PurdueCom

2012-01-29T20:46:00.000-08:00

Each semester we are told that we need a detailed syllabus that clearly outlines expectations, grading schemes, assignment dates, etc. and the syllabus is a contract between the students and the instructor. We dutifully collect these documents and hold copies in our main office for students, colleagues and anyone to view as a guide for course content. Some faculty members are completely true to their documents… topics are covered on the days indicated, PowerPoint slides are uploaded and in a machine like fashion the process of education takes place… completely predicable, consistent from semester to semester… in some cases the same jokes, the same sentences appear at the same time for 10 consecutive semester…

There is a quality to this mode of work… an art, the play gets repeated and with a good performance the audience leaves pleased and happy with the price of admission.

Is this the best we can do? Certainly it works. At its best the audience enjoys the performance, sees the connections, responds to the humor and the logic and they get their monies worth.

An alternative form is more impromptu… the general outline is there… but the class is less scripted… it’s “just in time” manufacturing at work… it may drift as new content is added and it requires concentration and participation from the audience… it requires a joint performance with the stage lights turned on the whole group as audience and company become one. There can be traditional components to the performance but it might look like a flash mob. The major characters may shift and uncertainty and surprise may illuminate failures and success.

The final act may not end as predicted or it may not come at all. If there is a lot of technology required, there is always a need to take this factor into account… each day you bring your best game… the students and the faculty member… your talent could be spotlighted… you might have to perform as leaderships shifts and content experts get their chance to strut their stuff…
It can be a little scary… but at the end of the day you leave charged up… ready to bring new stuff to the next session and see how it fits or causes fits.

Umbrellas, parasols and sun screen...

2011-05-31T08:26:00.000-07:00

It’s summer time in China… and in the summer it’s not too different from anywhere else in that people dress more casually… sandals and shorts become more the norm. While we all embrace more informality in the summer there are differences in how we deal with the warm weather and the sunshine. One summertime difference that many Europeans and Americans notice during their visits to Asia is the use of umbrellas or parasols… sure we all have them and use them when it rains but in Asia they come out in droves when the sun shines.

Chinese mothers for example hate it when their adult daughters (and younger children) get a tan and are always warning them to stay out of the sun or use their umbrella. Walk across Tiananmen Square in the full sun and the umbrellas are up in profusion… the Western tourists use their sun screen but it’s umbrellas for the Chinese… makes a lot of sense also… well, at least if the umbrellas are properly coated to cut down on the UV or otherwise it’s pretty much a fashion statement!

Somehow all this umbrella use fits… umbrellas are generally thought to have originated in China and they are now a consumer product with a huge international market. And as you might expect, most of the world’s umbrellas are now “made in China” with a majority of umbrellas coming from the Guangdong, Fujian and Zhejiang provinces. According to various sources, the city of Shangyu alone has more than a thousand umbrella factories.

Personally, I’ve always liked the decorative parasols of Japan and China and while there are still a number of these for sale to tourists and collectors, the modern mass produced “made in China” umbrellas have taken over.

Will we see more umbrellas deployed in the bright sunlight of Indiana? Yes, I think so… but we are still pretty much a “pass the sun screen tube” culture. Too bad, parasols are pretty cool.

8 random thoughts for new middle level academic managers…

2011-05-02T08:35:00.000-07:00

• Commit to craziness (on occasion)… just don’t go crazy.
• Never give up on a good idea, it’s time will come.
• Never surprise the dean (unless you absolutely cannot help it).
• Never underestimate resistance to change.
• Always have a collaborator you trust.
• Every time you save a dollar, have a plan to spend it… or a place to hide it.
• Try to get excited by adversity… just don’t get too excited.
• Have at least two suits and look like you know how to wear them.

Why a School of Communication?

2011-04-27T10:37:00.000-07:00

One of the questions I've gotten from people over the last few weeks has been... "Why a School of Communication"?

My responses have been relatively consistent, or at least I hope they have been. I respond in a few ways...

Well, first, a "school" structure fits the program at Purdue pretty well. The notion of "school" suggests a broader structure than "a department" which is a unit often found within schools. There is the question of breadth. At Purdue we cover a very broad array of topics, from mass communcation to rhetoric, to video production, org com and PR. Most departments of communication are much more narrowly focused.

Second, free standing "Schools" or in some cases "colleges" of communication have become common on our academic horizon and when you look at our peers and direct competitors... most of them are schools or colleges. So, when benchmarking our competitors this is the landscape we see.

I also think that the notion of a "school" creates a bit more visibility and sets us apart from smaller units and as a department we were rather large. Schools are very often free standing units and operate differently from departments.

Finally, for many years "schools" in academe were units that were perceived to be "more professional in orientation"... this has clearly changed in the last two decades and it's now clear that a school is more often perceived as a unit that is larger and broader than a department although it may still have at least a bit of a professional orientation.

So, school it is... why a "named" school...OK, that's the next post...

Stuck in the middle… the role of department heads in raising funds…

2011-01-15T10:19:00.000-08:00

One of the expectations… no duties… of being a middle level administrator is something called “development”… or what most would call “fund raising.” This hasn't always been the case but in these days our duties are always growing. It’s not enough that department heads deal with somewhat egotistical but highly productive colleagues, chronic lack of travel funds, GTAs with problematic students, parents who “want to get their money’s worth”, alumni who need to let you know “what it’s really like out there,” dirty floors and shortages in the coffee fund. Now, it’s pretty much "all about money" and it’s part of our job to find it.

The story you get is that this is all about “relationship development” and for those of us in communication, we are supposed to be good at this anyway… don’t we “study it.” Well… of course this is true. Right. But let’s get past this. We could be bogged down with this myth for some time.

When I first began to get involved in the “development scene” I had a lot of assumptions… it seems from the outside like there is order and a reasonably clear processes… for most academics it’s a black box and we just assume that our development offices are well oiled operation with hordes of organized and professional fund raisers scouring the countryside for alumni dying to “give back” to their alma mater.

Then you fall down the rabbit hole and the truth emerges…

More on this and my “five truths about fund raising” in the next edition.

Haibao, Shanghai World Expo and the Branding of Nations

2010-06-03T06:36:00.000-07:00

In the biggest World Expo yet, Shanghai and China have pulled out all the stops to make another global post-Olympic splash. In this regard they have succeeded… the waterfront of Shanghai’s Huangpu River has been transformed in just a few years. The Bund has a rival (albeit it temporary) for attention as millions of mostly Chinese crowd into this large Epcot like environment in search of “Better City, Better Life”… the Expo theme.

You can’t go anywhere near China without running into ads for this extravaganza or seeing a Haibao figure (looks a bit like a blue Gumby and represents the color water) on a poster or on television (my favorite is the larger than life “Mexican Haibao” I saw in a downtown Shanghai park)… Expo advertisements like Haibaos are everywhere in China and Asia although if you live in the US or Europe it’s rare to see anything. At this point I’ve seen a short ad on CNN’s airport channel in DC and on Bloomberg’s Asia News on cable… and that was late at night.

On the other hand, if you happen to be anywhere near Shanghai, say in Nanjing or Beijing, it’s worth a trip to visit the site and you still have over four months to make it… the “world’s fair” lasts six months and it’s just started.

But what’s the purpose? Clearly this is another opportunity for China to take the spotlight on the world stage. The Expo is huge… not just in scale but in participation and the lines to get into the pavilions are very very long (when I was there the wait for the Saudi pavilion was 8 hours!). Unfortunately, Expo is not widely known outside of China and Asia and the demographics of the attendees reflects the regional character of this event. At the same time it has a global imprint and impact as almost every nation has a presence (Pavilion) at the site and China made it clear how important it was for every nation to be there.

It’s “public diplomacy” at work… originally a chance to show off the latest in technology and architecture (there are some really cool pavilions!) it’s now mostly an exercise in national pride, showmanship and “nation branding” at work.

Interestingly, the U.S. was almost a noshow… if not for the last minute intervention of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton we would have been most prominently and embarrassingly absent. Since it’s illegal for the US to use public money in this endeavor, corporate donors had to be convinced to step up. This was harder than you might imagine since many of what we think of as US companies (McDonald’s, Coke, Starbucks, KFC, etc.) are really global companies and had already signed on as major Expo sponsors… they were already committed to the Expo and not to supporting a US presence.

Despite what you think of these things, the US needed to be at this Expo. As US Commissioner General for the Expo, Jose Villarreal noted in a conversation to a group I was in… “The US Expo Pavilion will see more Chinese visitors in the next six months than our Embassy and all our consulates in China will during the next 30 years. This is the chance of a lifetime to influence a huge number of people”. It was also vitally important for the Chinese… a U.S. noshow would have been a huge snub and this is not the sort of thing we needed for diplomacy of any sort… public or private.

