Friday Funnies: A Handy Guide to the Oral Qualifying Exam

The first-year of grad school was good...

...but now it's your second year of the program. Know what that means?

It's time for Oral Qualifying Exams*!!

It's time to hit the books...

...and try to make sense of it all.

And don't forget the most important part: typing the research proposal...

...getting feedback from your advisor on your latest draft...

...and then writing some more.

Most days you finishing studying and just want to relax.

Your advisor is constantly asking if you are ready...

...but your classmates know the real response.

The morning of your exam arrives.

They start you off with something easy, like a derivation.

Sometimes you get a question right...

...and sometimes the questions are really off-topic.

Before you know it two hours have passed and the committee must deliberate.

The deliberation goes on for what feels like hours.

They call you back in, and you're trying to keep it cool.

Your initial reaction to "You passed!"

...which quickly transitions into a desire to hug the committee.

And when your labmates ask how you want to celebrate:

Congratulations!

(Just think, only another 3-4 years until you face the firing squad again.)**

* The Oral Qualifying Exam (aka orals/comps/quals/prelims) is an exam taken in either your second or third year (depending on the university) that determines if you are ready to conduct independent research. Though the specifics vary between schools, typically the exam consists of writing and defending an original research proposal before a committee of faculty members. Passing the exam allows a student to "advance to candidacy" or enter the research and thesis writing phase of a doctoral program.

**For those schools that have a thesis defense. 

Special thanks to creative consultant louiseg @ jeezlouiseg

Waiting for 'Superman'

As I've mentioned before, one of the things that I'm passionate about is education. Growing up I attended a small, public high school in Pennsylvania. My graduating class had 81 students. I am fortunate to be where I am today because I had teachers who pushed me--who would except nothing short of my best effort. However, I realize that not everyone has access to the opportunities and the education that I had. 

I recently had the opportunity to watch the documentary "Waiting for 'Superman.'" For those who haven't seen it, it was directed by Davis Guggenheim and released in 2010. It focuses on the problems in the American public education system and failing test scores. Additionally, the film looks at charter schools--one answer to some of the problems of public education. Waiting for 'Superman' follows a handful of students, as they enter lotteries in their respective school districts, hoping to become one of the chosen few selected for entrance into the charter school. 

Waiting for 'Superman' Official Trailer

The film was interesting to me as it shed light on charter schools. There are some charter schools which provide specialized education or curriculum (e.g. the arts, technical vocational training). Other charter schools attempt to provide a better general education than other nearby or neighborhood public schools--similar to the type of schools that are profiled in the documentary. But is the charter school model really the answer we need or are there other issues at hand?

I'm not opposed to charter schools in general. Charters are great in that they can allow communities to  create an education system that works for their students/teachers/parents/etc. At the same time, they can often bypass some of the bureaucracy and red-tape public schools must handle. Some of these charter schools are doing quite well.  But in Waiting for Superman, they paint quite a rosy picture of charter-type schools. It sends the message that the only hope for the future of our society is for students to escape from underperforming public schools with lazy, uninterested teachers and attend the shiny new charter schools.

And yet...
One statistic mentioned passingly in the film was that only 1 in 5 charter schools have students performing above the level of public schools. We don't hear about the remaining 80% of schools that are performing at the same level or even below public schools. This raises the question--are charter schools really the answer?

The film criticizes teachers and teacher's unions as one of the major problems in the public sphere. They suggest a merit-based pay system for teachers whose students perform well. Certainly, there are teachers in any school system (not just public schools) that are lazy and uninterested. (I'm sure many of you have seen the video recorded earlier this month in Duncanville, TX, where Jeff Bliss stands up to his teacher for simply passing out worksheets instead of actively engaging the class.) But to me, it seems like merit-based pay will only encourage teachers to cheat--loading their classes with only the top students. Or if they can't do that, continuing the NCLB/Race to the Top model of teaching to the test instead of encouraging exploration and critical thinking skills.

