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Winding Down The Semester at Unknown University

It's Saturday afternoon, and i am in my workplace writing final exams whereas the remainder of the Unknown Family is one state away at a nephew's birthday half.

So that suggests that it should be the tip of the semester.

I have someday of categories left and 2 exams to offer - one in my principles category and one for my student-managed investment fund category. and each exams area unit well on the thanks to being written. So, i am in higher form than I even have been at the tip of the semester than in a very whereas (I'm typically doing the mad scramble for the end line). I figure another day's work on the exams and some of days grading, and i am done till succeeding crop comes in.

It's been an honest semester. My principles category went higher than it's gone in a very long-standing. I continually attempt to provide my students their money's value, and push them considerably tougher than within the alternative sections of the category. In previous semesters, they'd griped regarding this to the Powers That Be.

This semester appeared totally different. a part of this was that I even have a far higher perspective regarding life than I had antecedently. most of the people World Health Organization apprehend Maine would characterize Maine as evangelical (sometimes to a fault) and optimistic. whereas the Unknown Son was within the final stages of his malady, i used to be terribly stressed (ya think?). once i am stressed, i purchase over slightly critical, which ne'er plays well with students (particularly once you are extremely pushing them).

This semester, i used to be unabashedly positive and relaxed within the category. I additionally spent rather more time too soon framing their expectations. So, there was little or no griping to the oldsters within the Dean's workplace. Finally, I created a conjunctive effort to form positive the focii of the category were operating issues (and creating THEM work problems) at school till they could not take it any further, and forcing them to participate. the scholars appear to possess gotten the message that a neater road at school is commonly not the the simplest choice.

Unfortunately, we do not do a typical exam for the principles category at Unknown University. Anecdotal proof appears to counsel that my students have a stronger grasp of the fabric than in a number of the opposite sections, however i am continually mistrustful of constructing statements like this owing to biases in my very own perceptions (confirmation bias, hubris, and so on). i would prefer to see if laborious information shows that they apprehend additional, or if i am simply convincing myself. Maybe next time I can convince them to travel the common exam road.

My student-managed fund category additionally did higher than I expected. I continually concern the worst as they are obtaining scan for his or her end-of-semester presentation to the Alumni. This semester, we have a tendency to created the presentation it at the offices of a major investment-management company. the scholars did well, thus it ought to facilitate with placement of our grads at this firm within the future. I brought some of juniors World Health Organization are within the category next semester on to the presentation, associate degreed one among them might need created a affiliation there (with an Unknown University alum World Health Organization already works at the firm). So, he might need created a significant step towards grading associate degree place for this summer.

In any event, I've had enough workplace time for a Saturday. thus it is time to go out for a few Christmas searching then settle certain the large UFC fight tonight. Since the Unknown Family is out of city, i purchase to try to to the bachelor issue.

The Semester Goes Out Not With a Bang, But With a Whimper

I was simply commenting to the Unknown partner however this semester was ending going therefore well compared to previous ones - my student managed investment fund presentation was done every day sooner than usual, my principles category was previous schedule, and my tests were at the start of exam amount instead of close to the top.

I ought to have famous - ne'er say things like that. Even in jest.

It angers academe - the patron divinity of all professors (also called "she World Health Organization makes professors' work go pear-shaped at the worst attainable time")

So, what happens? i used to be cutting and pasting things from the grades programme for my principles category (it has four elements, all on separate tabs of the worksheet). Somehow, I not solely deleted the grades for all 3 exams, I traced the sheet to a file name that overwrote the backup (I perpetually save the programme to a brand new file name when every update). when finding out over associate hour, I finally found associate email backup copy i might created that had everything however the ultimate test grades.

The morals of the story:

Make multiple backups of your grading programme (and anything of crucial importance) each time you alter it.

Never, ever say "things square measure going well this semester". It angers academe (and she could be a vindictive "rhymes with witch").

On a additional pleasant note, a few of bright spots this week:

looks like i am going to have a paper submitted among a few of days. It will not get checked out by the journal editor for a few of weeks attributable to the vacation, however it will be off my table. Since (as my joint author says) "if we do not submit this one presently, we'd higher begin saving for its faculty education", that is an honest feeling.

