Crab photo from Qatar makes thesis defense

Our man in Qatar, besides responding to ICCS mail, has been to a market to take photos of crabs for Joelle. One even made it to her thesis defense. Just the few of us enjoyed the connections behind that photo.

And here it is on the trusty iBook I lent Joelle because her 5-year old powerbook is hanging on by just a single hinge now. She realises even the “old” iBooks are faster than her treasured, battered, mac. Her next buy is going to feel like magic.

Exhausting week, too tired to blog

I have been hunting down students, marking and processing marks for the past two weeks. Did what I could and my Reading Week schedule went out the window; good lesson though. It’s all over now and boy oh boy, was excel useful! I updated the post about excel functions I use to check marks and will provide it with figures as a webpage for the TAs. I will be getting them to use the gradebook functions built into NUS’ web-based IVLE system.

Am now dealing with the last of student queries via MSN; setup a live.com account for that. Still have the honours theses to examine this weekend. Hopefully I finish that before the exams begin on Monday. I am actually looking forward to marking exam papers to make comparisons after the changes in teaching methods I applied this semester.

Meanwhile, the exam invigilation reminders have turned up at the entrance of the department office. This announces the final and critical leg of the semester. Laurence used to present them like performance billings but I guess he’s too busy mopping up coffee to get fancy. At least he kept the colour, very useful. Its a good reason to drop by the department office every now and then. You can keep track of breaking news!

The notice reminded me of the stress our students must be under so I I SMS-ed cheery greetings to my research students and Toddycats project managers - I had their numbers in my handphone and ssw their replies come in thick and fast!

Thankfully, back at home, Mr Bats has been keeping me company during my marking processing and student hunting phase. He will reprise that role next week.

Sometimes he crawls in to a nice comfortable bag and territorially swipes at my hand when it ventures too close his “cave door”…

Coffee spill

Teutoburg’s coffee spill yesterday!

Morning rain

Testing network. And MarsEdit. Grrr.

Have a cuppa

I was one of two examiners for three UROPS students this semester. The students arrange to present to us, usually as a Keynote (=powerpoint) presentation on their laptops.

I usually greet the news with mock dread since it comes when we are up to our necks reading drafts and conducting oral exams besides lectures, practical and CAs. Its a crazy time until the recess week!

However, when the (usually) 3rd year students finally present, I find I recognise all the faces from their shadows in the corridor during the past semester while they were hard at work. And they are are illuminating to listen to. After having applied themselves to a specific question, they do end up educating their examiners about the specific topic.

Its important to spot and highlight loopholes not just for the exam, but some of them will be writing papers after the semestral exams. So the session functions as an oral review as well. Its invariably easy to spot issues and rattling their cages is a time-honoured tradition that provides them a challenge to think on their feet and expound. They have to cope with alternative perspectives and new ideas and we evaluate that too. They in variably help nail their own coffins while fighting to keep the lid open! But its the engagement not the outcome which is important so they do okay and its a warm up for the tougher session during honours.

Its not unique to fumble, I’ve seen PhD students in the final exams who would have profited likewise. Had we retained the practise of afternoon tea, they would have experienced this more often and during casual conversation as they would have been exposed to their seniors and even their peers more.

We used to chat about our projects with academics from other biological disciplines witin the department in the 90’s. And they used to tell us about the good old days in Bukit Timah campus when they could exchange ideas with a wider variety of practioners; the advantage of a small campus. Well, these days we’re pretty happy even to meet our colleagues! The collegial tea rooms of the former departments of botany and zoology were all converted to offices and labs during the hustle and bustle of the life science transformation.

So I told the students to ask people out for tea, that they’d actually be delighted. In the absence of the tea room, that table outside the Ecology Lab has always been the site of a wide variety of discussions. And it still profits from the passing biologists. Its just that they aren’t strolling much anymore…

Dry run with the UROPS students

The five undergraduate science research students in my care ran through their presentations with me; I was off-form due to the flu but still gave them enough feedback to polish up their presentations. I wished I had grilled them last week, and run through a revision 2 presentation before they meet their examiners.

Still, their examiners will give them feedback too. And there will be a reflection session for the lot with me after the exams. So I need not fear that they will not draw out the finer points of their experience. Else the experience is not maximised.

Also, they will have to share a watered done version with the public. After investing considerable time on a project, they do have something interesting to say about Chek Jawa, the fauna of Kent Ridge and specifics about the anurans, insects and spiders there.

Kok Sheng is a “poster boy” for NUS

Kok Sheng’s slightly evil looking mugshot appears in this NUS advertorial yesterday (25 Mar 2008):

He’s featured for the Chek Jawa UROPS project. Dan is mentioned too, and the department so they kept the good parts in. Its a good advertisement for the Science undergraduate research programme (UROPS), of which I am reasonably keen about.

Having 10% of the department’s students (i.e. 5) was mildly challenging, especially without the traditional lab space to host them like we used to be able to do. It required adjustment on my part but there was SMS (which they favour), IM (runner-up), Google Groups, GMail and of course my compulsory blogs allowed me to keep an eye on them.

Dan speaks to marine volunteers

Dan Ritttschof spoke to marine volunteers mainly about pheromones and sex in marine organisms. The responsive crowd had a good time with a lot of lovely stories delivered with wonderful pace. I realised too the influence he must have had on me, from more than a decade ago, for my bit on chemical communication in the animal behaviour class is easily the largest section under animal communication.

See Ria’s post at the Wildfilms blog

Seeing how he has decades of investigation, reading and teaching, it was as fun as I had expected it to be. He targetted delivery for the layman so it was a relaxing talk for the bunch who turned up after work.

Inter-tidal volunteers are resourceful and even at a seminar, so two brought loads of food so I abandoned my day-old coffee and cold sandwich.

After that we sat around chatting with Jon Siggurdsson and after Ladybug burnt the keys off Cyn’s keyboard, I learnt wee were heading to “far west coast” to makan. We dropped off the well fed speaker before heading home. That mood and conversation was reminiscent of the 90’s for me so it was very pleasant!

And Dan was happy he got to deliver a helpful towards more story-telling amongst his fellow shore-lovers!

Dan and his aposematic mee goreng! (Photo by Cynthia Lee)

New Journal Club coordinators

Although I moaned about work today, I had to announce the new Biodiversity & Ecology Journal Club coordinators.

The briefing session gets shorter each year and this year I didn’t even move out of my chair to chat with them for ten minutes and grab a photo. Pity the background behind the girls doesn’t do them justice but it doesn’t really matter; their smiles took care of that.

With their post and the Her World feature that had Alvin responding in minutes (he knows the two pictured together), “The Biodiversity Crew @ NUS” blog is beginning to look a little perky.

Avalanche of reports

I was stuck in the office for two days so animal behaviour students could get help if they were stuck with the blog assignment I set them on. No one came of course, hmph, so I assume they are all bloggin’ away happily. Some emails but non that were sent in the day, all from last night.

So I was imprisoned without lunch for two days. Luckily the lab saved me yesterday (lab meeting/lunch) and today I found cream crackers on a shelf there. The rats are not very active anymore it seems, so they leave things like that where I can find them, thankfully.

Though the day, a wide variety of people squeezed into my office at various times, somehow spacing themselves out, it was quite amazing.

When the dust settled though, I received a reminder of the two honours and five UROPs students brewing all this while - there are an avalanche of reports!

*clutch head*

The Good Friday weekend will help me chip away at those. But first some lectures, notes to write, an evaluation and the annual return to Mandai mangroves at night with Rittschof’s students from Duke.