Jeff Bliss stands up to his teacher

Several of the factors the film fails to address are perhaps better indicators of educational success. Academic and writer Rick Ayers had some very strong things to say about Waiting for Superman and the state of education in the United States. I will let you read his Huffington Post article here. To quote one of his main messages:

"The film dismisses with a side comment the inconvenient truth 

that our schools are criminally underfunded. Money's not the

 answer, it glibly declares. Nor does it suggest that students would 

have better outcomes if their communities had jobs, health care,

 decent housing, and a living wage." (1)

I couldn't agree more with his assessment. According to a report published last autumn from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 26 states will spend less per pupil in 2013 than they did in 2012. Of these 26 states, 3 of them (Arizona, Alabama and Oklahoma) are cutting funding by more than 20% per student. In all, 35 states are still spending at levels lower than before the recession (even after adjusting for inflation) (2). Our schools cannot perform well when we are drastically cutting their funding. 

And it's not just school funding. As Ayers so accurately writes, "The failure of these students [...] is not some mysterious or impenetrable problem. It is constructed, it is created, by our schools--which very efficiently reproduce the class and racial fissures of our society" (3). Students cannot be at their best when they are worried about where their next meal will come from, or whether or not they will have a roof over their head at the end of the month.

Education reform, what so many people in this country are demanding, cannot focus solely on schools. In order to see change--deep change, real change--we must begin by addressing disparities within communities. 

References:
1) Ayers, Rick. "An Inconvenient Superman: Davis Guggenheim's New Film Hijacks School Reform." The Huffington Post, 17 Sept. 2010. 
2) Oliff, P., Mai, C., and Leachman, M. "New School Year Brings More Cuts in State Funding for Schools." Report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Published 4 Sept. 2012. 
3) Ayers, Rick. "Constructing the Achievement Gap." The Huffington Post, 8 Feb. 2010. 

Educational Loans

Aw, come on....really?

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day!
I've been bogged down with qualifying exam preparations, so my apologies that posts have been delayed. Here's a fun link and I will try to get some more stuff up this week.

A Biologist's Mother's Day Song

Politics and Science: The House Science Committee

Once again, the lawmakers are attempting to micromanage scientific research. Representative Lamar Smith (R-TX) and the House Science Committee have been drafting legislation that would require NSF funded projects to meet a number of new criteria.

The draft, dated April 18th, proposes that newly funded research would meet the following:

1) "... in the interests of the United States to advance the national health, prosperity, or welfare, and to secure the national defense by promoting the progress of science;

2) "...the finest quality, is groundbreaking, and answers questions or solves problems that are of the utmost importance to society at large; and

3 "...not duplicative of other research projects being funded by the Foundation or other Federal science agencies."

ScienceInsider has a nice post here:

While I'm all for public accountability and justifying the broader impacts of your research, it's a completely different matter when members of the Science Committee declare themselves experts in matters of grant review. I understand that funds are tight, and that the government wants to allocate them responsibly. But the problem with Congress micromanaging grant money is that they likely won't understand the research (i.e., Todd Aiken of 'legitimate rape' fame sat on the House Science committee.) 

Many really fantastic objects and technologies that we use every day came out of basic research. The computer wouldn't exist today without the pure mathematics research that was conducted at the turn of the 20th century. Modern forensic science and medicine would be at a loss without an understanding of the structure of DNA (Watson and Crick, by the way, were funded by the British government during WWII.) 

The Third Annual Report from the National Science Foundation, published 60 years ago in 1953, offers this explanation of basic research, and the analogy for why we should continue to fund it. 

"The essential difference between basic and applied research lies in the

freedom permitted the scientist. In applied work his problem is defined

and he looks for the best possible solution meeting these conditions. In

basic research he is released of such restrictions; he is confined only by

his own imagination and creative ability. His findings form part of the

steady advance in fundamental science, with always the chance of a 

discovery of great significance."

"The history of science affirms the fact that basic research, though 

seeking no practical ends, is by no means 'impractical' research. 

Basic research, in terms of its immediate utility, is a game of chance. In

the search for oil, many a dry hole is drilled, but statistically the eventual

output far out-weighs the cost. So it is with research. From another point

of view, basic research is an investment in which, if wisely planned, the

proceeds from a small portion not identifiable in advance more than pay

for the total outlay (1)."

House Science Committee: listen to the NSF and let them decide which projects merit funding. I promise, give your investment 30-40 years and you will not be disappointed.

References:
1) National Science Foundation Third Annual Report, Section 6, "What is Basic Research?" 1953
http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/1953/annualreports/ar_1953_sec6.pdf