Category Archives: Grad School

Back to School, in the Flesh

08 Tuesday Sep 2015

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Dearest Patient and Kind Graduable Readers,

It is once again autumn (or close enough) in the Northern Hemisphere, a time when Herschel backpacks overflow, ugly-as-sin Toms are slipped on eager feet, and some new internet slang will pervade campuses and perplex absent-minded academics who have ‘better things’ to do. Yes, it is time to get back to school. Today is the first day of classes at UBC and I expect all of these things and more to be happening. This academic year marks the first in two years that I will be on campus more than I’m not. I am excited to be back into the academic fold of campus life after a hiatus in the Great White North (it’s really the Mediocre White North, but that’s a story for another time).

Speaking of hiatuses, the Graduable has been on one since the spring but no more! As the scent of pencil shavings fills the air and bad campus food is shoveled out of barrels and charged at a premium, I will be blogging the whole time. So, grab your bae and YOLO on fleek. School’s back in.

Love Always,

Justin

Nat King Cole and Your Dissertation

16 Monday Mar 2015

Posted by in Grad School, Research, Student Life

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nat-king-cole-by-warchild13dotcom

Nat King Cole is rooting for you.

As I was writing a conference proposal to music today, one Nat King Cole was summoned to my iTunes shuffle. The song was “The Very Thought of You” (lyrics by Ray Noble) and as Cole’s earnest soothing voice sang the words that were presumably meant for a love interest, it became clear to me that they could easily be applied to the dissertation and the unflinching hold it takes on the dissertator.

There’s plenty of talk about people doing PhDs because they ‘love’ the subject. This is not, however, the whole story. Just because you love the subject isn’t really enough to cut it. You’ve gotta have the chops to rigorously research your subject, defend it against sometimes hostile audiences, and add something new to the scholarly conversation. If what you wanted was Sea Monkeys, you’re out of luck–you’ve got yourself an exotic aquarium. And I hope you’re okay with being in a non-reciprocal relationship for a long while. Your dissertation becomes your constant companion, your bête noire. I have found that you just kind of have to let it assume control over certain parts of your brain and thinking processes. I’ve been unable to turn off my critical reading responses at will for quite some time and writing a dissertation only exacerbates this.

Let’s have a look at the lyrics for “The Very Thought of You” and see how they apply to the all-encompassing hold of the dissertation over its creator. Feel free to play the song while you read through the lyric breakdown.

The very thought of you and I forget to do
The little ordinary things that everyone ought to do
I have forgotten to do many of the ordinary things everyone ought to do when thinking and working on my dissertation: eat, be a good person. You know how it is.

I’m living in a kind of daydream
Or waking nightmare. Whatever suits you.

I’m happy as a king
When I am able to organize my thoughts and put them coherently into the document.

And foolish though it may seem
To me that’s everything
Yes, that’s what it’s really all about. On the rare occasions between bouts of intense research and hours of brainstorming and unproductive writing/procrastination sessions, there’s no better feeling than hitting ‘Send’ on a completed piece of writing. We don’t think about the feedback when we are doing this. It would harsh our mellow.

The mere idea of you, the longing here for you
You’ll never know how slow the moments go till I’m near to you
Well, we’re always near to one another. Time actually speeds up the closer a deadline is. Is that part of Einstein’s general relativity?

I see your face in every flower
Or at least in every TV show or movie I watch that flashes “YOU SHOULD BE WRITING” at me. Nobody else I’m watching with seems to be able to see these messages. I think I might have that thing the kid from The Sixth Sense had.

Your eyes in stars above
Panopticon. ‘Nough said.

It’s just the thought of you
The very thought of you, my love
Yes, it’s just the thought of you that will haunt me until I have finished and, even then, I expect to sustain long-lasting effects, though a job in my field is likely not one of them.

Those Were the Days: How Things Change from Undergrad to Doctorate

24 Tuesday Feb 2015

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Remember when you were an undergrad (or maybe you are an undergrad right now) and you were taking classes from all sorts of fascinating disciplines? On any given day during my undergrad I could have Philosophy, German, History, English, Sociology, or whatever and it was truly a delightful thing. I would show up and these smart people would teach me things–usually–and my only job was to absorb those things and apply them when it came time for the exam and/or term paper. University really is a great system in that way; its structure is very straightforward.

The career of an undergraduate really is a fantastic mixture of socialization and book learnin’. In the interests of full disclosure, I freely admit that I had outgrown most of the socialization we usually associate with university by the time I started at age 22. I began my bachelor’s degree as many of my friends who had gone to university straight out of high school were finishing. This was a strange feeling and it was also my first real taste of imposter syndrome. In many ways I did not have what we might think of as a traditional undergraduate experience. There was very little fanfare, let alone whipped cream, during my first semester. We all went to university in an 80s comedy, right?

