Re: [ECOLOG-L] UC-Berkeley and other 'public Iv ies'in fiscal peril
One thing that would help satisfy my curiosity would be to see two pie-charts showing where college fees go (or went), one for the early seventies and one for today. How much of the room/board/tuition goes to professors' salaries, administrators' salaries, non-teaching professionals' salaries, to janitors and buildings-and-grounds workers' salaries, etc. How much goes to new construction, to maintenance, to grounds keeping, to pensions, to fund raising, to compliance, to research, to scholarships, etc. Does anyone have the data that would go into making these pie charts? What shifts would we see? From what I've read in the previous posts on this thread, we might see increases of the pie slivers representing compliance, professors' salaries, administrators' salaries, and scholarships. Which pie slices will have gotten smaller to fund these increases? Martin M. Meiss 2011/12/29 Dawn Stover dsto...@hughes.net My experience is similar to Martin's, and I inquired about the high cost at my last college reunion. I was told that the reason the price tag is so high is because many students who have the academic credentials to qualify for acceptance come from lower-income backgrounds than in earlier times. The college wants to admit those students to maintain diversity within the student body, so they give them financial aid and subsidize it by raising the price for students who can afford to pay full freight. When you're calculating the cost of a college education, you have to consider how many students at that college are receiving financial aid, and how much they receive on average. At my alma mater, few students are paying the full price. If they come from a middle-class or low-income family, they typically receive financial-aid packages that can include grants, loans, and on-campus jobs. One thing that has changed is that many liberal arts colleges no longer can afford to admit 100 percent of their students on a need-blind basis (i.e. based on their academic credentials alone). Now many private, liberal arts colleges admit a small (but growing) percentage of students who are slightly less qualified than needier applicants but have the ability to pay the full price. Dawn Stover On Dec 28, 2011, at 10:05 AM, Martin Meiss wrote: Hi, Rick, I don't think the answer is that simple. I went to a small, private, liberal arts college from 1970 through 1974 and it cost my father about $3,000 per year for room, board, and tuition. Now it would cost about $42,000, about a 14-fold increase. Inflation, which I'm guessing has been about three-fold since then, obviously only accounts for a small part of that, and since it is a private school, declining government subsidies are not the reason. The professors haven't all become millionaires. The campus hasn't been plated with gold. The students aren't getting an education that is ten times better than what I got. This is a general trend, not just a phenomenon of my alma mater, and I really do want to know what the hell is going on. My father had a bachelor's degree, and my annual college costs were about on fifth of his annual income. I have a PhD and the costs for my kids would be well over half of my annual income. Can someone out there tell my why higher education is becoming something only for the rich? Martin M. Meiss 2011/12/28 Rick Lindroth lindr...@wisc.edu The answer is simple and (nearly) universal: states' support for higher education has declined precipitously over recent decades, especially in recent years. In essence, states are transfering the financial burden of higher education from the general public to individuals (students and parents). Although tuition increases have been high, they cannot close the gap; hence the fiscal peril that public research institutions now find themselves in. ___ Richard L. Lindroth, Ph.D. Professor of Ecology, Associate Dean for Research, and Associate Director of the Agricultural Experiment Station University of Wisconsin-Madison Madison, WI 53706 U.S.A. -Original Message- From: Ecological Society of America: grants, jobs, news [mailto: ECOLOG- l...@listserv.umd.edu] On Behalf Of Paul Cherubini Sent: Tuesday, December 27, 2011 6:29 PM To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] UC-Berkeley and other 'public Iv ies'in fiscal peril The University of California at Berkeley subsists now in perpetual austerity. Star faculty take mandatory furloughs. Classes grow perceptibly larger each year. Roofs leak; e-mail crashes. One employee mows the entire campus. Wastebaskets are emptied once a week. Some professors lack telephones. If all of the above is true, then can someone please explain why for 20+ years the annual increase in the cost of college tuition has far outpaced the consumer price index, heath
Re: [ECOLOG-L] UC-Berkeley and other 'public Iv ies' in fiscal peril
Things we are doing now that seem to cost a lot of money are things like the waste on accreditation. Waste on politically correct courses and curricula. Waste on unnecessary administration to cover every little contingency that could come up and unnecessary waste on useless fixed assets like Greek columns, marble foyers and garbage cans made from tropical hardwoods. The real kicker to this, IMHO, is we spend less on assets allocated towards education itself, like say vans for field trips, lab assistants (not grad students) for teaching situations and specialty fixed assets for basic and meaningful courses like say organic chemistry and ecology. Rob Hamilton -Original Message- From: Ecological Society of America: grants, jobs, news on behalf of Paul Cherubini Sent: Tue 12/27/2011 7:29 PM To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] UC-Berkeley and other 'public Iv ies' in fiscal peril The University of California at Berkeley subsists now in perpetual austerity. Star faculty take mandatory furloughs. Classes grow perceptibly larger each year. Roofs leak; e-mail crashes. One employee mows the entire campus. Wastebaskets are emptied once a week. Some professors lack telephones. If all of the above is true, then can someone please explain why for 20+ years the annual increase in the cost of college tuition has far outpaced the consumer price index, heath care, energy costs, etc. http://www.nas.org/polArticles.cfm?doc_id=1450 http://tinyurl.com/6xq6hv Paul Cherubini El Dorado, Calif.
