University faculty member's job

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University teacher is busy

Here is the job of an imaginary university professor, which is based on a real fact. Days for each task is just a rough estimate. Just for a reference, and the total days exeeds 365 days.

[75 days] Review

International conference program committee (reviewer) 6. Domestic conference program committee (reviewer) 2. International journal editor 1.

Review international conference 18 English papers. Review domestic conference 14 Japanese papers. Review international journal 12 English papers. Review domestic journal 9 Japanese papers.

Review is a volunteer. No bonus. The review which should be declined should be declined in order to avoid wasting time for education and research. Some review requests are definitely different from your field of experts. If accepted, the authors become victim. The review which should be declined should be declined considering your expertise and the paper contents.

Decline international conferece program committee (reviewer) 1. Decline domestic conference program committee (reviewer) 1. Decline international conference 1 English paper. Decline international journal 4 English papers. Decline domestic journal 1 Japanese paper.

Not even reviewing task. Unnecessary task is unnecessary. Decline the request if it is unnecessary. Judge with considering whole information such as your field of expertise, your job you are now engaging in, your career path, cost-effectiveness, alternative person can be easily found if you declined, and so on. If you accept the task which should be declined, you mayl harm someone.

[63 days] University committee

Followings are examples.

Attend guidance twice a year. Interview with students with low score, and upload the interview to the system. Post a notice to come to receive your scoresheet who are absent at the guidance. Call a phone to the students who did not come to receive the scoresheet. Get course registration sheet from university office, go to the class, and give them to the students. Give the course registration sheet at another class to the students who was absent at the former class. If absent, post a notice. If they did not come, call a phone. Call a phone to the students who are always absent at a class, ask them to come to my room, and interview. If cannot call or cannot arrive, send post-mail to parents.

Interview with students who want to suspend or quit university, summarize the interview, and sign the document.

Attend a two-days tour for newly entranced students. Hiking with students. Play dodge ball. Give bed sheets to students. Receive bed sheets from students, check whether it is correctly folded, let students fold again if folding way is incorrect, and record the number of received sheets. Keep valuables. Return valuables. Move tools such as line maker. Prepare michrophone took out from the car. Let students clean up the floor with mop. Arrange woods released from the wire for camp fire. Splash water with bucket to the camp fire. MC of dodge ball.

Reserve bus using website, receive documents, and give them to university office. Call a phone and send an e-mail to corporation, and discuss about the schedule. Send an e-mail to professors for scheduling. Go to the class, explain, and ask students whether they attend or not. Ask professors who are providing the class at that day, and ask whether it is OK that the students will be absent. Record the number of students who get into the bus. Attend the corperation visiting tour. Questionnaire got from students is scanned and sent to the company.

Go to the computer room, check whether the copy paper is not empty, and add the paper if it is emply. If the error occurs at the printer, ask the company to fix it.

Update webpage.

Ask professors to recommend excellent students so that their interview can be written in the university advertisement.

Write a document for the final year of interim plan.

Give money gift to a person when a certain event occurred. Ask attendees with e-mail, reserve a restaurant, and collect fees.

Send e-mail to professor's mailing list to decide the corresponding person. Move the students' report documents.

Guide the teachers of high school. Call a phone to high school, visit high school, and talk with high school teacher.

Send e-mail to IT center to make mailing list. Send e-mail to IT center to use wireless LAN. Make poster and print. Send e-mail to ask whether the budget can be used or not. Send e-mail to professors to involve the task. Send e-mail to professor to receive the document. MC. Reserve room using university web system. Guide high school students. Setting remote lecture. Talk with high school students. Reception desk. Ask students at my class whether someone can work for the task. Give document to student workers, let them write the document, collect these documents, and given them to university office. Explain the task to student workers. Move partition. Put poster. Prepaer paper and pen. Tell the request to buy some items to university office. Move items. Put notice. Send e-mail to professors to send back your manuscirpts, rename the file correctly, make table of contents, make maps, and give them to university office. Send e-mail to professors to send student volunteers from each laboratory. Make webpage. Send e-mail to IT center to get guest account.