The wait for entry into the US Pavilion can be as long as 4 hours… see what you can do to get into the VIP line (any VIP line)! Yes, it’s always seemed a bit odd to me that in a country with a recent history like China that there seems to always be a VIP line, or lane, or room, or tables… for high party officials, VIPs, etc… one of the country’s apparent contradictions. I could go on for a while, pointing out other interesting tidbits… for example, I’m trying not to read anything into the fact that while the US Pavilion is near to one of the major entry points, the Iranian and North Korean pavilions are all the way at the other pole of the Expo site… China directly in the middle! I’m sure a lot of thought was put into this placement, for this is the country of Feng Shui.

Meanwhile, I’ll be back in September, I just hope the lines are shorter… I don’t normally qualify for the VIP entrances.

For a view on the US effort at Expo take a look at Jian Wang's comments at:
http://uscpublicdiplomacy.org/index.php/newswire/cpdblog_detail/a_little_good_news_from_the_us_pavilion/

Why the NRC should just forget its outdated doctoral rankings effort.

2010-05-05T08:30:00.000-07:00

Chronicle of Higher Education headline from 2008 “Doctoral-Program Rankings Are Near Release, Director Says…”

The Chronicle story went on to report that “The National Research Council's assessments and rankings of American doctoral programs will be released in mid-February (2009), the project's director says.”

OK… it didn’t happen and in my view it shouldn’t happen at all now… it’s just too late. To release data this point would do a disservice to everyone and would reflect a point in time long passed and now mostly irrelevant. Any data five years old (the original survey date) is ancient history and can do little if nothing for us at this point except to add more controversy as programs who don’t like where they stand rightly argue that the findings are now useless.

As head of a large and well regarded doctoral program in Communication I looked forward to the results of this study. This was the first time that Communication as a field was included in the NRC study and we at Purdue and my colleagues at other institutions took this very seriously. Our programs across the country encouraged participation and our national associations and universities held workshops and formed task forces to make sure that quality data collection occurred. The labor was quite significant. Millions of dollars were spent by the NRC and I can’t imagine how much each campus spent in terms of personnel time preparing for this event.

Sure we had problems with some of the categories and had concerns that our program quality would not be captured accurately through the assessment but we were committed and we put our energies into this venture.

Our program has evolved significantly in the last five years. We have new faculty, retirements, better students (in terms of GREs, class ranks, etc.) and we have changed our curriculum. We are not in the same place or in the same space as five years ago. I would think that most of my colleagues would think the same thing especially as we have dealt with recent unprecedented budget challenges that in some cases have radically altered our programs.

So, this is not just a plea… it’s a reasonable request from someone in the trenches and is pretty much common sense. “Give it up… call it off”. I’m not worried about where we stand in terms of our peers… We’ve got a pretty good sense of our rankings (there are other data sources) but I do think that old data cannot help us and it’s better at this point to pack it in and enjoy the summer. It’s not like we aren’t busy enough with budget cuts, furloughs, and other diversions.

Managing Hope...

2010-03-15T12:13:00.000-07:00

As anyone who has a supervisory role these days knows (and yes, I know about academics and herding cats)… it’s tough out there. People are upset and there is a tangible sense of frustration and angst about personal and work lives and many are looking for scapegoats. At the local university/school level we’ve retreated from forward looking initiatives and seem to be trying to build the walls higher… defending our academic turf, screaming about budget cuts … some are still in denial while others are preparing to throw the weak to the wolves… “better them than me or mine” is certainly a rallying cry for some… maybe this sounds like everyday life in academe but I contend we are reaching new levels of incivility for all kinds of external and internal reasons. Our electronic discussion lists seem to hold more rancor than I can recall.

That said, there are no easy answers and unless you have your head in the sand you know there will be at least 2-3 years more years of very tough times before states start to see some economic relief (and I may be optimistic in this projection) and this will test our communities in a number of ways.

What can we do? Well, pointing fingers doesn’t help… and while running five miles or screaming in the shower might be physically and psychologically helpful it doesn’t do much for me (I don’t think I could make the five miles!) or I would think… for most of my colleagues. So, what do we need? A big raise… well, that would be helpful but unless I’ve read the tea leaves wrong we are not going to be in “the big raise game” for some time.

Maybe it’s really about looking ahead and sharing a positive vision for the future… I guess some would call this “managing hope”. The research in this area clearly shows that hope is not a random feeling and that we can and do seek to manage feelings of hope and optimism. There is related research that shows that optimism can have real positive effects. While I guess there are eternal pessimists (some would say this is a common faculty trait) I do think that academic administrators need to point to a bright future, not in some glowing unreasonable way but with obtainable but challenging goals and objectives. This future (I guess this is “the vision thing”) must be inspirational and engaging… as I look around at our current situation I can’t help but be inspired by my colleagues and their work ethic, they have individual goals and as a group we need to have a positive and overarching goal to work toward. Some of my colleagues will suggest that I need to stop dreaming and look at the realities of our situation… funny thing… I think this is exactly the time we need to dream more… or is it the caffeine? I really need that sixth cup of coffee

The New Holidays of China...

2009-12-27T03:17:00.000-08:00

It’s the holiday season in Beijing and not the kind of holidays many of us associate with this part of the world. Christmas wreaths, plastic snow men, over sized candy canes and holiday decorations of all sorts can be found in the markets at Flower Street just past the lines of visa seekers outside the US Embassy. Christmas trees are everywhere, in commercial establishments and can been seen even at night in the windows of private apartments… “Rudolf the Red Nose Reindeer” is played in every mall, holiday decorations are in every hotel, red and white ribbons adorn the columns of buildings and many businesses… and the government favors this development… obviously not for the religious significance but as part of the effort to stimulate domestic consumption. The Crowne Plaza Hotel is advertising a kind of “Holiday on Ice” package and a private development where I had lunch was pushing their “Christmas Casino Night” with fireworks… all aimed at getting Chinese consumers to spend more.

For some this is certainly sacrilege… my Chinese friends tell me that their children have started to have “Halloween” parties in school and that “Thanksgiving” (yes, the old fashioned American Thanksgiving) is now a solid part of the landscape. They note that the traditional Chinese holidays while still celebrated, are under assault by this latest form of creeping “Western Imperialism”. And it’s certainly true… in part. Only a few years ago, few in China knew of “Thanksgiving” and “Halloween” and now they are widely celebrated. But then again, so is Michael Jackson.

True, these celebrations are Western creations but should my Chinese friends be surprised that they are being woven into the fabric of a nation that produces these artificial trees for the world, makes the plastic Santas, assembles the Christmas wreaths and produces all the festival regalia associated with these Western celebrations? These plastic manifestations of Western holidays have brought employment and wealth to China and so in a certain sense it’s not surprising that they have influenced the producers.

At the same time it’s natural for people to look for meaning and I think it's not a surprise that many Chinese seek rituals to fill their lives. You see this at a Buddhist temple in downtown Shanghai or in temples outside Beijing… there is a natural human longing for meaning and spiritual substance. But as everyone knows, religion in China is minimized… regulated... and the government works to control avenues of belief.

The major religion in China at the moment is arguably “Commercialism” not “Confucianism”, not even “Communism”… I’ve seen too many plastic Chairman Maos for sale to believe "The Party" is in complete control... Economic activity is celebrated and in the absence of religion and spirituality something must fill the void. So, why not a plastic Santa?… or a tree?…

It’s cold in Beijing this December and for a Westerner I’ll admit it seems a bit more like home… warm chestnuts on the street and holiday wreaths everywhere… but what must my Chinese friends be thinking and feeling about these developments? I guess many would say it’s the price of modernization, the price of raising the standard of living for the Chinese people. But what will it mean in the long run?

Well enough of this, I’ve got to take down my artificial wreath and drag those inflatable Santas out of the front yard.

Forgeries, counterfeits and taxes

2009-12-20T09:05:00.000-08:00

I’ve just returned from China and I’ll admit it… in the past I’ve bought a few $1 DVDs of “still in the theatre” films but I stopped doing this a few yeas ago. I also once bought a “North Face” jacket in a market in Beijing for $20. I’m sure these transactions were “a bit dodgy” and know that the RIAA and the Interpol are likely hot on my heels… well, maybe not. I swear I’ve changed my ways and I’m sure there are bigger offenders out there.