Re: [ECOLOG-L] UC-Berkeley and other 'public Iv ies'in fiscal peril
Whether prestigious private universities, private liberal arts colleges, public ivies like UC Berkeley and UT Austin, state universities, or state colleges, I do not accept that increases in professor's salaries have increased at the expense of other expenditures. An assistant professor in a state university in Texas in 1970 might have started his or her career at $15k per nine months. Today that might be $50k or $60k, or 3-4 times as much. At the major national universities in Texas the amounts would be higher, but the proportion holds. Tuition in Texas state universities has increased from $50 per full load semester to $5k or $6K over the same period. In this instance, it is unwillingness of the public to foot the bill for public education. Somehow, we have stopped believing that an educated citizenry is a benefit to the nation, and have started considering an education to be a commodity of benefit only to the consumer (the student). One candidate for president,! from Texas, has forcefully and loudly successfully argued that higher education is not worth the state spending money on. mcneely Martin Meiss mme...@gmail.com wrote: One thing that would help satisfy my curiosity would be to see two pie-charts showing where college fees go (or went), one for the early seventies and one for today. How much of the room/board/tuition goes to professors' salaries, administrators' salaries, non-teaching professionals' salaries, to janitors and buildings-and-grounds workers' salaries, etc. How much goes to new construction, to maintenance, to grounds keeping, to pensions, to fund raising, to compliance, to research, to scholarships, etc. Does anyone have the data that would go into making these pie charts? What shifts would we see? From what I've read in the previous posts on this thread, we might see increases of the pie slivers representing compliance, professors' salaries, administrators' salaries, and scholarships. Which pie slices will have gotten smaller to fund these increases? Martin M. Meiss 2011/12/29 Dawn Stover dsto...@hughes.net My experience is similar to Martin's, and I inquired about the high cost at my last college reunion. I was told that the reason the price tag is so high is because many students who have the academic credentials to qualify for acceptance come from lower-income backgrounds than in earlier times. The college wants to admit those students to maintain diversity within the student body, so they give them financial aid and subsidize it by raising the price for students who can afford to pay full freight. When you're calculating the cost of a college education, you have to consider how many students at that college are receiving financial aid, and how much they receive on average. At my alma mater, few students are paying the full price. If they come from a middle-class or low-income family, they typically receive financial-aid packages that can include grants, loans, and on-campus jobs. One thing that has changed is that many liberal arts colleges no longer can afford to admit 100 percent of their students on a need-blind basis (i.e. based on their academic credentials alone). Now many private, liberal arts colleges admit a small (but growing) percentage of students who are slightly less qualified than needier applicants but have the ability to pay the full price. Dawn Stover On Dec 28, 2011, at 10:05 AM, Martin Meiss wrote: Hi, Rick, I don't think the answer is that simple. I went to a small, private, liberal arts college from 1970 through 1974 and it cost my father about $3,000 per year for room, board, and tuition. Now it would cost about $42,000, about a 14-fold increase. Inflation, which I'm guessing has been about three-fold since then, obviously only accounts for a small part of that, and since it is a private school, declining government subsidies are not the reason. The professors haven't all become millionaires. The campus hasn't been plated with gold. The students aren't getting an education that is ten times better than what I got. This is a general trend, not just a phenomenon of my alma mater, and I really do want to know what the hell is going on. My father had a bachelor's degree, and my annual college costs were about on fifth of his annual income. I have a PhD and the costs for my kids would be well over half of my annual income. Can someone out there tell my why higher education is becoming something only for the rich? Martin M. Meiss 2011/12/28 Rick Lindroth lindr...@wisc.edu The answer is simple and (nearly) universal: states' support for higher education has declined precipitously over recent decades, especially in recent years. In essence, states are transfering the financial burden of higher education from the general public to individuals (students
[ECOLOG-L] Ideas in Ecology and Evolution - Vol. 4
