We want to hire a biologist!

The UMM biology program is looking to replace a recent retiree, and we need someone who is an excellent teacher, competent to teach cell biology and a basic genetics course, and with some interesting expertise that can be used for upper level electives in your specialty and can provide undergraduate research opportunities. We will need this wonderful person by Fall of 2011, so if you think you fit the bill and want to be involved in an excellent undergraduate teaching program, send an application in soon! The committee here is champing at the bit to find out who our future tenure track colleague will be, so even though it says our screening period is open-ended, we’re going to get into action in mid-January and late applications will enter an applicant pool where we’re already interviewing people. Don’t delay!

Full Time Tenure Track Position in Biology

Required/Preferred Qualifications:
Required: Applicants must hold or expect to receive a Ph.D. in cell biology or a related field by August 15, 2011. Two years experience teaching undergraduate biology is required. (Graduate TA experience is acceptable).

Preferred: Preference will be given to applicants who have an area of expertise relevant to our pre-health professional students and complementary to existing faculty interests. These might include, but are not limited to: immunology, cancer biology, bioinformatics, and cell signaling.

Duties/Responsibilities: Teaching undergraduate biology courses including a sophomore-level cell biology course, an upper-level genetics elective course, an elective in the applicant’s area of expertise, and other courses that support the biology program; advising undergraduates; conducting research that could involve undergraduates; and sharing in the governance and advancement of the biology program, the division, and the campus.

Program/Unit Description:
The University of Minnesota, Morris (UMM) is one of the top public liberal arts colleges in the nation. As one of five campuses of the University of Minnesota, UMM has a unique mission and offers the best of both in the world of higher education–a small, close-knit campus complemented by the power of a world-renowned research University system. UMM is located 160 miles WNW of Minneapolis in a small (5000) rural community.  Our student body is diverse (19% students of color) and academically well-prepared, with 55% earning an ACT comprehensive score of 25 or higher and over 50% drawn from the top 20% of their high school classes.  Our current faculty have received 18 of the University system’s highest teaching award and are very active in research and publication.  To learn more about the University of Minnesota, Morris visit our website at http://www.morris.umn.edu.

This tenure-track position carries all of the privileges and responsibilities of University of Minnesota faculty appointments. A sound retirement plan, excellent fringe benefits and a collegial atmosphere are among the benefits that accompany the position. Appointment will be at the Assistant Professor level for those having the Ph.D. in hand and at the Instructor level for those whose Ph.D. is pending. The standard teaching load is twenty credit hours per year.

The University of Minnesota is an equal opportunity educator and employer.  We are committed to the policy that all persons shall have equal access to its programs, facilities, and employment without regard to race, color, creed, religion, national origin, sex, age, marital status, disability, public assistance status, veteran status, or sexual orientation.  To request disability accommodations, please contact Sarah Mattson at 320-589-6021.

Application Instructions:
Applications must include a letter of application, resume, transcripts, a teaching statement (with evidence of teaching effectiveness), a research statement (proposing a research program that is viable at a small liberal arts college and accessible to undergraduates) and three letters of reference. Send applications to:

Biology Search Committee Chair
Division of Science and Mathematics
University of Minnesota, Morris
Morris, MN 56267-2128

Applications will be accepted until the position is filled. Screening begins January 5, 2011. Inquiries can be made to Ann Kolden, Executive Office and Administrative Specialist, at (320) 589-6301 or koldenal@morris.umn.edu.

I know, it says we’re small and far away in the hinterland, but don’t let that scare you. This really is a great good place to work if teaching is your passion. And if it isn’t, we probably don’t want you.

The class writes

I told you I’ve got my development class blogging, and here’s the update for this week.

Don’t be shy. They’ve been told to welcome comments and to brace themselves for possible criticisms.

Who do you trust?

SciAm has a nice report on a survey of people’s trust of authority figures. On a scale of one to five, with five being the most trustworthy, they were asked who would provide accurate information on a range of scientific issues. Look at these results: scientists are highly regarded, while religious authorities are deeply distrusted.

