Moon, Aldebaran, Pleiades on March 31

Tonight – March 31, 2017 – the waxing crescent moon shines in front of the constellation Taurus the Bull and near its two most prominent signposts: Aldebaran and the Pleiades star cluster. Look for these celestial gems at nightfall, in the vicinity of tonight’s moon.

As always, the moon travels eastward in front of the constellations of the zodiac at the rate of about 13^o per day or ½ degree per hour. For reference, your fist at an arm length approximates 10^o of sky, and the moon’s diameter spans about ½ degree. Relative to the backdrop stars, the moon travels its own diameter eastward per hour.

On the sky chart below, you can see the moon’s change of position relative to Aldebaran in just one day, from March 31 to April 1. The moon lies to the west of Aldebaran (in the direction of sunset) on March 31 yet to the east of Aldebaran on April 1.

Watch the waxing moon over the next few evenings as the moon moves past the star Aldebaran, the brightest in the constellation Taurus the Bull.

The charts on this post are especially designed for North America. Nonetheless, from most places worldwide, you’ll see the moon to the west of Aldebaran on March 31, and to the east of this star on April 1. But as darkness falls in the world’s far-eastern Eastern Hemisphere – Australia, New Zealand and eastern Asia – on April 1, the moon and Aldebaran will couple up breathtakingly close together on the first day of April 2017.

Starting tonight – on March 31, 2017 – watch the moon light up Taurus as it passes in front of the constellation of the Bull over the next several days.

from EarthSky http://ift.tt/2nD5mCD

Tonight – March 31, 2017 – the waxing crescent moon shines in front of the constellation Taurus the Bull and near its two most prominent signposts: Aldebaran and the Pleiades star cluster. Look for these celestial gems at nightfall, in the vicinity of tonight’s moon.

As always, the moon travels eastward in front of the constellations of the zodiac at the rate of about 13^o per day or ½ degree per hour. For reference, your fist at an arm length approximates 10^o of sky, and the moon’s diameter spans about ½ degree. Relative to the backdrop stars, the moon travels its own diameter eastward per hour.

On the sky chart below, you can see the moon’s change of position relative to Aldebaran in just one day, from March 31 to April 1. The moon lies to the west of Aldebaran (in the direction of sunset) on March 31 yet to the east of Aldebaran on April 1.

Watch the waxing moon over the next few evenings as the moon moves past the star Aldebaran, the brightest in the constellation Taurus the Bull.

The charts on this post are especially designed for North America. Nonetheless, from most places worldwide, you’ll see the moon to the west of Aldebaran on March 31, and to the east of this star on April 1. But as darkness falls in the world’s far-eastern Eastern Hemisphere – Australia, New Zealand and eastern Asia – on April 1, the moon and Aldebaran will couple up breathtakingly close together on the first day of April 2017.

Starting tonight – on March 31, 2017 – watch the moon light up Taurus as it passes in front of the constellation of the Bull over the next several days.

from EarthSky http://ift.tt/2nD5mCD

Favorite octopus videos

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If you give an octopus a camera
… she’s going to want to take a picture. An octopus at a New Zealand aquarium trains a camera on visiting tourists.

Octopus opens a jar, from the inside
More evidence that octopuses are amazing, from Japan’s Enoshima Aquarium.

Brainy octopus and its coconut
Watch what this octopus does with coconut shells. More on this story here.

How the octopus changes color
Incredible color-changing! How – and why – the octopus, squid, and cuttlefish change color.

Watch octopus squeeze through tiny hole
It’s just cool, that’s all. A 40-second video of an octopus squeezing through a tiny hole to escape a box.

Bottom line: 5 of EarthSky’s favorite octopus videos

from EarthSky http://ift.tt/2nD1tOn

Help EarthSky stay an independent voice! Donate now to help us keep going.

If you give an octopus a camera
… she’s going to want to take a picture. An octopus at a New Zealand aquarium trains a camera on visiting tourists.

Octopus opens a jar, from the inside
More evidence that octopuses are amazing, from Japan’s Enoshima Aquarium.

Brainy octopus and its coconut
Watch what this octopus does with coconut shells. More on this story here.

