Why research professors? Part 1

I'm in a bit of a reactive mood. Over on my more public-oriented blog, I recently posted about one of the big reason we should be suspicious about US allegations against Syria. Here, though, I want to react to an article from Inside Higher Ed, that suggested adjuncts teach better than tenure-line faculty. (The article was passed on by my collaborator, Nicholas Rowland, through the organizational theory blog he is part of, and the original can be found here.) Alright, enough of a lead-in...

Some adjuncts certainly teach better than most tenure-line faculty members, but any research into who is better overall needs to be viewed with suspicion due to two potentially big sources of confusion. The first source of confusion is caused by the way adjuncting has shifted from a part-time job that is a totally legitimate, but tiny, part of most colleges' teaching rosters, to a full-time job that is a possibly illegitimate, and large, part of many colleges' teaching rosters. That is an issue for later discussion. The second source of confusion is that few people seem to understand why we might want to have researchers in teaching roles. This is the confusion I want to talk about, though it is too big to tackle in a single post, so I will only talk about it in the context of the recent article.

Getting back in the swing of things

Updates this summer have been a bit sporadic, in part because I have been switching jobs. While I don't normally want to post "personal" things in this space, this particular change is obviously professionally relevant. 

I am now working in the Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning (CTRL) at American University in Washington, DC. We are focused on supporting faculty and graduate students across the range of disciplines at the University. I am in the "Research" part of the center, and have responsibilities including running a computer lab stocked with the latest research software, (including overseeing the twelve graduate student consultants who act as front-line help) and developing a better working relationship between CTRL and the Office of Sponsored Programs (including much work related to grant development). There will also be many consultations regarding ongoing research projects, which I really enjoy. To cap things off, Terry Davidson has generously arranged an affiliation with his Center for Behavioral Neuroscience. Thus, while I am not yet in a position to have my own graduate students, I am now in a position to work closely with several of them.

The DC location also puts me closer to a group of pragmatist philosophers that I have been hoping to work with more closely, and provides countless other exciting opportunities.

A few people have asked if it is a "good" job, and I'm not quite sure how to respond. I wouldn't have taken it if it was bad. I guess what those inquirers are looking for is something like this:

It was definitely the right move for my family, and I am fairly confident it was a good move for my career. CTRL was very excited to offer me the job, and the position gives me the opportunity to develop skills I have long-wanted to develop, at a vibrant university, with a good set of co-workers. When they offered, I was happy to accept.

I have many things to catch up on here on the blog, and now that the semester is starting, I will get back into the routine of posting at least once a week. Many thanks to those who have not abandoned my blog during these inconsistent times.

Expect my contact information on various pages to start updating slowly. Oh, and if you are one of my many readers in the Maryland, DC, or Virginia areas, and you want to chat some time, let me know.

APA Convention - Society for General Psychology

As I mentioned in a prior post, while I'm not a big fan of the main APA convention, I am a big fan of the APA Shadow Convention (© Charles 2012). This year I am in charge of the hospitality suite run by The Society for General Psychology (APA Division 1). We are co-hosting a number of events with The Society for Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology (Division 24) and The Society for the History of Psychology (Division 26). It is a pretty fun program, with some experiments thrown in (Post-symposium discussions, a Speed Scholars Event, etc.) as well as a lot of social activities. There is also the two-hour "Unifying Psychology" Lunch I mentioned in the last post, featuring several authors from this month's special issue. I'll do my best to get the program cut and pasted below. Hope to see some of you in Hawaii!

Unifying Psychology - RGP and APA

This month's issue of the Review of General Psychology is a special issue on Unifying Approaches to Psychology. I highly recommend it! The issue features 19 brief statements that move us towards a more unified field. Most importantly, the articles are not speculative pipe dreams; they are introductions to already existing and already productive interdisciplinary approaches also, later this week at the APA convention in Hawaii several of the authors, and anyone else who is interested, will be getting together in the Division 1 Hospitality Suite for a two-hour luncheon to discuss next-steps now that the issue is out (Friday August 2nd, from noon to 2). The ever-brilliant Daniel Hutto has generously offered to serve as host. The table of contents is:

Psychological Realism and Poker

During my post-doctoral years I played poker very seriously. For a while, my poker library grew much faster than my psychology library, and I became a profitable mid-level player. I have played very little since my post-doc ended, but I think the experience was valuable. For one thing, the mathematics of poker is fascinating, and I still nurture a hope of one day teaching a "Statistics of Poker" seminar. For another thing, I think poker provides an excellent context for thinking through theories of psychology. On the surface, poker seems like it is a game about cards, and on the surface it is. However, you don't need to get much below surface-level to see that poker is primarily a game about the behavior of the other players. The player on your right just put in a big bet: Does he have a big hand? Is he bluffing? What does he think you have, and how does he think you will respond? Given what he might have and what he thinks you might have, if you put in a huge re-reraise, how will he respond? The layers of analysis that can be applied to these situations is fun, but not really on topic for this post (though I talked a little about it here). Instead, I want to delve into a very typical poker situation from the point of view of a psychological realist vs. a dualist.

Note that this is a preliminary analysis that I hope to develop further, and I would love any feedback. 

What do we know for sure about the brain

If I was going to list everything we knew for sure about the brain, it would be a very, very long list. Instead of trying to do that, I am going to focus on things we know relevant to my last post, which was quite negative about the new "brain mapping" initiative, and which generated a lot of criticism
(http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/fixing-psychology/201304/why-brain-mapping-is-stupid-idea). The title of the post then, should maybe be less “What do we know about the brain?” and more “What are some first principles we can use to understand how the brain operates?”

Why the Brain Mapping project is a Stupid Idea

It was just announced that President Obama wants to start spending one hundred million dollars to "map the brain", and that his oft-times rival Eric Cantor thinks it’s a great idea. But it is a terrible idea, because I can tell you, right now, about half of the big lessons they will learn. Plus, for about a million dollars, I could probably gather a group of experts together to tell you about half of what remains. I'm not sure what, exactly, would be left after that, but I'm sure it would be comparatively cheap to figure out.