However, I’m in Beijing in December and the Christmas season is in full swing with all the trimmings… fake trees, fake wreaths, plastic bells and Santas abound. Forgeries and fakes in China? … come on now…

On the front page of the “Metro” section of the China Daily (December 15, 2009) two of the four featured stories seem relevant to this theme…. First, an auction of Chinese paintings and artworks by a well known Beijing auction company was cancelled because some of the artworks were deemed “controversial”. Now in the U.S. I would assume that the art has been viewed as offensive in some way… perhaps the art offends some because it's focused on taboo subjects or the artist goes too far in portraying political or religious icons in some offensive postures… but in this case “controversial” means “fake”… quite simply it appears that many of these artworks (which were expected to fetch high prices) are “forgeries” and not very good ones.

Yes, I’d say “controversial” is a word that could be used in this case although it appears an odd choice at first… apparently it’s not illegal for art auction companies to pass off forgeries as the real thing here… according to the article “there is no sound regulation yet” but the artists and their relatives feel the auction company “should at least have a sense of morality.” The artists also report they are offended by the low quality of the forgeries... feeling the counterfeits which bears their name will drive down prices for the "real things."

The second story is more prominent, “above the fold” and focuses on vendors brazenly hawking fake invoices for employees. In this case the advertisements can be seen pasted to trash bins, on the ground and all over the place in public transportation areas (yes, the image that appears here is one of the many pasted on the ground near the Tsinghua Research Park). Apparently it’s the time of the year for workers to turn in receipts for reimbursement and the pressure to buy fake or second hand receipts (called fapiao in Chinese) is intense as people juggle their finances. As if it wasn’t bad enough even these forgeries (as most seem to be) are not very good ones… like the artwork, accountants at companies are quite competent at detecting and rejecting counterfeits.

However, it’s bonus time in China and many employees are desperate to get enough receipts for expenses that are not taxable by the government and account for a good percentage of their annual salaries.

According to the China Daily, when informed by the newspaper of this very visible and illegal activity, the local police reported they had not noticed but would send some officers over to check it out. My friends tell me that sometimes the police actually do show up and enforce the law in a rough fashion… in response, the local counterfeiters have begun using women with babies and small children as fronts… the police tend to respond less harshly when confronted with this activity by women and children!

The national government recognizes this is a problem and has announced that they will print new tax invoices (presumably more difficult to counterfeit) next year. Good luck! I expect to see the same red and white stickers next December.

Beijing in December

2009-12-19T01:09:00.000-08:00

December is a mixed time to visit Beijing. Occasionally you get one of those cold clear days but it’s often cold and smoggy. You can smell the smoke from burning firewood as you leave the main roads away from downtown and everything seems gray or mottled brown in tone. Even the festive Christmas decorations on the street (yes, in Beijing), in the stores or the elaborate displays in hotels don’t help much. Inside the buildings the conversations are warm, people are laughing and while there is a global recession it’s hard to tell from the active life in Beijing… at least from the traffic and the crowds in the restaurants. It’s cold and the first major snow has come and gone with only some remains of the stuff still around. I wonder how crowded the Great Wall is with tourists today? Not the best time of the year to visit, glad I brought my gloves.

I’m here for a week, meeting with colleagues from around the world who work with or serve on the boards of Confucius Institutes. These centers, usually located on college campuses are a systematic effort by the education branch of the Chinese Government, the Han Ban, to develop Chinese language skills and spread knowledge of Chinese culture. Controversial at times for obvious reasons, some logical, some emotional.

Dinner Saturday night was in “The Great Hall of the People”. We arrived in a motorcade of buses from the convention center near the Olympic Stadium. We all jammed into the hall through the doors and the limited number of security check points trying to get out of the cold weather and into the bright hall… reminded me a bit of the lines in immigration at Narita. The program was short and the table talk brightened our moods. Our table… Purdue folks and colleagues from Australia, Oregon and the Ukraine.

Sunday evening was a Purdue alumni reception… the talk was of Beijing and Shanghai housing prices, not the recession or the weather. Beijing housing prices have jumped about 40% in the last few years. Optimism abounds among the participants and strong positive feelings prevail as the Chinese economy looks better. Last week the China Daily reported that MBA applications are way up, the top programs are increasing tuition by about 30% and the central government has approved 55 new MBA programs for next year… a huge increase (there are currently 127 approved programs). Meanwhile back in Indiana the talk is of “a jobless recovery… more cuts to higher education”…. Maybe I’ll stay a bit longer… it can be a bit gloomy this time of year in Beijing but there are still the bright Christmas decorations and the shine of new Mercedes… looks to me like a pretty good year for China… I just wish I was further south. Warm weather would be so nice.

A few thoughts on academic conferences and social media.

2009-06-18T08:20:00.000-07:00

Academic conferences are the bread and butter of our profession. We work on papers to present to peers, prepare witty comments to dazzle fellow panelists and audience members and get out our suits and related convention attire. We get a chance to think about ideas and discuss them with our colleagues, share research results and network, network, network. As a department head, it’s pretty much dress as usual but for many of my colleagues it’s a chance for them to get that formal attire (a nice dress or jacket and tie) out of the closet for the first time in a while… it’s all about self presentation, in about every respect.

There are many venues of course and attire is varied from the causual to the more formal. In some cases it might be a small informal conference in a warm climate (don’t be surprised if it’s still a “suit environment” since some places and countries it’s just that way). And why do the Europeans always dress better than us? Oh, well that’s another question. Other times it’s a large somewhat stuffy national meeting with self presentation and self preservation skills at high levels. That tie… is it the right color for this year? Or in some cases, who cares.

I’ve been thinking a bit about conference venues lately and while I’ve not undertaken a systematic study I’ve started to do some sorting. First, we have the big national conferences… they are so big that it’s really a bunch of small conferences under the same umbrella. For us it’s a “big tent” meeting, lots of folks with lots of agendas. Big hotels and big cities. More often than not, there is a job fair, a recruiting fair, multiple social affairs sponsored by universities, book sellers, not-for-profits, etc… sometimes by invitation-only… sometimes open to all. There are panels of all kinds and attendance varies depending on the topic and time of day…

At the other extreme it’s the small intimate focused meetings. Maybe on a college campus or a retreat in the woods with various types of attendees and selection criteria… my favorite, the beach. A number of years ago I attended meetings at Nags Head… “Social Science by the Seashore” was how it was billed. Dress was very casual but the topics were focused.

Last week I was in DC at Georgetown University for an Edelman sponsored PR "Academic Summit" that focused on “New Media”. About 60-80 academics (at any given time), corporate “new media/social media” folks, not-for-profit types, a few traditional journalists, a new media guru or two and Edelman employees talked candidly about how corporations, government and others are using social media to connect with diverse audiences, how we measure these connections and how we as academics could work this into our classrooms and research. Yes, there was lots of twittering going on.

What were some of my favorite notions? “Every company is a media company,” “We are in a stakeholder society… not a shareholder society”, “Twitter is increasingly a reading and not a writing environment.”

This was a great venue… just the right size to make it possible to connect with people and just enough time to meaningfully discuss important topics. It was a high quality "ubernetworking" opportunity.

A few days after the conference ended the election results poured in from Iran and the power of social media was demonstrated in a very vivid way. This is yet to play out in Iran, but “Twitter”, “YouTube” and “Facebook” are now in the lead stories of all the “traditional” media… timing is everything and this conference was timely and relevant… something that is not always the case.

One of my favorite twits from the meeting was from miketempleton “If you can't convert your social media contacts into people taking action, the numbers don't matter“. This week in Iran, we didn’t need a more vivid demonstration of the real world utility of social networks.

Duties, expectations and EMT training...

2009-05-30T05:25:00.000-07:00

As a department head you expect to occasionally be called upon to serve in capacities outside your normal duties (what ever those are). I’ve put together furniture for faculty on weekends (yes, I keep tools in my office). I’ve been called into classes when graduate teaching assistants/faculty can’t remember their passwords or find IT support. I’ve often run a dust mop down the hallway (we are short on all kinds of staff), I’ve chauffeured out-of-town guests to the airport, I’ve picked up muffins and coffee for the office staff… on occasion I’ve driven colleagues to pick up spouses and children and once I had to take a colleague to the emergency room of a nearby hospital.

Most in academe know that the typical department head/chair is a “jack of all trades”… the Swiss Army Knife of the institution. Need a job done? Need to find someone at the last minute to meet a potential student, calm an upset parent, visit with an out-of-town guest? Call the appropriate academic unit… ask for the department head… they are usually in their office… writing another memo or at worst out getting coffee and they have their cell on… relatively easy to find and reel in at the last minute.

Did I mention, “EMT training"? … well, it’s not a formal requirement but lately it’s something I'd recommend if you are considering this job… this summer, maybe it’s not to late for me to start those short courses with the American Red Cross.

