The Final Throes of the Semester

It's that time of the semester:

• Only one meeting left for each of my classes.
  
• My student-managed fund survive their end-of semester presentation to the advisory board
• I've graded and handed back all assignments except for final exams
• I've even given out and collected my evaluations
  

Now all I have to do is make up my finals, give them, and grade them.

The crop is almost in. And man, oh man is it about time.

One of the things I like about this career is that it has a rhythm to it - we have new "crops" each semester, and a feeling of accomplishment once the semester is done. But that final week or two is always a bit crazy.

So, to all my readers: If you're a student, good luck on your exams and projects. If you're faculty, hang in there - it's almost time for the break.

The NYU Finance Department Has a Blog!

NYU has one of the largest and best finance faculties around (most surveys place them squarely in the top 5 programs in terms of research output). It turns out that they now have a blog: Stern Finance.

It looks pretty promising. Although it's less than 2 months old (the first post was made on September 26), it already has a lot of high-quality content, with participation from a pretty large nuimnber of the faculty. Just this last month, it has posts by Viral Acharya, Marti Subramanyam, Edward Altman, and Joel Hasbrouk among others).

It's definitely one to add to your feed reader.

Conference Presentations By the Numbers

Once you've gone to a half dozen academic presentations, you begin to notece the same comments appearing over and over. Along those lines, here's a classic piece from George Stigler's in the 1977 Journal of Political Economy — “The Conference Handbook.” Stigler suggested that econ seminar participants could speed things up by making objections to the speaker's presentation using the following numbered list:

1. Adam Smith said that.
2. Unfortunately, there is an identification problem which is not dealt with adequately in the paper.
3. The residuals are clearly non-normal, and the specification of the model is incorrect.
4. Theorizing is not fruitful at this stage; we need a series of case studies.
5. Case studies are a clue, but no real progress can be made until a model of the process is constructed.
6. The second-best consideration would, of course, vitiate the argument.
7. That is an index number problem (obs., except in Cambridge).
8. Have you tried two-stage least squares?
9. The conclusions change if you introduce uncertainty.
10. You didn’t use probit analysis?
11. I proved the main results in a paper published years ago.
12. The analysis is marred by a failure to distinguish transitory and permanent components.
13. The market cannot, of course, deal satisfactorily with that externality.
14. But what if transaction costs are not zero?
15. That follows from the Coase Theorem.
16. Of course, if you allow for the investment in human capital, the entire picture changes.
17. Of course, the demand function is quite inelastic.
18. Of course, the supply function is highly inelastic.
19. The author uses a sledgehammer to crack a peanut.
20. What empirical finding would contradict your theory?
21. The central argument is not only a tautology, it is false.
22. What happens when you extend the analysis to the later (or earlier) period?
23. The motivation of the agents in this theory is so narrowly egotistic that it cannot possibly explain the behavior of real people.
24. The flabby economic actor in this impressionistic model should be replaced by the utility-maximizing individual.
25. Did you have any trouble in inverting the singular matrix?
26. It is unfortunate that the wrong choice was made between M1 and M2.
27. That is alright in theory, but it doesn’t work out in practice (use sparingly).
28. The speaker apparently believes that there is still one free lunch.
29. The problem cannot be dealt with by partial equilibrium methods; it requires a general equilibrium formulation.
30. The paper is rigidly confined by the paradigm of neoclassical economics, so large parts of urgent reality are outside its comprehension.
31. The conclusion rests on the assumption of fixed tastes, but (of course) tastes have surely changed.
32. The trouble with the present situation is that the property rights have not been fully assigned.

HT: The Freakonomics blog.

