Dr. Shubho Banerjee
1. What is the name of your school?
Rhodes College
2. How many faculty members are in your department?
Four tenure track faculty. We have a couple of adjuncts to teach astronomy and introductory physics lab.
3. Do you consider your department to be more teaching oriented or research oriented?
A little more teaching oriented than research. Teaching counts for 40% in our eavaluation and research 35%.
4. Are you more interested in teaching classes or conducting research?
I like teaching more but like to do some research as well. I may take up a purely teaching job but wouldn't ever want a full research job.
5. Does your school have a graduate program in physics?
No.
6. Does your department focus more on undergraduate students or graduate students?
Undergraduate students.
7. What percentage of your time do you spend:
- Teaching? About 65% during the semesters and 0% during summer
- Doing research? about 10% during the semesters and almost 100% during summer
- Other? (please explain what "other" entails) There is some administrative duties as well.
8. Describe your standard week.
Teach class in the morning. In the afternoon I meet with students for questions on homework or for research if one is working with me, or teach lab, and/or go to meetings if any. Prepare for classes at night.
9. Do you have any TAs or graders?
Not really. We have TAs for lab that help out during lab but not with grading.
10. Do you collaborate with any other faculty regarding teaching? If so, in what ways do you collaborate?
When I came to Rhodes I got a lot of ideas and lecture notes from the physics faculty. Sometimes we discuss demonstrations that we could do in class.
11. Do you collaborate with any other faculty regarding research? If so, in what ways do you collaborate?
Yes. I am a theorist and all my colleagues are experimentalists. I have worked on joint projects with one faculty member where he works mostly on the experimental side and I work mostly on the theory. But we are involved in both to some extent.
12. To what extent are you able to teach what you want to teach? (Both in terms of choosing the courses you wish to teach and in structuring the courses you teach.)
I have gotten to teach almost all the classes I want to teach. The department is very supportive. Very seldom I have taught classes that I don't want to due to resource constraints. In my classes I have almost complete freedom to teach the courses in the way that I like.
13. How are teaching, research and "other" weighted when hiring and promotion decisions are made in your department?
See question 3.
14. What kind of experience does your department expect when considering hiring new professors? (postdoc, previous professorship, visiting professorship, etc.)
One postdoc and some teaching experience.
15. What do you know now about teaching that you didn?t know when you first finished graduate school?
A lot. I never taught upper level classes before and I did not have good ways to keep students engaged when I started. I taught a lot of introductory classes during graduate school so they have not been that new.
16. What do you know now about life in academia that you didn?t know when you first finished graduate school?
That there is a lot of administrative work as well. Last semester I was on two tenure track search committees and this semester I am on another one. There other administrative duties as well.
17. Do you have any advice for students currently pursuing PhDs in physics with a strong interest in teaching?
No.