Recently I was in Shanghai for collaborative discussions with Chinese colleagues. Shortly after breakfast I was in my room catching up on email (what can I say, it’s my life) when I received a call from a Purdue student whose study abroad group was also staying in the same campus hotel… I'd met these students a couple of days before… the short of it… “George (a fellow Purdue student) is in the breakfast room unconscious… we have to get to the airport.” OK, technically the study abroad experience was over, the lead professor was on the way back to the U.S…. but as usual, a department head was nearby, available and on call.

So, after an unsuccessful effort by a local campus nurse to bring the student to a conscious state, the ambulance arrived, I leaped (well, squeezed) into the vehicle with a Chinese colleague, rode through the streets of Shanghai to a nearby hospital, checked the student in, calmed him when he awoke, worked with hospital medical staff to get through appropriate paperwork, sat next to the student, arranged for the student's costs to be covered and still made it back to the hotel in time to check out and catch the plane back to Indiana and get to my daughter’s high school graduation.

Oh yes, of course, I documented all of this for the official files. I can also report that I've gained a healthy appreciation for this part of the healthcare system in China… the medical staff were efficient, competent, and went out of their way to take care of us... and the service... a bargain.

I don’t think there’s a category for this on my merit evaluation…

A few more notes on China and Shanghai

2009-05-23T05:07:00.000-07:00

Paperwork, interactions styles and open doors…

I’m in Shanghai, working with colleagues at Shanghai Jiaotong University and a variety of others including folks at the U.S. Consulate and Purdue students on study abroad (and no, I’ve not posted a status update to Facebook or twittered about it). We are working on projects associated with collaborative instructional efforts and World Expo 2010. Things are going well. It’s been about 8 months since my last trip and the usual observations still apply… the roads are better, the smog is the same, the traffic seems a bit worse, and the people are still great… and of course the construction noise outside my window began in earnest about 7:15am local time.

One of the many things I’ve noticed on my last few visit is the extent to which Chinese society embraces electronic records while simultaneously keeping much of the old bureaucratic, very manual, and human intensive record keeping intact. It’s almost like keeping a second set of books…

Check into a modest guest house/hotel (not a 4 or 5 star hotel mind you) and it still takes a very long time to work out who you are, copy documents, write up new documents (with carbon copies… haven’t seen those in a while have you!). Then there is the discussion about those “extras”. Ask about “internet access” and that’s another form with another fee upfront… Ethernet cable… maybe it’s in your room maybe its not… another “deposit” if not and another form to fill out… always expect a new form even if you’ve stayed there before… this time it was another form for my room key and a 100 RMB deposit.

It’s good to have a local with you when you check into a small ‘local’ place… it’s so much easier to have support next to you when “hello” and “good morning” are the only English words for the night clerk, and the security guard is almost asleep (and grumbling) on the couch in the front lobby. However, be prepared… the two star hotel staff are not what you will encounter in a major hotel. Service is redefined… especially late at night when they are tired and the staff has to turn on the lobby lights when you arrive and if anything and I mean anything is “out of the ordinary”…or “beyond basic”… this is when it really comes in handy to have a local there to fight for you… and it looks like a fight to me… my Chinese is limited but the verbal style on the part of some of these folks looks pretty aggressive… however, the staff are usually much friendlier in the morning (and they are the same people 24-7 as far as I can tell).

Breakfast… I really missed eggs, rice, dumplings (I know I’m being simplistic and generic here), soup and vegetables for breakfast… coffee is usually extra unless again, you’re in one of those big places. Order anything that’s not covered by the “breakfast coupon” and it’s more paperwork… for each item… two cups of coffee, two pieces of paper that have to be signed, dated, etc… and run over to the front desk. Good thing there are a lot of people in this country.

Doors… if you’ve not spent a night in a middle level hotel in China you’ve not seen the guest room doors propped open and everyone sitting in their rooms, smoking, watching TV and mostly watching the hallway and you or anyone walking by… wouldn’t want to miss anything. On this other hand you get a chance to look at all their stuff… and there is usually a lot of it… so, it’s really a two way opportunity.

It’s swine flu mania out here and I almost missed my connection from Tokyo Narita to Shanghai… don’t ask about how long we had to sit on the plane in Narita, filling out paperwork, having the locals look us over, measure our body temperature… and what’s with the blue gowns, sealed with masking tape in the back and everyone wearing the big industrial goggles?… I felt a bit like I was stuck in a Michael Crichton novel. But that’s another story…

Beginnings and Endings...

2009-05-01T11:04:00.000-07:00

One of the best things about being an academic is that our jobs have clear beginnings and endings. We call them semesters, quarters and/or academic years. Like our K-12 colleagues, we spend 9-10 months on what is usually an “academic contract”. My mother-in-law still thinks we get “summers off”... far from the truth of course. Summer is when you get the real work done (even if you don’t get paid). This is the time for you to focus on that research, revise your syllabus and in general have the time to think about your future and future projects. But even summer has a definable beginning and end.

In the summer, most academics still do their email daily, write letters of reference, collect data, work on that book project, attend professional meetings, sit on student exams,,, on occasion they might even teach a summer school class. But we break up our year and summer is usually special for most people.

As a department head, things slow down a bit as faculty are less likely to be on campus, there are fewer meetings, fewer stressed students, fewer upset parents and what really matters “fewer emails.” I’m still in my office each day, unless I take an official “vacation day” and in truth “what is a vacation day when you are constantly monitoring your email and available through your cell phone.” I’m not going to bemoan my “electronic tether”… I'll let others do that. We live in a 24-7 world and if you are an administrator of any sort you have to be available. That’s just the reality.

In my view, this year and semester were a bit more stressful than most. We started the year with a Presidential Election, a looming financial crisis and ended the term a full blown financial crisis, potential reorganization of our college and Swine Flu on our doorstep. In between there were all the usual human dramas, family life, students with problems, problems with students, problems with colleagues, opportunities and challenges, dramas and mini-dramas, tragedies and triumphs, and all the little things that make life what it is… and I’m not talking about college football or basketball or women’s soccer.

But summer is here “and the living is easier.” Don’t give me a job without beginnings or endings… I couldn’t stand it… oops, I’ve got someone waiting at my door and I have to get back to my email, it’s piling up fast!

Twitter is dead, long live Twitter…

2009-04-10T05:42:00.000-07:00

OK, this week the Chronicle of Higher Education’s “Information Technology” section focused on “Ten High Fliers on Twitter”. Some of the usual suspects were highlighted… Rosen, Rheingold, etc… but one caught my attention… Gordon Gee, President of Ohio State. This is a sign…in Wired Magazine’s terminology (from Wired to Tired to Expired) Twitter has in my view “Expired”. First, the Chronicle tries to keep up but it’s behind and when a college President is twittering… albeit for only two weeks, it’s all over with… I mean really, how often do you hear of university presidents as trend setters?

I know the Chronicle of Higher Education is a “must read” for many of us. It’s a place to read about all the great stuff everyone else is doing. It’s a place to read about minor scandals in academe, a place to post jobs (well, when there were jobs), conference announcements, opinions (mostly by English professors… does this go on a CV?) and on occasion there is even something interesting (often in the advertisements).

So, if twittering is getting old hat, what’s “hot”. Well, at the risk of sticking my neck out I’d say lot’s of stuff with mobile technology… yes, there are some cool Twitter apps from the Apple Store for the iPhone and the Google phone offerings are starting to heat up but you don’t have to believe anything I say. You can read Wired but I think you should just go find a group of 13 year-old girls and ask them… in the old terminology, “they rule.”

Want a hint of what’s to come? Go to Japan or South Korea and look at what 13-year-old girls are doing there, or if you can’t get there, go to an upscale suburban mall. Thirteen-year-old girls are my focus group and they are at the mall in force. My daughter is 17 now, past her prime, but when she was thirteen I asked her and her friends what mobile phone company they preferred… at the time, they said “Cingular” (“the new AT&T”, or I guess it’s the old AT&T now) so I immediately switched from my old company… and they were right, the connection was better in our location. There is other evidence... for example, who won the world championship in texting last year? That’s right, a 13-year-old girl. Pay attention.

I spend a fair amount of time in Starbucks, Borders, Paneras, in airports and yes, libraries. I listen to others’ conversations (let’s not go there!) and I pay particular attention to what people say about technology and how they use technology (I know, I should file with our IRB). I listen to kids talking about their friends and how their parents (mostly mothers) are on Facebook now… and how that’s mostly bad from their point of view and I listen to mothers talk about Facebook and what their kids are doing and worse yet “What their daughters’ friends are posting”.

I do know this… when you mother is on Facebook, it’s all over, find another place to go… when the President of Ohio State has discovered Twitter… it’s “tired” at best and likely on the verge of "expired".