Rewrite the rubric evaluation table. Calculate the total score of the rubric evaluation table. Write the result in a document. Discuss about the document. Collect students who attend the discussion. Students will write the discussion results to the Post-it, and I will copy the text to the file.

Create a timetable for guidance at the beginning of each semester. Provide the guidance files to the students. Give an announce to the students to answer the questionnaires. Ask students to submit the thesis who did not yet submit. Create the timetable of thesis colloquium. Create the table of contents of the thesis proceedings. Prepare the room used for thesis colloquium. Rewrite the rubric evaluation table. Calculate the total score of the rubric evaluation table. Interview with students. Write recommendation letter.

Attend monthly meetings. Ask for some comments at monthly meetings.

[42 days] Society

Job of society administration depends on the post. Society administration is volunteer without reward.

Here shows organizing chair (local arrangement chair). Give money gift to plenary talk speakers, and ask them to sign the document. Send e-mail to each committee chair, ask the date and time of committee meeting, ask the attendee number, ask whether lunch is needed, ask the name to be written to the receipt, and arrange the room. For each committee, ask the company to make the receipt for each time period of the committee used, and send the receipt to each committee. Count the number of bento for lunch and dinner based on the number of student workers and committee meeting attendees, and tell it to the company. Reserve restaurant. Send e-mail to professors of other university who give a prsentation at banquet, ask them to send the presentation file, merge those presentation file. Buy additional drink for banquet at department, and bring them to the room. Buy award envelope and print, ask award winners for their bank account, and pay. Ask professor of other university the number of award winner, buy certificate sheet, ask professors about the sentences for certificate, print the sentences to certificate for the winner already determined, print the paper title and author names immediately for the winner determined during the conference, and push a conference stamp. Buy tube for certificate, give tube to the winners at conference site, put certificate in tube and put cover sheet around the tube and ask the postal address to the winners who were absent and who were determined after the conference and send it. Select prize such as sake, buy, bring, and give it to winners at conference site. Ask co-chair to collect student workers and make shift, make receipt for student workers, give receipt to student workers, ask student workers to stamp, receive the receipt, and give money payment. Ask conference site for wireless LAN SSID/password, tell it to committee members, and print it to paste at the conference site. Write a document of the job of student worker, tell, cameraman should prepare camera, posterman should make voting box, mikeman should prepare michrophone, timekeeper should prepare iPad appli, bring bento to committee meeting roome, demo equipment security, guide for the first day. Ask student worker to arrange reception desk, ask them to arrange documents in order. Bring projector and cable to committee meeting room, and connect. Receive program booklet via postal mail from publishing chair, and bring them to conference site. Copy proceedings data to USB memory and bring it to conference site. Bring laser pointer to conference site. Ask co-chair to bring office tools to conference site. Bring inkjet printer to print certificate to the conference site. Let the company to obtain the allowance from conference site to use parking of conference site. Decide where to be checkroom and where to be drink area. Ask the compony to ask the conference site how to send demo gadgets and send back, and tell it to demo chair, and ask the company to prepare the delivery slip. Make access map, floor map, and lunch map, and send the file to publishing chair (professor of other university).

Here shows program chair. Meetings with committee members. Select and communicate with keynote speakers. Write CFP and send it to mailinglist. Select program committee members. Assign review. Accept or reject papers. Notify the result to the authors. Buy Easychair and set up. Add committee members and assign reviews using Easychair. Write preface of the proceedings. Check the proceedings. Assign session chairs. Give opening and closing remarks. Chair keynote session. Select award. Buy prize. Print certificates. Write conference report. Hand over to the next program chair.

[112 days] Lecture

Lecture. Make update of lecture documents. Copy, upload, and print lecture notes. Set test. Scoring report. Make sample program. Make and score interim exam and final exam.

5 classes per year.

[17 days] Certificate exam (licence exam)

Certificate exam (licence exam) is made by university professors. Not the organization that is managing the exam, but the university teachers. Exam creator is not open to public. We do not know who is the exam creator. We do not know which exam they are making. We do not know how heavy the work is.