Some of the commenters on the piece added more options. Here are some of the better ones:

1. How did you handle endogeneity problem?” (Note: this almost always works well at finance conferences, particularly for corporate finance pieces)
2. Your standard errors are too small because you failed to cluster (or clustered at the improper level).
3. At Fed banks, certainly one of the items for this list would be, “How is this of any relevance to monetary policy?”
4. The results are driven by unobserved heterogeneity.
5. Did you try using a Difference-in-Difference technique? Did you try using a non-parametric estimation?
6. Experiments conducted by Kahnmen and Tversky have clearly demonstrated that people do NOT choose rationally under those conditions.
7. Is there a weak instruments problem?
8. But what if the actors aren’t rational?
9. Isn’t this just Modigliani-Miller?
   
10. How is your model identified?
11. Have you included fixed effects?
12. That’s ok in practice, but it won’t work in theory.
13. This theory is only valid in the static case and won’t work in the dynamic one.
14. Why do we care about this? or “Why is this question important anyway?"
15. That’s true, but not very interesting
16. That’s not a large effect you’ve found, it’s a small effect.
17. That’s not a small effect you’ve dismissed, it’s a large effect.
18. Did you try first-differencing?
19. What happens if you estimate it by GMM?
20. You just ran a bunch of regressions. What have we learned from your analysis?
21. Here's a popular one, in the “I did this back in..” vein:“I was troubled that you didn’t cite my work in the field.”
22. Your empirical results are obviously biased by a troubling sample selection issue.
23. But what if we view this as a 2-stage game?.
24. ‘In an efficient market, that type of arbitrage isn’t possible’.
25. I believe your correlation is a spurious one unless you convince me you checked for co-integration.

If you can think of others to add to the list, feel free to put them in the comments section.

What Effect Does Professor Quality Have on Student Performance?

Whether or not (and how) professor quality affects student performance is an ongoing question in academia. Unfortunately, there are a lot of statistical problems involved in testing these effects. Here are a couple:

• Students self-select into professors classes. So, better students might choose to take harder professor, while weaker ones might choose "softball" ones. Or alternately, grade-conscious students might select into classes of "easy graders"
  
• Performance in a class is typically based on an exam that scored by the same professor teaching the class. This means that the professor can increase easily increase (or decrease) scores by "teaching to the test" or simply by inflating/deflating them directly
  
• Student evaluations are subject to a number of biases, including the physical attractiveness of the instructor (oh well, I'm screwed...). In addition, they're endogenous with respect to expected grades.
  

Here's a very interesting paper that addresses these problems, written by Scott Carroll (of UC-Davis) and James West (at the USAF Academy). The paper, titled "Does Professor Quality Matter? Evidence from Random Assignment of Students to Professors" uses some of the unique features of the class assignment system at the U.S. Air Force Academy to disentangle some of the confounding effects that make testing the professor quality/student performance so challenging. At the USAF, students are randomly assigned to class sections, faculty in common courses teach from a single common syllabus, and exams are jointly graded by all faculty teaching the course. Here's the abstract (note: italics are mine):

It is difficult to measure teaching quality at the post-secondary level because students typically self-select" their coursework and their professors. Despite this, student evaluations of professors are widely used in faculty promotion and tenure decisions. We exploit the random assignment of college students to professors in a large body of required coursework to examine how professor quality affects student achievement. Introductory course professors significantly affect student achievement in contemporaneous and follow-on related courses, but the effects are quite heterogeneous across subjects. Students of professors who as a group perform well in the initial mathematics course perform significantly worse in follow-on related math, science, and engineering courses. We find that the academic rank, teaching experience, and terminal degree status of mathematics and science professors are negatively correlated with contemporaneous student achievement, but positively related to follow-on course achievement. Across all subjects, student evaluations of professors are positive predictors of contemporaneous course achievement, but are poor predictors of follow-on course achievement.

So, "higher quality" professors result in better long-term performance for their students. But at the same time, their students get lower grades in the foundations courses. This could be a result of lower quality instructors "teaching to the test", or of better instructors teaching in a way that's geared more towards follow-on classes at the expense of focusing on the intro materials (those ar tow ways of saying the same thing, BTW).

If you don't have access to NBER, you can read an ungated version of the paper here.