A joint author abreast of Maine that she had a revise and feed back that needs her to try and do some tests that she may do herself, however would rather source. Since I will simply get laid with a week's work more or less, she asked Maine to be a joint author. So, for a little of labor, it's like i will be able to doubtless have another hit.

We've been creating do at the Unknown home with a seven-year previous TV (an previous cathode-ray model). we have a tendency to simply got our new TV stand (a terribly nice corner model) and can shortly be obtaining a brand new forty six in. flat panel model. Ah, the dominion of Thingdom includes a new subject.

In any event, here's desire a Merry Christmas (or no matter else you decide on to celebrate this point of year) to all or any my readers (all 3 of them).

It's finally feeling like Christmas within the Unknown home - we have Christmas songs enjoying on the radio, Winnie the Pooh (the Unknown Son's (a.k.a. Knucklehead's) recent fascination) on TV, and i am within the middle of creating up a quadruple batch of pumpkin soup on the stove A double batch are for our neighborhood party tonight and another is for the large family get-together at our place on Christmas Day. therefore the place sounds and smells like Christmas.

mythe divinity created Maine save my grade programme to the incorrect name

Fly Away, Little One. Be Free!

It's been a good couple of days:

Yesterday, we just got a very good sized check from the IRS (we'd let some things slide when the Unknown Son was sick, and finally got things straightened out a few months ago.
about a half-hour ago, I submitted a paper to a journal (not a top-tier one, but a decent one). It's been about 4 years since we started it. So now, it's off my desk.
I just got an email that my new 43-inch flat-panel TV is available for pickup from Best Buy.

All in all, a nice way to close out the year. Now I just have to get the TV set up in time to watch the Lesnar/Overeem MMA fight on Friday.

Stuck In Grading

Ah, all classes are done, and my finals have been taken. Unfortunately, I had a rather large group in my principles class, and they had a long final - 73 students and a final with 25 multiple choice questions(concepts and definitions) and 21 problems. I'm currently on problem 11, so I still have about 730 "student-problems) to grade (about 5-6 hours of work).

Then the grumbling by the students starts. I've already had one email me to complain that "my tests didn't assess the students' learning properly" - within a day of the exam.

But even with all that, this still beats any other job I can imagine.

Random Thoughts

It's been a busy month or so since FMA, so I've been out of touch blog-wise, So her are a few snippets:

We're now in the final throes of the semester (only two weeks left once the students get back from Thanksgiving), and they just had their second exam in my principles class). So, I had about 1000 pages of grading to do (I don't do scan-tron graded exams). But they did extremely well, so I feel good about it. Now all I have left to cover is CAPM and WACC, so I'm right on schedule.

I've been experimenting with online web-conferencing software as an enhancement to my classes. We use a really clunky system called Sakai, which has limited web-conferencing capabilities (only 15 or so concurrent users). So I and another faculty who's also a techie have been looking into using a commercial vendor that will allow us to do deliver online instruction (and review sessions) for 50-100 students at a time. I figure that this (along with my pre-recorded videos) could be the backbone for a fairly thorough and well-done online class.

The little guy is talking up a storm, and is a riot to be around. He loves to get a running start and then do a running headbutt. Unfortunately, he's at just the right height that he hits his dad in a very sensitive area. But it was pretty funny at Thanksgiving when he caught his uncle unawares. It probably didn't help that I distracted him at just the right moment. when he wasn't. Not nice, I know. But funny

Trying to get a paper out this weekend, another one in the following week, and a third one over December break. And then I'll do the usual scramble to get a new piece together for the FMA deadline in January.

Finally, I came across a pretty good quote (by Aristophanes) that will probably make it onto my door: “Youth ages, immaturity is outgrown, ignorance can be educated, and drunkenness sobered, but stupid lasts forever.”

Gotta get to bed. Later.

Stick A Fork In Me!

I'm done, done, DONE with grading for the semester. Now there's nothing left to do but wait for the complaints. Ah well - that I can deal with.

For a reward, I spent the night spent reading an anthology of short stories titled Strange Brew by P.N. Elrod (author of the Vampire Files). It includes stories by some of my favorites, including Jim Butcher, Patricia Briggs, and Charlaine Harris, among others (what can I say - I'm a big fantasy/sci-fi nerd).