So, forget it… if you are thinking about twittering, think again… Twitter is soooo 2008... and this Blog… sooooo 2004. Go read a book, the public libraries are still open or better yet download it to your Kindle 2… or just ask a 13-year-old girl what to do. They know.

Building Global Partnerships...

2009-03-16T15:52:00.000-07:00

Flying into Copenhagen (København) in March is an interesting experience… on a good day, the sun is visible but it’s still likely to be pretty cloudy. Most days it's overcast and dreary... It’s just that time of the year. From the air you are struck by the numerous small lakes, the roads leading into well organized communities of houses with red tile roofs, while some houses are isolated, built on small bits of land emerging from the marshland and water… different than Amsterdam. Smaller in scale, more in tune with nature… this time of year winter has retreated, the grass is still brown but there is a hint of green in some of the hedges. Only in a large public square do you see some of the remaining snow, small piles, shrinking and dirty.

Don’t judge Copenhagen from the drive in from the airport… the route is not attractive, but then you emerge... and it does seem like an emergence, into the city proper, the shops, the energy on a good day. The bustling airport shops give you a hint of what’s to come but it’s really hard to describe… a bit like Auckland maybe? A smaller Amsterdam perhaps? The place is wedded to the water… it’s vibrant in the late afternoon as people stroll and bike about. An urban environment without the scale that sometimes overwhelms you in other European cities… a bustling street with people and children, mothers and fathers pushing upscale baby carriages, people still bundled up and with fewer cars, unique shops and high fashion amid attire you can find in any mall in the world.

The taxi drivers seem relaxed and tipping is not expected. But what’s with the hot dogs? I mean from the time you step off the plane you’ll see the hot dog stands in the airport and on the street... these vendors are plentiful. The hot dogs come in all sizes and the fries are also prominently featured on the pictures of food in the windows of the crowded eating establishments. The fries I’m used to from Amsterdam but the hot dogs?

Maybe because it’s midday that this part of street life (the food) is so prominent. At night things start slowly and build, dinner is late and in the good places on Saturday night there is a wait for a table. The houses and restaurants are bright, people laughing and enjoying life. They don’t hurry you but when you leave the place and people are waiting… maybe standing, patiently, talking and laughing with friends in a light rain or mist, they smile and you know it’s because another table is available.

Sunday night was a bit unusual… dinner at the home of one of our hosts. In Denmark (Danmark), dinner at someone’s house is a treat, something special, unusual, not to be missed. Expect things to start about the normal time for an American dinner but don’t expect to get out the door until 1 or 2am… a wonderful time, but if you are still jet lagged from a transatlantic trip it’s a challenge. At least it is for me. At least I didn’t snore.

Why Copenhagen over Spring Break? Oh, that’s right; I forgot to mention, it’s Spring Break at Purdue. My students are all off to sunny and warm places, some in Florida and a couple on cruises. And this year (I guess it’s the economy) a number are staying closer to home with maybe that brief trip to Chicago or just to Indy. Good news, the weather is cooperating. Looks like those who can’t get to the Caribbean will be rewarded with some sunshine and above average temps…. And there is the Big Ten basketball tournament in Indy and St. Patrick’s Day is Tuesday. Maybe it’s a good time to hunker down in West Lafayette for a few days and catch up on that term paper that’s due soon.

Past all this why are we here? Well it’s part of the plan… I hope it’s “our plan” but it’s certainly a plan. As a department head I work with many audiences… students, colleagues, staff, alumni, deans and others… I seek to advance our unit in multiple ways and to link us… co-brand us with the best programs worldwide…. In working toward this goal we have identified potential global partners we think can add value to our program, provide opportunities for our students and build our reputation for excellence and innovation. We are working with two major universities in Copenhagen that may fit the bill… we are here to talk about “what might be.”

Denmark is a small country with some very bright entrepreneurial individuals, excellent universities and a “responsible” business and cultural climate… and we have things to offer as well… these opportunities are two way streets. We all have something to gain in working together. Today it was University of Copenhagen (KU) and tomorrow it’s Copenhagen Business School (CBS). Too bad I can’t find any XL T-shirts I like… yes, I have loftier goals but that XL T-shirt is still on my list.

Program Review

2009-03-03T04:21:00.000-08:00

“Program Review”… Two words that can bring a chill to the heartiest of academics… especially those who hold the title of “Director” or “Chair”, “Head or "Dean” At our institution it’s an every five year event. Depending on your view of things, it’s either an inquisition, a trial by fire, or maybe it’s a bit more like Carnavale… everyone spends time preparing individually and as a group and we all parade down the street together (often out of synch) in our costumes for three days. At the end, we are exhausted, upset with some of our fellow performers and can’t figure out why we didn’t get a big trophy or why the newspapers didn’t name us “Best in Show.”

What is an academic program review? Well, that varies from place to place but it almost always starts with some kind of “self study” or documentation provided by the department… lots and lots of data, a strategic plan and almost always, a plea for more resources. At some places, it’s an entirely in-house exercise where your program is subjected to scrutiny by a hand picked group of local colleagues who don’t know anything about you or your field and often don’t care… or they think they know something about your field and have heard that “other programs elsewhere are so much better”… or they know “Professor X” from your program and he is married to a reviewer’s ex-spouse… now there are some healthy assessment dynamics!

Another model you see is when you mix the locals with an “outside” expert who provides “a view from the field.” This can lead to interesting differences of opinion or in fact can work as hoped and provide “context” for the review and a sense of how things are done elsewhere.

Sometimes, there are multiple teams involved in a review… one group sifting carefully through the graduate program and another minutely assessing undergraduate efforts… these can be mixed or all “locals”… it just depends. These things can turn into a war of attrition... grinding on for weeks, casualties mounting.

Finally (and I have not exhausted all permutations!) you might have a program review group composed entirely of outsiders… that’s the way it is at Purdue. A group of outside experts, chosen by the dean with input from the department arrive on campus for 2-3 days, interview all the usual suspects (faculty, staff, students, others from across campus… maybe even alums), write a brief report and jet off to their next gig. Actually, it’s a lot of hard work for these folks and I know from first-hand experience that it doesn’t pay enough and the hours are long.

Of course, it’s all about making programs better… right… well that’s the goal and that’s a goal we should all strive for, but sometimes other factors get in the way. Let’s just hope ours goes well and the upper administration sees fit to throw more scarce resources into our efforts to improve the quality of our programs. Well, got to go. it’s breakfast with the review team and I’ve got to straighten my tie.

Dubai and the GCC

2009-02-18T06:03:00.000-08:00

When you get into a cab in Dubai you often get the unexpected… of course this is true for Chicago as well. In fact, I think I had the same driver last week in Chicago and this week from the Sheraton Jumeriah to Knowledge City in Dubai… you know the guy, he’s picked you up also. But what strikes me about cab drivers in the world lately (at least the places I go) is that they all are listening to “world music”… you known it as “hip hop” but it’s on in every cab I get into and it’s not like the driver sees me coming and says “yes, it’s hip hop for this guy.” Our driver this morning was from India… a young guy with a suit on and a red tie… didn’t say much, but it was “hip hop” the whole way. My driver yesterday afternoon was Palestinian… a bit older than me… no political talk, just a brief comment on how he “always gets the Americans." Don’t know what that meant but again hip hop united us.

That said, what is going on with Dubai anyway? It’s hard to tell really, the New York Times bashed the place last week. Guess they were tired of bashing Detroit and the latest news on Chicago/Illinois corruption hadn’t hit the front pages yet so “let’s look international.” If you read some of the English language international papers you would think that Dubai was turning into a ghost town. You hear about abandoned projects, empty condos, thousands of foreigners/expats fleeing the country each week and leaving their Lexus or Mercedes at the airport (but then again, the whole place is expats). You might also read about how credit has frozen up and it's almost impossible to get a loan...

Well, here is what I’ve seen this week… lots of cars are still on the road and not all of them in the airport parking lot or on an auction block somewhere (although the auctions are taking place)… my flight into Dubai from Atlanta didn’t have an empty seat…the local newspapers report that there are long waiting lists for slots in private Indian and English secondary schools, lots of work is still being done on a breathtaking (oversupply) number of buildings… the stations for the Metro rail system are still going up (and will be done on time)… there are still multiple car pile ups on the main roads (usually involving at least three Range Rovers and a couple of Mercedes). The Mall of the Emirates still seems crowded with shoppers and the Rolex store looked pretty busy if you asked me… I didn’t go in. Lot’s of people were using the indoor snow ski slope and it’s not even hot out yet… about 80F today, but a bit dusty.