HT: Kids Prefer Cheese

Giving an Academic Talk

I can count the number of really good (i.e. memorable) academic presentations I've seen on one hand. If I lower the bar to "pretty good", there's still only a limited list.

If you want to improve your presentation skills, here's a very good collection of advice on how to give an academic presentation from Jonathan Shewchuck, a Computer Science professor at Berkeley. Even if you're not a CS guy, read it anyway - most of what he discusses is relevent to almost any presentation. He breaks down just about everything you need to know:

• How to make sure your slides are clean and crisp (less is more)
• How to organize the presentation (more time on motivation and less on technical details)
• Helpful advice on actually giving the talk (be aware of nonverbal communication).

I'd argue that even most experienced presenters can pick up a tip or two from his piece. Once a given bit of research is completed, it's very hard to improve its quality without significant cost. On the other hand, it's relatively easy to improve your ability to present your research. And the marginal payoff to increased presentation skills is pretty big -- conference presentations are a critical part of building your academic and professional reputation, and if you're on a campus visit, your research presentation is one of the most important factors in determining whether you'll get an offer.

So read Shewchuck's list here before your next presentation.

You're Known By The Company You Keep

I catch one or more people cheating almost every semester. Most times, it's of the "cheat sheet on exams" variety. But sometimes, it involves plagiarism on a project.

I have less and less of a problem with it as time goes on, because I give very detailed guidelines as to what should go in each section of the project. So the likelihood that they'll be able to plagiarize something that matches up with the assignment's requirements is somewhere between slim and none. But still, it happens.

Here's a cautionary tale for those of you who have to do do group projects from Jacqueline Passey, who's now back to blogging (and with a new, improved title for her blog to boot). One of her group members plagiarized a good portion of her "contribution" to a group project in an accounting class. Luckily, Jacqueline caught it before handing it in and redid the work herself.

It's important to remember - if a member of your group plagiarizes on a joint project and the instructor catches it, you're equally screwed. So choose your group carefully, and check their work. If it has your name on it, you're responsible.

HT: Newmarks Door.

update 5/23: The link was to the wrong piece. It's been updated.

Grade Too Tough And You'll Be Denied Tenure

Inside Higher Education just posted a troubling article involving the case of Steven Aird, a Biology professor at Norfolk State University (a Historically Black College in Virginia). He was known for being a pretty tough grader, and failed 80% of his students some semesters. What makes it troubling is that the university had a policy that if a student missed more than 20% of the class, he or she could be failed. And in fact, Aird's records showed that the average student in his class missed almost twice that many classes. So, just by following the college's policies, the expected grade in the class should have been an F.

Unfortunately, the university also had an unofficial policy that 70% of their students would get passing grades. So, they ended up crucifying the guy for holding the students to the very standard that the university itself had officially set.

RTWT here, and also read the comments that follow.

Stick A Fork In Me - I'm Done!

Just handed in grades for the semester. As usual, there was a pretty broad range of performance, and many of the usual cast of characters (the names change every semester, but the acts never do):

• The obviously extremely bright student who doesn't take proper care on his assignments and does them at the last minute. This results in a low score on 20% of the total grade, which along with his poor attendance (class participation is another 20% of the grade) makes it difficult to do well in the class. Then on the exam he gets one of the highest grades in the class (Final Grade: "B", when he was clearly capable of an "A").
• The not-so bright kid who is more passionate about finance than any student I've seen in the last five years. He ends up getting one of the highest grades in the class on the exam (Final Grade: "A", when I thought at the start that he'd probably be lucky to get a "B-").
  
• The charming one who tries to be my buddy, but doesn't do the hard work necessary to grasp the material on more than a surface level (Final Grade: "C"). Then he can't understand why he got such a poor grade (I guess math is also not his strong point).
  
• The student who failed the class last semester and retakes it this semester. She "Gets Religion" and works her tail off this time around (Final Grade: "B-"
• The student who failed the class last semester and retakes it this semester. He learns nothing from the experience and approaches it the same way he did last time, with the same results (Final Grade: "D+").