Volume 4 (2011) of Ideas in Ecology and Evolution is now complete (http://library.queensu.ca/ojs/index.php/IEE), including year-end editorials from four of our Advisory Editors. Ideas in Ecology and Evolution publishes short forum-style articles that develop new ideas or that involve original commentaries on any topics within the broad domains of fundamental or applied ecology or evolution. They may encompass any level of biological organization, and involve any taxa, including humans. Articles may concern subject matter within any recognized sub-discipline of ecology or evolution, or they may be broader in scope, including articles that aim to inform fields of study outside of biology. All articles are joined by a conceptual foundation in the core principles of ecology and evolution studied by biologists. -- Lonnie W. Aarssen -- Professor Department of Biology Queen's University Kingston, ON Canada, K7L 3N6 Editor Ideas in Ecology and Evolution http://library.queensu.ca/ojs/index.php/IEE -- Campus office: Room 4326, Biosciences Complex Email: aarss...@queensu.ca Web:http://post.queensu.ca/~aarssenl/ Tel:613-533-6133 Fax:613-533-6617
Re: [ECOLOG-L] e-field guides - South America
Good afternoon, After recieving several replies asking to share my findings, here is a brief summary: http://fm2.fieldmuseum.org/plantguides/rcg_intro.asp http://wikiaves.com.br/ The onlyone I found to be specially desgned was: Birdguides limited - Birds of brazil. Available on itunes store for 12.99$. This covers around 1800 bird species. As you can see not much available. Although this are ok, its still very limited info, I'm thinking it would be a great idea to develop more guides (electronic) for mobile. I'll let you know if I find addittional information, or if anyone is interested we could develope a project to build this apps in the future. Regars and have a great new year! Felipe Ramirez Biologist fjr...@gmail.com On Sat, Dec 10, 2011 at 7:57 PM, Felipe Ramirez fjr...@gmail.com wrote: Good Afternoon. I recently moved to Chile and I'm courious if anybody could recomend some good field guide aplications for ipad/iphone. I have seen app like this, for North America, specially birdwatching app, and they have worked quite good! Appreciate any recommendations. Regards, Felipe Ramirez Biologist fjr...@gmail.com
[ECOLOG-L] graduate research assistantship in soil microbial ecology available in UNL
Dear Ecolog-L, please help to post or send around this announcement: The Soil Microbial Ecology Group at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln is seeking a highly motivated M.S. or Ph.D. student to further our understanding of the arbuscular mycorrhizal symbiosis to the phosphorus nutrition of maize and soybean grown at high yield. To complement our current field research, the student will develop greenhouse based trials to address specific hypotheses related to plant P transporter activity under various abiotic stressors of relevance to high yielding agricultural systems in the face of climate change. Applicants require a BS degree or MS degree in biology, biochemistry, soil science, agronomy or related discipline. Preference will be given to students with a strong biochemistry/molecular biology background. Interested parties should send a statement of research interest, resume, unofficial transcripts 3 references via email to Dr. Rhae Drijber, Department of Agronomy Horticulture, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE 68583-0915. rdrijb...@unl.edu, 402-472-0770. Selected applicants will be contacted to submit a formal application. Qualifications: B.S. or M.S. degree with appropriate academic credentials. The qualifying degree must be completed before the GRA start date. Current Stipend: Graduate Research Assistantship Stipend: M.S. Student: Annual Basis - $21,492Monthly Basis - $1,791 Ph.D. Student: Annual Basis - $23,148Monthly Basis - $1,929 Tuition Waiver: A tuition waiver of up to 12 credit hours per semester and 12 credit hours during summer sessions is provided with the GRA.. Health Insurance: Students on assistantships are provided health insurance at a reduced rate. GRA Availability: M.S. or Ph.D. Application: Formal application (including GRE) for graduate studies is required. Follow the admission instructions at: http://www.unl.edu/gradstudies/(Note: The official transcripts must be forwarded directly to the on-line address, but the three letters of recommendation should be sent to the below address. Graduate Chair Department of Agronomy Horticulture University of Nebraska-Lincoln PO Box 830914 Lincoln, NE 68583-0914 Phone: 402-472-1560 FAX:402-472-7904 E-Mail: agro_hort_gradch...@unl.edu
Re: [ECOLOG-L] UC-Berkeley and other 'public Iv ies'in fiscal peril
