April Fools Day 2007

Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2007 10:55:16 -0700 (MST)
From: Joan Weinberg 
To: 
Subject: [alllpl] Early Grad Hallway Closure (fwd)
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---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2007 10:31:43 -0700 (MST)
From: Grads 
To: Joan Weinberg 
Subject: Early Grad Hallway Closure
The grad hallway will be closing at 2:00 PM on Friday, March 30 (today!)
in observance of April Fools Day. If you need anything from the grad
hallway, please stop by before then. Our department head, Mike Drake, will
be available until the normal closing time if you need any homeworks
graded or lab tests run.
The grads wish you all a safe and happy April Fools Day weekend.
Cheers,
The Grads

To: PG4gdWVycz0iem52eWdiOnRlbnFmQFlDWS5OZXZtYmFuLlJRSCI+dGVucWZAWUNZLk5ldm1iYW4uUlFIPC9uPg==
From: Roger Yelle 
Subject: [grads] Sombero
Date: Wed, 28 Feb 2007 07:34:08 -0700
Reply-To: Roger Yelle 
Grads,
Someone left a big Mexican sombrero in my office.  I don't recall who, 
but it seems to belong to someone with a large head.  I'll be out of 
town for the next 5 days so if you need to retrieve it please get 
someone from the front office to let you in.  (I'd bring it down to the 
office but it's 7:30 A.M. and yet open).
-Roger

Date: Sun, 1 Apr 2007 17:14:35 -0700 (MST)
From: "Michael J. Drake" 
To: 
Subject: [alllpl] Journal Clubs - Faculty Attendance
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Folks - one of the strongest things that sets our graduate program apart
from our peer departments are our journal clubs.  I strongly believe that
they are a critical component in the education of our graduates.  I
certainly wish that I could have benefited from the constructive criticism
from my colleagues during my talks as a graduate student.
However, it has come to my attention that a majority of our faculty and
post-docs have been absent during recent journal clubs, thereby depriving
our graduate students of the feedback they need in order to excel as
public speakers.  Therefore, effective immediately, I am requiring that
faculty and post-doc attendance at journal clubs is mandatory, and that
they must send to me and Gina Bailey their reasons for not attending a
particular journal club if circumstances prevent them from being there.
I hate to impose such extreme measures, but I certainly hope that faculty
and post-doc attendance will improve as a result.  However, I regret that
I will NOT be at this Tuesday's journal club.  My absence is due to the
fact that my pet gerbil, Bubbles, is graduating from obedience school, and
a higher authority calls.
Cheers -- Mike

Date: Mon, 02 Apr 2007 11:18:11 -0700
From: Alex Pavlov 
User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.6 (X11/20050720)
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To: "Michael J. Drake" ,
        Roger Yelle ,
        Hal Larson ,
        Adam Showman ,
        PG4gdWVycz0iem52eWdiOnRlbnFmQFlDWS5OZXZtYmFuLlJRSCI+dGVucWZAWUNZLk5ldm1iYW4uUlFIPC9uPg==,
        Dante Lauretta 
Subject: Journal Clubs - Faculty Attendance
Hello Mike,
I would like to share a few thoughts about Journal Club presentations
at LPL. I assume that  the primary goal of the Journal Club is to
prepare LPL students for various future talks which they are going to give
throughout their successful careers.
 
Here are a few suggestions:
1) Length of presentations: Currently students are supposed to give two 
20 min presentations. However,
I do not recall a single conference where a speker was given 20 min to 
present.
In my experience talks are either 10-12 min (regular oral  presentations 
at DPS, AGU, GSA etc.) 
or longer than 30 min (invited talks/job interviews). Would it be more 
useful instead of two 20 min presentations
to have 10+30 min presentations - still 40 min total? The structure of 
the talk and the manner in which
material is presented changes significantly pending on the leghts of the 
presentation.
30 min talk can be on student's research while 10 min on the article. 
What do you think?
20 min talks can provide a false sense of security for regular 
conference talks and do not really train students for invited
talks either.
2) Evaluation forms and constructive criticism: I do not believe the 
evaluation forms is the most efficient way to
give feedback to students about their presentation. I looked through 
them in the fall  and 90% of the forms (mostly from students) are saying 
the same - good job, excellent  -  encouraging but not specific. Several 
times it was hard to write
evaluation because there is very little  time between two talks of the 
same Journal Club meeting.
In my opinion it would be beneficial for students if after each talk and 
questions/answers, all audience will take 2-3 min  to go over the 
presentation slide by slide. This way a student gets instant feedback 
and we do not miss any flaws (size of the figure,
color of the background etc.). This is how Brian Toon and a few other 
faculty do it at CU and it was very helpful for me.
Regards,
Alexander Pavlov
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From: "Michael J. Drake" 
Subject: Re: Journal Clubs - Faculty Attendance
Date: Mon, 2 Apr 2007 11:24:59 -0700
To: Alex Pavlov 
Cc: "Michael J. Drake" ,
        Roger Yelle ,
        Hal Larson ,
        Adam Showman ,
        Grads ,
        Dante Lauretta ,
        Joan Weinberg 
Alex - I assume that you are NOT responding to the April Fools Day  
fake e-mail from me, but actually composed by the students.  Bring  
this up at the Faculty Meeting next Monday.
Grads - any thoughts?
Cheers  --  Mike
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