How the octopus changes color
Incredible color-changing! How – and why – the octopus, squid, and cuttlefish change color.

Watch octopus squeeze through tiny hole
It’s just cool, that’s all. A 40-second video of an octopus squeezing through a tiny hole to escape a box.

Bottom line: 5 of EarthSky’s favorite octopus videos

from EarthSky http://ift.tt/2nD1tOn

Friday Cephalopod: Reflections [Pharyngula]

Monterey Bay Aquarium

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/2oilmgG

Monterey Bay Aquarium

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/2oilmgG

Star of the week: Mimosa

Constellation Crux photo by Christopher J Picking in New Zealand. Beta Crucis, or Mimosa, is the second-brightest star in the Cross, on the left in this image. More information about this photo here. Used with permission

Help EarthSky stay an independent voice! Donate now to help EarthSky keep going …

So far to the south as to be unfamiliar to the ancient Greeks and Romans, this star was not given a name by the classical astronomers, although many today call it Mimosa. The star is formally known as Beta Crucis, the second-brightest star of the Southern Cross. It is sometimes also called Becrux by the same naming oddity as with Alpha Crucis (“Acrux”). German astronomer Johann Bayer (1572-1625) is said to have called it Mimosa. Bayer’s reasoning is unclear, but some have suggested that the name might also refer to this star’s blue-white color. Possibly it is reminiscent of the flowers of some members of a large family of tropical trees called mimosa, although most mimosa flowers are purple, red or yellow. Follow the links below to learn about Beta Crucis, aka Becrux or Mimosa, second-brightest star in the Southern Cross.

How to see Beta Crucis

History and mythology of Beta Crucis

Beta Crucis science

Crux, the Southern Cross

How to see Beta Crucis. Blue-white Mimosa (or Beta Crucis, or Becrux) is the 19th brightest star in all the heavens. It is the second-brightest star in the constellation Crux the (Southern) Cross. The Cross is a southern hemisphere constellation, and you will not see Mimosa north of 30 degrees north latitude. That is approximately north of a line that runs from St. Augustine, Florida to New Orleans and Austin. Other cities near this latitude include Cairo in Egypt and New Delhi in India. Southern hemisphere observers know and love Mimosa, though, and it is circumpolar for latitudes of about 30 degrees south and higher.

Recommended almanacs can help you find rising and setting time for the Southern Cross star Mimosa into your sky

A midnight culmination occurs when a star is roughly opposite the sun, and ensures that it will be above the horizon a maximum amount of time. This occurs for Mimosa on or about April 2 each year.

The nearer the observer is to the northern observation limit of about 30 degrees, the lower the star will climb into the sky and the shorter the time it will be visible. For example, from Austin, the star barely skirts the horizon for about a half hour at most. Likely it could not be seen at all due to the dimming affects of Earth’s atmosphere. From Miami it rises almost 5 degrees above the horizon and stays up more than 4 hours.

From northern hemisphere locations such as Hawaii, where Mimosa can be seen more easily, it rises in the late evening in late winter, far to the south-southeast and sets in the predawn hours to the south-southwest. By early June it rises before sundown and sets by midnight.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

History and mythology of Beta Crucis. Beta Crucis, or Mimosa, was essentially unknown in classical western mythology, as was the Southern Cross itself. Of course, these stars were well known to the Australian Aboriginal peoples as well as the Islanders of Polynesia and Southern Africa. In Australia, for example, one Aborigine story is that the stars of the Southern Cross are a reminder to the time and place where death first came to mankind. Two of the stars are the glowing eyes of the spirit of death, and the other two are the eyes of the first man to die.

The main stars of Crux including Mimosa, appear on the flags of both Australia and New Zealand, Mimosa appearing as the left side of the cross bar, and Acrux as the bottom of the Cross.

Image via onemoregoodadventure.com

Beta Crucis science. About 353 light-years from Earth, according to data obtained by the Hipparcos mission, Beta Crucis or Mimosa has a visual magnitude or 1.25. It is a giant (or subgiant) blue star, with a spectral classification of B0.5III (B0.5IV), more than 3,000 times brighter than our sun in visible light. However, Mimosa is blue and as such very hot (nearly 28,000 kelvins as estimated by Prof. James Kaler, or about 49,000 degrees F at the surface). Such high temperatures demand that much of the the star’s energy be radiated in ultraviolet and higher frequencies invisible to the human eye. When you take this into account, Mimosa is about 34,000 times more energetic than the sun, according to Kaler.

