In a couple of days I’m participating in a panel to help young faculty be ready for their 3rd year review (the halfway step to tenure, which is kind of a big deal at my institution). This is the sort of thing that I normally say no to, but I’ve been to a couple of these things and I just couldn’t bear the thought of another group of young faculty being told that what they really needed to do to get tenure is to have a really spiffy tenure binder… so I’m going to talk about what they actually need to do to get tenure – get stuff done – and I thought it would be worth posting my thoughts on this here for broader consumption. This advice is targeted at assistant professors at research universities, but folks in other situations may be able to adapt it to their individual circumstances (e.g., if you’re at a small liberal arts college or other teaching centered school try swapping research and teaching below). Since the goal of the workshop is getting through the first phase of tenure, this is about what you need to do to accomplish that goal, not what you should be doing in any sort of broader philosophical sense. This advice is built on the lessons that Morgan (my wife and co-blogger for those of you new to JE; in fact she was so instrumental in developing these ideas that even though I’m using the first person singular this will be listed as a co-authored post) and I have learned during our time as assistant professors.
Getting things done in academia
January 18, 2010
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education, meetings, productivity, science | 
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Posted by Morgan & Ethan
Faculty position in experimental conservation ecology
January 14, 2010The Community and Conservation Ecology group at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, has a job opening for a tenure track assistant professor in Experimental Conservation Ecology (details below). This is a very impressive group that is headed by Han Olff and includes Rampal Etienne and David Alonso. I’ve worked with all three of these folks and I have no doubts that working in this group would make for a very intellectually stimulating environment. So, if you’re interested in moving to the Netherlands, check out the ad below and put in an application.
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Posted by Ethan
MacArthur on generality in ecology
January 13, 2010I just came across this great Robert MacArthur quote on Allen Hurlbert’s website:
Ecological patterns, about which we construct theories, are only interesting if they are repeated. They may be repeated in space or in time, and they may be repeated from species to species. A pattern which has all of these kinds of repetition is of special interest because of its generality, and yet these very general events are only seen by ecologists with rather blurred vision. The very sharp-sighted always find discrepancies and are able to say that there is no generality, only a spectrum of special cases. This diversity of outlook has proved useful in every science, but it is nowhere more marked than in ecology.
–Robert MacArthur, 1968
It seems to me that one of the real challenges for us as scientists is to make sure that even if we don’t understand what others see when they look at the ecological world, we need to consider the possibility that they simply have an alternative, and equally valid, perspective. As MacArthur notes, ecology will move forward most rapidly with a diverse set of approaches and perspectives, not by having a single viewpoint dominate how we address ecological research.
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Posted by Ethan
Ideas in Ecology and Evolution
January 11, 2010I just read the excellently forward thinking year end editorial of the new journal Ideas in Ecology and Evolution. The editorial was written by Lonnie Aarssen and Christopher Lortie and is filled with Aarssen’s trademark,creative, outside the proverbial box, thinking. In this case it applies to the field of scientific publishing, the things they’ve tried to change with their new journal and those attempts that have failed and required rethinking. There are a lot of great ideas embodied in this editorial and that from the launch of the journal the previous year.
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Posted by Ethan
Upcoming meetings on metabolic scaling and ecology
January 8, 2010There are a couple of upcoming meetings (or sessions of meetings) related to metabolic scaling and it’s relationship with/to ecology that I thought might be of some interest.
The first is a symposium at the 2010 Society for Experimental Biology conference in Prague on the relationship between the scaling of metabolic rate with body size in organisms and the ecology of those organisms. According to the flyer that one of the organizers (Shaun Killen) sent me
The scaling of metabolic rate with body size has been a central research theme in biology for over a century. Recently there has been a particular interest in how patterns of metabolic scaling at the individual level may affect ecological phenomena and, in turn, how environmental factors may influence changes in metabolic rate with body size. The purpose of this symposium is to review recent evidence of these relationships, and to exchange ideas regarding the underlying factors that cause the observed patterns of metabolic scaling both between and within taxa. The scaling of metabolic rate with body size has been a central research theme in biology for over a century. Recently there has been a particular interest in how patterns of metabolic scaling at the individual level may affect ecological phenomena and, in turn, how environmental factors may influence changes in metabolic rate with body size. The purpose of this symposium is to review recent evidence of these relationships, and to exchange ideas regarding the underlying factors that cause the observed patterns of metabolic scaling both between and within taxa.
The meeting is June 30th – July 3rd in Prague and registration is now open.
The other is the biennial Gordon Research Conference on the Metabolic Basis of Ecology and Evolution, schedule for July 18th-23rd in Biddeford, Maine. If you haven’t been to a Gordon Conference before, these are really amazing conferences. The number of participants is limited (I think it’s about 100-150 people) and the format is specifically designed to engender discussion and interaction among the participants (every one eats meals together, stays in dorms together, etc). This year our own Morgan Ernest will be giving a talk in the section on Regulation of Metabolic Systems Across Scales. You’ll have to apply and be accepted in order to participate and the talks are invite only so posters are the only general option for presentation (both of which are a little strange in ecology circles), but it’s definitely the best conference I go to so it’s well worth the effort.
Ethan
Morgan
Morgan & Ethan