Hmmm... My father earned enough as a junior faculty member to support a wife and three kids. My junior colleagues certainly cannot, at least in California. Sent from my iPhone On Dec 28, 2011, at 6:49 PM, Judith S. Weis jw...@andromeda.rutgers.edu wrote: Another element is that now faculty earn a reasonable living wage, while several decades ago they didn't. One element in the increase in college costs, not just research, is accountability. Congress has passed laws that had good objectives (protecting human subjects, protecting animals, ensuring occupational safety, reducing campus crime, ensuring no discrimination on campus, ensuring fair value for federal student loans, etc etc.). Laws become rules and regulations which are monitored and enforced by federal agencies that have no real need to restrain themselves, so they add more regulations, the better to enforce the intent of the law. Universities meanwhile, trying to stay in compliance, add senior administrators and assistants and assistants to assistants to deal with the regulations. These bureaucracies (well any bureaucracy) protect themselves and the best way to be protected is to jump through every hoop the agencies put in place. Because the university might get in trouble, compliance gets handed what is often essentially a blank check. Whole industries have developed around animal care, human subjects, college accreditation etc. These classes and consultants don't tell the universities how to maximize compliance at minimal cost, instead they suggest ever better and more expensive ways to be in compliance, selling something the compliance bureaucrats are more than happy to buy. Even more senior administrators are brought on board and again, they need more support staff. For research, the more the university spends on compliance, the higher the indirect cost it can charge the federal government, thus providing even more money for compliance. Unless the funder is NIH, higher indirect means the amount the researcher actually gets is smaller, so research loses. And so it goes. With federal funds in short supply, the agencies should be taking a look at compliance, but then they have their own compliance empires to support. Is the compliance industry the only cause of increased tuition costs? No. As one of the articles mentioned, higher tuition makes a college more attractive (never mind that like hotel room rates the list price is not necessarily what you end up paying). State and federal governments no longer feel education is so important so they have decreased support. This is in stunning contrast to after World War II when the GI Bill jump started American prosperity through essentially free higher education for returning vets. Too many Americans, politicians and administrators now seem to regard universities as factories that produce degrees, learning being incidental. In that case, climbing walls and Jacuzzis make sense, making one factory/college more competitive than another. So does hiring of 'rock star' professors that, like professional athletes, lend their names but not always their teaching skills to the university's brand, while driving up faculty salaries. More and more people are telling universities to jump and fewer and fewer universities are bothering to ask why before they do. Until faculty and students start asking why, the universities won't so things will continue as they are, or get worse. That's the way it is. Happy New Year. David Duffy David Cameron Duffy Ph.D. Professor/PCSU Unit Leader/CESU Director PCSU/CESU/Department of Botany University of Hawaii Manoa - Original Message - From: Martin Meiss mme...@gmail.com Date: Wednesday, December 28, 2011 8:10 am Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] UC-Berkeley and other 'public Iv ies'in fiscal peril To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Hi, Rick, I don't think the answer is that simple. I went to a small, private, liberal arts college from 1970 through 1974 and it cost my father about $3,000 per year for room, board, and tuition. Now it would cost about $42,000, about a 14-fold increase. Inflation, which I'm guessing has been about three-fold since then, obviously only accounts for a small part of that, and since it is a private school, declining government subsidies are not the reason. The professors haven't all become millionaires. The campus hasn't been plated with gold. The students aren't getting an education that is ten times better than what I got. This is a general trend, not just a phenomenon of my alma mater, and I really do want to know what the hell is going on. My father had a bachelor's degree, and my annual college costs were about on fifth of his annual income. I have a PhD and the costs for my kids would be well over half of my annual income. Can someone out there tell my why higher education is becoming
Re: [ECOLOG-L] UC-Berkeley and other 'public Iv ies' in fiscal peril