So, it was the usual mixed bag, with some surprising performances on both ends of the distribution. Either way, I can now put paid to this school year, and start on a couple of research projects that need my attention.

Now, all I have to do is get out of town before the emails and calls start coming in. I need to figure out how to put an autoresponse on my email that says "Dr. XXX is currently out of the office. He is recuperating from the stress of grading your papers on a dry (no alcohol permitted) campus. He will be back in a couple of weeks after recuperating and getting all the sand out of his swim trunks."

Exam Blogging

I'm in the midst of giving my Advanced Corporate Finance class their final. Since it's open-book/ open-notes, monitoring costs are almost zero (I just have to check for occasional peeking at others' papers).

So, in the next three hours, I get to grade my other final exam, do some reviewing for CFA, and empty out my cache of unblogged items.

All hail the open-book exam. Of course, the cost is that I can't do multiple choice or simple definitional -type questions, so it takes longer to make up an exam. But since they're seniors, they shouldn't be seeing those types of exams in any case (that doesn't meant that some of my colleagues don't give multiple choice exams, but that's another story).

Dartmouth's 'Hostile' Environment'

Here's a great piece in today's Wall Street Journal (off the Opinionjournal.com site, so it's free).

Often it seems as though American higher education exists only to provide gag material for the outside world. The latest spectacle is an Ivy League professor threatening to sue her students because, she claims, their "anti-intellectualism" violated her civil rights.

Priya Venkatesan taught English at Dartmouth College. She maintains that some of her students were so unreceptive of "French narrative theory" that it amounted to a hostile working environment. She is also readying lawsuits against her superiors, who she says papered over the harassment, as well as a confessional exposé, which she promises will "name names."

The trauma was so intense that in March Ms. Venkatesan quit Dartmouth and decamped for Northwestern. She declined to comment for this piece, pointing instead to the multiple interviews she conducted with the campus press.

Ms. Venkatesan lectured in freshman composition, intended to introduce undergraduates to the rigors of expository argument. "My students were very bully-ish, very aggressive, and very disrespectful," she told Tyler Brace of the Dartmouth Review. "They'd argue with your ideas." This caused "subversiveness," a principle English professors usually favor.

Ms. Venkatesan's scholarly specialty is "science studies," which, as she wrote in a journal article last year, "teaches that scientific knowledge has suspect access to truth." She continues: "Scientific facts do not correspond to a natural reality but conform to a social construct."

Read the whole thing here.

I think Professor Venkatesan would like my students - they tend not to challenge ideas much (or participate in class much at all).

But seriously - this lady is destined to end up as the punchline on a bad joke. Can you imagine a professor being upset because students actually challenged his/her teachings in class? That's a perfect opportunity to get them engaged, discussing, and thinking critically. That's the stuff we work for.

I get the impression that that's not what she had in mind. I guess it's not just students who are "Snowflakes" (i.e. each special, unique in their own way, and deserving of kudos for every little accomplishment).

I'll leave it to my readers to come up with the "appropriate" responses.

Sorry - gotta go before I start ranting. Must. Drink. Coffee.

update: Mike Munger provides a nifty link to a treasure trove of info on this case from Ivygate. I really should get back to work, but this is like watching a train wreck, but with PoMo nonsence trown in as a bonus.

Another New Academic Finance Blog

I think it's good practice to mention new blogs of note -- I got some mention by established bloggers early on, and it helped a lot. So, I try pass the favor along and mention new blogs as I come across them - particularly when they're finance or academic in nature.

In this case, here's one that's both: Finance Clippings, run by Richard Warr, a finance professor at North Carolina State University.

I've read Richard's work (and enjojed it) for years, and have even crossed paths with him at conferences on a number of occasions. He seems to have both the academic chops and personal characteristics necessary to make for a good blog. Based on his first few posts, he seems to be off to a good start, and is focusing on material that he'll use in his classes.