[27 days] Entrance exam

Entrance exam work is not open to public. Supervise, inteview, make exam questions, score exam sheets. Guess the load how heavy from the information open to public. Number of staffs, size of rooms, type of exams, subjects of exams, past exam questions, examinee number, and so on.

[5 days] Forensic image analysis

Some researchers are required to analyze the images for trial.

[72 days] Writing textbook

Society may require professor to write textbook. Other university professor may require to be the co-author of the textbook. Read and understand the related books and scientific papers. Write sentences and revise them. Be careful about the copyright of other publications. Dowload and upload the manuscripts via filesharing webservice. Examine the manuscript of co-authors. Make a program in order to check whether the mathematic formula and the algorithm are correct. Make a program and use commercial CG software to make the figures for the textbook. Send e-mail or visit other university in order to ask professors of other university to become co-authors. Discuss with co-authors with e-mail and remote meeting. List up the terms to make the index. List up the researchers of other university to send the book. It is not surprising to take several years to publish because university teachers are busy and they write the texbook during other works.

[13 days] Art project

Art project with the people of the department of art.

[20 days] Lecture for businessperson

Lecture for businessperson. Make lecture documents.

[6 days] Lecture at high school

Go to high school and lecture. Write a document for this task. Collect the slides from already-made lecture notes and research presentation, modify and add explanation of the presentation so that high school student can understand.

[176 days] Research activity

Various works exist. No time for each task. No time to concentrate on the research because we have to do research during other jobs. Followings are the work.

Detail: 21 days [Install] Softwares for research. University staff's work spreads wide variaty, large number of software needed. Setting computer enviroment. Software update, windows update. Uninstall unnecessary software. Backup, virus scan.

Detail: 29 days [Business trip] Domestic conference speaking with Japanese, international conference speaking with English. Attend domestic conference and international conference, present my research. Listen to other presentation, obtain knowledges about new technology. Society committee member attends the committee meeting. Committee members attends domestic conference, so committee meeting is held at domestic conference. Business trip also includes a meeting with a company, a meeting with a publisher, and other reasons.
Detail: 25 days [Prepare trip] Schedule plan for business trip. Reserve hotel and flight. Write document and give it to university office. Input application form and send the fee to scientific conference. Write and submit the report after business trip. Write the document for attendance fee and give it to university office.

Detail: 8 days [Budget; Report] For budget such as KAKENHI, write report for each year. The document is mainly about the progress of the research, and sometimes other documents are also needed.
Detail: 43 days [Budget; Application] Budget such as KAKENHI is provided if the submitted application documents have passed the judgement. Judgement is difficult to pass, and we have to use very long time to write the document. Create the research content and theory using the knowledge obtained from paper survey. Design the theory using mathematical formula. In order to check the correctness of the created theory, calculate by hand, calculate by Excel, or calculate by the orginal program made by myself. Create sample input data to run the program to check the theory, and also, create the program which outputs the sample input data. Collect data using the measurement device for experiments to check the theory. In order to make the research contente aesthetic, take photo to paste on the document, design figure and graph to paste on it, and create the program to generate the figure to paste on it. Search for the device needed to execute the research, and ask a company for price estimate. Revise the application document many times because the quality of it is related to the acceptance. Prepaer some other documents needed for application. Read books and watch vides that provide tips on how to write an application.

Detail: 11 days [Paper survey] Read scientific papers to obtain knowledges of recent research. If you want to know the summary of the research, find the minimum area to be read, and read only those parts. If you want to use the technology to your own research, read the theory section multiple times in order to understand how to implement. Read scientific books, read scientific websites, use related software, listen to webseminar. Much knowledge about scientific papers are needed to make a new idea of your research, but university teachers have no time to read papers. Output is important than input.

Detail: 14 days [Collaboration with industry; Meeting with student] Cooperative research with a corporation. University teacher has no time to work on the research, so the actual research activitiy is done by student or company's engineer. Meeting is held to check the progress, give some advices to problems, and give suggestion what to do next.
Detail: 7 days [Collaboration with industry; Create document] Write a document summarizing the research done by students or engineers, and discuss via e-mail with the company.
Detail: 2 days [Collaboration with industry; Meeting with company] University professors have not time to work on the research, so they provide knowledges as much as possible to company. Meeting is held to provide the knowledge to the company.

