Building Update

There are a number of rumors going around about the new building and
I think soon will be a time to have a town meeting, which will be
organized by Ken and myself. Briefly however, the new building is on
track. We are in negotiations with the winning team in order to bring
their bid into line with the funds available–and we are making good
progress on this. There are some changes in program for the building
and at the moment they aren’t set in stone, but we’ll be able to
discuss in hopefully some real detail at our meeting.

Jim

Sabbatical

At Mason they’re called “Study Leave”, but around academia they come around every six years or so (at least that’s the unspoken rule) and provide either one semester or two for the purposes of “re-charging” the old intellectual batteries. Novels have been written about sabbatical. Somehow they always take place in delightfully urbane locations which feature perhaps a flat in London or a small pied a terre in Paris. Less is written about the supposed re-charging. It leaves the question: what ought one do with one’s sabbatical?

Academics get a bad rap, of course, on this. At most cocktail parties that I’ve attended with non-academics, it’s a matter of course before someone brings up such experiences as the ultimate academic sinecure besides tenure. In fact however, most professors I’ve known have treated sabbatical as a serious period to focus exclusively on scholarship (as opposed to teaching), very often staying at their home institution during the entire period.

For many scholars, their teaching and service responsibilities leave, on average, very little time for pursuits of the mind–research. That is why institutes for advanced study, like Krasnow exist of course. Such time needs to be protected, sometimes as a place (Krasnow) and sometimes as an institution (sabbatical).

Jim

Cognitive load article in yesterday’s NY Times

I’m wondering if you saw this article (click on the link above) in yesterday’s Times. It was basically about cognitive overload, particularly with regards to the computer desktop. I found it fascinating and actually started using the Mac’s Dashboard feature in OS X Tiger to try to reduce some of the constant distractions that go with paying attention to your computer.

Jim

Pre-medical undergraduate education at Mason

I’m co-chairing a committee to take a long hard look at pre-medical
education at Mason, particularly from the standpoint of academic
advising and the “care and feeding” of such students over the course
of their undergraduate years here. The Committee, charged by the
Provost, provides a unique opportunity, I feel, to market Mason
towards an entirely new demographic of entering freshman who, from
day one are focussed on achieving a career in medicine.

Two sea changes at Mason are catalyzing this process: the first is
simply that we have more physicians than ever before on faculty.
These individuals can play critical roles in the mentoring of
undergraduate pre-medical students, while at the same time serving as
role models. The second change is that Mason is moving broadly ahead
in biosciences across a number of fronts (neuroscience,
bioengineering, proteomics just to name a few) and these changes make
it possible to market the University more effectively towards
entering freshmen who are very interested in a pre-med curriculum.

None of this will be possible without adequate central support and
coordination. But I’m very optimistic for the future and I believe
this new focus will help the University.

Jim

Graduate programs at Krasnow

There are now two doctoral programs with a special relationship to the Krasnow Institute: the neuroscience program and the program in computational social sciences. Both programs are currently admnistratively housed within Mason’s School of Computational Sciences.

It would be nice I think to set up some informal graduate student linkages between these two programs based on their ties to Krasnow. One idea might be for a brown bag lunch series that would alternate appropriate topics between the two programs.

Jim

Professional commitments

In academia, as in much of the rest of the work world, you’re judged by the commitments that you keep. While in the early years of a science career in academia, this may come as something of a surprise–there is no doubt that in teaching, collaborations, grant writing–anything where you are working as part of a team, or representing a team (or faculty)–it is absolutely crucial to follow through on the work-related promises that you make.

Occasionally, however external events intervene and it becomes impossible to do whatever it is you told others you would do. Perhaps a family illness, or maybe a fantastic job opportunity in Singapore. I wish I could write otherwise, but it’s simply a fact that even under those circumstances one has to be prepared to accept the professional accountability that comes with a life in academic science–and that accountability can be harsh indeed.

And often invisible.

That’s why it’s so incredibly important to not promise more than you are certain you can do–even if you wish to be collegial, friendly etc. My sense is that it’s better to say no, if you’re not entirely certain you can fulfill the commitment.

Jim

Rain and cooking

After 60 days more or less without a drop, it’s finally raining in the Washington DC metropolitan area. Lots. Buckets in fact. I’ve been spending the afternoon making a Provencal beef stew from a recipe in Cook’s Illustrated. This is one of those all day affairs that fills the house with good olfactory entertainment while it cooks slowly.

Reminds me in many ways of the very long experiments that I used to conduct during my thesis work–where I’d drive back through the snowy weather to the lab around 2AM to finally develop the autoradiograms on a protocol that had begun early the previous morning. I’d be barely awake as I would stumble into the darkroom–but then of course, there was the first look at the results…and that, like a slowly cooked dinner, was always worth it.

Jim