But the truth? Well, don't look to the papers it's still illegal to report bad economic news. There are stories of stalled building projects, of real estate that won’t move and it strikes me that there are a lot of dark apartments in the high rises… the bubble has burst… again. Well, if it hasn't burst it’s certainly deflated, ask the cab drivers they will tell you about their friends going back home. Will Dubai turn into a ghost town? No, not in my opinion. We are we going to need oil for the next 50 years and they have it.

How deep will the world recession be and what will Dubai and the rest of the GCC do? The folks paid to guestimate these things seem confused, they talk about "the lack of good data" on the UAE and what's happening. I’m not an economist, so I don’t have the credentials to provide an “expert” guess anyway (as if they have been any good anyway!) But, I’m a Florida native… I've experienced booms and busts firsthand… the history of Florida is one of severe ups and downs… I think it’s the same here, at least until they run out of oil. The plan is still the same, ramp up commerce and finance, shipping/transportation is critically important, take advantage of the geopolitical position, real estate is big part of the mix and tourism is a big part of the future.

But it must be hard on the locals, growing up in Florida we often looked with distain upon the snow birds, the winter (and summer) visitors who brought much needed cash for our economy. What are the locals in Dubai thinking?… they like the attention, they are human and love the wealth that comes with the oil, the Ferraris and the flowing robes go well, Bentley would already be out of business if it were not for the UAE. At the same time, this wealth clashes with the culture and sets up difficult situations for them, for us… for the many construction workers who have come here to build these cities in the desert as well as the Brits, the Germans, the Russians and the Americans who work in the high rises that spring out of the sand. As Dubai slows down, the outflow continues (if you are not employed you have to leave the country)… official estimates are for a population loss of 8% this year and this might be a huge underestimate.

Maybe that’s good… not for the companies stuck with unrented extra space, not for the investors who got in late, not for the laborers who are here to send money back to their families… maybe the place needed to slow down a bit and take a breath, give the power grid a chance to stabilize (the UAE uses more electricity per person than any other country)… the government said it learned from the last oil slowdown… maybe it’s human nature, but they got hammered again. But so did all of us… been to Miami or Naples or Ft. Myers Florida recently? Well a lot of those folks are over here looking for jobs. I'm not worried... the UAE will be back and so will “South Beach.” In the meanwhile... need a new Mercedes? I know where you can get a real deal.

The Color of Leadership

2009-01-27T06:12:00.000-08:00

The color of leadership…

Have you ever noticed that Barnes and Noble and Borders are just full of books on leadership lately? I mean really… we must have a real need for this stuff… really badly and I guess there is a market or maybe it's just that I started to pay attention.

I’ve been doing a little content analysis of these books and they seem to say a lot of the same things… “stick out, but not too far”… “treat others well but create urgency”… “discomfort is expected”… “lead from the front… and sometimes the back”… “embrace creative destruction” (my favorite) and so on. These books also come in all sizes… the little ones that remind me of kid’s versions of “The One Minute Manager”… remember that one? Or maybe it's just a bit like "Pat the Rabbit." Others are thick tombs with huge prices (these are by the academics who hope to score some bucks and get the book counted toward merit this year… sort of twofers) and then there are the “how to” manuals with the funny names and drawings done by the author’s five-year-old child… at least I hope that’s who did it. If not, someone paid too much for the design.

The prices vary but most are in the $19.95 to $24.95 range… except those that have the academic book look… then they jump to $60 or $80 or even $120 (the later was likely an ordering mistake) and the paper quality is a lot better… also, the jacket cover has a long resume and no picture… well, maybe there is a picture but it looks like the picture you would expect on an $80 book. The guy doesn’t seem to have any obvious tattoos. Colors vary… doesn’t seem to be a “color of leadership”… well, maybe there should be… in fact maybe that’s a great title…“The Color of Leadership.” I better start writing the thing before someone else does… maybe I get can it done before I leave town in three weeks… but I better do a search… hold on...

Well, I’ve been saved some hard work, I just Googled “The Color of Leadership” and now I know… it’s been done. Something called the Media Management Center has a publication with this title… and there is another Google entry on the “colors of leadership” which seems to be claimed by some kind of consulting group that wants you to “explore the leadership spectrum”… I give up… well, maybe I should check to see if they have trademarked the notion… if they have, I can focus on those memos I need to write before the next faculty meeting.

Chasing the money...

2009-01-17T03:38:00.000-08:00

A few entries ago I spent some time writing about “metrics”. How do we measure up? In communication and journalism we are fortunate… we don’t have a category in US News and World Report… yet. Why are we fortunate? Well, we do have rating and ranking schemes of all sorts but not a national/international ranking/rating scheme that gets so much public attention (although the NRC rankings are about to be released). I don’t know about my colleagues at other universities but I don’t feel the angst that department heads in psychology, public administration and business endure every time the US News reports come out.

At the same time we are increasingly driven by metrics. One metric that’s getting more and more attention in our field is “external funding”. What kind of money are your colleagues bringing in? “What’s this all about?” you might ask. Communication, journalism and external funding? Isn’t this the domain of the sciences and engineering? Why are we in the money hunt and what could possibly be funded in communication by the likes of the National Science Foundation, NIH, HHS, or corporate interests? Well, the answer is… a lot.

Over the last decade several factors have come into play… funding agencies like the NIH and NSF have come to realize that to tackle many of the really sticky problems we face, we need to consider interdisciplinary approaches… New information and communication technologies (ICTs) have significant social effects… these technologies get used in unexpected ways… or not! Advances in science have unanticipated effects that influence their adoption, their public perception and more importantly their funding.

The other day I talked to one of my engineering colleagues who directs a major energy research center on campus… he told me that 70% of the requests for information they receive are “soft” inquiries… nonscientific questions… policy questions. This surprised him. Another friend who directs our “nano” efforts agreed with him but seemed less surprised and wondered if we had someone in our unit who could work with them on research submissions.

So, there are opportunities… uses of new media are of great interest… public understanding of science is important… and fundable… information campaigns are a critical part of grant proposals… you need to have a dissemination campaign… show impact… publishing a piece in an obscure scientific journal is not enough anymore. But it’s more than that. It’s the recognition that science is an ‘integrated’ enterprise… it’s not isolated, it’s part of our social fabric and affects and is affected by events and people outside the laboratory. Well, others have spoken more eloquently about this so I won’t belabor this point.

The concept of “funded research” in communication and journalism is not new but its importance for our programs is growing and in major doctoral programs it’s become a critical metric. Regardless of whether or not we are hiring a humanist or a social scientist we assess “their potential to bring in funds” during the interview process. We want to hire the very best and we look to hire great scholars who are also great teachers… we are not solely focused on “grant potential” but this aspect of a hire is playing a larger role in our thinking.

Not all my colleagues will agree with me but I personally try to assess a job candidate’s potential to work in interdisciplinary teams, is their work potentially “fundable”… sounds pretty mercenary doesn’t it? Well, it’s not “money for the sake of the money”. Most of my colleagues don’t require huge amounts of expensive equipment, don’t need complex labs (some do) and a number of the best scholars in our unit don’t have major funding, but there are a lot of research questions, national surveys, and projects that involve significant travel that can’t be addressed without funds to support the work.

Funded research is the coin of the realm in R1 universities. Without significant external money we don’t show up on the charts in the VP for Research Office, we don’t sit at the tables we need to be at, we don’t participate in the conversation or influence research directions at our universities. We need to have a voice in these meetings. My colleagues have views that need to be represented and I think their views are important for our engineering, science and medical colleagues to hear… The communication department at Purdue had almost $4 million dollars in new externally funded research last year… our goal is higher this year! What are you doing reading this blog? Finish that grant application this weekend!

A few observations on South Africa

2008-10-14T14:36:00.000-07:00

Government in transition… South Africa in 2008

A few weeks ago I was in South Africa. Colleagues from the U of Pretoria invited us some time ago and we were finally able to free up some time to get down to that part of the world. I was there to attend the annual meeting of the South African communication association, visit a number of excellent of universities in the Pretoria/Johannesburg area, and spend an afternoon at Vega (which in my view reminds me a bit of an effort to develop an educational IDEO)… sorry, I didn’t get down to the coast so I don’t know how the area compares to California and it’s vineyards. You’ll have to read about that elsewhere.

The timing was perfect. The weather was great (but dry before the rainy season). The world economy had not yet tanked and the Rand was doing pretty well. Just after we arrived, at the request of his party (the ANC), President Thabo Mbeki agreed to step down sooner than his already announced departure date in 2009. The locals were in a bit of a frenzy and we were on site to observe developments. Would the transition over the first few days be smooth? What happens when and if Jacob Zuma is selected President next year? What happens to a country that the rest of Africa looks to for leadership (and produces 1/3rd of the GDP for the whole continent)?

