Upcoming Talks in Japan

I'm starting to do some speaking again, and now that Japan has opened back up for travel, I'm very pleased to be giving a couple of talks later this month:

• On November 19, I will be speaking at Waseda University, hosted by Tetsuya Sakai.
• On November 20, I will be giving a keynote talk at IBIS 2022 (Information-Based Induction Sciences). Thank you very much to Toshihiro Kamishima for inviting me!

Late Work

As long as I have been teaching, I've used a “late day” policy in most of my classes. I designed this policy after learning about universal course design while taking Preparing Future Faculty at the University of Minnesota, but I don't think I've ever publicly written down the motivations and design of this policy. So here you go!

Academic Portfolios

A few years ago, early in my first faculty position, I wrote about how I tracked academic work. I still implement the core ideas of that piece, but most of the details have changed; I thought now, after working on my first annual review after applying for tenure, would be a good time to write an update.

What Is a Dissertation?

If we can aggressively simplify for a moment, earning a Ph.D has three primary components:

• Do research.
• Write it up in a dissertation.
• Convince a committee of faculty that what you’ve done and presented is worthy of a research-based terminal academic degree.

There are some other things in each program, such as courses and qualifiers, but this is the heart of what earns the degree.

But what is that mysterious “dissertation”?

2021 State of the Tools

It has been a couple of years, hasn't it? I thought I would do another state of the tools. Last year I had other things on my mind and didn't get to this kind of thing, but let's give it a whirl.