On the biking side, there's been nothing but rain for the last few days, so I went to the gym to use the exercise bike for about 40 minutes. It's a poor substitute for having wheels on the road, but my 50 miler (the Angel Ride) is only 11 days ahead, so it's better than nothing.

Enough goofing off - back to research.

Update: The rain stopped, so I got in another 26 miler. I rode like a circus bear on a bike, but I was still within a minute of my best time, so I'll take it. The good news is that I seem to be able to handle at least that distance at a pretty good pace even on an off day. So, with a bit more work, I should be able to do the 50 if I dial back a bit. It won't be pretty, but it's a ride, not a race.

It's Time To Bring The Crop In

It's that time of the semester - exams are done, projects are in (with one exception) and it's grading time. Some highlights/low lights:

My Student Managed Investment fund was a weak group, and they never seemed to "get with the program". As a result, they did a lot of the work for the end-of-semester presentation to our advisory board in the 11th hour.
Having said that, they did a pretty good job in the presentation. Not as good as last year's group (that was probably my strongest group in the last 5 years), but good enough
My Investments class did terribly on my final exam. On the one hand, it means that grades will be lower than expected. On the other, since grades will depend a lot on the curve, it allows me a lot of flexibility.
I have THREE students that will be returning for my student-managed investment fund class next semester (they're three of the better ones, too). This makes my job a lot easier.

On non-job related things, I'm mostly trying to put in enough miles on my bike so that I'll be ready for the Hole In The Wall Gang Angel Ride. It's a relatively hilly 50 miler, and, while I'm pretty sure I can finish it, it'll be ugly. So, I'm trying to squeeze in a few more 25-30 milers in the next two weeks. It's a good cause (check out the link above.).

Unfortunately, yesterday involved a pretty hard 26 miler followed in short order by my 1 1/2 hour "Yoga For Stiff Guys" class (fairly strenuous yoga done in a heated room). BY the end of the day, I was beat to the bone.

Oh well - back to grading those last few student projects.

The Default Major

A colleague just pointed out a great article in the New York Times, titled "The Default Major". Here's a few choice pieces:

Business majors spend less time preparing for class than do students in any other broad field, according to the most recent National Survey of Student Engagement: nearly half of seniors majoring in business say they spend fewer than 11 hours a week studying outside class. In their new book “Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses,” the sociologists Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa report that business majors had the weakest gains during the first two years of college on a national test of writing and reasoning skills. And when business students take the GMAT, the entry examination for M.B.A. programs, they score lower than students in every other major.

...

Donald R. Bacon, a business professor at the University of Denver, studied group projects at his institution and found a perverse dynamic: the groups that functioned most smoothly were often the ones where the least learning occurred. That’s because students divided up the tasks in ways they felt comfortable with. The math whiz would do the statistical work, the English minor drafted the analysis. And then there’s the most common complaint about groups: some shoulder all the work, the rest do nothing.
“I understand that teamwork is important, but in my opinion they need to do more to deal with the problem of slackers,” says Justin Triplett, a 2010 Radford graduate who is completing his first year in Radford’s M.B.A. program. From his perch as a teaching assistant, he estimates that a third of students in the business school don’t engage with their schoolwork. At Radford, seniors in business invest on average 3.64 hours a week preparing for class, according to the National Survey of Student Engagement.
...
One senior accounting major at Radford, who asked not to be named so as not to damage his job prospects, says he goes to class only to take tests or give presentations. “A lot of classes I’ve been exposed to, you just go to class and they do the PowerPoint from the book,” he says. “It just seems kind of pointless to go when (a) you’re probably not going to be paying much attention anyway and (b) it would probably be worth more of your time just to sit with your book and read it.”
How much time does he spend reading textbooks?
“Well, this week I don’t have any tests, so probably zero,” he says. “Next week I’ll have a test, so maybe 10 hours then.”
He adds: “It seems like now, every take-home test you get, you can just go and Google. If the question is from a test bank, you can just type the text in, and somebody out there will have it and you can just use that.”

Let's see - the students don't study as much, they minimize effort, cheat on take-home exams, and don't come to class prepared.

These sound like things I've heard my own colleagues say in the hallways at Unknown University.