Detail: 11 days [Domestic conference; Paper writing] Submit the paper collected from student's graduation thesis to domestic conference.
Detail: 16 days [Domestic conference; Presentation] Combine the presentation you have made in the past, remake some of the figures, and make the oral presentation file and the poster presentation file.
Detail: 40 days [International conference; Paper writing] Few students enter graduate master course, and no student enter graduate doctor course. Therefore, university teachers should make the alumni's thesis into scientific publication. Summarize the students' thesis, and rewrite it so that it becomes the adequate scientific paper. Revise the paper again and again to improve the paper. That Japanese paper is sent to English translation company to convert it to English paper. Write also cover letter which is necessary for submission. Sometimes, we need to make a movie to explain the research content. After acceptance, revise the paper into camera-ready paper.
Detail: 6 days [International conference; Presentation] Combine the presentation you have made in the past, remake some of the figures, and make the oral presentation file and the poster presentation file.
Detail: 11 days [Domestic journal; Paper writing] Few students enter graduate master course, and no student enter graduate doctor course. Therefore, university teachers should make the alumni's thesis into scientific publication. Summarize the students' thesis, improve the figures and sentences, and add additional explanation to the theory so that it becomes the adequate scientific paper. Revise the paper again and again to improve the paper. After the review process, do some additional experiments and revise the paper according to the reviewer's suggestion. Write the answer to the reviewer's question. After acceptance, revise the paper into camera-ready paper. Check the galley proof and revise.
Detail: 50 days [International journal; Paper writing] Few students enter graduate master course, and no student enter graduate doctor course. Therefore, university teachers should make the alumni's thesis into scientific publication.
Write the paper based on the English paper you wrote in the past while looking at the student's thesis. Make the figure and sentences from scrap. Make the program again, and make additional programs. Take some data in order to add experiments, and process the data. Revise the paper again and again to improve the paper. Send the paper to English proofreading company to correct the English grammatical mistakes. Write also cover letter which is necessary for submission. After the review process, do some additional experiments and revise the paper according to the reviewer's suggestion. Write the answer to the reviewer's question. After acceptance, revise the paper into camera-ready paper. Check the galley proof and revise.

Detail: 25 days [Programming] Programming is necessary in IT research, but university teachers have no time to create programs. Measurement devices used in research activity is quite special, and most data format is not adequate to use for the research. Therefore, we make a program to convert the measured data into the data which can be used for the research. We should check whether the main process of the program is working consistent to the theory using a simple input data. Therefore, we have to create a program which produces such input data. Make a program of a single process extracted partly from the whole algorithm which is the fundamental part of the algorithm in order to check the fundamental part of the algorithm. It is the fundamental important process of the proposed method, thus, the teacher is better than student to implement it. Such important part is often difficult to implement for students, and thus, the theacher should implement. The output data of the main process sometimes cannot directly check whether it is working correctly or cannot be used for other purposes. Therefore, we create postprocessing program which converts the output data. Sometimes, the main part of the research is implemented by teachers.
Detail: 9 days [Order software development to corporation] Outsourcing is quite important to perform the job efficiently. If a company can create a program, that's good. Make specification sheet, discuss with company, give some related articles, and make contract documentation. But it is not always good to order software to company. Software development require human resource, so the price is quite large, but the price is not that important because we can receive enough software without wasting time. The problem is the non-effectiveness to order software of cutting-edge technology of recent research. Wasting time to make specification sheet and to discuss in meeting is a bad situation because the purpose is to reduce time. If the company can make the program according to our requirement "please make the program for *** research", that's good, but it cannot. The reason is that the documents that explain how to make the program of *** research does not exist. How about ordering existing technology to company rathar than new research? The paper about *** research is available. But how to implement the software is not written in *** research paper. Of course, the researcher can understand the paper, but the company engineer cannot understand the detailed implementation from the paper since the paper is quite different from the specification sheet used for ordinary software development. As a result, the teachers should make an explanation documet based on the scientific paper. The teacher is better to implement the software than company because the teacher has enough programming skill and has no time to write the detailed documents. However, teachers have no time for programming, so dillemma occurs. The program university teachers make and the program company engineers make are different. The right person in the right place. The engineer has higher programming skill for the program they usually create. It is better to order the program to the company which often the company makes. We will often not be satisfied by the resultant software even if we give the expalantion document of scientific paper to the company. Therefore, we often do not order a program about new technology. We often order a program to process the measurement data, preprocessing program before applying the main program, the program based on existing technology, and the program which require small expanation. High scientific program is implemented by students and teachers, and low scientific program is implemented by software company. Of course, students and teachers can implement low scientific program. But it is wrong that students and teachers implement low scientific program. Students and teachers should not use time for low scientific programming but should use time for high scientific programming.