So welcome to the Blogosphere, Richard.

Now everyone go check out his blog -- it's been added to the blogroll.

The Semester Winds Down

It's that time of the year - I have one more day of classes, followed by final exams. My student-managed investment fund did a bang-up job on their end-of-semester presentation to the advisory board, so that's another big item to cross off the list.

So now all I have to do is write a couple of final exams, grade them and some final projects, and start my summer.

The only downside to the end of the spring semester is that there are always a couple of students who thought they were "graduating seniors" who found out only the second part of the phrase is correct. But for the most part, they already know where they stand.

Now it's on to summer research and studying for the CFA level 2 exam (only 42 days until the big one).

A Crazy Week

The semester is winding down - only two weeks of classes to go. Still, they'll be crazy ones. I just got back from a conference, which took several days out of my schedule. The next few days I'll be feverishly trying to finish up a paper for submission in time for a colleague to put it on her 3-year mid-tenure review (if we get it submitted by Friday he can count it, but not if we submit it later. And since he hasn't done as much writing in the last three years as he should have, this piece is important to him.

In addition, my student-managed investment fund class has to prepare our end-of-semester report for our advisory board, and I still have to create a couple of problem sets and final exams in the next week.

I know I say this every year at this time, but man, am I tired. But at least it's only two more weeks and then finals (followed by alcohol, and then sleep).

Ah well, it still beats a job in industry by a country mile.

Spring Break, and The Living Is Good

Spring Break has officially begun at Unknown University. Since I'm on a Tuesday/Thursday schedule this semester, that means blessed relief from classes for another 10 days.

Other than a bit of extra time catching up with the Unknown Family (it's off to Horton Hears a Who in a few minutes), that means I get to focus on my research and catch up on studying for CFA Level2. I've got a rewrite of a first draft that need attention, a revise and resubmit to work on, and another rejection that needs to be tweaked and sent back out.

As for the CFA, I'm pretty much on track, but there's still a lot to go (and only 12 weeks until the exam). I still need to take a first pass at Ethics and Derivatives, I'm only about half done with the Fixed Income material, and Financial Statement Analysis will need at least two more passes before I'm comfortable with it.

But for now, I'm lovin the break from the classroom. I like teaching, but a breather is always appreciated by this point in the semester.

And no, I don't expect to show up on any video collections sold over the cable channels (even as comic relief).

Advice to First Year Ph.D. Students

I came across this a while back, tagged it, and immediately forgot about it. So while I spend my day torturing the English language (my coauthors are both internationals and I'm in charge of "englishizing" the paper), this might keep y'all busy. It's written by Matt Pearson, a UC-Davis econ grad student, but there's so much overlap between econ and finance at "good" programs, that it's worth reading the finance PhD students, too. He starts out with a few running themes:

• You'll spend a lot of the first year studying things you think are useless, silly, or off point. Expect it. But realize that you really don't know yet what's needed and what's not. So, keep slogging - it does get better, and learning the foundational stuff is essential.
  
• You'll often feel like an impostor - particularly when one or more of your classmates is a star that seems to coast through things. In my case, we had a student who was ABD in physics, and he could run rings around some of the professors when it came to high-level math chops. In contrast, I struggled with basic real analysis. I got through it, but it wasn't pretty.
• You'll want to give up - often. In fact, this is a running joke with some of the students. Avoid the temptation.
  

Following these observations, he gives some very practical tips that seem painfully obvious, but are often ignored. Read the whole thing here.

I Vant To Be Left Alone!

Like almost any college, we have a few folks who get upset at from time to
time. I just got this email from one of my more collegial fellow finance faculty at Unknown University:

Unknown:

I would like to let you know that I have decided that I am no longer going to belong to the Finance area faculty. When you or any other Finance area faculty correspond to the Finance area faculty in the future, please remove my name from the list.

