Sabbatical

Sabbatical isn't all laying on beaches soaking up the sunshine. Indeed, it can be one of the busiest parts of an academic's career! There is still some time for R+R, however, such as at the famous Whitehaven beach, pictured above, on the Gold Coast of Australia near Airlie Beach.

I should warn you at the start: my colleagues tell me: "John, you're doing sabbatical wrong!" But what is a sabbatical anyways? Why do many (though not all) university professors get to take one? And what purpose, if any, does it serve? As I come to the end of my first sabbatical it seemed like a good time to reflect on what I felt I did right, what I would change for my next sabbatical and to take a few minutes to answer some basic questions.

5 years, 7 months and 25 days (Tenure)

You may think it's a bit silly, but I do have a thing for a well-made watch. I have a tradition of picking up a new one for major milestones at work (if you can call something you've done twice a tradition!). At right is the Seiko Premier Moonphase from my hiring as an Assistant Prof in 2012, the 62MAS Prospex Diver at left is the latest addition, doubling the size of the "collection." There's something about the simplicity and clarity of the latter that I appreciate now, much as I did the clockwork complexity of the former six years ago.

On the 26th of July this year, I finally got the good news from my President - I have been granted tenure! For those fans of this classic post that makes it 5 years, 7 months and 25 days since I began work at York University as an Assistant Professor. It's significantly longer than I spent as a postdoc and just a shade over the time spent in graduate school (5 years, 4 months and 7 days). I would have posted earlier, but I've been processing this news. In fact, I'm still processing. But, as is typical for this space, I'm feeling the itch to write and so I'm sharing my half-formed thoughts with you now.

But first; not all of you might be familiar with the concept of tenure. Why does it exist? What does it mean? Why do I/we care? And, what is it for? Perhaps a little background is called for. At most Universities, (but notably not all) most starting appointments, what would be in Canada and the United States called an "Assistant Professorship," is in fact a limited-term contract. The deal is that you will teach, research, serve the community/university and mentor graduate students for a period of time (typically 5 years). At at the end of that time, your fellow professors (Associate and Full) will weigh in and determine whether or not you meet the standards of your profession and merit being awarded a continuing position. Deans and other Senior Administrators also get a vote on this, however, at least at York it tends to be the lower-level committees that present the largest hurdles.

A Half Century of Publishing? (or: fun with metrics)

Too much fun with metrics? This plot shows an h-value graph based on my google scholar citations (As of December, 2017). A researcher's h-value is the number of papers written by an author that have been cited at least that many times. For me, that number is 26 (if you trust google!), which is where the red and blue lines cross in the chart. In the article below, I discuss the sorts of fun an analytical person can have with metrics. But Science is about much more than just comparing these sorts of numbers. Ultimately if you enjoy what you research, and that work is useful to others, what more do you need?

(Editorial Note: I'll be lightly editing the various posts I had created over the last year and a half as I put them up, where I've made changes, these will be noted in italics in brackets).

It's taken almost as an article of faith that a successful scientific career consists of 100 peer-reviewed publications. If that's the case, then as of November (2017) I'm halfway there Breaking the 11-month logjam at 49 papers was my methane update and, as predicted in my summer post, there has been more to come with five acceptances having followed since that time, nudging my number up to 55. If everything currently in the submitted and just about to be submitted categories follow suit, it might be 60 before the end of 2018! (indeed, it's now 62)

It seems, therefore, that this is as good a time as any for some reflection. It doesn't hurt that it is currently December (2017), the official month of reflection, and that my first sabbatical was recently approved for January of 2019. First sabbaticals are a classic break in the academic race, a time after you've established yourself to take a step back and consider where (scientifically speaking) you'd like to go next. Perhaps, then, I'm just being a bit precocious here in getting started on that longer-term thinking. Though I shouldn't get too far ahead of myself since I won't hear back with finality on Tenure and Promotion for several months yet.

A Long Hiatus

It has been a year, 4 months and 10 days since I last posted, which I'm pretty sure is a record for this blog. Decidedly, it has been a very long hiatus. It's not so much that I stopped writing - very hard to do that - and indeed, I did write quite a few posts that are more or less ready to go. But in all that time, I just couldn't bring myself to hit the post button. So much second guessing about how others might read and interpret what I had to write*. Not to mention a great deal of wondering about why I should bother. Overall it just seemed to be an easier thing to simply put this conversation on hold.

While I was away, I've been busy. There's been a fair bit of stress, some unexpected challenges and a great deal of soul searching. I'd love to tell you that's all done now. But I don't think I'm quite there yet. Still, I've been feeling that it's time once again to put digital pen to digital paper, just in case this record is of any use to any of you. It's certainly been therapeutic for me, once or twice over the years! Besides, this has never been a sanitized "best life" record of my career. Frankly, I have a hard time understanding how such things are useful to anyone, including their authors.

