smudged up

This beautiful quote is not just true for academic affairs professionals.  It's true for us folks down in the trenches, too.  It's okay to call a classroom audible every now and then, to deviate from the script (or the slides).  Take a chance and explore something you or your students find interesting or even troublesome.  The payoff is usually worth it.

"Never suppose that your plans should be implemented exactly as you envision. You are not a portrait artist. People who lead academic affairs are impressionists. Mary Cassatt and Claude Monet painted people. The lines are all fuzzy, but the picture is worth a lot of money. Your work looks a lot better if it is smudged up."

From Faculty Focus.

She wore...red velvet

I don't remember seeing this before...but it looks just dreamy.

Don't be terrorized by terrorism

Get up tomorrow.  Go to church, go to work, go to school, go to the store.  When you change your plans, when you stop being normal, when you cower to fear, that's when they win.  Don't.  Don't be "terrorized by terrorism."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/17/travel/17london.html

Cost of introductory meteorology textbooks

One of the things that irks me the most in academia is the runaway cost of textbooks.  (A second thing is how we pass these costs on to our students, almost blindly--how many instructors know how much a student pays for books these days??)  Since I teach an introductory course in weather & climate every year, I thought it would be helpful to keep track of the latest editions of several popular titles.

Author(s)	Year	List Price	Amazon Price
Ahrens (10th)	2012	$209	$172
Ahrens "Essentials" 6th	2011	$188	$155
Ahrens "Essentials" 7th	2014	$196	$172
Ahrens "Extreme Weather"	2010	$171	$156
Aguado and Burt 6th	2012	$160	$135
Ackerman and Knox 4th	2013	$167	$152
Lutgens & Tarbuck 12th	2012	$155	$136
Moran (AMS)	2012	$140	n/a
Anderson and Strahler	2008	$123	$108
Nese and Grenci	2012	$103	$98

If you see errors or omissions, let me know.  I'll try to keep this list updated, for me and for everyone else.  (And maybe I'll add some commentary down the road.)

Last updated January 15, 2014

"Find your teacher heroes"

"If I have one piece of advice to give to new teachers, it would be to find your teacher heroes. Not your mentors. Your heroes."

http://www.notinteacherschool.com/post/42029896112/honoring-one-of-the-greats

My three:

• Sherry Crabtree, Mathematics, Northwest-Shoals Community College
• Ken Crawford, Meteorology, University of Oklahoma (now at KMA)
• Roberta "Bobbi" Webster, Geography, University of Alabama (now at Wyoming)

I would not be here today without them!

There is a hierarchy

A recent article in the journal Science, Technology, & Human Values has this gem, a response about teaching at an R-1 university:

"Those who are in chemical education are looked down upon . . . by those who do hard core research. There is a hierarchy. We're beneath them somehow. You could talk to most chemical educators across the country and it's going to be that way. The hard core research faculty see you as something the department needs to train and teach all these undergrads, but 'as long as I I don’t have to go in there and teach and I can do my research, fine.'" [1]

Dr. Chemist, you are not alone.  This is true in meteorology, atmospheric science, geography, geology, physics, mathematics, and probably a blitz-ton of other departments too.

This caste system, however, isn't just perception.  It's institutional.  Those who would prefer their careers to be more balanced--contributions to both education and to the scientific research of our field--struggle to find a comfy home at R-1 universities.  For example, at Indiana University:

"A candidate for promotion [or tenure] should normally excel in at least one of the above  categories (either research or teaching) and be at least satisfactory in the others. In exceptional cases, a candidate may present evidence of balanced strengths that promise excellent overall performance of comparable benefit to the university." [2, my emphasis added]

I find it unfortunate that a balanced career should be considered exceptional, but this is the nature of the beast.  And it happens not just at the professorial ranks, but in graduate school also.  As a graduate student, if you dare utter the words "I like teaching" scorn will rain down like those frogs from the sky in Magnolia.

Whither the teacher-scholar?  Sigh.

References

[1] Article title:  Technological Change and Professional Control in the Professoriate
http://sth.sagepub.com/content/38/1/126.full.pdf+html

[2] http://www.iu.edu/~ufc/docs/policies/BalancedCase.pdf

Bridge washout in Maine

"Scour: When Bridges Fail to Withstand Nature"

Collapse of a bridge in Freeport, Maine, on 8 August 2008.  The power of water.

http://sciencebasedlife.wordpress.com/2013/01/22/scour-when-bridges-fail-to-withstand-nature/