Happy Equal Pay Day!

Today is the day that women "celebrate" their pay "catching up" to that of men. "Celebrate" and "catching up" might not be quite the right words, but celebrating is better than whining. In fact, some AAUW chapters, including my local chapter here in Ashland, OR, celebrated by giving away free cookies with a bite taken out of them. The remaining cookie was 78% of the original cookie to represent the ratio of women's wages to men's wages. The AAUW's booth in our downtown plaza today was quite crowded with people of all ages and gender taking free cookies and free literature about pay disparity.

The National Committee on Pay Equity started Equal Pay Day in 1996 to raise public awareness about the gap between men's and women's wages. The day, observed on a Tuesday in April, symbolizes how much a woman must work, on average, to earn as much as a man. Tuesday is the day of the week on which women's wages catch up to men's wages from the previous week. April is the month when women's wages catch up to men's wages from the previous year. On average, full-time working women earn 78% of what full-time working men earn.

I've read a few blog posts that object to women making a big deal out of the earnings disparity. The blogs rehash the same old myths we've been hearing for years. I would like to make a few points about these myths:

Myth #1. Women earn less than men because more of them work part-time. Nope, that doesn't explain it. The data used to celebrate Equal Pay Day are based on an analysis of full-time, year-round workers.

Myth #2. Women choose less lucrative occupations than men. A 2003 Government Accountability Office study controlled statistically for this factor and still showed women's average pay was about 80% of men's. Also, I have to ask, why do certain occupations (librarianship, teaching, etc.) attract more women and why do these occupations pay so little?

Myth #3. Women aren't as well educated as men. Well, this simply isn't true. More women go to college than men these days. Also, studies show that one year out of college, women graduates earn, on average, only 80% of male graduates.

Myth #4. Women take time off to raise families or take easier jobs because of small kids at home. Um, why should women do that more than men? And even if they do, please note that the GAO study mentioned above took that into account.

Myth #5. Women aren't as good at negotiating salaries as men. This is possibly true, but studies by Carnegie Mellon researchers and others show that when women do negotiate, they are less likely to get the job. Hiring managers are often turned off by an assertive woman but impressed by an assertive man.

Myth #6. Women whine too much and the government shouldn't protect them. Well, we're trying to whine less and celebrate with half-eaten cookies, so give us a break! Regarding the government, I'm all for a government with a small footprint. It would be nice if anti-discrimination laws were unnecessary. Let's all aim for that. If you're a man in a position to hire employees, please consider writing job descriptions that detail the knowledge, skills, and abilities that potential employees should have and appropriate salary ranges. Then hold interviews. Let other managers and employees assess the potential hire. Don't just give the job to your male buddy at the salary he suggests. I've seen enough of that to make me want to upchuck my cookies.

Too many screens!?

I'm teaching in New York City this week. It's great fun, but a bit overwhelming coming from Southern Oregon. One thing I've noticed that's different from the last time I taught in New York City (admittedly about 15 years ago) is that it's impossible to get away from video screens. Note there's even TV access in my taxi!  If I had any photography skills (which I obviously don't) and/or a good camera instead of my iPhone, I would have caught a picture that shows that while sitting in traffic I could see more than just the TV screen in my taxi. To the left of me was a huge screen advertising something useless. To the right of me was a TV store with about a hundred screens. This taxi ride came after breakfast at the hotel where no matter where I went in the breakfast room there was a TV blaring. When I talk about "the makers of things" on this blog, I usually have good things to say. But I'm not sure all these screen things are a good thing. Where can one go for silence? Silence is golden. Well this trip will certainly help me appreciate Southern Oregon more.

A Few of My Favorite Things

Since this blog is supposed to be about the makers of things, I thought I would cover a couple of my favorite things for this blog post. I just discovered a very cool website and app that lets you create abstract art! It's called Bomomo. It lets you make all sorts of random squiggles look elegant. You can save your drawings and use them as wallpaper or print them to put on your refrigerator to compete with your kids' or nieces' drawings. :-) I made a movie with mine, using iPhoto on my MacBook. On the downside, it doesn't seem to work with Safari. It works fine with Firefox though. So, I add to my list of favorite things, Bomomo, Firefox, my MacBook, and iPhoto from Apple.

What is a professor?

I was an adjunct professor for five years. It was fun. I finally quit due to the glass ceiling made of pure optical fibers with total internal reflection (a concept I taught in my networking class!) The all male department hired their male students based on the buddy system. I didn't stand a chance coming from industry where hiring decisions are based on qualifications. I got stuck teaching the same class over and over and over again.

So, I got to wondering, what does make a good professor? What qualifications should hiring managers actually look for? Is it about being friendly to the department chair, blowing your own horn, showing off in the lecture hall, playing politics with the powerful tenured faculty, keeping quiet in faculty meetings so as not to make waves? I don't think so. I think a good professor is someone with teaching abilities and skills who cares about students. Here are some characteristics I came up with for being a good professor. 

• A talent for teaching. Yes, I think it's a talent. My father (shown in the picture above) was a professor for over 30 years until he retired. He still tries to engage us in scholasticism when we visit, questioning every statement we make. My mother was also a professor, as was my aunt. In fact, all my aunts and uncles were teachers. My family is riddled with them. My nieces are professors and teachers. If we aren't teachers, then we're librarians or musicians. That's what we do. It's an inherited trait.
  
• Teaching skills. Some aspects of teaching are learned skills, not just talents. You can be taught how to lead an engaging lecture, to develop labs and homework that help students practice what they're learning, to write quizzes that fairly assess whether students have learned what you wanted them to learn, etc.
• A love of teaching. Don't do it because you couldn't find any other work. Do it because it energizes you and your students!
  
• Subject matter expertise. It's not OK to learn from the textbook at approximately the same pace that the students are learning.
  
• The ability to develop labs or problem sets based on your goals for the class. It's not OK to buy a lab kit and hand students the user's manual.
  
• A passion for your subject! If you get stuck teaching a subject that's not really up your alley, try to get excited about it anyway. It won't be hard. Learning is fun, even when you're the teacher.
  
• Research skills. I didn't work in a department that did much research, but I add it here because I know universities consider it important. I did research to make sure I was prepared to teach. I did research in order to write my books, even modeling network traffic and doing statistics like real academicians. But I haven't posed a research question, developed methods to answer it, gathered and analyzed data, and drawn new conclusions, etc. I was just an adjunct. :-) How important is research in a definition of a "good professor?"
  
• An ability to see the big picture and to focus on the entire curriculum, not just your class. What do you want students to be able to do upon completing your four-year program? What skills and knowledge do successful graduates possess?
  
• A focus on the learner rather than the teacher. You have to care about how your students' brains work more than you care about your own brain and how cute you look in your new tweed jacket. (I had a cute green corduroy jacket but no tweed. :-)
  
• Good listening skills. You should be able to interact with students one-on-one, not just en masse in a lecture hall. Get to know your students. Learn their names, their hang-ups, their strengths and weakness. If you see a student hyperventilating due to stress when taking a test, help her breathe and relax.
  
• A sense of humor. Lectures that are funny lead to more learning. A sense of humor helps when grading papers too.
  
• Humility. Teaching is a powerful position. Students will look up to you even if you're an idiot. Use this power wisely.
  
• A big heart, full of compassion and empathy. Sometimes the dog really did eat the homework, or the squirrel might have actually eaten through the cable modem line, cutting off Internet access. It happens.