So, in the interest of moving forward, allow me to sum up what has been going on in the last 16 months. 

There have been some definite highs in there: As of last August, I'm now a tenured professor at York and I was inducted into the Royal Society of Canada (!!!) last November - something I wouldn't have dreamed possible when last I posted (though I do know that even things we dare not dream can come true). I'm also now the director of a $7 million research network - which is thrilling and terrifying in equal measure; though I've found more confidence and encouragement than I expected when I took on the role.

However, on the other side, there have definitely been some lows. The tenure process is not an easy one and I must admit that I'm still working through some of what happened and what was said in the process. I'm told by colleagues at other Universities that this is not uncommon. I also served on a jury in a major criminal trial, something which permanently changes you in ways you don't expect. Last but far from least, my ophthalmologist likes to say that the warranty on a human being expires around the age of 40. For me, that seems to have been more like 37. I've spent 8 of the last 16 months on medication and my doctors cannot seem to figure out the problem. I suppose it shouldn't be a surprise to someone who works on the edge of a physical science that there is a huge gulf of the unexplained in medical science. Only TV medical dramas seem to tie up all the ends neatly with a diagnosis and cure within the hour; for the rest of us reality intervenes.

So there you have it. Look to this space over the coming weeks for a number of long-delayed posts. I might even have something to say about my Sabbatical which I'm currently enjoying down in Canberra, Australia with my unbelievably gracious hosts here at the Australian National University. Not to mention some of the exciting ideas for upcoming work that have been brewing.

___

*Ahh the tenure process, is there a better crucible in which to forge self-doubt?

A New Term with New Tools

 A new textbook of my own design awaits my Planetary Science students this fall!

I've got to say, as much as I've enjoyed the last 8 months of research, I am looking forward to the coming semester of teaching. Once again, I'll be the course director for PHYS 3070: Planets and Planetary Systems and also for PHYS 4120: Gas and Fluid Dynamics.

This will be my first time teaching a class for the second time, and that means that I have the opportunity to fine tune my course organization and lectures. While both courses went well last year, there is room for improvement which will hopefully be appreciated by the dozen or so Planetary Science and 20ish Fluids students.

How to make your own Petrographic Microscope

 

Note the colourful chondrules as viewed under cross-polarized light. Such views are used for mineral identification and demonstrate the interaction of light with real-world samples. You too can make your own petrographic microscope! Here's how...

Here at York, as we welcome our newest class of students, we're taking a few minutes to pause and start thinking more about our recruitment efforts in the future. One question that comes up often is how we can stand out in a sea of power point presentations. The solution - to try to be a little more hands-on by bringing in some props to illustrate some of the principles behind our work. To that end,  some of us have come up with little inexpensive demonstrations that capture a lot of what we do here in the Earth and Space Science and Engineering Department. Look for these at university nights at high schools everywhere in the coming months!

For my part, I put together a little, inexpensive rig that gives students a taste of a few different themes. Basically, you could call it the poor man's petrographic microscope. It presents a neat little introduction to some interesting optics with serious engineering applications as well as some earth science. By using meteorite thin sections as my specimen, I can springboard into planetary science and spacecraft and how we can use simple techniques to learn a great deal from the materials we encounter in our exploration.

A Surreal Summer

 A photo I took of myself last summer in Pasadena, CA while working on the Mars Science Laboratory Mission which appears on the cover of today's St. John's Telegram. Can you tell that I'd been doing Mars Time for a whole month by that point? In some ways, this summer has been almost as surreal as last summer.

It has been a long slog of a summer, but today there's a fallish tinge in the air here in Toronto and I can feel the semester beginning to creep up on me once again. One thing I never really grasped about this job when I took it was how many different components there are to being a prof.  I will admit that I was certainly aware of each of those things but not of how much time they can eat up, collectively.

Teaching is in the air

A mathematics lecture, courtesy of Wikimedia user Tungsten. Teaching is an area I greatly enjoy and seek out the opportunity to contribute. This fall, I will get to do more of it than I ever have before!

One of the aspects of preparing for a life in academia in Canada vs the United States is the prominence accorded to teaching. In the US, you could probably get away with not teaching until after receiving an assistant professorship appointment as long as your research and grant acquisition were top notch. In Canada, you really need to have shown an ability to hold your own in front of a classroom.

First Impressions of CPSX: A Smart and Noble Gamble

[My new home: The Centre for Planetary Science and Exploration at the University of Western Ontario]

Before I begin, thanks to all my readers out there! It wasn't long ago that I had thought no one came by this space. But to my astonishment, sometime in the last 24 hours "HTWT" just passed a thousand page views (6-month rolling window) for the first time. I suppose I will have to write more often now - and try to encourage some dialog! I also know what you like, with my two Astrobio posts making the top 3 most viewed. Since I'm in Western partially on a CATP (Canadian Astrobiology Training Program) grant, you can look forward to more of the same in the years to come.