Getting back to the topic at hand, what really prompted me to think back to my undergrad days was a colleague who was lamenting the pressure put on PhD students to be ‘competitive’ for the job market. That many-headed beast who is never satisfied with your accomplishments and always hungry for more. More publications. More scholarships. More networking. It’s all a real mindfuck if you sit down and give it any serious thought. As we all know, academic hiring is not a meritocracy and luck plays as much a role as any of your sweet publications (although the latter cannot possibly hurt). It’s when I began to think, as I often do, about this whole world I’ve willfully chosen to be a part of that I was reminded of a former version of myself who loved every minute of the university experience.

This is not to say, however, that I don’t love what I’m doing. I don’t think you can do academia very successfully if you don’t have at least a bit of love for your work. I guess the stage I’m at right now might be what I’d call ‘old love.’ I love my work the way grandparents might love each other: they’re not giddy about it and rolling around in the back of a Studebaker anymore, but they really can’t imagine a life without one another. Back when I was an undergrad I was like that old photo of your grandfather with the Bogart hairdo and smart jacket. My classes were your grandmother with ruby red lips and risqué form-fitting dress and, boy howdy, were we mad for each other. It continued on apace for the entirety of my four year degree and, by the end, it was still quite something but perhaps with the luxury of a little maturity and experience.

Studying as an undergrad meant that you would never leave campus without knowing much more than you did when you arrived that day. Study, attend lecture, study some more, have class discussion, exam, term paper equaled one learned young man. After undergrad I did a teaching degree, but we’ll kindly avoid that subject. My education degree, if we’re sticking with the grandparent metaphor here, is the period they don’t like to discuss but nobody really knows why.

The master’s degree was very much a study, attend lecture, class discussion type of affair except that this time the stakes were much higher in terms of what was expected to come out of our mouths and brains. This is not even to mention how much more specialized the subject matter was. Master’s coursework allowed me to fill in the gaps of my broad knowledge in English. Still discovering things and reading widely and voraciously, at breakneck pace. This is when your grandparents first had your mum or dad and every day was a struggle, financially and emotionally, but they wouldn’t have traded it for the world. In a lot of ways, these were the best days of your grandparents’ lives and they learned a lot about who they were.

Finally, we get to the PhD. This is the point when your grandparents have begun establishing themselves. Maybe your grandpa smokes a pipe now. There is a comfort level and a feeling like everything will probably be okay. There’s a clear path to success, you just have to be sure to make something out of what you’re doing. At many points during the process it is frustrating, the kids are misbehaving, and your relationship seems strained. Expectations become more nebulous as you fall into a routine that is not actually a routine and you sometimes wish you could just get back into that Studebaker and let nature take its course. That was a lot of fun, but you realize that you can’t really ever go back and that’s okay, except when it’s not.

As the doctorate presses on, it is a given that you love your thesis topic but maybe you don’t buy it flowers much anymore and wouldn’t it be nice if all you had to do was show up? Sometimes, when I think about what it was like to be an undergrad student, attending lectures and being let into the seemingly secret worlds of the disciplines I studied I can’t help but play this in my head:

“Recommended but not Funded” *UPDATE*

15 Friday Aug 2014

Posted by in Grad School, Research, University

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Earlier this year I learned that the result of my SSHRC doctoral award application was “recommended but not funded,” which essentially meant that my project was good enough to be funded but there was just no money left in the pot. You can read the original post here (I have also copied it below).

I woke this morning to an unexpected email with the subject heading “2014 – 2015 SSHRC Doctoral Award Offer” detailing my successful application being funded. It was and is great news.

I continue to hold my conviction that this does not mean my project or anyone else’s that receives funding is somehow better or more deserving because of it. To further illustrate this idea I’ve provided a handy visual non-sequitur.

Original Post 30 April 2014
This was the result of my most recent kick at the federal funding can. For those unfamiliar with the Canadian system of federal scholarships for doctoral work, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council is the major funding body for this type of academic research in Canada at the graduate and professorial levels. If you’d like a bit more about this process see my post on grant proposals. What exactly ‘recommended but not funded’ means is that my proposal was accepted and good enough to receive an award, but there was nothing left in the pot to actually consummate that marriage. I am lucky because I am in a position — thanks to my department and family — where my continued pursuit of a PhD does not hinge on SSHRC funding. It would be nice to hold a SSHRC scholarship because that opens more opportunities for funding things like overseas research. I would be remiss to mention that ‘recommended but not funded’ does not mean the same as ‘no.’ On the contrary, it means that there is still a chance of an award if another is declined for any reason.*

At any rate, this post is not a whinge or a sour grapes kind of thing. I have plenty of friends and colleagues who have received this funding and that’s an incredible thing. I know how hard it is to make it in the academic funding game and anyone who makes it should be applauded. I hear plenty of griping around funding season about projects that didn’t ‘deserve’ to be funded but were. That kind of crap doesn’t help anyone and is petty beyond belief. Does every funded project ‘deserve’ its funding? I don’t know. Someone thinks so. There’s a subjective element to funding decisions that is going to make it a necessarily flawed process but, hey, that’s the Humanities, folks (I’m sure this is the same for other disciplines too).

Congratulations to all those who were awarded grants this time around. To those who weren’t, it’s cool. If you’re doing a PhD, your success is not tied to your ability to receive SSHRC funding. You’re already doing a PhD and an entire department at a university somewhere has your back. That looks like success to me.