Detail: 8 days [Experiment; Data measurement] Experiments are necessary in research. Ordinary IT experiment is to just run a program, but the experiments of computer vision field includes the experiments in real world like natural science field. Create program based on the theory, and perform experiment to validate the theory. Prepare target object to measure which is adequate to evaluate the theory. Settle various experimental apparatus, and measure the data in adequate way considering the experiment purpose. No one have done a new research, and no one knows how to execute the expriment, thus, try-and-error is required to measure the data adequately which satisfies the research purpose. Even if you do experiments same as existing work, the way how to do experiment is not written in the paper, and the experimental device of the paper is not commercially sold. University teachers should do many experiments to obtain know-how, but they have no time to do them.
Detail: 13 days [Experiment; Data processing] We should apply post-processing program to the obtained data. The measurement device is not specifically design to your research because reaserch is the one that no one have done. We have to convert the measured data into the data which can be used for the research. The preprocessing may be done by hand, done by Excel, done by text editor, done by the program you made for it. Some of the main program needs the parameter to be adjusted adequately. After that, the post-processing program is applied to the output data. Create figures and graphs and tables from the obtained data.

Detail: 19 days [Experimental equipments; Buy] Measurement device is special since the research is special. Buy special device which is not commonly sold. Some of the device is sold from a small venture in Europe/USA with 8 officers and 2 engineers. Order-maid device unlike commonly made by industy's conveyer belt. Components are bought from other companies, construct, check, shipped, go through customs, and arrive at Japanese agency. The delivery deadline is often not satisfied. Special device solely does not work as expected, and require additional components to buy. Components used for research are not mass production. If there is a stock, it arrives in a few weeks, but if there is no stock, it arrives in a several months. If there is a stock partly, then we have to immediately buy the stock even if it is only a partial components of the whole appratus we want to build. Order the price estimate to the company. Write some documents based on the estimate, and give it to university office.
Detail: 14 days [Experimental equipments; Build] Measurment device is often not commercially available because research is not yet presented. Therefore, we have to make the device by ourselves. Carefully think about the research purpose, think about the data you want to obtain, think whether the width and length of each component is adequate, screw male/female millimeter/inch, size. Design the apparatus so that the components fit tightly, but it is often imposibble due to the specification of each component. Design the apparatus which can be easily extended so that if there is a problem you can easily fixed it. Actual apparatus you constructed may include unsatisfactory points. You should not aim to make a perfect appratus. Make a prototype with high scalability. Some components should be bought immediately while constructing the appratus when you find a lacking component to construct. Shininess, hardness, tranparency, smoothness, and processibility cannot be recognized from a catalog, so you have to buy the components needed to construct experimental apparatus at real shop.
Detail: 15 days [Experimental equipments; Rehearsal] Check whether the experimental appratus working correctly. Experimental device is not designed for non-experts. Experimental device is not designed for the research because the research is what the people have not yet done. Hand-made experimental apparatus is not made by hardware engineer but made by amateur teacher. Namely, the experimental appratus is quite complex to use. Taking data as expected is difficult, so try some experiments a-priori.
Detail: 10 days [Experimental equipments; Manual] Manual of the device exists. Is it enough for students? No. Manual is written in English not Japanese. Manual is written for experts not non-experts. Moreover, the device manual only explains how to use the device. That's the problem for students. "How to obtain the data for ***'s research" is not written in the device manual. How to obtain the data for your research is neither written in the manual nor written in the web because the research is the activitiy who never tried. What parameter should be set, how the equipments be arranged, in what order each step should be operated, how to use, what kind of data should be measured. University teachers often make the explanation manual and give it to students.
Detail: 16 days [Experimental equipments; Disposal] Take a photo, measure the size, record the manufacturer, record the name, record the administration number of the equipments you want to discard. Create a list, and discuss via e-mail with laboratory staffs, university office, and selling company. Let students to move the equipments to discard.