Mimosa is thought to have a radius about 8 times that of the sun, and a mass 14 times greater. However, these figures are not certain because it is also known that Mimosa has a small stellar companion about which little is known. Since all we can observe is the combined light of both, it is difficult to be precise on all details. The star also is a complex variable with three short periodicities in its light, which varies less than a 20th of a magnitude over several hours. Directly south is the Coal Sack, a distinctive dark nebulosity in the Milky Way, part of Crux.

Position of Mimosa (Beta Crucis) is RA: 12h 47m 44s, dec: -59° 41′ 19″.

Acrux is brightest star in Southern Cross

Southern Cross: Signpost of southern skies

from EarthSky http://ift.tt/1Fzs8Rg

Constellation Crux photo by Christopher J Picking in New Zealand. Beta Crucis, or Mimosa, is the second-brightest star in the Cross, on the left in this image. More information about this photo here. Used with permission

Help EarthSky stay an independent voice! Donate now to help EarthSky keep going …

So far to the south as to be unfamiliar to the ancient Greeks and Romans, this star was not given a name by the classical astronomers, although many today call it Mimosa. The star is formally known as Beta Crucis, the second-brightest star of the Southern Cross. It is sometimes also called Becrux by the same naming oddity as with Alpha Crucis (“Acrux”). German astronomer Johann Bayer (1572-1625) is said to have called it Mimosa. Bayer’s reasoning is unclear, but some have suggested that the name might also refer to this star’s blue-white color. Possibly it is reminiscent of the flowers of some members of a large family of tropical trees called mimosa, although most mimosa flowers are purple, red or yellow. Follow the links below to learn about Beta Crucis, aka Becrux or Mimosa, second-brightest star in the Southern Cross.

How to see Beta Crucis

History and mythology of Beta Crucis

Beta Crucis science

Crux, the Southern Cross

How to see Beta Crucis. Blue-white Mimosa (or Beta Crucis, or Becrux) is the 19th brightest star in all the heavens. It is the second-brightest star in the constellation Crux the (Southern) Cross. The Cross is a southern hemisphere constellation, and you will not see Mimosa north of 30 degrees north latitude. That is approximately north of a line that runs from St. Augustine, Florida to New Orleans and Austin. Other cities near this latitude include Cairo in Egypt and New Delhi in India. Southern hemisphere observers know and love Mimosa, though, and it is circumpolar for latitudes of about 30 degrees south and higher.

Recommended almanacs can help you find rising and setting time for the Southern Cross star Mimosa into your sky

A midnight culmination occurs when a star is roughly opposite the sun, and ensures that it will be above the horizon a maximum amount of time. This occurs for Mimosa on or about April 2 each year.

The nearer the observer is to the northern observation limit of about 30 degrees, the lower the star will climb into the sky and the shorter the time it will be visible. For example, from Austin, the star barely skirts the horizon for about a half hour at most. Likely it could not be seen at all due to the dimming affects of Earth’s atmosphere. From Miami it rises almost 5 degrees above the horizon and stays up more than 4 hours.

From northern hemisphere locations such as Hawaii, where Mimosa can be seen more easily, it rises in the late evening in late winter, far to the south-southeast and sets in the predawn hours to the south-southwest. By early June it rises before sundown and sets by midnight.

Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons

History and mythology of Beta Crucis. Beta Crucis, or Mimosa, was essentially unknown in classical western mythology, as was the Southern Cross itself. Of course, these stars were well known to the Australian Aboriginal peoples as well as the Islanders of Polynesia and Southern Africa. In Australia, for example, one Aborigine story is that the stars of the Southern Cross are a reminder to the time and place where death first came to mankind. Two of the stars are the glowing eyes of the spirit of death, and the other two are the eyes of the first man to die.

