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How to Teach for Long-term Impact

2/2/2022

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There once was a legendary, larger-than-life professor.  If Marvel’s 137th movie of this year is named UltraProf, it would be based on John Shank.  He taught a dry subject (think Accounting), but his charisma and his orchestration of his class made each class session seem like 60-person David Mamet plays.  Every class had passion, drama, and some surprising reveal at the end that people still talked about ten  years later.  Here’s a quote:  

As a teacher John was at home at any level, and always brilliant. I could offer the testimonials of others, however, what brought his classroom performance home to me— and it was a performance in the truest sense of the word—was watching him at an Accounting Round Table at Pitt’s business school. He held 50 top financial officers in the palm of his hand while he presented his material. They were busy individuals with many things on their minds and schedules, but not a one left until John had answered their last question. I can assure you that their staying until the end was not out of courtesy (Bernberg 2008).
 

Although the opposite is true, some believed he was only about style. This is because he wore Brooks Brothers braces, walked with a MVP swagger, drove a Dartmouth green sports car, and he had a runway model wife who was like some VP of Finance somewhere.  His office was professionally-decorated with French draperies, super-thick Dartmouth green carpeting, and a massive 18th century French desk which sat in the middle of the room so his desk chair could face the doorway.   Even his two huge perfectly groomed dogs were effortlessly well-mannered. On Saturdays he’d come to work, and they’d sit on either side of his desk and face the door.  They were like lions on either side of a throne, and he was like Odin . . . or John Wick.  His dogs keep eternal vigilance. My dog wets on me and then licks my face.

This was 1992.  Because he had about the highest MBA teacher ratings at Dartmouth's Tuck School and I had about the lowest ratings, he let me sit in on his classes so I could suck less . . . so I could learn better teaching strategies and classroom management skills.  One Saturday during a Tuck alumni reunion, I stopped by his office and told him I had overheard some alumni who were still talking about what they had learned in a class they had taken with him 10 years earlier. 

He looked up over the top of his half-glasses, and said, “That’s what they’re supposed to do.  It means I’ve done my job.”  

He said his goal isn’t to teach students to get a great first job (or to, analogously, get a high score on the GRE or MCAT), his goal is to teach them to succeed for wherever they will be in 10 or 20 years.  Although he got outstanding teaching ratings, he brushed them off by saying that teacher ratings mainly measured the moment – they mainly measured the warm feelings a student had at the time.  Ratings might capture style (which he was very good at), but they may not always measure long-term substance.


Last week, the school year ended.  A lot of amazing teachers will take their course evaluation ratings and use them to improve their classes for next year. John’s view was that we need to also focus on the long-term impact of our courses. 

I regret that I never had the presence of mind to ask him how he did it -- how he knew what long-term impact to aim at.  Since he was on boards and did a lot of consulting with upper management, I suspect he taught his courses like he was teaching board members and upper management.   That is, when he was teaching, he treated them like they were high level managers.  That’s one way to do it.

A second way to try and teach for long-term impact might be to ask.  After they graduate, it will be more apparent to them whether your course helped them live a better life (more useful, meaningful, successful, or whatever), and how your course might be improved.  It’s easier to get this feedback than you might think. You’ve probably saved your class lists (somewhere)  from 5 years ago.  You might have their emails, or the alumni office will have both their emails and their snail mail addresses. 
You can simply ask them.  

[As an example of what your survey could look like, here’s a version of one I sometimes send out to former students a couple years after they graduate.  It asks them what they remember, what they found most useful, what they wish they’d learned, and what work-related anecdotes they might have.  It also lists the class sessions, and it asks them to circle their 3 most useful class sessions and to cross out their 3 least useful.  Sending the right type of email will help you get a great return rate.  The first page of the download has a bunch of wording you can use in your email or cover letter, and the second and third pages have example questions you could adopt for your courses.]