-Dr. Hothead

And they say academics get all bent out of shape. I forwarded the email to the Dean, and asked if this means we get to hire a new faculty member. He hasn't responded yet.

Our Students Are Still Ahead - But Monkyes Are Closing The Gap

I often tell my students that giving an idiot a financial calculator merely gives you a faster idiot.

I also tell them setup is the key to solving problems - you can train a monkey to push buttons on a calculator - just give him a banana.

Now it turns out that my analogy wasn't fair - monkeys are surprisingly good at mental math.

Unfortunately, my students aren't - once you take away their calculators, they're in trouble.

Twas The Night Before Finals

I read the blog "Rate Your Students" on a daily basis - it's the electronic equivalent of the lounge where the faculty share stories about students among ourselves. Here's their latest offering - Twas The Week Before Finals

‘Twas the week before finals
And all through the U,
The students were yawning
And some drooling too.

While papers are now due
Students are at the mall,
With not one single fear
That their good grade might fall.

“I can write it all one night,”
Thinks the tattooed pierced girl,
“I’ll just peek at a Wiki
And give it a whirl.”

They don’t come to class
There is always a reason,
These vary quite little
From season to season.

“A cold” has the tall one,
“With me it’s the flu,”
“My sister’s in jail
And Grandma’s dead too”

“Hangover” “flat tire”
“My boyfriend dumped me,”
“Alarm didn’t go off”
“Had to play with my Wii”

“This class ain’t important,
Many other things are.”
With an attitude like this
Frat boy’s sure to go far.

“I’m going to med school
Organic’s the crux,
Have to go over anatomy
With my buds at Starbucks.”

“After that comes my psych
And the math quiz I missed.
Your class is ‘bout tenth
On my priority list.”

Outside my office
There arose such a clatter.
A line of students?
Now what is the matter?

Here come the grubbers
The beggars and thieves,
With the crap that they’re dishing
I’m going to heave.

“This paper is all mine.
I never would fake,
That you found it on Google
Is just a mistake.”

“You’ll ruin my average
My perfect grade,
A ‘C’ isn’t part
Of the deal that we made.”

“I pay tuition
You give me an ‘A,’
Then everyone is happy
And I’m on my way.”

“Get lost all you losers!”
I wanted to shout,
But the tenure committee
Would then throw me out.

I brought out a six pack
Some pills and a noose
But settled down with exams
and a vodka and juice.

For many this season
Is chock full of cheer
But for profs, December
Requires much beer.

Let the games begin!

Faculty Meeting Bingo

I'm on my college's undergraduate curriculum and assessment committee, and I'm sure it's because of some egregious sins I committed in a past life. We had a meeting the other day, and after an hour and fifteen minutes, it was still going strong with no end in sight. So, I left to go pick up my kids. After looking at the agenda, I thought we could get 'er done in about 30 minutes, but that means they would have had to try something that was clearly out of their comfort zone - like SHUTTING UP AND FOCUSING ON THE MATTER AT HAND!

It seems like you have the same characters and scenes in far too many faculty meetings (the actual people and issues involved change from meeting to meeting, but the play remains the same).

A while back, I came across the game called "Buzzword Bingo" (as pointed out by some of my commenters, there's an Educational Buzzwords version and a Law School version known as "Turkey Bingo"). For those who aren't familiar with it, in the game of BB you get a Bingo card filled with common business buzzwords. You take it to a meeting, and when you hear an overused buzzword, you mark it off on the card. That way, what had been an irritating, overused phrase becomes something you get excited hearing.