Nothing new. But somehow, there are professors in my school (several come to mind without much effort) who hold the students to high standards AND get top evaluations. The common threads in their classes is that they DEMAND that students come to class prepared and cold-call from day one. And they make classroom performance (either measured by the quality of participation or by numerous in-class quizzes (often of the unannounced, "pop quiz" variety) a major part of the grade.

Of course, they work a lot harder than the other professors in the classroom, but DUH.

Students will slack, not go to class, and cheat like crazy if all the instructor does is read off PowerPoint slides and give softball take-home assignments. They're rational, after all.

I view the course design (of which the grading scheme is a major part) as a mechanism design problem. In other words, it's an exercise in putting together a grading scheme that forces the students into behaviors that I want them to engage.

For the most part, they're rational - they'll find a way to get the grade they want while minimizing effort. The trick is to set the class up so that they can't slack. Unfortunately. that's harder than the old "30% of the class grade is based on the mid-term, 50% on the final, and 20% on quizzes" structure.

But it's possible.

Back In Dayton Again

I'm out at the R.I.S.E. forum in Dayton with a couple of Unknown University students. I've seen about a half dozen of these, so I thought I'd take a few minutes off from the speakers and knock out a quick post.

We have our new (used) car, and settled with the insurance company on the old one (they came up about $300 from their initial offer on our old car, so the arguing paid off. And, for a net cost of $1400 (the amount of the new (used) car we bought less the insurance settlement, we went from a $2000 Camry with 125,000 miles on it (and some minor body damage) to a 2001 Camry with only 85,000 miles (and a body in pretty much pristine shape. So, all in all, it worked out.

Time to go back for a few more speakers and catch up with some old friends. Then it's back to the hotel room to put up a video for my students.

Last semester, I put together a fairly nice video on Modern Portfolio Theory (the math of variance/covariance, portfolio risk and return, efficient frontier, etc...). I'm rounding it out with another one on some historical returns (basically chapter 5 from Bodie, Kane, and Marcus' investments text). This means that I don;t have to lose class time just because I'm away.
(we cancelled class Friday, since I'm out of town).

So even while I'm away, my students don't have to feel deprived (yeah, right).

Back to the speakers.

Things You Wish You Could Write On Students' Papers

Here's a pretty good list of things I wish I could write on some students' papers, from Sapience Speaks. #6, while harsh even for this list, is my favorite. Feel free to add your own in the comments.

"You certainly have a way with words. A long, long way."
"You seem to be attempting a very delicate approach to the assignment--so delicate, in fact, that you fail to touch on it at all."
"Every one of the words in this sentence is utterly devoid of meaning."
"I can't help feeling that you treat the ideas in your paper much as a black hole treats its neighboring star systems: forcefully and vigorously synthesizing them, you condense them beyond recognition, leading to utter destruction and chaos."
"like the broad swift stream / a thesaurus will go far / but yields no great depth."
"This paper isn't even bulls*&t. Bulls*&t has substance. This is diarrhea."
"I find your rhetorical strategy in this expository to be similar to that of a rhinoceros in extracting a tooth: large, blunt, and wholly ineffective."
"This entire page says exactly NOTHING."
"Every teacher wishes she could read a paper like this one. It makes the rest of her life so much brighter by contrast."
"As I was reading, I felt that you were trying to include in your paper every type of fallacy possible. If so, you only missed one."
"The level of disorganization in your paper suggests that your true topic must be chaos theory, not, as your title implied, Wordsworth."
"the wind speaks all day / yet with only empty breath: / you have no thesis"
"I'm not sure even you believe this sentence."

Finance Profesors' Salaries?

One of the most common questions people email me is "how much do finance professors make?

The Annual AACSB salary survey is the definitive source for business school faculty salaries. Here's the most important table from the report - it shows the mean salaries for new doctorates for the major business disciplines

The figures above are for 9-month salaries. At research schools, summer research support can add another 10-20% to that, and there are also opportunities to pick up additional $$ teaching over the summer. However, at teaching oriented schools, there typically isn't summer support, and summer teaching money is also much lower.

For years, Finance professors got the highest salaries across all business disciplines. That's changed in the last few years, with accounting salaries pulling ahead. The increase in accounting new-hire salaries is likely due to smaller numbers of accounting PhD's being graduated and a lot of retirements in their field. But still, $120K isn't bad.

Click here for the free executive summary (you can also get the full report, but it'll cost you).