For those interested, I’m posting my successful SSHRC proposal below with the note that this was my fourth time applying. So, yeah, it’s harder than it looks.

*Since I don’t know how far down the list I am, I might be in a Prince Charles situation or I might be one of Liz’s numerous titled yet ultimately unimportant grandchildren.

O’Hearn SSHRC 2013

The PhD Process: Passing Qualifying Papers

27 Tuesday May 2014

Posted by in Grad School, Pornography, Qualifying Exams, Research, Student Life, University, Writing

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It’s been about a month since my last post. That post was about the culture and procedures of academic funding in Canada — and I guess they could be extrapolated to academic funding in general. The thing that I forgot about was why I had started this blog lo those many almost two years ago: namely, that I wanted to try and make the PhDing process somewhat less murky for others who found themselves in the same position as I was (and still am) in terms of the unavailability of examples of things like qualifying exam reading lists, qualifying papers, and the like.

Well, good news: now that I’ve finally reminded myself of my initial mission* I’m posting my successful qualifying papers for your perusal. I say they are the ‘successful’ ones because the first go round I had to do some revisions on one of them. At UBC English you get two chances to submit your qualifying papers before your oral defense. This means that, at the discretion of the graduate committee, I was instructed to take that second chance and was offered plenty of feedback as to what the paper was lacking.

I haven’t reformatted the papers for consumption here and you will notice the dates differ on both papers. The later date on paper 1 represents the date of the final revisions’ completion. After both papers were accepted, the oral defense was scheduled at which my committee plus a representative from the graduate committee asked questions about my papers and the direction(s) of my future project. That took about an hour and my committee automatically dissolved (as per the rules of UBC English). I am not quite a PhD candidate yet, as there is still the next stage — the prospectus — to deal with before I’m set free to work on my dissertation. To bring us up to the present, however, I am currently sorting out my dissertation committee and working on my prospectus. Expect another post like this nearer the end of the summer when that bit is all said and done.

Feel free to have a look at the PhD work I have posted thus far here. It might give you a better idea about the process in the Humanities, even though every program is going to be different.

*’Initial Mission’ would be an awesome band name. You can have it if you put me on the guest list at your shows in perpetuity.

Qualifying Paper 1 Erotic Memoir

Qualifying Paper 2 Pornographic Print Culture

The Library Recall War

15 Tuesday Apr 2014

Posted by in Grad School, Miscellany, Research, Student Life, University

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The spring 2014 semester has been the semester of the recalled library book for me. I have had no fewer than seven recalls, the latest one being merely five days ago. I can’t help but feel these are somehow personal attacks on my research by malicious hordes who fear my exposing the truth about Victorian pornography. I’m pretty sure big pharma/data/oil are all in on it.

If I can be serious for a moment, though, I need to flesh out this whole culture of librarying. Now, the reason I think I am taking these recalls somewhat personally is that I don’t live within a reasonable distance of my institution and so I’m having to return the recalled books via post (you know, that thing that costs money). I don’t expect that there is any way those recalling the books can know this, nor would I expect them to care if they did…so long as they really needed the book they’re recalling. It’s every borrower’s right to have access to a given library’s materials. I get that. I do. My fear, however, is that some recalls may be haphazard. It takes more than simply spec for me to recall a book. I have to make sure that it is something I really need. Some of the books that I’ve had recalled this semester were available online — which helps me out because I still have access — had multiple copies available, or were borrowed and returned almost immediately by the recaller. Imagine my surprise when I planned on waging a fully spiteful recall war in an effort to give the inconsiderate recaller(s) a taste of their own medicine only to find that the items were listed as available in the library stacks. Zut alors!

As such, I’ve got a couple of tips for those who may recall first and ask questions later.

  1. Ask yourself if you really need this book.

Maybe you feel like you do because it lists a keyword for the thing you’re researching? That’s not really a good reason. When I don’t have immediate access to a particular item but I found it during a keyword search or some other ephemeral thing I’ll try and find someone else who’s read it. Chances are, if the book is at least a few years old, there’s a review or two floating around out there that will help you decide whether the book is really what you need. Or, alternatively, ask someone else who knows shit about the topic if the book is worth getting and will add anything to your work/research. Who? You’re at a university, use your imagination (hint: not the swimming coach).

2. See if it’s available electronically.

I have colleagues who manage to never step foot in a library. I envy their electronic research kung fu. I myself have only the most tenuous grasp of finding things online, but even one as incompetent as I can usually find at least a snippet of things online, if not a full text. Newer texts will usually have some sort of online presence as publishers try and make their wares available on every platform and, more often than not, university libraries will have electronic copies of new and/or key texts. It seems like a contradiction for me to be telling folks to find a text electronically before recalling the physical copy, and that’s a fair point. Please note, however, that these are simply steps to take while deciding whether recalling the work is the necessary thing. I do this myself. I have to convince myself that it is absolutely necessary for me to obtain a physical copy of a text, which most likely means that someone will have to make a special trip to the library. A minor inconvenience, to be sure, but it’s only polite to consider others when making requests. This is not to mention also that I find most electronic versions of texts cumbersome, especially if I can’t download a pdf version that I will print out as a last resort.