The good news… best I could tell, despite the political uncertainty, road construction continued without pause (a unifying factor from every country I’ve been in lately) and on the road in between Pretoria and Johannesburg there are enough international company offices that the place resembles a modest scale Silicon Valley.

Bad news, the local Pretoria rugby team is not doing well and there is great concern that as host country for the 2010 FIFA World Cup the locals won’t be able to organize a competitive team. And of course, some feel like the facilities will not be ready in time to greet the hordes of international guests anticipated.

My impressions. A mix as you might imagine but optimistic overall. I visited Soweto and was surprised. It was not what I expected. Nelson Madela's house is undergoing renovation… rumor has it that Winnie feels it’s a bit too modest to be the home "Nelson lived in". I was told that Bishop TuTu was up from the coast… there was a car with a Cape plate outside his house. The local kids were well attired and playing soccer in a nearby park. The housing was modest but clean and respectable and you felt secure. Something you don’t always feel in downtown Pretoria or Johannesburg… or many U.S. cities. True, there are parts of Soweto that don’t have electricity and sewage but overall the place didn’t have the look or feel I expected.

A day earlier, we visited an Afrikaner monument and museum… a very impressive monolithic facility on top of a hill near Johannesburg testifying to the Afrikaner movement and its historical influence in this part of the world. Transition is a continuing theme in South Africa’s short life. The Afrikaner monument and Soweto show the diverse sides to this place. And as the ANC shifts its players there is consternation. Minorities have gotten used to Mbeki's multiracial liberalism and Jacob Zuma's aggressive populism concerns some who feel it bears a great deal of resemblance to the politics of their northern neighbor, Zimbabwe. Ask around, just below a surface level of optimism there is angst among many.

They say that no trip to South Africa is complete without a sighting of the “Big Five”. Unfortunately for us, our visit ended in viewing only 4 of the big 5. Oh well, we almost made it… this place is worth a return trip for many reasons. Dynamic, exciting, good people doing interesting things. It’s not “out of the way”, it’s right in the middle and has been since Mandela and Tutu emerged on the world scene. That has not changed.

Olympic Observations

2008-08-21T13:02:00.000-07:00

Well, I’ll admit it. After years of preparation Beijing looks pretty good for these Olympics. The flowers planted 4-5 years ago along the main roads and medians are in bloom, the rows of trees have matured and the rain the last few days improved the air quality and for a few days it was even sunny and bright. The buildings along these same roads all received a fresh coat of paint and the new buses are impressive. With the economy booming the people you see on the street are well clothed and the “Clean Up Beijing” campaign seems to be working… the streets look great although the average tourist would be a bit bemused by the workers whose job it’s been to discourage locals from “spitting in public”. There is practically, no ticket scalping outside the Olympic venues… it’s very very subtle! My favorite DVD store is closed until after the ParaOlympics and you don’t see any of the street vendors tugging on your arm, scrambling to use their best sales pitches and hawking their wares as you near popular shopping areas. The government has cracked down on this kind of activity. These folks are gone until after the Olympic tourists leave and the world’s press turns its attention elsewhere. Will they be back? I suspect so, this place seems so sterile without them.

I’ve been fortunate, I’ve sampled Beijing about every eight months for the last six years. I’ve seen the changes, I’ve watched the place evolve as the Olympics near. What do the locals think? It’s mixed really… with half the traffic on the roads, the traffic jams are minimal. There are still accidents. Likely because the locals are not used to being able to get near the speed limit! I saw three (all fender benders) on my way to meetings one day. But still, if you don’t have at least two cars… one with an “odd” plate and one with an “even” plate then you are out of luck at least half the week… it’s taxi time! Some businesses have closed (and not just those selling counterfeit products!). Some of the locals tell me that many government services including the courts have put off decisions in order to “promote harmony” during the games… so, if you intend to sue someone in Beijing in the next month, forget it! One of my Purdue colleagues who is working for the Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee in the media area wanted me to take her to Outback for a steak (she’s been in Beijing for five weeks, she wants steak!). Well, one Outback is closed until after the Olympics because it’s too close to a venue and the other is only open to Olympic Volunteers/Competitors who have a official credentials… so, no luck there… my colleague has the credentials but they don’t allow guests? As one of my good Chinese friends says “I hate the Olympics”… but she is in the minority… for the moment… the question is… will this overall goodwill hold up? One year from now, what will the Chinese think? What will the local post mortems be like? I’m not sure we will really know since I can’t imagine there will be any kind of real public dialog on this topic.

A day trip to Padua or Padova

2008-02-04T00:14:00.000-08:00

If you are in the Veneto for a little while consider a visit to Padua or as the locals call it Padova, even in the rain. Yes, it rains around here in early spring... a lot. Take the train from Venice to Padova or if you live nearby, drive to Castelfranco or Bassano del Grappa, leave your vehicle in the car park in Castelfranco (it's free) and take the train. In Bassano, parking is more of a challenge.

Parking in Padova is really bad (and expensive) even on Saturdays. Grab the tram from the station (1 Euro) down to the Basilica of St. Antony (you can't miss it). Take a tour through this place, then walk back through town to the train station, it's not that far. I'd recommend you take an earlier train from Castelfranco or you will run into a 'timing problem' typical of Italy. You get to a place about 10am, tour a few things, grab an early (noonish) lunch, enjoy the wine and food and then when you walk out (note the Italians are just walking in) all the shops are closed and in Padua and you really want to take a look at the shops... a few are open (like Nautica, but you can see this in the US) but all the others will be closed until 3:30pm. Of course, you could leave, take the train back and arrive just in time for the shops to open in Castelfranco, but that defeats the purpose of your day in Padova.

Make sure you walk through the University of Padova, or visit the area. Galileo and Copernicus taught here and Galileo is reported to have said that it was the best 18 years of his life. Founded in 1222 it's worth a look even if it's integrated into the city like most European universities, it's fun to see students and I enjoy intruding into the places they inhabit. The coffee shops or the pizza place that serves pizzas that look like ice cream cones for example... and there are dessert pizzas (in cones of course and very good!). I know, how could you after that wonderful lunch?

The best known attraction is the Scrovegni Chapel, but remember you need to make reservations in advance (a couple of days should work) since only 25 are allowed in at anytime.

A view from the Veneto...

2008-01-29T07:03:00.000-08:00

This semester I’m in Northern Italy, teaching "Global Entrepreneurship" and a related communication class in a beautiful campus setting (the Istituti Filippin) in a small town about 50 miles from Venice. This is a great study abroad program run by a consortium of U.S. public universities and offers mostly classes in business, communication and journalism.

Students are mostly from b-schools but the liberal arts and engineering are represented as well. Faculty members are from all over the U.S., Canada, England and Italy. It’s week two and it’s begun, the Americans have started to grow restless… how is it possible that this could happen? We are in Italy, the mountains greet us every morning, the air is clear, the people friendly and the coffee great. The food, well, who needs to even mention it… it is Italy after all and I’ve picked up two kilos already. I need to walk more.

Well, I’ve not done a systematic investigation but I think my U.S. colleagues have been too long in a media saturated environment, they have begun to experience “tech withdrawal”… no broadband in the faculty flats? What? No English channels on TV? What? Well, maybe MTV… No wireless connections in the local cafes? No, Blockbuster on the corner? Come on! No DVD rentals in the Tabacchi? How will we ever know how the Presidential primary in Indiana turns out?

I don’t mean to say that we are not connected… we all have our cell phones and even in small town Italia there are satellite dishes and ESPN and BBC International, just not in our flats and of course only about 1% of Italian homes have cable television. It is true that many Italians have multiple mobile phones (I won’t go into why this is the case), each with a different ring which makes for interesting meals and all of our students use Skype, sometimes to call the next building.

So, how are my U.S. colleagues dealing with this perceived media impoverished environment? No, cable TV! No CNN! No Sports Center! Well, from my view it looks like they are putting in more time in the office, more care in course preparation, they are working more on that writing project they neglected at home, they are reading what novels they can find in English, they are spending more time with students and with other faculty here, and they are taking the occasional day off to go to Verona, Venice, Padua or Bassano… you know, it’s not all bad. There may be hope for us yet.

Rankings and Ratings… It’s the world we live in...

2007-11-22T14:51:00.000-08:00

Someone asked me the other day what I thought of the program rankings recently produced by “Academic Analytics'” and published in the November 2007 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education. This for-profit company, owned in part by the State University of New York at Stony Brook, recently released its third annual Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index — a ranking of graduate programs at research universities based on what they report to be “an objective measurement of per-capita scholarly accomplishment.”