Download File
Ten or fifteen years after I left Dartmouth I was in Boston, and I rented a car to drive up to visit John.  I wanted to thank him for being so generous, and I wanted to prove to myself that his office, desk, and dogs were as amazing as I remembered them.  There was a different name on his door.  I was too late.  

I love the idea of trying to teach for a long-term impact.  It’s like trying to create long-term memories.  I sometimes think I can remember everything John said to me because he was always so intentional with every conversation.  Just like he was with his classes. 

At the next reunion, if his former student’s aren’t talking about what they learned 30 years ago, they’ll be talking about how hard he tried.  That itself was a great lesson. ​


Long-term Impact Survey for Class
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5 Ways to Finish your Ph.D.

1/18/2022

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Most "How to finish your thesis" advice is pretty obvious -- even if we don't follow it.  Sometimes we don't follow it because it seems too difficult.  Other times we don't follow it because it's so general, we don't know how to start.  

Here's five pieces of dissertation advice I heard that were 1) nonobvious, 2) doable, and 3) specific.
 
1. “Choose your best friend as your advisor.” I heard this from a Med School professor friend who then said “And choose your older brother to be your second committee member, and choose your favorite uncle to be your third.”  We tend to choose our dissertation committee based on who’s most famous.  Consider which professors most want you to graduate. [Read more] 

2. "Write the first two hours of every day."  The guy who told me this, pretty much said it like a command: no email, no breakfast, no class stuff.  Before breakfast and before the kids wake up.  It sets a productivity vibe for the whole day. [Read more]

3. “You can either read a lot or you can write a lot, but you can't do both.”   We can sometimes use reading as avoidance behavior for writing.   There's diminishing returns to trying to read everything in a subject area.

4. Write down the 3 specific things you'll finish each day.  Better to have three things completed than 20 things pushed ahead an inch. [Read more]
​
5. Remember: “The ‘P’ in PhD stands for Perseverance.” – The smartest and most talented people in PhD programs aren’t always the ones who graduate. 
5 Ways to Finish Your Thesis
File Size: 281 kb
File Type: pdf
Download File

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“How Can I get an Academic Job as a Professor?”

12/2/2021

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This season starts the beginning of job market Speed Dating in lots of academic fields.  It’s when all of the schools who have jobs and all the PhD students who want jobs get together at their annual job market conference and speed date.
 
If a speed date goes well, a school will call you in about two weeks and ask you out on a campus date. If that 2-day campus date goes well, you get the engagement ring and get the job.  If the 7-year engagement goes well, you get married with tenure.    
 
But this all starts with the 45-minute speed date at the conference where there’s about a 1 in 3 chance that you’ll get called back.  Two common questions:  1) How do I ace a conference interview, and 2) how do I know if I aced it? 
 
Your advisor and friends have given you a big list of “dos and don’ts” for your interviews.  Things like do act interested and do know lots about their school, and things like don’t act smarmy or arrogant and don’t dress like Spiderman or your favorite D&D character.
 
There's no perfect way to predict whether you’ll get a campus visit, but you hear lots of rules of thumb:
 
     • The best day to interview is the second morning.  
                 The next best is the first afternoon.  
    • The two best interview times are either 10:00 AM or 1:00 PM
    • The more interviewers in your room (vs. skipping),the better your chances
    • The more “fun” the interview seems, the better your chances
    • The more questions they ask about your dissertation, the better
 
When I was on the rookie job market, I thought it would be useful to know which of these was the best predictor of a call-back.  If a person knew that, they’d know when to schedule interviews with their favorite schools, whether to be serious or funny, and whether to encourage lots of dissertation questions.  A few of my friends got together, and we came up with a list of about ten things we thought would predict how well an interview went.   We all then rated each one of our interviews on these 10 things. 
 
We then pooled everything together and ran a logit regression on whether we ended up getting a campus interview date at each school. Only 1 thing was significant.  It wasn’t the timing of the interview or our subjective rating of how “fun” it was.  Instead the only predictor of whether we got a campus visit was how many questions they asked about our dissertationduring the conference interview.
 