Purely out of curiosity, what do you mean by Waste on politically correct courses and curricula? Which courses or curricula do you consider politically correct and a waste of resources? Joel Abraham On Dec 30, 2011, at 8:06 AM, Robert Hamilton roberthamil...@alc.edu wrote: Things we are doing now that seem to cost a lot of money are things like the waste on accreditation. Waste on politically correct courses and curricula. Waste on unnecessary administration to cover every little contingency that could come up and unnecessary waste on useless fixed assets like Greek columns, marble foyers and garbage cans made from tropical hardwoods. The real kicker to this, IMHO, is we spend less on assets allocated towards education itself, like say vans for field trips, lab assistants (not grad students) for teaching situations and specialty fixed assets for basic and meaningful courses like say organic chemistry and ecology. Rob Hamilton -Original Message- From: Ecological Society of America: grants, jobs, news on behalf of Paul Cherubini Sent: Tue 12/27/2011 7:29 PM To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] UC-Berkeley and other 'public Iv ies' in fiscal peril The University of California at Berkeley subsists now in perpetual austerity. Star faculty take mandatory furloughs. Classes grow perceptibly larger each year. Roofs leak; e-mail crashes. One employee mows the entire campus. Wastebaskets are emptied once a week. Some professors lack telephones. If all of the above is true, then can someone please explain why for 20+ years the annual increase in the cost of college tuition has far outpaced the consumer price index, heath care, energy costs, etc. http://www.nas.org/polArticles.cfm?doc_id=1450 http://tinyurl.com/6xq6hv Paul Cherubini El Dorado, Calif.
Re: [ECOLOG-L] UC-Berkeley and other 'public Iv ies'in fiscal peril
Here is one example of new costs (read the second url especially). State colleges and universities that offer distance learning out of state must be licensed by the other states. If you have one student or 100 from state x, you have to get licensed by that state. The other states, since it is not their money, have no incentive to minimize costs. Some appear to be simple shakedown artists. Others may simply not have the capacity (legal or human) to handle so many license applications. This was intended to rein in fly by night correspondence schools. Will it work? Your call. Does it hurt education opportunities for students and increase costs of distance education for responsible institutions and their students? Now imagine hundreds of similar compliance demands and their costs lurking like icebergs below the surface of university budgeting. see http://wcet.wiche.edu/advance/state-approval State Authorization--An Introduction On October 29, 2010, the U.S. Department of Education (USDOE) released new “program integrity” regulations. One of the regulations focused on the need for institutions offering distance or correspondence education to acquire authorization from any state in which it operates.” This authorization is required to maintain eligibility for students of that state to receive federal financial aid. Institutions have until July 1, 2014, to have obtained the appropriate approvals. Meanwhile, institutions are required to demonstrate a 'good faith' effort to comply in each state in which it serves students. While the regulation has been 'vacated' by court orter, we believe it will be reinstated. see this for estimated costs of this program for different institutions: http://wcet.wiche.edu/wcet/docs/state-approval/StateAuthorizationCostsofCompliance04-08-11.pdf David Cameron Duffy Ph.D. Professor/PCSU Unit Leader/CESU Director PCSU/CESU/Department of Botany University of Hawaii Manoa 3190 Maile Way, St John 410 Honolulu, HI 96822 USA Tel 808-956-8218, FAX 808-956-4710 http://www.botany.hawaii.edu/faculty/duffy/ - Original Message - From: Martin Meiss mme...@gmail.com Date: Friday, December 30, 2011 4:22 am Subject: Re: [ECOLOG-L] UC-Berkeley and other 'public Iv ies'in fiscal peril To: ECOLOG-L@LISTSERV.UMD.EDU One thing that would help satisfy my curiosity would be to see two pie-charts showing where college fees go (or went), one for the early seventies and one for today. How much of the room/board/tuition goes to professors' salaries, administrators' salaries, non-teaching professionals'salaries, to janitors and buildings-and-grounds workers' salaries, etc. How much goes to new construction, to maintenance, to grounds keeping, to pensions, to fund raising, to compliance, to research, to scholarships,etc. Does anyone have the data that would go into making these pie charts? What shifts would we see? From what I've read in the previous posts on this thread, we might see increases of the pie slivers representing compliance, professors' salaries, administrators' salaries,and scholarships. Which pie slices will have gotten smaller to fund these increases? Martin M. Meiss 2011/12/29 Dawn Stover dsto...