More job links

The lovely Jaimie clued me in last night to (yet another) place to look for faculty job postings: The Chronicle of Higher Education. Which, it seems, is separate from Higher Ed Jobs. There are positions here that I haven't seen advertised elsewhere, which is good, but there's no "subscription" option that I could see, so it's another place where you'll have to go and look periodically. (Edit: You have to create a free account in order to get job alerts.)

The good news? I found another job worth looking into, although I'm not *quite* qualified, it's worth thinking about. I've always wanted to teach Research Methods (and be good at it), but for some reason that hasn't come up in the lottery for where I work. Definitely, it is one of the skills that I have on my "to-do" list.

So! I will go back and add the Chronicle of Higher Ed to my long post which includes job-search links.

It should be really easy to get a job, right? I mean, there are so many postings out there ...

Movie Extra Credit

When most of my students begin the Introductory Psychology course, they have got some preconceived notions about psychology: therapists, lobotomies, Prozac. By the end of the course, they have had a lot of exposure to a lot of different ideas and topics. Some of the time, we can use examples from TV and movies to illustrate the disorders or conditions. Some of the time (and even better), the students themselves can remember how the disorders or conditions played out in something they watched on the big screen.

For instance: Memento or 50 First Dates (anterograde amnesia), Monk (obsessive-compulsive disorder), A Beautiful Mind (schizophrenia).

Toward the end of the semester, I like to offer as extra credit an assignment where the students can choose a movie from PsychMovies.com. This site is currently undergoing some renovation, but it does have a compiled list of movies and the psychological topics they cover. It also has a page for teaching resources, and lists the movies by topic (developmental, psychopathology, etc).

The assignment usually is required to be about 3 pages long and asks for a synopsis of the video, followed by an analysis of how the disorder or condition was portrayed and whether the portrayal was accurate based on our readings from the textbook. I also ask them to say what they would do differently if they were to have some input on the movie they watched. This is usually a popular assignment as extra credit -- students see it as a way to have fun *and* do homework at the same time.

The ones that are popularly reviewed include A Beautiful Mind, but last semester I got some old ones like All About Eve and Sybil, and then some crazy ones like Fight Club and What about Bob?.These are always fun to read and even sometimes clue me in to movies that I haven't watched that I can add to my Netflix queue.

Have you done any assignments like this with your classes? What kind of requirements did you include? What are your favorite psychological movies?

Where children sleep

If you are teaching psychology, we all come across the idea of "sociocultural" differences in how people live and what their values are. Sometimes it is easy to get stuck in a mindset that everyone has a middle-class standard of living worldwide. After all, it's what most of us experience, especially if we rarely leave our communities.

The photo essay "Where Children Sleep" by James Mollison is a collection of pictures, both of children's faces against a white background, and their living quarters. Sometimes this is their own well-furnished bedroom, sometimes it is a shack that they share with numerous other family members. I found this to be incredibly eye-opening and a great discussion piece for my Human Growth and Development class. You can also see some examples of what "Industry" (as in, "Industry vs. Inferiority") means in different cultures.

This slideshow at the New York Times gives a caption for each of the kids and their living environment.

 From Mollison's site: a bedroom in Kentucky. Nice use of camo, by the way!

You can also buy the book at Amazon for a whopping $239.

I encourage you to take a look at this photo series and even share it with your class!

Classroom demonstrations and activities

While interacting with the search chair for a position that I'm applying for, I came across her website called Full Cranium, in which she gives sample assignments (I really like this one: a scrapbook of Lifespan-related items) as well as links to her previous presentations regarding teaching and technology. I like what she said:

(there is a)..."lack of available social comparison in order to judge how well one is doing. In other words, lack of idea sharing for teaching techniques may not stem from selfish proprietary beliefs but rather from the inability to gauge one's own success. To protect egos, ideas are not shared for fear that others will consider them sub-par. We don't know how well we are doing ourselves. How do we know the quality of our own work if we cannot compare to the work of others?"

As someone who has been teaching at the adjunct level for a few years now, and sharing my office space with whoever happens to be there from many departments in the college, this is a huge thing that I happen to be dealing with regularly. I was really excited to see someone out there coming at this "problem" from a social psychology perspective -- I have a tendency to just assume that since I'm female, I like to talk, and talk to other people, about what I'm doing (biological psychologist, at your service...). Because of the nature of the adjunct, this opportunity is rare, beyond the monthly departmental meetings in which I get to *meet*, let alone interact with, my colleagues.

One website I have encountered as a result of being a member of the Society for the Teaching of Psychology  is their  wiki called ToPIX which is pretty comprehensive; they update it occasionally with links to demonstrations and a whole lot of links to media/Youtube clips divided up by topic, such as at Clips for Class.  They also have a separate page with teaching resources that can be helpful if you are looking for in-depth and specific ways to teach certain topics, including one about developing a neuroanatomy lab (Note to self...!).

I would love to see more of this around, and if my readers have links to other collections of psychology class activities, please share!

Oops!

 Gotta give credit where credit is due. This picture came up on the Failblog one day. I have to include it when I'm giving the S&P lectures. Ha!

And now for some actual content

So, I'm a person with a terminal degree in Psychology and Neuroscience, and I'm also a person trying to find a more permanent/stable job. What's a professor to do? One way to find openings could be to go to your desired institution, find their HR page, and see if perhaps they have available positions. This, my friends, can take a long time. The other key finding is that some employers post to several of these, and some post only to one or two, so if you don't look around, you could miss something!

Let me recommend a few websites that I have found helpful in the job search. In no particular order:

Higher Ed Jobs: Not just related to faculty jobs, but for staff and other administrative positions. I like this one a lot because you can create your job search and the website will automatically email you when a new job is posted that matches your criteria.

SFN's Neurojobs:  Here you will find more "neuroscience" and less "psychology" related listings. Also, lots of postings for postdoc positions.

Association for Psychological Science: These tend toward the tenure-track, "must have your own funding or be able to get your own funding" sorts of jobs. Also, a place where the big-name institutions are posting their job listings!

APA's PSYCcareers: These tend more toward clinical/counseling jobs, but not entirely.

COGDOP: I was getting a lot of forwarded emails from my old department chair that were labeled "COGDOP". When I looked it up, hey! More job listings! This is the Council of Graduate Departments of Psychology, by the way.

Academic Jobs Online: Another site not specific to psychology/neuroscience, but has listings you can sort according to institution, discipline, or location.

Chronicle of Higher Education: You can search by the field you want to go into, and also by state, and if you sign up for a free account, you can get email notifications when something new pops up in your desired area/location.

This collection is by no means complete, and I'm sure there are sites that I'm missing. If you know of another place to look, leave me a comment and let me know! Thanks!

It's a long story...

But as I was searching the Etsy website for brain-related items, I was alarmed to see that most of the brainy stuff out there had to do with zombies.

Fig 1. Zombie brain shoes? Isis the Scientist would be proud...except they are ugly.

Since Halloween is coming, I guess that's forgivable, but I really would like some "real" brain art and paraphernalia, not just zombie apocalypse costumes.

Fig. 2. A keychain seems like a safe place to start.

Until then, there are actually some lovely things about psychology and the brain all over the internet. I'll be posting my favorites on this blog.

If you're visiting, please leave a comment and let me know what you think!