3. Recall the book, but don’t abuse the privilege.

As I mentioned above, nothing is more disheartening than thinking items you’ve gone out of your way to return have not been used thoroughly. But, hey, maybe you really only needed half a chapter of a specific book. Who the hell am I to judge your work? I’m nobody. Could you do me a favour, though? Make a show of it. Keep the book for longer than a couple of days. It’s cool. Most libraries send you courtesy emails telling you that your book is coming due soon so you don’t even have to rely on your memory to know when to return the thing. Can’t return it when the library reminds you nicely? No problem, it’s 2014 now and you can renew that shit online. No human interaction required. If nothing else, please make the recallee feel that their efforts to get an item you have recalled have not been in vain. If there were an academic library episode of Seinfeld I feel it would have covered the social conventions of this interaction succinctly. Since there wasn’t an episode like that, all you got is me. Sorry about that. I feel I could use a guy like Mr. Bookman sometimes, though.

 

Ethics and the University: A Graduable Profile of Linda Baines

10 Monday Mar 2014

Posted by in Academic Profiles, Grad School, Profiles, Student Life, University

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Dearest Graduable Readers,

This is what you have been waiting so patiently for. The profile of Linda Baines, a PhD student in the School of Management at University of Southampton studying the interactions of knowledge exchange, innovation, and social responsibility. You can find out more (after you’ve read the interview) on Twitter, Linkedin, Academia.edu, or DelBea. Linda also hosts #phdchat on Twitter periodically which, if you don’t know already, is one of the most useful hashtags in the academic world. Below is our interview about her research, how she came to PhD studies after working in the public sector for a number of years, and the similarities between the UK and North American university systems. Thanks for reading. Enjoy.Exif_JPEG_PICTURE

Thanks for agreeing to be profiled, Linda. It’s great to talk to you. Let’s start with a little bit about your research.

I’m looking at the ethics of exploiting the knowledge and ideas that come out of the research that universities and public research labs undertake, and the values and ethics that underpin this. For instance, when biotechnology or pharmaceutical companies work with universities there can be conflicts between the companies wanting the research to be kept secret and the universities wanting to publish their results. So, what are the ethical limits within which universities and academics are bound or socially responsible for exploiting  their research and knowledge? It’s closely linked to what universities are about, their roles and perceptions of this.

Also, what happens if a tobacco or some other company wants to fund research at a university but their involvement is a conflict or makes the researchers uncomfortable? Could they then refuse and what are the boundaries within which they must operate? I’m focusing, in short, on the ethics of showing the benefits of research or proving academic worth.

So what if that large tobacco company, for example, or some other contentious source wants to donate money to build a new wing of a university for research?

To give you one example from the UK, a few years ago Muammar Gadaffi’s son donated a large sum of money to the London School of Economics and he was also awarded a PhD, to which there was a large outcry. On the one hand, universities are under pressure to try and find additional sources of income because the government has cut funding, for instance. On the other hand, the university is accepting money from a regime that the government is against, so this apparent trade off can happen.

What’s the climate like for doing a PhD in the UK? In North America there’s a sort of all-or-nothing culture in graduate school and PhD programmes especially. It doesn’t mean, however, that there aren’t people doing a PhD and working part- or full-time out of financial necessity. How are the funding programmes different in the UK and how has corporatization affected academia there?

Two things: first, the trend toward academic corporatization is prevalent in the UK as well. We’re a few steps behind North America, though. Second, there is a perception that the proportion of administrators has grown, the metrics and the measuring that academics have to do in the form-filling and paperwork has grown along with it, and many have said that this takes away from their research and teaching that they really want to do. So, it’s not just a North American phenomenon. You can even look to Australian universities, for example. I think it’s a global trend right now.

When you register for a PhD in the UK you can register for full-time, which is about 3 years, or part-time, which is about 6 – 7. It’s not unusual for people in the UK to be doing a PhD on a part-time basis. You’ve indicated that it is a little unusual in North America to be doing so. In fact, I was told that approximately one-third of the students in my programme were doing it part-time. I was surprised by this number as well. Normally those doing their PhD part-time are working part- or full-time and even those doing full-time PhDs are sometimes working. The main sources of funding are public institutions that give grant funding or studentships for doctoral research to universities for Science, the Humanities, and so on. The competition for this funding is getting more difficult as cutbacks take effect, though. You have to be outstanding to get one.

That’s similar to Canada and they’re also being cutback. We’ve had a fairly fiscally (and socially) conservative government for the last decade or so and grad students are finding themselves having to seek other forms of funding either through university endowments or other types of private scholarships and awards.

Yes, we have charities like the Wellcome Trust or sometimes big companies will endow a chair at a university. There are similar patterns, I think.

When you say you’re ‘self-funded,’ do you get any funding at all from the government?

No.

So all your expenses are out-of-pocket for your PhD?

