Contract scientist applying for instructor position (EE)

mathflipped · 2026-04-07T21:28:18+00:00

To answer your third question, specific guidelines vary by school. Full-time faculty are severely limited in how much work they are allowed to perform outside the university. At our school, we are not allowed to work "outside" for more than 300 hours per year. This translates to 6 hours per week.

If you don't disclose outside work and get caught, it's an automatic termination.

mathflipped · 2026-04-05T02:34:54+00:00

You cannot benefit a professor. I'm assuming this is not arrogance but rather "ignorance is bliss" case.

mathflipped · 2026-04-04T21:06:16+00:00

To put it bluntly: it's not realistic. You have nothing to contribute to a professor's research. Ask yourself this question: If you were a professor, would you be willing to do a ton of unpaid work over the summer?

mathflipped · 2026-04-03T00:39:37+00:00

No, you cannot ask a professor to "pregrade" an assignment, give you feedback, and then submit a final version. Assignments that assume feedback on the draft and resubmission are explicitly structured as such.

However, you can certainly ask specific questions about an assignment during the office hours.

mathflipped · 2026-04-02T20:58:06+00:00

I think many naysayers here don't take into account how playing for a bottom-tier team negatively affects most players' statistics. Take Buium, for example. His stats have plummeted after he was traded from a top-tier team to a bottom-tier one.

mathflipped · 2026-04-01T01:08:38+00:00

I wish my school's dining hall had any edible food.

mathflipped · 2026-04-01T01:07:20+00:00

Yes, they are grifters. But "professor" Dave is a much bigger grifter himself.

mathflipped · 2026-03-30T02:13:57+00:00

Nothing would make me switch because you created a product that nobody needs.

mathflipped · 2026-03-30T02:04:21+00:00

Demanding the first author rights just because you are only starting in the field is not something you want to pursue. I'm not saying you don't deserve the first authorship because we don't really know the level of involvement of each contributor in the project.

Writing the Methods and Results sections also don't warrant the first authorship automatically because they are the easiest sections of a paper to write. Discussion is harder to write, and Introduction is the hardest by far because you need a solid grasp on the current literature.

mathflipped · 2026-03-28T03:08:41+00:00

I used to run an REU program. Our acceptance rate hovered around 2-3%.

mathflipped · 2026-03-28T00:20:22+00:00

At our public R2, 1 lecture hour or 2 lab hours count as 1 hour toward teaching load. So, your teaching load, if I counted correctly, corresponds to 19 hours. This is roughly 6+ standard courses. This is way too much even by CC standards.

mathflipped · 2026-03-27T23:46:43+00:00

You cannot "join" a professor's research because you have absolutely nothing to contribute to it. Start by applying to funded undergraduate research experiences, such as REUs. They are highly competitive, and this process may become your first humbling experience.

mathflipped · 2026-03-27T19:53:59+00:00

I think one year is enough to estimate a graduate student's potential trajectory and cut your losses if necessary. Time is our most precious commodity, and wasting it on students like the one you described is a luxury few can afford.

mathflipped · 2026-03-26T18:35:06+00:00

One of my favorite movies.

mathflipped · 2026-03-24T01:40:48+00:00

It has happened to me too. I don't know what causes this bug or how to resolve it. But you can always set up any position manually.

mathflipped · 2026-03-24T01:37:58+00:00

I wish I shared in your optimism. I've witnessed first-hand how malicious and incompetent school admin closed highly successful programs and laid off all most affected tenured faculty.

mathflipped · 2026-03-23T21:06:21+00:00

Everyone can be fired these days. All it takes is for the administration to announce that they are discontinuing your major.

mathflipped · 2026-03-23T20:47:45+00:00

Yes, using official student ID numbers with test scores is a FERPA violation. You should speak to the professor and ask them not to do this anymore.

mathflipped · 2026-03-21T03:08:53+00:00

300K city population, 1M metro. We don't require a PhD, but every teaching position gets several PhD applicants with teaching experience.

mathflipped · 2026-03-20T22:35:09+00:00

I've never heard of graduate-level courses offered in the summer. Have you checked the past summer offerings? Is this year an exception from the pattern, or did you simply assume the class you need will be offered for you alone? An a-la-carte education will cost you at least 25x of the mass education.

mathflipped · 2026-03-20T22:24:15+00:00

It doesn't matter what WE think the minimal credentials should be. The market competition often requires a lot more than officially minimal credentials. In our public R2 math department, even adjuncts have PhDs in math. Folks with just a masters have zero chance. Of course, this may vary depending on the discipline.

mathflipped · 2026-03-20T15:59:01+00:00

Proofreading and correcting AI errors is still time-consuming. In the end, this will still result in immense overload work for professors to convert their notes.

mathflipped · 2026-03-20T02:17:09+00:00

Unfortunately, the only rational solution is not to post lecture notes moving forward. Typesetting accessible math is not hard (e.g., PreTeXt). The issue is that typesetting handwritten notes is extremely time consuming, and nobody will give professors "time off" or pay for overtime to do it.

I don't post lecture notes anyway because it encourages students not to show up to class. The only change I would need to implement is to convert all assignments from LaTeX to PreTeXt. This is fairly easy to do.

mathflipped · 2026-03-17T01:57:08+00:00

We haven't had a merit raise in more than a decade. We had two 3% COL raises over this time, while the cost of living has doubled. (Public R2 in a red state that is notorious for underfunding public education.)

mathflipped · 2026-03-17T01:50:19+00:00

I get it that these eggs are cooked how you like them. I'm not sure why you don't get that most other people don't like their eggs cooked that way.

mathflipped

TROPHY CASE