The main stars of Crux including Mimosa, appear on the flags of both Australia and New Zealand, Mimosa appearing as the left side of the cross bar, and Acrux as the bottom of the Cross.

Image via onemoregoodadventure.com

Beta Crucis science. About 353 light-years from Earth, according to data obtained by the Hipparcos mission, Beta Crucis or Mimosa has a visual magnitude or 1.25. It is a giant (or subgiant) blue star, with a spectral classification of B0.5III (B0.5IV), more than 3,000 times brighter than our sun in visible light. However, Mimosa is blue and as such very hot (nearly 28,000 kelvins as estimated by Prof. James Kaler, or about 49,000 degrees F at the surface). Such high temperatures demand that much of the the star’s energy be radiated in ultraviolet and higher frequencies invisible to the human eye. When you take this into account, Mimosa is about 34,000 times more energetic than the sun, according to Kaler.

Mimosa is thought to have a radius about 8 times that of the sun, and a mass 14 times greater. However, these figures are not certain because it is also known that Mimosa has a small stellar companion about which little is known. Since all we can observe is the combined light of both, it is difficult to be precise on all details. The star also is a complex variable with three short periodicities in its light, which varies less than a 20th of a magnitude over several hours. Directly south is the Coal Sack, a distinctive dark nebulosity in the Milky Way, part of Crux.

Position of Mimosa (Beta Crucis) is RA: 12h 47m 44s, dec: -59° 41′ 19″.

Acrux is brightest star in Southern Cross

Southern Cross: Signpost of southern skies

from EarthSky http://ift.tt/1Fzs8Rg

Senate urges Surgeon General to warn Americans about asbestos [The Pump Handle]

The U.S. Senate passed a resolution last night urging Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy to warn the public about the risk of asbestos exposure. The deadly mineral continues to be imported to the U.S.  S. Res. 98 designates the first week of April as “National Asbestos Awareness Week.” The Senator note that the U.S. continues to use tons of asbestos every year despite the following facts which the resolution acknowledges:

• Thousands of workers in the U.S. face significant asbestos exposure
• Thousands of people in the U.S. die from asbestos-related diseases every year

The  U.S. Geological Survey estimates that 340 tons of asbestos was used last year by the chlor-alkali industry for the production of chlorine and sodium hydroxide.

S. Res. 98 is particularly timely this year as the EPA implements amendments to the Toxic Substances Control Act.  Earlier this month, the agency received scores of comments in response to the agency’s inquiry about worker groups and communities who are exposed to asbestos. Brent Kynoch with the Environmental Information Association noted in his comments to EPA, that known and potentially exposed individuals include firefighters, auto mechanics, building maintenance, school custodians and teachers, utility workers, and individuals working in chlor-alkali facilities. The Environmental Defense Fund reported the ease at which it purchased asbestos-containing brake shoes. Others reminded EPA on the necessity of examining the risk of exposure to asbestos from the time it is mined, processed, transported, to when it is used and disposed.

On learning of the passage of S. Res. 98, Linda Reinstein who co-founded the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization (ADAO), said

“We are enormously thankful to Senator Tester, Resolution co-sponsors, and the entire Senate for unanimously passing the resolution. …Now, more than ever, it’s crucial to raise asbestos awareness to ensure the American public understands that this is not an issue of the past.”

Reinstein’s husband Alan, 66, died from pleural mesothelioma. She points to new data from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health CDC showing a continued rise in asbestos-related deaths, including those from malignant mesothelioma among young individuals (i.e., ages 25-44.)

Next week, Hassan Yussuff, the president of the Canadian Labour Congress will be speaking in Washington, DC at ADAO’s annual conference. Yussuff was exposed to asbestos while working years ago as a mechanic. Along with other trade unionists, community groups, and public health allies, Yussuff worked with Canada’s Trudeau government to secure a ban on asbestos. It will take effect in 2018.

The U.S. has quite a way to go to catch up with Canada and the 58 countries that have already banned asbestos. Our Senate is simply urging the Surgeon General “to warn and educate people about the public health issue of asbestos exposure, which may be hazardous to their health.” May be hazardous?  Like I said, we have a long way to go.

