only expert about your work in the room.
7. Busy slides are worse than no slides at all.
8. Each slide requires at least one minute of air time, if not more.
9. Colored text should be used sparingly and intentionally to highlight or associate text.
10. Animations should be used sparingly and intentionally to highlight or associate concepts or transitions in your presentation.
11. Text should be used as cues to you and the audience in an abbreviated form, and not in long narratives to be read. (Occasionally important quotes may be necessary.)
12. Text and figures should be large enough to be visible in the back of the room.
13. Each slide (particularly those showing data, a figure, or some other kind of result) should be shown for a reason. Make sure to include prompts or bullets for each such reason.
14. Appropriate literature citations should be included within each slide, not at the end. 
15. All images and movies not created by you should be appropriately credited with references. This includes the ones that you "borrowed" from Wikipedia.
16. Do not speak in a monotone; a little enthusiasm goes a long way.
17. Look at your audience. If they appear to be inattentive, then throw in some relevant metaphor to bring them back in at the next pre-planned point in your presentation. (That means that you should have such examples at the ready to be dropped in at various places in your presentation.)
18. Detailed equations, algorithms, methods and/or lab set-ups are cool and you worked really hard to make them. But nearly no one wants to see them in a brief presentation. Try to have at most one such slide so that you may indicate how it was done without losing your audience in a quagmire of details. Have extra slides at the ready in case someone asks for such detail during Q and A.
19. It's hard to keep anyone's attention longer than 5 minutes or so. This means that you need to stop once in a while to remind the audience where you are in the story you are teaching them.
20. Good lecturing is good teaching. Think about using techniques from research-based education research (DBER) in your presentation. (For example, active learning!)
21. Feel free to violate any rule above if it makes your presentation better as long as it is not intellectually dishonest to do so.

I welcome more tips to be added to this list through your comments!

(This is the third post in a series of items on how I run my lab. Check out the list here.)

Item 2: On Celebrating Oral Exams (A random walk through how I run my lab)

Doctoral programs around the country tend to have varying requirements. Invariably, they have some kind of oral exam (early in the program) to establish the candidate's proficiency to continue on to write her or his dissertation. Later, the doctoral candidate completes her or his research and thesis. Whether or not she or he "defends" it with yet another oral presentation, it marks the second major and final stage before earning the doctorate. These two critical transitions can be treated as weed-out mechanisms or as teachable moments. I prefer the latter perspective, and I therefore devote a lot of time to help my students flesh out their ideas and practice their presentations. In the end, it's still them being tested so I have no qualms with helping them be better prepared. It's a training program after all!

As with all rituals, I, like most of my colleagues, find a way to include food and drink to mark these successful transitions. Mine has a twist. After successful completions of each, I bring a bottle of bubbly. I offer a domestic sparkling wine for the candidacy exam, and real champagne after the Ph.D. defense. That is, the real bubbles are reserved for the authentic confirmation of the degree… And I'm happy to report that we celebrated my 10th such doctorate just a few weeks ago!

This continues my random walk through how I run my lab. Look for other such posts using the "RandomWalks" tab. The previous item on a different set of rituals (annual lab outings) can be found here.

@SloanFoundation helping to increase Minority PhD's in STEM Areas

I'm in New York today serving on the Advisory Committee for the Sloan Foundation's Minority Ph.D. STEM grant program. It's an exciting time to be working with their office. They are in the process of re-imagining their investments to address the dearth of Minority Ph.D.'s being produced by the leading research active STEM departments. They have introduced two new funding models: The smaller Program in Exemplary Mentoring (PEM) aimed at promoting accommodating climate in individual departments, and the larger University Centers of Exemplary Mentoring (UCEMs) encompassing several departments and including graduate student fellowships.

It should be obvious from the names of these programs, but I'll hit you with a two by four… The common theme is the emphasis on mentoring. Anecdotal and research-based data both suggest that mentoring is one of the most effective actions for lowering the barriers faced by minority students in pursuing a Ph.D. and beyond. However, not all mentoring is equally good. It also involves people (and increased contact time), and that's expensive. Put this all together and it turns out that it's not so easy to construct sustainable and effective mentoring programs. This is where the funding from the Sloan Foundation plays such a crucial role. It provides both motivation for universities to compete to do it well, and funds that can be leveraged by diversity champions on their campuses.

Little boy blue and the man on the moon...