@hughes.net My experience is similar to Martin's, and I inquired about the high cost at my last college reunion. I was told that the reason the price tag is so high is because many students who have the academic credentials to qualify for acceptance come from lower-income backgrounds than in earlier times. The college wants to admit those students to maintain diversity within the student body, so they give them financial aid and subsidize it by raising the price for students who can afford to pay full freight. When you're calculating the cost of a college education, you have to consider how many students at that college are receiving financial aid, and how much they receive on average. At my alma mater, few students are paying the full price. If they come from a middle-class or low-income family, they typically receive financial-aid packages that can include grants, loans, and on-campus jobs. One thing that has changed is that many liberal arts colleges no longer can afford to admit 100 percent of their students on a need- blind basis (i.e. based on their academic credentials alone). Now many private, liberal arts colleges admit a small (but growing) percentage of students who are slightly less qualified than needier applicants but have the ability to pay the full price. Dawn Stover On Dec 28, 2011, at 10:05 AM, Martin Meiss wrote: Hi, Rick, I don't think the answer is that simple. I went to a small, private, liberal arts college from 1970 through 1974 and it cost my father about $3,000 per year for room, board, and tuition. Now it would cost about $42,000, about a 14-fold increase. Inflation,
Re: [ECOLOG-L] UC-Berkeley and other 'public Iv ies'in fiscal peril
Absolutely true. Then, we mostly expected a single family member to be able to support a family on one salary. Of course, another change is that women have more nearly the same opportunities as do men. In fact, in biology, new faculty hires are women as often as men. There was a time when women would routinely get questioned about their family situation, and whether they could do the job while taking care of a family. Or, the questions would go unasked but the answers assumed to be no, and that was that. But the point that a person who taught at a university or college could expect to pay the bills on his salary then, but not now, is accurate. My undergraduate professors generally lived in upper middle income neighborhoods, had good cars, had kids who could expect to attend good colleges and universities , on one salary. I know junior faculty who have been happy that they could buy a small house in what was a working class neighborhood, drive ten-ye! ar-old vehicles and use public transportation (for those who have access to it), and so on. mcneely R Omalley rachel.omal...@sjsu.edu wrote: Hmmm... My father earned enough as a junior faculty member to support a wife and three kids. My junior colleagues certainly cannot, at least in California. Sent from my iPhone On Dec 28, 2011, at 6:49 PM, Judith S. Weis jw...@andromeda.rutgers.edu wrote: Another element is that now faculty earn a reasonable living wage, while several decades ago they didn't. One element in the increase in college costs, not just research, is accountability. Congress has passed laws that had good objectives (protecting human subjects, protecting animals, ensuring occupational safety, reducing campus crime, ensuring no discrimination on campus, ensuring fair value for federal student loans, etc etc.). Laws become rules and regulations which are monitored and enforced by federal agencies that have no real need to restrain themselves, so they add more regulations, the better to enforce the intent of the law. Universities meanwhile, trying to stay in compliance, add senior administrators and assistants and assistants to assistants to deal with the regulations. These bureaucracies (well any bureaucracy) protect themselves and the best way to be protected is to jump through every hoop the agencies put in place. Because the university might get in trouble, compliance gets handed what is often essentially a blank check. Whole industries have developed around animal care, human subjects, college accreditation etc. These classes and consultants don't tell the universities how to maximize compliance at minimal cost, instead they suggest ever better and more expensive ways to be in compliance, selling something the compliance bureaucrats are more than happy to buy. Even more senior administrators are brought on board and again, they need more support staff. For research, the more the university spends on compliance, the higher the indirect cost it can charge the federal government, thus providing even more money for compliance. Unless the funder is NIH, higher indirect means the amount the researcher actually gets is smaller, so research loses. And so it goes. With federal funds in short supply, the agencies should be taking a look at compliance, but then they have their own compliance empires to