The Senate is calling on the Surgeon General to issue a warning about asbestos. How strong Dr. Murthy makes it—including urging EPA to ban it—-is up to him.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/2nAfAUF

The U.S. Senate passed a resolution last night urging Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy to warn the public about the risk of asbestos exposure. The deadly mineral continues to be imported to the U.S.  S. Res. 98 designates the first week of April as “National Asbestos Awareness Week.” The Senator note that the U.S. continues to use tons of asbestos every year despite the following facts which the resolution acknowledges:

• Thousands of workers in the U.S. face significant asbestos exposure
• Thousands of people in the U.S. die from asbestos-related diseases every year

The  U.S. Geological Survey estimates that 340 tons of asbestos was used last year by the chlor-alkali industry for the production of chlorine and sodium hydroxide.

S. Res. 98 is particularly timely this year as the EPA implements amendments to the Toxic Substances Control Act.  Earlier this month, the agency received scores of comments in response to the agency’s inquiry about worker groups and communities who are exposed to asbestos. Brent Kynoch with the Environmental Information Association noted in his comments to EPA, that known and potentially exposed individuals include firefighters, auto mechanics, building maintenance, school custodians and teachers, utility workers, and individuals working in chlor-alkali facilities. The Environmental Defense Fund reported the ease at which it purchased asbestos-containing brake shoes. Others reminded EPA on the necessity of examining the risk of exposure to asbestos from the time it is mined, processed, transported, to when it is used and disposed.

On learning of the passage of S. Res. 98, Linda Reinstein who co-founded the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization (ADAO), said

“We are enormously thankful to Senator Tester, Resolution co-sponsors, and the entire Senate for unanimously passing the resolution. …Now, more than ever, it’s crucial to raise asbestos awareness to ensure the American public understands that this is not an issue of the past.”

Reinstein’s husband Alan, 66, died from pleural mesothelioma. She points to new data from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health CDC showing a continued rise in asbestos-related deaths, including those from malignant mesothelioma among young individuals (i.e., ages 25-44.)

Next week, Hassan Yussuff, the president of the Canadian Labour Congress will be speaking in Washington, DC at ADAO’s annual conference. Yussuff was exposed to asbestos while working years ago as a mechanic. Along with other trade unionists, community groups, and public health allies, Yussuff worked with Canada’s Trudeau government to secure a ban on asbestos. It will take effect in 2018.

The U.S. has quite a way to go to catch up with Canada and the 58 countries that have already banned asbestos. Our Senate is simply urging the Surgeon General “to warn and educate people about the public health issue of asbestos exposure, which may be hazardous to their health.” May be hazardous?  Like I said, we have a long way to go.

The Senate is calling on the Surgeon General to issue a warning about asbestos. How strong Dr. Murthy makes it—including urging EPA to ban it—-is up to him.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/2nAfAUF

5 Vital Lessons Scientists Learn That Can Better Everyone’s Life (Synopsis) [Starts With A Bang]

“I much prefer the sharpest criticism of a single intelligent man to the thoughtless approval of the masses.” -Johannes Kepler

There are a lot of myths we have in our society about how the greatest of all scientific advances happened. We think about a lone genius, working outside the constraints of mainstream academia or mainstream thinking, working on something no one else works on. That hasn’t ever really been true, and yet there are actual lessons – valuable ones – to be learned from observing the greatest of all scientists throughout history.

The gravitational behavior of the Earth around the Sun is not due to an invisible gravitational pull, but is better described by the Earth falling freely through curved space dominated by the Sun. Image credit: LIGO / T. Pyle.

The greatest breakthroughs can only happen in the context of what’s already been discovered, and in that sense, our scientific knowledge base and our best new theories are a reflection of the very human endeavor of science. When Newton claimed he was standing on the shoulders of giants, it may have been his most brilliant realization of all, and it’s never been more true today.

Kepler’s Platonic solid model of the Solar system from Mysterium Cosmographicum (1596). Image credit: Johannes Kepler.

Come learn these five vital lessons for yourself, and see if you can’t find some way to have them apply to your life!