Work-life balance. If you're thinking about it, like me, you've likely already tipped the scales. For me, the old Cats Steven song,* Cat's in the Cradle, serves as a clarion call reminding me that my actions today will be rewarded or penalized later. It's seemingly easy to ignore any one request to play with my son today. After all what could it hurt? But there's a tipping point beyond which I would essentially never play with him, never teach him anything, and thus not have him around in the long term. One could argue that science is another such a child in my life, and it too requires my attention so as to remain on the productive side of its tipping point. This is yet another nonlinear dynamics problem for which I seek a partitioning of time that gives rise to a global fixed point. The trivial solutions would result in the loss of grants or detrimental effects on my relationships. The good news is that there are existence proofs that nontrivial healthy solutions exist! (And hopefully I'm maintaining one of them.)

A similar question arises when you run a research group. Each of my students requires just the right balance of training and freedom to venture into our joint research problems. She or he has little choice—once in the group—but to trust in my approach and in our group culture. That is, unless there is a catastrophic event that results in them leaving before achieving their degree. Like the little boy in the song, though, once graduated my students have the choice to remember their experience positively or negatively. If the former, this gives rise to an alumni network of students who continue to interact with each other and me. Thus the seeds of collaboration and interaction planted during their training continues to give back substantially to the other members of my group and me. But it's my choice to make those investments, and sadly not everyone makes this choice. So one of the pieces of advice to the students at the Future Faculty Workshop was simply: invest your time in mentoring the kind of group you want now and later. The former is your choice, but you will reap the latter accordingly.

*The lyrics of Cat's in the Cradle were written by Sandy & Harry Chapin, though I have mostly heard them on the Cats Steven soundtrack.

Chemists are unique but are very much like each other

It's a curious thing about chemists that most of us like to think of ourselves as rational thinkers making individual decisions that are unlike those made by anyone else. Just like the Apple commercial (and most of us appear to own more than one Apple product) told us to do long ago, we follow the credo "Think Different." The thing is that in our rational choice making, we tend to arrive at the same conclusions, and hence to an outside observer, we appear to all be alike. Many of us walk tangents (exhibiting that we understand geometry better than everyone else.) We buy Apple products because they are sleek, easy to use, and set us apart from corporate types who have to buy the company's choice of PCs. When we travel, we spend our time optimizing how to deal with airplane/airport headaches, and invariably arrive at similar strategies. In short, we are a marketing segment of the population that is as classifiable as any other. In this respect, we probably aren't very distinct from other scientists.

So how do we impart such non-uniqueness onto our students? At first order, we train them to think just like ourselves. Students need to learn how to solve chemical problems of the type that we have become experts at solving. So, of course, we teach them to approach the problems in the same way that we approach them. After a few years working together, our students even start mimicking some of our mannerisms. But what if our students aren't like us to begin with and they simply can't see us in themselves at the beginning (let alone the end) of their research journey? I suppose that they could find a different research advisor. Perhaps a better answer is to look for ways in which we can teach them the tools while letting them personalize them to their own way of thinking? That requires the faculty mentor to bend as well, growing in the process. If successful, we would then be truly imparting a uniqueness onto our students that match their own. In so doing, we can also open up the profession to a more diverse cohort of students. Sadly, the next generation of such scientists would likely still be an easily classifiable marketing segment...

Mentoring the next generation of chemical and materials scientists

During the past couple of days, I acted as one of the facilitators (as mentor and speaker) at a Future Faculty Workshop hosted at Georgia Tech. The workshop focuses on training senior students and postdocs in Chemistry, Chemical Engineering, Polymer Science, Materials Science and related departments. They sit through a series of informational seminars covering the entire process of getting a job in academia. Equally importantly, they get a lot of one-on-one time with the faculty during frequent breaks and unstructured meals. This is the 7th staging in a series of these workshops founded by Tim Swager (from MIT). Sadly, he still hasn't set-up a full website archiving the materials that have been presented and the many amazing individuals who have contributed as mentors and co-organizers. A vignette of the 2011 Workshop, held at MIT, is available here. The site provides a list of the mentors specifically involved that year, but many of them have been involved multiple years. It's also notable that the 2012 Workshop was held at UCSB. This year's workshop involved approximately 40 participants and 15-20 professors (a few of whom are department chairs, deans, and upper administrators.) Prof. Rosario Gerhardt did a great job of organizing it.

Our community has evidently gotten the memo that mentoring is important! The workshop provides straight talk about what you need to do to make the jump into a position as an Assistant Professor, and what you'll need to do once you're there. Meanwhile, the selection of participants and mentors is weighted toward the broader demographics we find in our students at the present moment, but much more diverse than what we find in our applicant pools. Thus this event, following Isiah Warner's advise that "diversity is a planned event," is truly working to broaden the next generation of faculty members in the chemical sciences. Kudos to Tim for starting and maintaining these workshops!