Maggie's Farm

Which brings me back to one of my favorite issues--accurate CV's.

I am appalled by the lack of integrity today's universities are supporting in the name of some type of equity.

Here is the problem: if you want to know the best (most experience in the field, most academic experience, etc.) you must have an Curriculum Vitae (CV) that reflect the dates of each course studied, or taught, and the dates of any actual job experience. PARENTS of college aged students must insist on seeing this information. An honest department will require each of it's faculty; tenured, or not; assistant, associate, or full professor; core faculty, or visiting. ANYONE walking into the classroom must post on the department's website a COMPLETE CV--that includes dates ladies and gentlemen--it also assumes a willingness to be accurate! Without this information students have no idea whose classroom they are walking into and parents have no idea of what they are paying for. However, the trend today is to not require that information of the teachers. The supporting argument for failure to provide actual experience and dates is that white guys have been in the field longer and look better (more qualified and talented). GET BUSY PARENTS and GRANDPARENTS--here is one small thing you can do to help clean up this mess: write to the college president and point out to him that Professor so/so has not posted a complete CV. Ask where you can find that information. If the whole damn department doesn't post then be sure to ask the president why?

Oh and one more thing: Be sure you don't tell them who your student is--those people are spiteful and mean SOB's! But, you too have an obligation to protect this country, and this is a relatively harmless thing you can do. It's not like I am telling you to sign up for Afghanistan duty!

Just ask for complete CV information--dates and actual tasks performed. Also, if you read through the list of published documents and you keep seeing a particular woman whose name is printed first on the article, or paper, and then followed by a bunch of men. You can count on one thing being true for most of the time. The guys did the actual work, and the gal acted as "facilitator" (managed the calendar and scheduled meetings). She did not, nor does she likely have the real intellectual skills required to do a true scientific research paper--not if she is in academia!

Ol Einstein was famous for two things with regard to being a professor: he could not teach worth a darn, and he wrote letters of glowing recommendation for each/every student that asked. Got so that people in the field looked twice at a student with a letter of recommendation from the old man!