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/2okZAWv

“I much prefer the sharpest criticism of a single intelligent man to the thoughtless approval of the masses.” -Johannes Kepler

There are a lot of myths we have in our society about how the greatest of all scientific advances happened. We think about a lone genius, working outside the constraints of mainstream academia or mainstream thinking, working on something no one else works on. That hasn’t ever really been true, and yet there are actual lessons – valuable ones – to be learned from observing the greatest of all scientists throughout history.

The gravitational behavior of the Earth around the Sun is not due to an invisible gravitational pull, but is better described by the Earth falling freely through curved space dominated by the Sun. Image credit: LIGO / T. Pyle.

The greatest breakthroughs can only happen in the context of what’s already been discovered, and in that sense, our scientific knowledge base and our best new theories are a reflection of the very human endeavor of science. When Newton claimed he was standing on the shoulders of giants, it may have been his most brilliant realization of all, and it’s never been more true today.

Kepler’s Platonic solid model of the Solar system from Mysterium Cosmographicum (1596). Image credit: Johannes Kepler.

Come learn these five vital lessons for yourself, and see if you can’t find some way to have them apply to your life!

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/2okZAWv

Priority Expectations and Student-Faculty Conflict [Uncertain Principles]

There was a kerfuffle in academic social media a bit earlier this week, kicked off by an anonymous Twitter feed dedicated to complaints about students (which I won’t link to, as it’s one of those stunt feeds that’s mostly an exercise in maximizing clicks by maximizing dickishness). This triggered a bunch of sweeping declarations about the surpassing awfulness of all faculty who have ever thought poorly of a student (which I’m also not going to link, because they were mostly on Twitter and are now even more annoying to find than they were to read). It was a great week for muttered paraphrases of Mercutio’s death speech, in other words.

These opposite extremes are sort of interesting, though, in that they both spring from the exact same core problem, namely that each side of the faculty-student relationship thinks they should be the other’s top priority, and are annoyed when they’re not.

Faculty complaints about students missing class, not handing in work, etc. in the end trace back to the feeling that class work– and specifically their class work– ought to be the single highest priority for students in that class. I realized this a few years back, when I had a horrible experience with a couple of pre-med physics classes, who were infuriating even by the standards of pre-med physics classes. What I found most maddening about this particular group was that they didn’t even try to hide the fact that my class was their lowest priority. It wasn’t just the constant requests that I adjust my due dates to work around the organic chemistry class running the same term– those are a constant with the pre-med crowd. This particular group would come to a physics recitation section in a first-floor classroom that ended ten minutes before my lab on the third floor, then leave the building to go get coffee in the campus center, and roll into lab 10-15 minutes late. The colleague who taught the recitation section was usually back in his office down the hall well before the students in the class he’d just finished teaching would stroll by on their way to lab.

(I eventually lost my temper with them, and started locking the door at the beginning of the period, only letting them in after I finished the pre-lab lecture to the students who cared enough to arrive on time. This… did not end well.)

On the student side, a lot of the complaints about faculty practices and policies boil down to the same thing in reverse– the idea that faculty need to have the needs and wants of individual students in their class as their absolute top priority. One of the most common complaints about faculty is that they’re “not available enough” and “too slow returning graded work,” both of which implicitly assume that the faculty don’t have anything else to do that’s more important than grading papers and waiting for student questions. That’s not remotely accurate, even if we restrict the scope of activities to professional duties alone, leaving out personal and family concerns. There are research papers to be written or re-written, grant proposals with hard deadlines, committee and department service tasks, and lots of other things that take faculty away from working on that specific class.

And a lot of things that seem like perfectly reasonable requests from an individual student perspective have very real costs for faculty, and for other students in the class. I’m pretty flexible about due dates and the like, but I can’t wait on one student’s homework indefinitely, no matter how good their reason for needing extra time, because it harms the other students in the class. My general practice is to make solutions available to the class as a study aid, and I can’t do that until I have all the homework that’s going to be graded.

Are there faculty whose draconian policies are an unfair imposition on students? I think so, yes. Are there students who feel entitled to excessive deference? Absolutely. (The go-get-coffee-and-come-to-lab-late thing was beyond the pale…) For the most part, though, everybody has priorities they’re trying to balance, and we’re all doing the best we can.

