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Re: [Phys-l] Physics Program Reviews



On 10/06/2011 07:20 AM, LaMontagne, Bob wrote:
I would appreciate any recounting of experiences people have had with such reviews.

1) As Vern Lindberg pointed out, you want to get people from industry
involved ... in particular, the industries that hire your graduates.
These are the people who know about and care about the quality of
your "product".

=======

NOTE: The next few remarks should be understood in the following
way: As always, it helps to think about the goal, and then think
about the best mechanisms for reaching that goal. This is better
than focusing too early on a specific mechanism.

2) You can gain a lot from a robust /visiting faculty/ program.
Somebody who is on-site for one or two semesters can judge your
program better than somebody who has only been on-site for one
or two days.

This is a slightly different mechanism, but serves many of the
same purposes as the "Review Program" that was asked about. See
the NOTE above.

3) Continuing down that road: You can gain a lot from having a
_Professor at Large_ program. No matter how prestigious your
institution, there will always be some guy you would like to hire
but can't, but maybe you can entice him to accept an appointment
as Professor at Large, which means that he visits the department
for a couple of weeks every year, for years on end. Example: At
Cornell, Tony Leggett was Professor at Large for many years.
(This is before he was famous. They recognized him as a Good Guy
before the Nobel committee did, which is a sign of good judgment.)

4a) As a further step down that road: The guys you invite to give
the department colloquium are obvious candidates to offer feedback
about the department. This saves you some work, because the
colloquium committee has already done a tremendous amount of work
identifying Good Guys and bringing them in. And while they were
on-site, they presumably got a tour of the department.

4b) Note that even if you don't ask the colloquium speakers for
feedback, the colloquium program in-and-of-itself is a step
toward the same goal, namely helping the locals keep perspective
about what is going on in the rest of the world.

5) Also note that some institutions, especially in Europe and in
Canada, have a tradition of getting an Outside Examiner to review
each PhD thesis. Again I mention this because the Outside Examiners
have already done a good bit of work becoming familiar with your
"product". The point is, this is directly a check on the student's
performance, and indirectly -- but no less importantly -- a check
on the advisor's work -- in the sense that if there are problems
with the thesis, the advisor should have noticed and done something
about it before it got to the thesis-defense stage. More indirectly,
this provides feedback on the whole department, including coursework
and even admissions.

Needless to say, if you don't have a tradition of Outside Examiners
you should consider establishing one.

The pilot-training business relies heavily on "outside" examiners.
The instructor does /not/ get to design the final exam to evaluate
his own students. The instructor can do whatever evaluation he wants
along the way, but then there are (usually) "stage checks" and
(always) a final "check ride" administered by an Examiner. He is
usually quite a bit more senior and more highly certified than the
instructor. Again: This is directly a check on the student's performance,
and indirectly -- but no less importantly -- a check on the instructor's
work.

Bottom line: There are many ways of obtaining feedback from outside.
You want to cultivate them all.