support. Is the compliance industry the only cause of increased tuition costs? No. As one of the articles mentioned, higher tuition makes a college more attractive (never mind that like hotel room rates the list price is not necessarily what you end up paying). State and federal governments no longer feel education is so important so they have decreased support. This is in stunning contrast to after World War II when the GI Bill jump started American prosperity through essentially free higher education for returning vets. Too many Americans, politicians and administrators now seem to regard universities as factories that produce degrees, learning being incidental. In that case, climbing walls and Jacuzzis make sense, making one factory/college more competitive than another. So does hiring of 'rock star' professors that, like professional athletes, lend their names but not always their teaching skills to the university's brand, while driving up faculty salaries. More and more people are telling universities to jump and fewer and fewer universities are bothering to ask why before they do. Until faculty and students start asking why, the universities won't so things will continue as they are, or get worse. That's the way it is. Happy New Year. David Duffy David Cameron Duffy Ph.D. Professor/PCSU Unit Leader/CESU Director PCSU/CESU/Department of Botany University of Hawaii Manoa - Original Message - From: Martin
[ECOLOG-L] Ideas from grad students and post-docs
DO YOU HAVE A NOVEL IDEA OR OPINION? Some of the most fertile ground for the release of creativity in science can be found in the relatively young open minds of graduate students and post-docs, who are not yet biased by theory tenacity. If you are a grad student or post-doc in ecology or evolution, and have a novel opinion or new idea associated with your research, or resulting from your reading of the literature, don't be intimidated by a self-perception of junior status, and don't just blog it or sit on it while it gets scooped by someone else. Consider taking the time to develop your hypothesis or views as an opinion piece / commentary, get feedback from colleagues and supervisors, and submit your manuscript to http://library.queensu.ca/ojs/index.php/IEEIdeas in Ecology and Evolution . IEE is an open-access electronic journal, where your original thinking can be quickly subjected to critical assessment, revision, debate, and further development, and quickly rewarded with peer-reviewed publication credit, where it can therefore have potential to make a significant contribution to the maturation of theory and the progress of science within your discipline. -- Lonnie W. Aarssen -- Professor Department of Biology Queen's University Kingston, ON Canada, K7L 3N6 Editor Ideas in Ecology and Evolution http://library.queensu.ca/ojs/index.php/IEE -- Campus office: Room 4326, Biosciences Complex Email: aarss...@queensu.ca Web:http://post.queensu.ca/~aarssenl/ Tel:613-533-6133 Fax:613-533-6617
[ECOLOG-L] NPS Upland Crew Leader Position
Biological Science Technician (plants) GS-6/7 permanent, subject to furlough National Park Service – Northern Colorado Plateau Inventory and Monitoring Network Moab, UT with travel throughout Utah and western Colorado Job description This position will act as the crew leader for integrated upland monitoring (vegetation and soils) in 10 national park units on the Northern Colorado Plateau. The incumbent will supervise 5-7 seasonal, intern, and volunteer staff in remote backcountry locations. Major duties include: -Supervising plant data collection using established network monitoring protocols. -Accurately identifying Northern Colorado Plateau vegetation to the species level in the field or in the office using standard floras. -Training crew members in appropriate data collection, entry, and verification methods. -Conducting fieldwork in remote backcountry settings and under difficult conditions in a safe and efficient manner. -Ensuring crew safety. -Accurately collecting and entering data into established databases and following quality assurance procedures. -Maintaining field and camping equipment. This position works eight 10-hour days followed by 6 days off and requires constant travel to parks within Utah and western Colorado. Crew members are required to hike off trail with heavy packs, sometimes in extremely hot weather and through thick vegetation. Field crews camp in remote backcountry locations. The anticipated field season is April through October, with approximately a month of office work at the beginning and end of each season. To apply, view the full job description at: www.usajobs.gov under Job Announcement Numbers IMDE-12-88. Applications due by January 13. For more information on the Northern Colorado Plateau Network, see http://www1.nature.nps.gov/im/units/ncpn/index.cfm For more information about these positions, contact Dana _witwi...@nps.gov.
