Lives in Science: How Institutions Affect Academic Careers

What can we learn when we follow people over the years and across the course of their professional lives? Joseph C. Hermanowicz asks this question specifically about scientists and answers it here by tracking fifty-five physicists through different stages of their careers at a variety of universities across the country. He explores these scientists’ shifting perceptions of their jobs to uncover the meanings they invest in their work, when and where they find satisfaction, how they succeed and fail, and how the rhythms of their work change as they age. His candid interviews with his subjects, meanwhile, shed light on the ways career goals are and are not met, on the frustrations of the academic profession, and on how one deals with the boredom and stagnation that can set in once one is established.An in-depth study of American higher education professionals eloquently told through their own words, Hermanowicz’s keen analysis of how institutions shape careers will appeal to anyone interested in life in academia.

Politics & Social Sciences

Hermanowicz, Joseph C.

Social Sciences

University of Chicago Press

<p>What can we learn when we follow people over the years and across the course of their professional lives? Joseph C. Hermanowicz asks this question specifically about scientists and answers it here by tracking fifty-five physicists through different stages of their careers at a variety of universities across the country. He explores these scientists’ shifting perceptions of their jobs to uncover the meanings they invest in their work, when and where they find satisfaction, how they succeed and fail, and how the rhythms of their work change as they age. His candid interviews with his subjects, meanwhile, shed light on the ways career goals are and are not met, on the frustrations of the academic profession, and on how one deals with the boredom and stagnation that can set in once one is established.</p>
<p>An in-depth study of American higher education professionals eloquently told through their own words, Hermanowicz’s keen analysis of how institutions shape careers will appeal to anyone interested in life in academia.</p>

Sociology

Based on sixty interviews with physicists at universities across the United States, The Stars are Not Enough offers a detailed and intimate account of the worlds in which scientists work. Joseph C. Hermanowicz looks at a range of scientists from young graduate students to older professionals well into their careers. The result is a colorful portrait of a profession and its diverse cast of characters.These deeply personal narratives reveal dreams of fame and glory, in which scientists confess their ambitions of becoming the next Newton or Einstein. However, these scientists also discuss the meaning of success and failure. We hear their stories of aspiration and anxiety, disappointment and tragedy, hope and achievement; we are privy to their doubts and to what they consider to be their limitations and weaknesses. As the scientists age in their professions, the specter of failure often visits them, and they have to accept something less than scientific immortality or even the Nobel Prize. Ultimately these stories give us more than an inside look at the details of careers in science, they also examine ambition by uncovering the forces that drive people in their professions and by describing how these forces persist or fade over time. Ambition for greatness often ignites a career and often sustains it. Yet, as Hermanowicz's study reveals, greatness eludes nearly all people in their heroic quests for extraordinary achievement. The Stars Are Not Enough offers a fascinating account that will appeal to anyone interested in how people's dreams blossom and evolve.

The Stars Are Not Enough: Scientists--Their Passions and Professions

Based on sixty interviews with physicists at universities across the United States, The Stars are Not Enough offers a detailed and intimate account of the worlds in which scientists work. Joseph C. Hermanowicz looks at a range of scientists from young graduate students to older professionals well into their careers. The result is a colorful portrait of a profession and its diverse cast of characters.  These deeply personal narratives reveal dreams of fame and glory, in which scientists confess their ambitions of becoming the next Newton or Einstein. However, these scientists also discuss the meaning of success and failure. We hear their stories of aspiration and anxiety, disappointment and tragedy, hope and achievement; we are privy to their doubts and to what they consider to be their limitations and weaknesses. As the scientists age in their professions, the specter of failure often visits them, and they have to accept something less than scientific immortality or even the Nobel Prize.  Ultimately these stories give us more than an inside look at the details of careers in science, they also examine ambition by uncovering the forces that drive people in their professions and by describing how these forces persist or fade over time. Ambition for greatness often ignites a career and often sustains it. Yet, as Hermanowicz's study reveals, greatness eludes nearly all people in their heroic quests for extraordinary achievement. The Stars Are Not Enough offers a fascinating account that will appeal to anyone interested in how people's dreams blossom and evolve.

The Stars Are Not Enough: Scientists--Their Passions and Professions (Worlds of Desire: The Chicago Series on Sexuality, Gender, & Culture)

Undergraduate attrition is an issue of growing concern in the field of higher education - it now even has its own scholarly journal. This work is the first book on college attrition to present case studies based on specific institutions of higher learning, examining in detail the practical concerns that cause students to drop out and what can be done to cut the drop-out rate. The book adds an important voice from the students themselves, whose views have often been omitted from the discussion.College Attrition was written as a result of the author's scholarly interest in the question of Why students quit, combined with the concern expressed by the leaders of the four institutions in the study. While responding to and building on trends in existing work in this field, the current work departs from existing literature both empirically and theoretically. The book studies university drop-out rates, looking at quantitative data but also, and primarily, relying on qualitative interviews with students who have left school. Students' accounts, most often the unseen side of the equation, reveal extraordinarily consequential insights into the attrition process itself and to what interventions can be effectively introduced to stem it.Theoretically, the work is set in a context that is enlarged by examining attrition within the organization - right in the schools in which it is found. Most previous research has treated attrition as an abstract process.While the data are based on and are primarily focused on research universities, the findings and many of the conclusions are germane to a host of other institutional types.

College Attrition at American Research Universities: Comparative CaseStudies

Education & Teaching

Higher & Continuing Education

Algora.Publishing

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Hermanowicz, Joseph C.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Hermanowicz, Joseph C.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Hermanowicz, Joseph C.. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Lives in Science: How Institutions Affect Academic Careers

Lives in Science: How Institutions Affect Academic Careers

The Stars Are Not Enough: Scientists--Their Passions and Professions

The Stars Are Not Enough: Scientists--Their Passions and Professions (Worlds of Desire: The Chicago Series on Sexuality, Gender, & Culture)

College Attrition at American Research Universities: Comparative CaseStudies