Detail: 30 days [Laboratory; Seminar] Students read English scientific books. Students read English scientific papers. Students hear English scientific presentations. Students present the summary of those contents.
Detail: 12 days [Laboratory; Presentation] Self introduction. Introducing your research. Research plan explanation. Interim progress report. Programming contensts for laboratory newcomers. Career path meeting for laboratory newcomers.
Detail: 60 days [Laboratory; Meeting] Most laboratory has 2 or 3 groups for research activity, and each student belongs to one of the groups. Meeting held per group. Progress report, advice to the problem facing, suggest what to do next.

Detail: 15 days [Research idea] University teachers often create the content of research. Students lacks the professional knowledge of their research field. Teachers have enough experience to write scientific papers and to review scientific papers. Teachers can judge the goodness and the badness of each research. Teachers have enough experience to perform research and to coach research. Teachers can estimate the knowledge and the time needed to do each research. Teachers often need to do a certain research due to the research plan of budget, their career path, or other reasons. Also describe the detail of the research. In order to check whether the created theory is correct, we check the mathematical formula, check the calculation by hand, check the calculation by Excel, check the calculation by the sample program you create for this purpose, check the result using the experiments done a-priori. University teachers are busy, so the research plan is far from perfect.

Detail: 10 days [Coaching students; Explanation document] University teachers write some documents with detail explanation of the research algorithm so that students can make the program if they follow the instructions in the documents. Teachers often write the documents to explain the source code which is given to students for reference.
Detail: 3 days [Coaching students; Survey] University teachers search for related papers which can help students to work on their research.
Detail: 5 days [Coaching students; Proofread papers for society] Proofread Japanese paper written by students to submit to domestic conference.
Detail: 7 days [Coaching students; Proofread presentations for society] Proofread oral presentation and poster presentation students made for domestic conference and international conference.
Detail: 12 days [Coaching students; Proofread paper for thesis] Proofread graduation/master thesis written by students. Teachers write some part of the figure and the senteces of the thesis.
Detail: 4 days [Coaching students; Proofread presentations for thesis] Proofread presentation students made for graduation/master thesis.
Detail: 8 days [Coaching students; Presentation of thesis] Watch the student's graduation/master thesis presentation at actual thesis conference and at the rehearsal.
Detail: 5 day [Coaching students; Data processing] Data processing of the data students obtained.
Detail: 10 days [Coaching students; Debug] Debug and improve the program students made. Check whether the program coincide with the theory, check whether the program is mathematically/physically correct. The data made manually or the data made by the software made by the teachers are used as the input data for the student's program in order to check the student's program whether it works correctly.
Detail: 58 days [Coaching students; 1-to-1 discussion] Meeting is not enough to discuss the detail. 1-to-1 meeting is done to explain the detail of the research when the student faced a problem. Check progress, advice to solve the problem, suggest what to do next. Explain how to use measurement device and explain the procedure of experiment. Give paper, manuscript, presentation, and program. Give a document explaining the program. Explain theory and algorithm. Give the whole materials of alumni, and receive whole materials when graduation.


University teacher is lazy

Here is the job of an imaginary university professor, which is based on a real fact. Days for each task is just a guess. If you think this description applies to you, it means that you are lazy professor.

[18 days] Review

Review 5 papers of domestic conference, and 2 papers of domestic journal.

[32 days] University committee

Do committee or working group with easy task. Do tutor rotates among the members.

[78 days] Lecture

Total 3 classes per year.

[17 days] Entrance exam

[123 days] Research

Let students do. They themselves do not do.


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