Yes – well – let me work backwards and tell you how I got here. I used to work full-time in the public sector. I was in commercial management and there came a point where I wanted to put a theoretical framework around what I was doing. I found a course at Manchester Business School and did a Master’s there over three years.  I was fortunate to be accepted into the PhD programme at the university that my dissertation supervisor moved to. The university I’m at now, University of Southampton, is much closer to home than Manchester as well.

Do universities give your life skills acquired outside of the university any kind of weight in the application or degree progression?

No, they don’t, but when you’re discussing with your supervisor what your needs are, you look down the list of prerequisites and course requirements, and figure out which you need and which you don’t based on the skills and experience you bring with you. The only real course I did was the compulsory research methods course and that was very useful.

You’ve started your PhD later than the majority of students, so what’s your take on taking breaks before or between degrees and have you encountered any resistance from academia in doing so?

Not resistance, but speaking anecdotally, some universities is not properly set up for part-time students. It’s difficult to become part of the academic community as a part-time student so I’ve had to find different ways to deal with that, such as finding communities on Twitter and PhD buddies outside. I think also that my supervisor and I are more equally matched in terms of confidence and complementary experience than if I were a student, say, in my twenties. And I think that’s healthy for me.

Yes, I think that’s important. It seems to me that confidence and, ultimately, independence from your supervisor is a powerful thing. What do you think of attaining independence as the ultimate ‘goal’ of a PhD?

I think it is. I  share my plans and strategies with him, of course, and I also  seek advice and guidance from him but not permission. And I will listen to and follow his advice. One piece of invaluable advice given to me by him on my dissertation has been: what three new things is your PhD going to say about your topic?

That’s actually a great way to get yourself thinking about your project in another light.

Yes, I think it is.

Backing up just a bit, let’s talk about why you’re doing a PhD now.

I suppose it was always something, in the back of my mind, that I always wanted to do and I think that if I don’t do it now I never will. Having done a master’s you get a little ‘taste’ of academia. When I had done my master’s, it had been quite a while since I’d done any university so I found myself getting used to new kinds of academic techniques and procedures, particularly the conventions of academic writing. But, yes, I think getting the ‘taste’ for it again was important. It’s great being able to do original research into something that you’re interested in, not knowing what you’re going to find or where it’s going to take you. It’s a bit like trying to start writing a novel from scratch, but you have certain parameters and a framework to guide you.

How would you frame doing a doctorate to someone else with a background and experience similar to yours?

I think you’ve really got to want to do it and you’ve got to choose a topic that excites you that you can stick with for several years. You’ve got to be able to keep plodding away at it consistently; it never really leaves you. And you may not do work on it every day, but little things like cleaning up a file or something that adds to the productivity. Even just thinking about your project is important. It’s also very important to allow yourself a break. It takes a while to get back into studying, however. It’s a bit like when you stop exercising for a while. It takes a while to get back into it.

I think it’s also important to have support. I’ve got lots of family support and the fact that I’ve got my daughter rooting for me as well as my other half. If not for that, I don’t know that I’d be able to do this. Their support goes a long way in terms of my motivation.

Thanks, Linda, for taking the time to talk with me today. It’s been a pleasure talking with you today. Cheers.

Cheers.

So, that’s the end. Don’t forget to read the other current academic profile on Graduable.com on Dr. Eva Lantsoght. If me peppering you relentlessly with questions sounds like something you’d like to do for an hour or so, contact me and we can set something up. I want to hear about your research and share it on my blog. I really, really do.

Solid As Concrete: A Graduable Profile of Eva Lantsoght

10 Monday Feb 2014

Posted by in Grad School, Profiles, Research, University

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I had the pleasure of speaking via Skype to Eva Lantsoght, a civil engineer who was awarded her PhD in June 2013, about all sorts of things relating to the academic experience. I spoke to her from my home in Whitehorse, Yukon to hers in Quito, Ecuador where she has accepted a full-time assistant professorship in the engineering department. After a couple of false starts thanks to a storm system heading through her area of Ecuador, we got going and covered a number of topics of serious interest to academics, both up-and-coming and seasoned, as well as grad students. Among the topics we covered were her own research and teaching, the transition from student to professor, variations in funding systems worldwide, and the importance of becoming independent as an academic.

What follows is an edited transcript of our conversation. I think you will enjoy hearing what Eva has to say in sharing her experiences and knowledge as an international academic. If you’d like to read more, you can visit Eva’s top-notch blog PhD Talk on grad school, academia, and beyond.

 

What is your background and what are you working on at the moment in your research and lecturing?

My topic is structural concrete and I’m looking at not so much the material or the composition of the material, my PhD research was applied to concrete bridges. We looked at what are called slab bridges in the Netherlands, which were mostly built in the 1950s and 1960s and designed for 50 – 60 years of service. I tested the strength of the slabs together with the Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment to determine the capacity of the bridges to determine whether they could remain in service, also taking into account the increased volumes and intensity of traffic over the decades. I worked with the ministry on a  spreadsheet containing over 600 of these bridges to provide an overview on which ones need maintenance first, which is what I’ve been working on since this past summer in addition to working on trying to get my journal papers from my dissertation published as well as teaching at Universidad San Francisco de Quito (USFQ).