[ECOLOG-L] User Support Position Available,, CUAHSI, Medford, MA
CUAHSI HIS User Support Specialist Major Duties and Responsiblities The incumbent will assist users in deploying CUAHSI Hydrologic Information System (HIS), a service-oriented architecture for publishing time series data using web services. More information on CUAHSI HIS is available at his.cuahsi.org. Extensive interactions with data publishers and data analysts who seek to discover data using these services will be required, both in a one-on-one support mode and in formal training settings. The incumbent will also gather information on bugs, feature requests, and other modifications required to HIS and communicate these requests to the Hydrologic Information Systems development team. The incumbent will advise the CUAHSI Senior Program Manager on the performance of CUAHSI HIS, assist in prioritizing revision requirements, and assist the Senior Program Manger in support of the HIS Standing Committee, which oversees CUAHSI HIS. Knowledge and Skills Required by the Position The incumbent should hold a masters degree or a bachelor's degree plus three years' experience in information science, hydrologic science, or a related discipline and must have extensive experience in working with relational data base systems. Knowledge of GIS, Microsoft SQL Server and the Microsoft .NET development environment is highly desirable. Domain knowledge of hydrologic science, environmental science, or related disciplines is also desirable. The incumbent must be able to work independently with minimal supervision. Excellent communications skills, both oral and written, are required for this position. This position requires interaction with people who will have a range of knowledge of data systems. An outgoing, engaging personality, the ability to listen, and patience will be important attributes of a successful software support. Nature of Position The incumbent will be an employee of the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science, Inc. The incumbent reports to the Senior Program Manager. The location for this position is at the CUAHSI office in Medford, MA (near Boston). CUAHSI is a non-profit university consortium with over 120 members and affiliate members from 47 states and 6 countries. CUAHSI receives funding from the National Science Foundation to develop and to deploy Water Data Services. Salaries offered are competitive with excellent fringe benefits. Application Process Please send a resume and list of references to bus...@cuahsi.org. Applications will be reviewed on an on-going basis until the position is filled. Target hiring date is March 1, 2012. Any questions on the position may be directed ex...@cuahsi.org). Telephone inquiries are not accepted. CUAHSI is an equal opportunity employer.
[ECOLOG-L] PhD in Forest Modeling Complexity
PhD in Forest Modeling Complexity We are looking for a motivated PhD student to work on a modeling project that investigates the potential tradeoffs between managing forests for efficient provision of goods and services and adaptability in relation to global change factors and in the context of complex adaptive system theory. The project will be coordinated between the University of Quebec a Montreal (UQAM), Oregon State University, and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Umeå, Sweden; with the student being based at the UQAM, but travelling among the three universities. Required qualifications include a basic training in forestry, forest ecology, and forest economic and a strong background in quantitative sciences and modeling. To apply or for further information, send a letter of interest outlining your suitability and motivation, a CV, and a list of references to Klaus Puettmann (mailto:klaus.puettm...@oregonstate.eduklaus.puettm...@oregonstate.edu), Christian Messier (messier.christ...@uqam.ca) or Jon Moen (jon.m...@emg.umu.se). The candidates acceptance will depend upon successfully obtaining a scholarship from the Forest Modeling Complexity program (http://www.fcm.uqam.ca/index.asp?lang=en).