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Before you get too happy about this, though, check out the source of the survey: this was taken of readers of Nature and Scientific American. Can you say sampling bias, boys and girls? That’s disappointing; I’d rather see how the general public views these authorities, since we can already assume that fans of science would rate scientists most highly. It’s rather like posting a poll about the greatest musician of the age on a Justin Bieber fan site…you couldn’t really rely on the results for much of anything.

I notice that the views of scientists on evolution get the highest trust scores, and I can explain that. No matter what you hear from church pulpits, evolution is settled science — any debate on that matter has been resolved for almost a century. This is entirely why the evolution ‘debate’ today is so hot and furious, because it takes remarkable ignorance and fanaticism to disagree with it anymore. It’s also the case that of all the topics listed, evolution actually has the oldest, most firmly established answer among the bunch, so yes, informed people are comfortable with the views of pro-evolution scientists. It’s only the denialists who have to be crazy.

The rest of the article discusses more details of international views on various issues, and mostly they are positive. Just keep in mind — these data are from a well-educated and science-friendly audience, and probably aren’t representative of the citizenry as a whole.

UM backs down

Those must have been some interesting meetings: the University of Minnesota administration was trying to suppress an environmentalist documentary about abuses of the Mississippi river, but every faculty member I’ve heard from on this issue was a bit outraged by the censorship…and now, the university has backed off, and the movie will be screened on 3 October at the Bell Museum. If you’re in the area, stop by and watch it!

We teach developmental biology at UMM

I’m back to teaching developmental biology this term, and one of the things I do in my upper level classes is have students write blog entries on the themes of the course. In the past, I’ve given them space right here to do that, which I’ve found to be a parlous course of action — the commentariat here is savage and brutal, and infested with trollish nitwits who can derail threads spectacularly, so I’m doing it a little differently this time around. I’ve had them create their very own blogs on their own spaces, which has the additional benefit that maybe they can keep them going after they graduate.

So here’s the list of student blogs from my course. Feel free to visit, criticize, comment, etc., but do remember that they’re just now learning, so constructive discussion is far better than our usual ravaging ferocity. They’ve also been warned to be thick-skinned, though, so you don’t have to be too gentle.

Developmental Biology blogs

There isn’t much there yet in most cases, since they’ve just set them up, but I’ll be making weekly links to relevant articles in the future.

While I’m at it, I’ll mention that a former student, Levi Simonson, has a blog from his perspective as an ex-UMM student, now a graduate student at the wonderful University of Oregon. People do leave here to go on to interesting work!

Another reason you shouldn’t attend a religiously-affiliated university

Universities are supposed to be places where students are free to think and argue…but too often, if a student says something that contradicts the religious dogma of the institution, it’s an excuse to be censored. Here’s an example: a Mormon student at BYU wrote a letter for the school newspaper criticizing the LDS position on gay rights while still supporting Mormonism as a religious belief.

It is time for LDS supporters of Prop 8 to be honest about their reasons for supporting the amendment. It’s not about adoption rights, or the first amendment, or tradition. These arguments were not found worthy of the standards for finding facts set up by our judicial system. The real reason is that a man who most of us believe is a prophet of God told us to support the amendment. [This is a privately held religious belief that we are using to support legislation that takes away a right from a minority group. If our government were to enact legislation based solely on such beliefs, it would set a dangerous precedent, possibly even more so than allowing a homosexual to marry the person he or she loves.] We must be honest about our motivation, and consider what it means to the delicate balance between our relationship with God and with His children here on earth. Maybe then we will stop thoughtlessly spouting arguments that are offensive to gays and lesbians and indefensible to those not of our faith.

It got pulled. Why? I don’t know. It’s still crazy pro-mormon gushy baloney, but it is simply saying that everyone should be honest about their motivations.

Oh, wait. I forgot. Honesty is one of those sins in these goofy cults.

15 minutes…

I’m about to enter a classroom for the first time in over a year. I feel a strange dread that I’ve forgotten how to teach.

OK, I’m back. I survived. No students passed out. I think it was OK, although it was made more difficult by the fact that it involved a transition from one instructor to another.

Now to do it again this afternoon.

I get to start teaching again this week!

Oh, boy, it’s been a while. I was out for the first few lectures (which I am grateful to my colleagues for covering), so in my introductory biology class I get to plunge straight in to Darwin, Darwin’s finches, and Sean Carroll’s The Making of the Fittest. No preludes, baby, I’m diving right in.