You’re splitting your time between research at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands and a full-time assistant professorship at USFQ in Quito. Who and what do you teach during the academic year at USFQ?

I teach Reinforced Concrete 1 and Reinforced Concrete 2 and Design of Pavements Concrete 1 is a fourth year course of a five year undergraduate program; there is no master’s program yet, but we are hoping to develop something for 2015 or 2016. The other two courses are fifth year courses for students in that final year.

Is your teaching a tenure-track position and will that necessitate you travelling back and forth from Ecuador to the Netherlands throughout your career?

Well, what’s new in Ecuador is that tenure-track is written into the law so, as of now, and what my job description says is that I’m on equal footing with other professors, but the new law – passed in November, I think – has three levels of professorship with certain requirements to move up through associate, assistant, and full professor. The Ecuadorian government is trying to make the university system a little more uniform. I have an agreement with Delft for two years and I’m going to see how practical that is and if it works out, I’d like to keep my ties with Delft because it is so interesting for my research because the Civil Engineering and Geosciences department is so much bigger and they have about seven staff members and nine other PhD researchers who specialize in structural concrete, where as USFQ does not have a department that large.

Is USFQ building their engineering department?

Yes, I’m looking to put together a lab to start doing the experiments students are required to do in their first years of engineering, which they are currently doing in other universities with labs. If the master’s program comes they’ll also need to hire more people. In terms of my own research, I am the only person in my department specifically doing research on structural concrete, so it’s not the same as being in Delft working with people who’ve been working on this topic their entire careers with the giant lab facilities on hand.

As you know, the tenure-track and the number of adjuncts in North American universities is a bit of a hot button issue right now, so is the Ecuadorian model of government intervention in securing tenured professors a model that seems to be working or is it a bit of an experiment?

The first thing I would point out is that the Ecuadorian president is a former academic, so he’s been putting a lot of focus on higher education in terms of giving a lot of scholarships to students for study abroad for their master’s and PhDs with the requirement that they come back. And there are now requirements at universities that state 70% of professors must hold a PhD by 2017. In the past it was mostly people with master’s who taught at universities, so there has been a push to hire people with PhDs to fulfill these requirements. Prior to these interventions by the government into tenure-track and scholarships, it was the case that if you had money and space anyone could build a university without any requirements or accreditation. It was a way to quickly make money from people seeking degrees rather than providing an academically rigorous environment. So, it’s better now because there is a university rating system which goes from A to D; if an institution is at D, they have one year to improve and move up to category C. If they stay as a ‘D’ institution, they close it down. USFQ is one of the few universities – and the only private university – in Ecuador with an A rating.

That sounds similar to the private for-profit colleges in North America, which target mostly international students who are trying to get into ‘A’ level Canadian and American universities.

The system is different again where I’m from in Belgium, where there are almost no private universities and the public universities are regarded as higher quality because there is an accreditation system in place.

What’s been your experience moving around for your degrees, research, and jobs affected you as an academic? Does it make you a better candidate in the eyes of, say, hiring committees?

Moving around between degrees, as I did, always slows you down a bit because you have to adjust to the new place and perhaps make up certain requirements but, in terms of learning experiences, for me it was very good. I first studied in Belgium which has a system that’s very similar to the French system of teaching engineering – starting from mathematical principles and then derive everything from that until you reach the design of your building or bridge – which is very different from the American system where you first learn to design structures and then you can dig deeper into the mechanics of the structure. Many engineering students in America don’t take classes such as ContinuumMechanics, which covers the mechanics of our structures, whereas in Belgium this is where we start. This has given me an advantage in some fields because I can understand the mathematical concepts, but I don’t have the same feeling for the design. I learned this when I studied in the Netherlands because they are very practical or ‘engineery,’ as I call it, where they may not necessarily have all the ‘science’ of a structure right but they have more of a ‘feeling’ for it, which I had to adjust to, but overall as a learning experience it was good. In terms of travelling during my PhD, I travelled a lot for conferences. I had been hoping to travel to spend some time in different labs, but I never got the chance to do this because I was working full-time in my university’s laboratory trying to finish all my experiments so this did not leave any time to travel for this. I was fortunate in that, as part of my PhD funding, there was money for travel to conferences provided I was presenting a paper that would be published in the conference proceedings. In 2013 alone I went to 7 conferences on all continents, which was really helpful because this allowed me to show people what I had done and to spread the word about my work as I am also trying to get my thesis published. It was very tiring because, for example, I had a conference in Japan, followed by another one in Pittsburgh, and then, a week after that I had my thesis defense!

Was there a limit to the amount of funding you could access during your PhD for conferences, providing you met the criterion that your paper would be published in the proceedings?

I must say, Delft was very good in terms of funding. I had always been granted travel permission by the university so long as it was within my project’s budget. I had to keep all my receipts to get reimbursed for travel expenses.