On to business: I want to give my first impressions of my new academic home, the Centre for Planetary Science and Exploration (CPSX) at the University of Western Ontario. To my knowledge it is the only academic organization of its kind in Canada, completely devoted to the study of other worlds and how to go about exploring them. It's a young group, only a few years old, and did not exist when I left for the US back in 2003.

An Astrobiology tempest: Arsenic Life?

Is this an SEM Image of the first known lifeform to use a different biochemistry from the rest of us?

So many interesting things to mention about the recent findings of (partially) Arsenic-based life in Mono Lake, CA. First of all there's the discovery itself, detailed in a paper by Felisa Wolfe-Simon over at Science Magazine. But there's also something to be said about the way that NASA has handled the media surrounding the discovery. Additionally, in the week since the announcement, we've had some serious backlash by bloggers, including particularly pointed remarks by fellow science blogger, and microbiologist Rosie Redfield over at RRResearch. Some seem to think that "research paper review by blog" is a good thing and a sign of the times, but is it a substitute for the peer review process? Most troubling of all are the questions being raised in some spheres about the scope of NASA's astrobiological work and the worth of the planetary sciences. After all, they argue, what's Space got to do with studying pond scum on a lake in California?

Are the Humanities a Subset?

I always enjoy the sharp with and careful reasoning that can be found in many of Stanley Fish's columns. His most recent is no exception and clears up a misunderstanding I had with his previous offering. You see, Dr. Fish was describing how the Humanities have been tantalizing targets for University Administrators who have sought to reduce their costs as the result of vanishing public funding for Universities. He felt that on pure economic grounds, Humanities are not justifiable. Does arcane analysis of literature add nothing to the public's enjoyment of said literature? If not, then perhaps there is no direct societal value. Do humanities programs produce goods of value, or graduates who go on to be highly compensated? If not, then perhaps there is no direct economic benefit. Fair enough. However, Dr. Fish seems to imply that the case for the humanities should be argued based entirely on tradition, as the following quote emphasizes.

I have always had trouble believing in the high-minded case for a core curriculum — that it preserves and transmits the best that has been thought and said — but I believe fully in the core curriculum as a device of employment for me and my fellow humanists.

-Dr. Stanley Fish, (New York Times)

What remained unsaid, and has been added in the most recent column, is that the analysis of humanists is not in terms of direct value, but of added value:

Instead ask what contribution can a knowledge of the Russian language and Russian culture make to our efforts in Far Eastern studies to understand what is going on in China and Japan (the answer is, a big contribution). Ask would it be helpful for students in chemistry to know French or students in architecture and engineering to know the classics (you bet it would).

Now, Fish eschews this added value argument, but this could be a winning stroke for the humanities. Perhaps they are a little bit like BASF whose ads used to proclaim "we don't make a lot of the things you buy, we make a lot of the things you buy better." In this sense, the Humanities are a subset of the larger university, adding value to the activities of all other groups and to the students and researchers so produced. In fact, by implication, it might be the humanities that make the University and differentiate it from a directly economically justified entity, such as a trade college.

Moreover, there is the role of University Presidents. In many cases, these are appointed by state legislatures which raises an interesting question: is the chief administrator simply a soldier carrying out the wishes of elected representatives? Or should the president be an advocate for the University community? One of Fish's major beefs seems to have been that the president who sought to cancel languages at SUNY leaned towards the former instead of the latter:

That’s O.K. It’s not their job to value the humanities or even to understand them. But it is the job of presidents and chancellors to proclaim the value of liberal arts education loudly and often and at least try to make the powers that be understand what is being lost when traditions of culture and art that have been vital for hundreds and even thousands of years disappear from the academic scene.

It's an interesting perspective, coming from the other side of the academic business from my own. Over here, we often brag about the amount of money we bring in and specializations live or die by how economically viable they are for the university. However, if you move back a single step, you could make similar arguments for my own business of planetary science as are often made about the "unproductive" humanities. After all, from the university's perspective we are highly viable because we are able to obtain NASA/CSA/NSERC grants. But when you think about why those grants are available in the first place, you come back to the problem faced by Dr. Fish. After all, putting aside the quest for knowledge and distant benefits, what does exploring the solar system do for humanity in the right here and now? (aside from inspiring many young scientists and engineers to enter the field who otherwise would not have done so; many of whom "leak out" of the profession and go on to pursue directly viable enterprises)

I can also sympathize on Dr. Fish's point of synergies. For instance, when we have a group come by the observatory on public nights, we do our best to connect them with what they are seeing. That means not only do we tell them why the stars look the way they do, how they were formed and how far away they are; but we also tell them about constellations and the greek, latin and arabic etymologies of their names. That kind of detailed cultural information which enhances the experience doesn't spring forth from planetary science or astronomy. Instead, it is the humanities that provides the connecting details that allows us to prove the economic and cultural worth of our field to others. Food for thought for those who would break up the concept of the University.