John Wilkins just had to ruin my morning.
The bad news is that those of us who teach at small liberal arts institutions have significantly smaller bars than the averages there. The good news is that our football coaches also get nowhere near that amount of money.
The Canadian Undergraduate Physics Conference is in trouble — government support has been flat, and corporate support has been declining. They are really in trouble: here’s what I got from one of the people working on it:
The CUPC is the largest conference in North America organized entirely by undergraduate students. It brings together students from across Canada and the world studying a vast array of subject areas from mathematical and theoretical physics to medical biophysics to engineering and applied physics. This important event gives many students their first experience with academics outside of the classroom, and helps to cultivate an interest in research and higher study. I, and every one else working on the organization of this event, would therefore be extremely grateful if you would be willing to post a link to your blog for the conference (http://cupc.ca/) and ask for donations (which are accepted on the site). The conference is in only a few short days and we are desperate for funds. If the we cannot find adequate support, this will be the 44th and final CUPC, which will be a tremendous shame for science education.
If you can, donate. If you know any potential sponsors who care about undergraduate physics research, pass the word on.
This site, Academia.edu, is kind of nifty, but it’ll be even niftier when more people join up. It’s a web page that indexes academics, displaying them and their affiliations in a tree diagram. Play with it, if you’re one of us, sign up, and if you know a professor, let ’em know about it.
They just keep popping up all over the place…is there a tally somewhere? We should calculate how much of Darwin’s genome is still floating about in the gene pool. Anyway, this several-times-great granddaughter of Darwin is Emma Darwin, and she writes well and of interesting things.
Jebus, but we’re in for a world of trouble. I think one of the signs of the apocalypse is when instructors of dangeral studies revive moribund blogs. We’re obviously in a cultural meltdown of epic proportions.
Here it is the time of year when Minnesotans are reviewing the state science standards, and I’m off in California, shirking. At least Greg Laden is on top of things, and while there are some things that need to be fixed, it’s mostly good news: no creationists are making a fuss this time around. Last time, I attended a couple of Cheri Yecke’s dog-and-pony-shows, and there were creationists on stage, on the committees, in the administration, and in the audience. This time, only pro-science people are there, arguing over significant issues and not whether giants were in the earth in those days and how many ID buzzwords they could sneak in.
This is cute: college professor is preparing a lecture on homology, rummages about on the internet to see if there are any useful or interesting sources, and finds one that leaves him bemused and amused at the prospect of using it as an example in class…a bad example. The source is Conservapædia! The story concludes with a little understatement:
The Conservapedia entry on homology seems more concerned with acceptance of “custom and tradition” as a basis for “truth of religious matters” than with possible comparisons we might make among organisms. Indeed, it seems that the Conservapedia aims to dismiss important scientific approaches through superficial allusions. Perhaps we should be wary of trusting the Conservapedia, despite its subtitle.
It’s a nice example of using a creationist source to make a legitimate point in a science class, while not surrendering an inch of credibility to that source.
I’m impressed: Appalachian State University is celebrating the Darwin year with a lecture series of stellar quality. Between September and April, they are presenting talks by Eugenie Scott, Jay Hosler, Ken Miller, Janet Browne, Edward Larson, Sean Carroll, Elisabeth Lloyd, Paul Ewald, Jim Costa, and Niles Eldredge (and also John Haught, but then I guess there has to always be one clunker in the works, to maintain the balance of the universe). I’m wishing I could afford to commute to North Carolina every few weeks now.
Adam Savage of the Mythbusters (the second most easily recognized scientists in the US, right after Bill Nye) has a short article up on Popular Mechanics on how to fix US science education. He only has 3 suggestions, but they’re really just two.
The first is to let students get their hands dirty. Instead of just telling them what science is about, make them do it and work at it and see it being done. Working through an actual experiment is a very different experience from being told what the cleaned-up, simplified results are.
The second is to actually spend more money on science education. Weird, huh? It works, though. Science isn’t cheap, and especially if you’re going to put students to work breaking stuff and using up reagents, it’s going to have an ongoing cost.
The third is a bit obvious and a natural consequence of his first: students will make mistakes, and that’s OK. If they’re actually doing experiments, science class is not like home ec class, where you’re supposed to follow a recipe and get a perfect outcome every time.
Of course, all of these suggestions are already being implemented by good public school science teachers (except maybe the second, since you can’t spend money if you don’t have it), but you’d be surprised at how many creationists think science is a matter of rote memorization.
I mentioned this before, but time is running out and the full allotment of money hasn’t been used up yet. If you go to the Big Think site and watch a video about inspiring scientists, Pfizer will spend a dollar on DonorsChoose. The videos are actually pretty good, they aren’t just commercials, and it’s an easy way to donate to a worthy cause by investing nothing but a tiny amount of time.