That’s a very different model of conference funding than we’re used to here! PhD students, in my experience, have to choose their conferences extremely carefully because of the lack of sufficient funding. We end up paying out of our own pocket for a lot of things. So, as a followup, based on your experience have you ever been to a conference that seemed like more of a vacation than an academic gathering? For instance, I get a CFP every year for this vaguely worded conference in Hawaii that seems to highlight the beach and the pool more so than the content. Does it do any harm to go to a conference if you’re uncertain about the academics?

I haven’t gone to any of those conferences, but I’ve been to some that are remotely related to my field. For instance, I went to a conference on sustainability and I wasn’t sure how my work would fit in there, but my supervisor encouraged me to go. Most of the conferences I go to are organized by the big concrete associations in my field. Even though I haven’t been to any ‘destination’ conferences, I’ve ended up going to great destinations like Israel, South Africa, Japan, and Australia anyway.

How did it help you to be out of your comfort zone by, for instance, going to that conference your supervisor had recommended?

At the sustainability conference I went to, it was a little difficult for me to follow because many of the presentations were about materials whereas my research is largely design-based. It was a great learning experience, however, because it gave me another perspective on my own work and my presentation was from a different angle than I usually do because it was about the sustainability of preserving existing bridges.

Are these conferences all conducted in English?

Yes, with the exception of a few national gatherings in the Netherlands where the proceedings were presented in Dutch.

It seems that any research conducted in non-English languages is given less value in the unilingual (English-speaking) world. Have you encountered any stigma about conducting and presenting research in other languages?

In my field, German is still relatively important. There’s a very good German journal in my field; I’m planning to submit a paper to that journal and I will need a translator to help me with that because my German is not good enough to write a technical paper myself. Most people in the German universities still publish largely in German and that, of course, doesn’t make it to most of the rest of the world. I’ve published a paper in a Dutch industrial journal that has a lot of local readers, which was very good for me, but in terms of my profile as a researcher it is the English publications that take up most of my energy and writing effort. And because English isn’t my first language, it’s sometimes a struggle. When I got reviews back for my first paper the reviewers had said there was a problem with my English and the recommended an English proofreader to help with the language. My professor suggested that he would fix the English. In other universities, it is common practice to send papers to a native speaker for correction before submitting it to journals.

In European academia, is it more common or acceptable to publish something in a language other than English?

In my own work, I have used French papers in my research in order to target certain researchers. In terms of other languages – apart from German – I wouldn’t really think to publish in any other language. Even in the Dutch journal I discussed earlier, the researchers will write a longer paper for a peer-reviewed English journal and there will be a little note referring the reader to the ‘full’ paper in the reference list, which is kind of like ‘If you want to read the real paper you can find it in this particular journal’ so the English journal is still given preference.

It’s difficult to reach the right audience if you don’t publish in English. I’ve worked with a supervisor who has great personal contacts all over Europe and I know people who have gained access to lots of work from non-English labs but that wouldn’t have happened if not for that professor’s personal contacts.

In your non-peer-reviewed writing – blogs, Gradhacker – how crucial is it that academics, and particularly younger academics, have this sort of profile? And, in terms of online presence for academics, is there any forum that you wouldn’t give up?

If I had to give up all of my online writing the one I would keep would be my blog because of all the work and time I’ve spent working on it. It’s got a lot of foundational work on there. Even though I get a lot out of chatting on Twitter, the blog is much more in-depth.

How crucial is it to keep personal and professional online presences separate for academics? Has your online presence had any impact in terms of gaining the notice of the academic gatekeepers (hiring committees, journal editors, etc)?

As for the hiring here at USFQ it has been a huge benefit. I was hired by one of the owners of the university and he wants me to look into setting up a social media in Engineering course because he values that interaction very highly. When I was at Delft, the marketing and communications people there contacted me and have used me in some marketing for the university. In those terms, I have felt that both institutions have appreciated my online efforts. Sometimes others will cast a bit of doubt about whether blogging or maintaining an online presence is really worth it. I’ve also learned some great skills from online connections. Once I needed to make a poster project so I put the word out to #phdchat on Twitter and lots of people responded to me with resources that helped me turn out a decent poster. Also, in preparing for my TEDtalk I had reached out to companies like Lafarge, which is the manufacturer of high-strength concrete, for pictures to use in my presentation.

I don’t think people should be forced into taking part in professionalized social media if they don’t want to.

What is the most important thing that you’ve taken away from the PhD process since coming through the other side of it?

I’ve become very independent. The professor I was working with actually retired during my PhD and he was somebody who travelled extensively throughout the academic year so he was often not present in the Netherlands. This meant that most of the time I was largely on my own. In the beginning I would wait on his stamp of approval for everything but after a while I came to the realization that this was my project and I took ownership over it. There were no real rules at Delft about the supervisory relationship. They used to practice the ‘mushroom technique’ which would mean putting a student in a dark room for three years and then at the end opening the door and seeing if they were ready. My daily supervisor and I had a relationship where he would send me to conferences to make a presentation that he was unable to do because he trusted that I could do it.

So that ends the first of my series of academic profiles. I urge you to check out Eva’s blog PhDTalk where you can learn more about her research and CV.