I'm convinced there's a niche market for an academic version of BuzzWord Bingo that can be played at faculty meetings (particularly in committee meetings). The main difference between Faculty Bingo and Buzzword Bing is that you can have boxes not just for buzzwords but for cliched behaviors. I've listed a few options for the squares of the Bingo card, but I'll add others as readers send them in:

1. A senior faculty member brings up the same sore point that he's been harping on for the last 10 years. It has nothing to do with the issue at hand.
2. A spirited discussion breaks out about changing ONE word on a document that (at most) two people will ever read. The discussion goes around and around for an hour or more.
6. The word "Rubric" (our new word du jour) is used. And I always thought Rubric was the character Steve Martin Played in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. Also (from the Cynical Professor: the terms cognate disciplines, course embedded assessment, and subvention, from King Banaian: the terms student learning outcomes, program assessment matrix, degree map, and strategic cooperation (which I think is the antonym of sincere cooperation), and from Frank: the term "co-curricular " (often used in the same breath as "extra-curricular")
7. Someone (usually the guy in #1) complains about how things have changed (i.e. students are so much worse, they used to have a 5/5 load, it was much harder to publish in top journals, etc...) since they they were starting out.
8. Don't forget the ever-exciting "Let me give a little institutional background" guy. He is worth 20 dead minutes in every gathering. (also from Cynical Prof)
9. Someone frets about how any disagreement will reflect badly upon the program / department / institution's 'mission. Bonus points for being in a very secular setting or campus while muttering about the same. (HT: Ancarett)
10. The tired old hand who tells everyone that whatever's decided doesn't matter because nobody has any real power here, anyway. (HT: Ancarett)
    
11. #s 11-16 are compliments of Mike Munger: When I was at [name of previous job university], we always....[what they did].
    
12. I hear that in [name of department], they just got [n new positions, a budget increase, new space]. Why don't you get that for US?
    
13. The "snatch defeat from the jaws of victory" guy. Committee chair reads proposal, clear that everyone agrees, if you voted now. But the Snatcher prepared a talk, and by golly he's going to give it. Starts by talking about how 25 years ago he proposed something like this (not MUCH like it, though), and was turned down. So, it's really time that anyone opposed then explains how they could have been so stupid. 7 or 8 people raise hands to respond. Vote is finally taken, an hour later, and it's 15-9. The 9 people, who were ready to support the proposal, end up sabotaging it because they are so angry at the Snatcher. After meeting, Snatcher congratulates self on "victory", since vote was positive.
14. The by-laws guy. Either we are doing something not in the by-laws, or the by-laws need to be revised to reflect what we are doing.
    
15. They guy who starts out with, "I'm going to support this, but..." and then runs down the proposal, or candidate, for ten minutes. Finishes with, "But I'm going to go along, and vote yes."
    
16. The Dean's mouthpiece. "I don't think the Dean is going to like that. We need to think strategically!" This same person is perhaps the least strategic, and most politically inept, person in department.
17. #s 17 & 18 are from Mike Barry: At our faculty meetings, there's always at least one blatant suckup. The dean will start the meeting off and the suckup will loudly thank the dean for all of his support (in something that made the suckup's job easier).
    
18. We also have a social issues person. We could be talking about something like upgrade cycles for our computers and she'll somehow try to weave in a socially responsible angle. There are always a few faculty who, as soon as their hands go up, the rest of us groan. Of course, we have students like that!
19. David Tufte contributed #s 19-23: The guy who insists that everything has an ethical angle that is in conflict with how we should present ourselves to stakeholders.
20. The person who is secretary or otherwise in charge of documents who doesn't seem to be able to use Word, PDF or e-mail properly (usually you see this one on campus-wide committees
21. The person who makes copies for the committee, but never makes enough - as if they had to type them all by hand.
    
22. The former administrator who views the committee as a forum to perpetuate the views and continue the actions that got his butt booted out of the previous position.
    
23. The student representative who never shows up for meetings.
24. #s 24-25 are compliments of David Hammes: There's the "Oh, so what you're saying " or "Let me see if I understand you" guy who restates everyone's previous comments (oft times incorrectly), thereby dragging the meeting out even longer.
25. The guy who "debates" himself out loud, changing his position with every comment he makes (kind of like Colin "Bomber" Harris)
26. Someone says the word "Stakeholder". NOTE: this was found on the comments on Newmark's Door: "Personally, every time I now hear the word 'stakeholder' the first thought that comes to my mind is putting a stake thru the heart of the person who said it."
27. Free-Wheelin' Guy: After anyone has presented their scheduled, carefully thought-out proposal, Free-Wheelin' Guy takes the floor for 20 minutes coming up with off-the-cuff suggestions for "Someone" to do. No-one ever does what he suggests (including him) but every meeting he still does his thing.
    