Makes sense – except this was negatively related.  The schools that asked us lots of questions about our dissertations DIDN’T fly us out for a date.   
 
At the time, we thought maybe they realized we were doing a lot of handwaving in our theory section. Or maybe the deeper they dug, the more holes they found that we hadn’t yet plugged.  
 
I now think there is another explanation.   If we spent 35 minutes of a 45-minute interview talking about only 1 thing, the school only has 1 thing to judge us on (other than our advisor’s letter).   It’s like a speed date where the person spends 90% of it talking about their vacation to Hawaii or their doily collection.  We end up learning a lot about Hawaii or doilies, but not enough about them to want to call them back for a date.
 
A few years later, I was unexpectedly on the job market again as an assistant professor, and I did things a bit differently. Instead of spending 35 minutes droning on about a single project or two, I wanted to make sure we talked about a lot more than just Hawaii.  That way, a broader set of connections could be made, and the people who hated Hawaii might find other things they could be interested in.
 
For all of the adrenaline-pumped PhD students at their job-market conference, it’s probably not the best strategy to spend the whole time talking about only your dissertation or only about Hawaii.  The more other “good fit” connections you can make in the interview, the more likely you might be called back for a first date. 
 
At this point, no last-minute finishing touches on your dissertation rap will help you ace your interview tomorrow morning.  Instead, tonight's better spent learning more about your potential date – especially any unique overlaps you might have in common.
 
Good luck on the job market!
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How to Be a Happier Academic

11/19/2021

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Some scholars are truly amazing and heroic.  They’re self-made, and their career’s been flawlessly filled with perfect decisions and perfect timing.
 
Then there’s the rest of us.  The rest of us have succeeded because we were all raised, socialized, and helped by other people.  
 
Outside of academia, some of these people are obvious:  parents, close relatives, coaches, and some teachers.  But inside academia, not all of these people are as obvious.  They might be that undergraduate professor who recommended we go to one grad school versus another, or the one who helped get us our first tenure-track job, helped lend a hand during a difficult time, or saved us from a desert island that one time by paddling through shark infested waters using only their right arm.
 
With Thanksgiving coming up, it can be a nice chance to hit pause and think of 2-3 nonobvious people who might have done a small thing that made a big difference in your life.  Doing something as simple as this can do your soul good.  On one extreme, it reminds us that we aren’t the self-centered Master of our Universe as we might think when things are going great.  On the other extreme, it reminds us that there are a lot of people silently cheering for us when we might think things aren’t going so great. 
 
What do you suppose would happen if you tracked these people down and game them a call?  It’s four steps:
            
            1. Find their phone number and dial.
            2. “Hey, I’m ___; remember me? How are you?”
            3. “It’s Thanksgiving. I was thinking of you” or "It's not Thanksgiving, but I've been thinking of you."
            4.  “Thanks”
 
For about the past 30 years, I’ve tried to do this each Thanksgiving.  It used to be the same 3-4 people (advisors and a post-college mentor), then a couple more, and this year I’m adding a new one.    For some reason, I always look for an excuse why I shouldn’t make these calls. I always find myself pacing around before I make the first call.  Part of me thinks I might be bore them, or they already know it, or it’s interrupting them, or that it’s too corny. 
 
Yet even if I have to leave voice messages, I’m always end up smiling when I get off the phone.  I feel more thankful and centered.  I feel happier.  Maybe they feel differently too. 
 
Still, there’s some years I never made any calls, because I had good excuses.  Maybe it was too late in the day, or they were probably with their family, or I called them last year, or I didn’t really have enough time to talk.   I’m sure they had some good excuses – way back when – as to why they didn’t have time for me.  I’m thankful they didn’t use them. 
 
If you can think of 2-3 people you’re thankful for who might not know it, you don’t have to wait until Thanksgiving next year to tell them.  They won’t care that you’re a little bit late or a whole lot early.   It’s only 4 steps. 
 ​
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