Qualifying Papers Progress: Small Victory

03 Monday Feb 2014

Posted by in Grad School, Qualifying Exams, Student Life, University, Writing

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For those of you who’ve been following my progress through the PhD, you might recall that one of my primary goals in creating this blog was to chart said progress. Well, a small victory happened just the other day for my qualifying papers: after some delay, I got feedback from my committee and learned that one of two passed without revision while the other needs revision. I’ve got ample time (six weeks) to do the revisions, which I don’t imagine I will need in its entirety. Once I have successfully passed both papers my plan is to post them along with the other documents I have created thus far in this process.

I feel like I have fallen well behind my other colleagues but I have been getting some great support from my on and offline communities, so this thing keeps going.

The Role of Coffee in My PhD

13 Monday Jan 2014

Posted by in Grad School

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Coffee — good coffee — is an integral part of the PhD process for me. We’ve all heard the cliche “life is too short to drink bad coffee.” As cliches go, I don’t mind this one. I mean, cliches didn’t start out as cliches, after all.* For me, however, this little saying misses half the point of good coffee. By ‘good,’ of course, we mean all sorts of things, from the quality of the green bean, the region it came from, whether the farmer got a fair price, to the end product that is poured down our gaping maws. It truly astounds me when I see people who will drink just any hot brown liquid that someone describes as coffee. Moving me beyond astonishment are those annoying prats who light-heartedly describe their coffee addiction as though it were something they earned rather than a byproduct of their over consumption. There’s a certain panache to really, truly good coffee that is lost on people who claim dependance on this drink yet don’t know, or worse, don’t care much about what it is they’re drinking. I should know, I used to be one of them.

In a former life, I was a salesman. I sold everything from building supplies, to alarm clocks that didn’t work, to men’s suits. I drank coffee like everyone else. Usually from whatever place was handy. And in Canada, this means Tim Horton’s. I would adulterate the coffee with cream and sugar because, for the amount of it I drank, I really didn’t like the taste, I just knew coffee was something people drank and I desperately wanted to be part of the adult masses. I quit drinking coffee for a little while after I realized how ridiculous it was to do something you didn’t really like just because, but I still offered to go on coffee runs for coworkers so I could get out of work for a little while.

I didn’t start drinking coffee again until Starbucks began gaining a real foothold in Canada. I wasn’t drinking coffee per se, but rather their sugary and whipped creamy concoctions masquerading as coffee. I didn’t begin drinking actual coffee until a few years after that when I lived in Australia. Not that their coffee chains were much better than ours, but I had discovered the simple pleasure of the espresso shot. Even a bad espresso shot isn’t all that bad in comparison to most chain stores’ regular coffee. I lived in a small town in Australia and got to know a local cafe owner who made me my first flat white. From that point onward, I knew that this was an important drink and would be crucial to my success.

I began modestly, seeking out independent cafes and preferring them over chain stores. While Starbucks and their ilk get top marks for consistency across their stores, it really equates to nothing when it is consistently bad. I had a great time trying all sorts of coffee shops in Sydney and Melbourne and watching the artistry involved in making something worthwhile putting into my body. This became the standard by which I would judge all coffee: had enough care and attention to detail been taken to deem this something I would be willing to ingest?

After moving back to Vancouver, I learned that I was still a coffee amateur and, again, had the same experience of sourcing good local coffee shops to learn as much as I could by drinking as much good coffee as I could. Then I began to tinker a little bit with brewing my own. I started off with a simple over-the-cup Asian-style brewer, then a Turkish pot, then a fully automatic espresso machine. This latter was the first time I had been able to buy whole beans and it changed my life. I then went with french press and eventually Aeropress before I invested in a real manual espresso machine and a decent grinder. This is where I am today, happily adjusting my grind daily and learning the fine arts of tamping and frothing milk to try and emulate some of the better cups I’ve had over the years.

Now, to the title of this post, coffee’s role in my PhD. What I learned in my quest to drink and, eventually, make the best coffee is that the process and rituals involved are just as important as the end result. When I’m having a particularly bad time of doing academic work, I can always go and tinker with the various coffee devices I have acquired. There’s a soothing and a satisfaction involved in getting the grind just right or ensuring the water doesn’t boil over. Then, when all the grinding, tamping, boiling, frothing, and whatnot is over with, I go back to my work with a newfound sense of accomplishment and I actually feel better. I am not dependent on coffee or caffeine in the same way that those I describe above are. Rather, I am dependent on doing things right and actually enjoying the fruits of my labour. Coffee, and good coffee especially, is not a passive experience. I learned this somewhat abruptly and embarrassingly during a stop at a cafe in Victoria, BC on my way to catch a bus. I asked for a cortado to go. The barista refused. Confused I said, sarcastically, thinking this was a little game, “Please?” to which he replied: “No. If you want that you will have it in a glass, sit here, and drink it. Like an adult.” A little on the nose, I thought, but he was absolutely right. How could I even begin to enjoy the slightly sour milk taste and the richness of the nutty coffee in a paper cup running to catch a bus. Now, coffee is a relaxation technique for me. That guy’s pretentiousness solidified the fact that it’s okay to miss a bus every now and then.

*I wonder what Churchill would think of this bullshit nowadays.