Any other suggestions? Put them in the comments, and I'll add them in as they come (with appropriate citation in the style manual of your choice). And pass this along to your friends. Once I get to about 40 or 50, I'll make up a handy sheet with boxes to check so you can keep track.

And thanks for playing...

Reflections on Interviewing at The FMA Meeting

Now that I've been back from the FMAs for about a week, I finally have time to put some thoughts together about the experience. Although I've been in the job candidate's seat a number of times, this was my first time being on the "hiring committee" side of the interviewing table, and it was an interesting experience, to say the least. Here are a few thoughts, in no particular order (like many of my thoughts, but let's not go there):

1. There was a huge (and noticeable) variation in the amount of preparation candidates had done on my school. If they didn't know anything about the school other than the location, it signalled a general lack of interest on their part (and resulted in a lack of interest on ours).
   
2. A surprising number of candidates did a very poor job of what I call "setting the table" for their research. By that, I mean the anecdotal part of showing me why I should give a rat's hiney about their topic. As an example, consider a candidate researching the effect of syndicate composition on the outcome of an IPO: A bad candidate would jump right into their model and/or hypotheses, while a good candidate might first talk about a recent underwriting syndicate put together by Goldman, and what some of the salient facts illustrated about their topic.
   
3. It's impressive when you can site literature to buttress your arguments and do it smoothly. It shows you have a good grasp on your literature. It's even better when you can bring it back to the big picture.
   
4. I found out that I really like asking questions about factors that the candidate hadn't considered in their tests (for example, if they were examining some aspect of merger bid premiums, I'd ask how the composition of the institutions (transient vs. indexers) holding target shares might affect their analysis). My main interest wouldn't be their specific answer, but rather how they approach the question. Again, if they can link it back to important prior research, all the better.
   
5. Here are some f the things that made candidates seem less attractive: not knowing their topic (or not caring) well enough to show me how it fits into things (see above), not taking care in answering questions (See above again), not at least making eye contact with everyone in the room (even if one is the dominant interviewer, we all count), and not having any good questions to ask US - it shows you're interested and know at least a bit about our institution. Make sure tehy're not dumb ones.
   
6. We had one or two candidates that were extremely sharp - they were prepared, articulate, passionate, interpersonally gifted, and had great dissertations that they really had a grasp of. Of course, we have NO chance of actually hiring these people (we're a bit under the market salary. But at least they serve as a benchmark.
7. The process can be stressful for the candidates, and stultifyingly boring for the interviewers. Regardless of which side of the table you're on, if you don't take careful notes, the interviews quickly run together.
   
8. One candidate had 35 interviews! I have no idea how they either prepared for all of them or how they survived the stress. On a related note, this candidate was 10 minutes late for OUR interview. So, they had probably gone past the optimal number. And we're not sure we want to get into a "multiple bidder" situation. So, thanks but no thanks.
9. We've met as a group since coming back, and have a short list of candidates we'd like to call for fly-outs. But before we can invite them, we have to clear the hurdle of our affirmative action office. And they're a picky and verrrry slow group. So, I suspect we'll get some sand thrown in the gears shortly, and we'll have to wait a while longer before the campus visits.
   
10. You run into a surprising number of candidates (and their professors) at the cocktail party and at the bar. This is a good place to find out if they're the sort of people you want as colleagues. (the well known "soft" information). If they can loosen up a bit (but not too much), it's a plus. Even better if they've been reading any interesting books lately.
    

I'll post more on the process as it continues. Stay tuned