It’s important for both faculty and students to recognize that members of the other group are people trying to balance multiple competing priorities as best they can. Students who really like the class and want to do well can end up having to give other courses, other activities, or their personal well-being a higher priority for part (even most) of the term. And faculty who want to do right by their students can nevertheless have any number of valid reasons for drawing a line and saying “I can do this much, and no more.”

We all want our thing to be everybody else’s top priority, that’s just human nature. It’s not always going to work out that way, though, and recognizing that is the key to avoiding a lot of needless conflict.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/2ocuHWN

There was a kerfuffle in academic social media a bit earlier this week, kicked off by an anonymous Twitter feed dedicated to complaints about students (which I won’t link to, as it’s one of those stunt feeds that’s mostly an exercise in maximizing clicks by maximizing dickishness). This triggered a bunch of sweeping declarations about the surpassing awfulness of all faculty who have ever thought poorly of a student (which I’m also not going to link, because they were mostly on Twitter and are now even more annoying to find than they were to read). It was a great week for muttered paraphrases of Mercutio’s death speech, in other words.

These opposite extremes are sort of interesting, though, in that they both spring from the exact same core problem, namely that each side of the faculty-student relationship thinks they should be the other’s top priority, and are annoyed when they’re not.

Faculty complaints about students missing class, not handing in work, etc. in the end trace back to the feeling that class work– and specifically their class work– ought to be the single highest priority for students in that class. I realized this a few years back, when I had a horrible experience with a couple of pre-med physics classes, who were infuriating even by the standards of pre-med physics classes. What I found most maddening about this particular group was that they didn’t even try to hide the fact that my class was their lowest priority. It wasn’t just the constant requests that I adjust my due dates to work around the organic chemistry class running the same term– those are a constant with the pre-med crowd. This particular group would come to a physics recitation section in a first-floor classroom that ended ten minutes before my lab on the third floor, then leave the building to go get coffee in the campus center, and roll into lab 10-15 minutes late. The colleague who taught the recitation section was usually back in his office down the hall well before the students in the class he’d just finished teaching would stroll by on their way to lab.

(I eventually lost my temper with them, and started locking the door at the beginning of the period, only letting them in after I finished the pre-lab lecture to the students who cared enough to arrive on time. This… did not end well.)

On the student side, a lot of the complaints about faculty practices and policies boil down to the same thing in reverse– the idea that faculty need to have the needs and wants of individual students in their class as their absolute top priority. One of the most common complaints about faculty is that they’re “not available enough” and “too slow returning graded work,” both of which implicitly assume that the faculty don’t have anything else to do that’s more important than grading papers and waiting for student questions. That’s not remotely accurate, even if we restrict the scope of activities to professional duties alone, leaving out personal and family concerns. There are research papers to be written or re-written, grant proposals with hard deadlines, committee and department service tasks, and lots of other things that take faculty away from working on that specific class.

And a lot of things that seem like perfectly reasonable requests from an individual student perspective have very real costs for faculty, and for other students in the class. I’m pretty flexible about due dates and the like, but I can’t wait on one student’s homework indefinitely, no matter how good their reason for needing extra time, because it harms the other students in the class. My general practice is to make solutions available to the class as a study aid, and I can’t do that until I have all the homework that’s going to be graded.

Are there faculty whose draconian policies are an unfair imposition on students? I think so, yes. Are there students who feel entitled to excessive deference? Absolutely. (The go-get-coffee-and-come-to-lab-late thing was beyond the pale…) For the most part, though, everybody has priorities they’re trying to balance, and we’re all doing the best we can.

It’s important for both faculty and students to recognize that members of the other group are people trying to balance multiple competing priorities as best they can. Students who really like the class and want to do well can end up having to give other courses, other activities, or their personal well-being a higher priority for part (even most) of the term. And faculty who want to do right by their students can nevertheless have any number of valid reasons for drawing a line and saying “I can do this much, and no more.”

We all want our thing to be everybody else’s top priority, that’s just human nature. It’s not always going to work out that way, though, and recognizing that is the key to avoiding a lot of needless conflict.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/2ocuHWN