And then I stumble across CreationConversations, which is kind of like the Ask A Biologist website, if it were staffed by idiots. People write in, and the gang there, which seems to be mostly junior league suck-ups to Ken Ham and Answers in Genesis, tries to answer from the Biblical perspective. It’s simply sad and pitiful. Here’s an example of the kinds of questions they get:

I am starting ninth grade biology. I know that we will be learning about evolution. I’ve been doing a lot of reading and have a very solid belief in creation. I was wondering how I should go about talking to my friends and other students about creation and the lie of evolution in and out of the classroom. I’ve tried talking a few times about it with my closest friends and it is sad to see that their beliefs are so firmly rooted in evolution that they have never questioned it. I fear not only for my friends but for my generation seeing as they have been taught nothing but evolution for their entire life. Many of them don’t even believe in God. How can I show not only my friends, but other students, that evolution is wrong?

First of all, I’d have to tell this student he’s living in the paranoid fantasy land of most Christians: it’s highly unlikely, unless he’s at a very good school, that he will be confronted with much evolutionary theory, and the odds that his faith will be challenged at all is vanishingly small. In fact, if he’s perturbed at all, all he has to do is squeak something about Jesus and the teacher will probably run away as fast as possible — not because they’re afraid of your stupid questions, but because obnoxious evangelical parents can make the teacher’s professional life a seething hell.

Also, most of his peers will not have been exposed to much evolution at all, but if they go to church, they’ve probably gotten mega-doses of creationism. There will be no persecution. His biggest disappointment will be that he won’t get to be a martyr.

College, of course, will be an entirely different matter.

The answers he gets at the site are amazing for their semi-delusional thinking: most are entirely confident that they’ve got buckets of apologetics and evidence, and they’re mainly warning the poor kid to go easy on the defenseless evolutionists. They so rarely face serious opposition in the schools that they fantasize that the pile of crap on their site actually has some weight to it; but really, creationists rely completely on cultural intimidation to cow their opposition.

Here’s one representative answer they give:

‘

My counsel is to check your attitude when you decide to confront an issue in class. Be sure that you are humble and respectful of others’ feelings. No one, especially a teacher, likes to look the fool in front of their peers or their students. Since the science controversy is firmly rooted in worldviews, when you begin to deconstruct their presuppositions, they can get defensive. It is far better to sow seeds of doubt and let an issue go, than to argue your point to a crushing conclusion. You may win battles that way, but lose the war, so to speak.

As Justin suggested, be the best possible student you can be. Learn the expected answers, but continually analyze the fallacies and presuppositions purveyed in class. A ninth grade biology course is a survey course, so you will be given a lot of generalizations. Don’t be arrogant or belittling when you decide to question one of these ideas. Look for the underlying truths in what you are learning. You will discover that, unless your teacher or the textbook author(s) are on a mission to convert students to evolution, you probably won’t even discuss it except tangentially in most of the topics.

Awww, how sweet. What this fellow is unaware of is that this poor student has nothing to be arrogant about — if he actually met a teacher who was able and willing to confront his misconceptions, he’d be hung out to dry. The answer also reflects a common creationist myth: the Big Daddy fable, in which the gentle, polite Christian boy humiliates the hysterical, dishonest Evilutionist professor by calmly refuting every piece of evidence brought up in the classroom.

It never happens.

In my experience, the reverse is true. The poor kid gets flustered and his story falls apart in a few moments’ conversation, and he looks like a total dork — I don’t enjoy these situations at all, because then I have to struggle to keep him from abject humiliation while explaining how thoroughly wrong he is. That’s the nasty part of these pro-creation sites that they don’t talk about: they are cheerfully encouraging students to have a false sense of competence, and then shooing them off into the lion’s den to be publicly mauled, while the cowards back at CreationConversations, who are the ones I really would enjoy eviscerating in the classroom, are taking it easy with their back-patting congregations of equally ignorant kooks, lying their asses off to children.

Oh, well. The good news is that students come out of our biology classes here at UMM well-prepared to shred the frauds of creationism.