Frankly, I'm always a bit skeptical of these reports. While several areas of our program are ranked in the “Top 10” in recent studies, should we be ranked “2nd” nationally by “Academic Analytics”? I know the rating process did not include variables I think are important including information on our efforts to diversify our faculty and student body or our efforts to internationalize our program. However, as I took a very close look at the components of this ranking it started to make sense to me. Of course, if we had been ranked lower it would have made less sense!

At the same time I realize that this is just one data point. In February, the NRC will release its more authoritative report and that assessment is likely to have more impact with university administrations. I also know that other surveys, rankings, ratings and reports will continue to appear and we will be regularly asked to provide data on numbers of journal articles, grant dollars, awards, etc. for the metrics that each of our colleges and universities require for various purposes. At the end of the day, what does this really mean? I'm not sure.

What I do know is that these metric analyses are unlikely to cease and that readers will peruse them, sift through them and use them to make choices and recommendations. Maybe no single survey or study really captures what we do or “accurately” ranks programs but you can get an overall sense of things when you look at enough of these over time. Still everyone’s experience is different and programs of many kinds have value that are not captured in these studies. So much of our experience in a graduate program depends on that “special mentor”, that moment when a piece of literature brings clarity to our thinking or that time when we finally “get it” in a conversation with our peers.

Of course, in the end, it's better to be on the list than not :).

The Visible Past Project

2007-11-02T17:17:00.000-07:00

My colleague Sorin Matei has undertaken a very interesting project... with the assistance of others he is focusing his energies on recreating historical events and/or places with something he calls the "visible past project." Combining an interest in geospatial concepts, existing online resources like "Google Earth" and the CAVE in Purdue's Envision Center he is really contributing in a unique way to the development of online geospatial environments and the notion of gwikis... For a video overview from The Chronicle of Higher Education see: http://chronicle.com/media/video/v54/i16/matei/. For a discussion of this project take a look at the article in First Monday or check it out at: http://www.visiblepast.net/gwiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

Life’s a Beach… well, it should be…

2007-10-23T15:31:00.000-07:00

It's a bit trite... "Life's a Beach" the slogan is all around, on t-shirts, signs, but there is something to it... it's sticky. Many of us hear the call and the statistics bear it out. Despite hurricanes and global warming we appear to be still moving like lemmings, closer to the beach. Sometimes we move back but more move with the tide than against it. At what point in a life do you decide that a beach is where you need to be? Growing up in Ft. Lauderdale was quite a trip… but after 20 years it was time to move and I’ve not regretted a minute of my life in the Midwest. I like the change in seasons, the mild summers, the trees, small town midwest values, Big Ten football and I don’t really miss the flat terrain and the midday heat (except in the dead of winter). Never-the-less the Florida coast is still a draw… it pulls me… the white sand, the stucco houses, the palms, the live oaks, Spanish moss, walks in the early evening and even the fire ants. It’s still a place that feels like home… and with wireless and high speed internet access… well, it seems better than ever. This post, well, it’s just for fun. Winter is on it's way.

Ten Months until the Beijing Olympics… a few thoughts on China

2007-10-14T11:18:00.000-07:00

My first trip to Beijing was five years ago… I’ve been sampling the place about every 6-8 months since and it still startles me each trip. 30,000+ additional cars on the road each month in Beijing… the roads are so much better and the traffic is so much worse… but Beijing is almost ready for what many call its “Coming Out Party”…

They are doing massive renovations to the transportation system and to beautify Beijing… flowers are everywhere and each new overpass adds function and a bit of green beauty… the rows of trees are maturing and in general you see Chinese trade success in the clothing styles, the billboards, the restaurants and even in public transport with all the new buses and the subway extensions and of course the buildings… the cranes. The newspapers report that residential building growth is slowing… and if you look closely you see a fair amount of vacant office space in those huge new buildings.

What amazes me even more though are the new subdivisions… the new burbs that extend out toward the 5th Ring and beyond, cities of new high rise buildings and several new walled communities. Four years ago I visited my first walled/gated community near the Beijing airport… I thought the 3-5,000 sq. ft. houses for ex-pats and well off locals were pretty interesting… then I visited a newer gated community last week. Our friends’ house… 10,000 sq. ft., an indoor pool and pump driven river in the backyard… the architecture, a fusion of Western and Eastern… this would not have existed 10 years ago… five-hundred houses in this one community for the new entrepreneurs of China… forces in this new market-driven party-guided economy… making people wealthy who could not have been wealthy in the past… new challenges, new faces, the same black Mercedes and Audis you see in Europe… and NYC… the world culture.

The CPC was meeting at the same time… private property rights are being extended and basic health care plans for lower income groups are being tested…

Last week I also went to Tiananmen Square (Simplified Chinese: 天安门广场; Traditional Chinese: 天安門廣場) at night for the first time… it was my 4th trip to the place but again, the first at night… very different place… very few Europeans at night and a whole different feel.

What a contrast… Tiananmen Square with it’s huge picture of Mao and the walled/gated communities five rings out… what would Mao have thought of the traffic, the Audis and the Olympic fever that grips China? Let’s hope that the growth is sustainable… it seems such a balancing act.

India - 2007 Observations

2007-10-14T09:34:00.000-07:00

India… I am a late comer, my first trip to India and it’s 2007… behind the curve… my impressions are likely to duplicate those of others. Indeed, I can add little to what has already said… but I will never-the-less say a few things. Personal memories are important.

First, I’m struck by the courtesy of the people… even before arriving, behavior on the plane seemed different from the US, Europe or China… maybe I'm just looking for something... less of the pushing you often see, courtesy for the most part was the rule… there were exceptions however… there always are…

The Delhi airport reception area was less crowded than I expected… still you find those who approach you like at every airport, “taxi” “you want a taxi”… they are not aggressive, no one tries to grab your bag as they do some other places… and there are not many of them compared to elsewhere… the airport is what I expected… it could be many places, still it’s “laid back” in comparison to most… but like every port of entry, family members and friends greet each other warmly, smiles, hugs, flowers are the order of the day. I get a coffee, call my friends from an Airtel booth… my cell phone, the cheap one I bought to replace the one my daughter “borrowed” doesn’t work here… I’m not surprised. A vendor at the airport makes me a cappuccino from a machine… he doesn’t have small change and gives me a candy bar at half price… I’m not going to argue.

Then you go outside and the sounds and people greet you... the reception area was "controlled", access limited... now I'm clearly in India.

Remember, this is where you are most vulnerable and they know it… you are jet lagged, you have new currency and it’s still a mystery about the common things… tipping, the cost of things and often you are still mystified by the exchange rate… have friend pick you up or have the hotel send someone or else you will find yourself paying far more than you should… welcome to India (or many other countries… it’s the same in the US)… I once had a woman in Paris (before the Euro) lecture me about learning about the local currency… I had offered her too much for a magazine… I’ve learned more, but when you are jet lagged, and confused by a new environment you pay a price…

By the way… make sure you “prepay” for your taxi at the airport, save the receipt and if a kid helps you with your bags (even for 10 seconds) he will pester you all the way out of the parking lot for a tip… not too too pushy… but very assertive… he’s hungry… and disappointed, after all he’s made an investment in you.

As I walk around in the morning I share the street with some vegetable vendors, bored security guards outside businesses, the occasional local getting his hair cut or a shave, outside in a chair near the park… street sweepers using the big broad brooms and the dogs and cattle the stand in what otherwise might be a parking place (and you know you are in India) on the side of the street. All the while Airbus and Boeing planes fly over… the airport in Delhi is near.

The dogs run in small packs of 3-8… they are active in the morning and at night (you will hear them!)… sometimes running from an angry shop owner where they have scavenged something… they all have torn ears or scars from fights and life on the streets… in the morning you might see a local resident walking his dog, wooden club in hand to fend of any of the dog pack seeking to worry his pet… if they get near, he shouts and wields his club threateningly. They back off… later in the day… indeed, most of the day… they sleep in the shade… saving energy for evening activities.

The traffic, many “auto rick shaws”… “motos” we would have called them in Iquitos Peru… little three wheelers powered by a small motorcycle or lawnmower engine with room for you and another (or a small bit of luggage) in the back… I think they must be a staple of the developing world… now you only see the human power rick shaws or pedicabs in the tourist areas…

My friend apologized for the persistence of the hungry shoeshine kid outside a local temple… it happens… they see the India I see, the disparity the haves and have nots and she believes in social justice but not hand outs… I would have given him something… but she is tough and it would only attract hordes of others.

I’m in a “guest house” in a good part of town… but it’s pretty basic, the owners work the place, they and their relatives sleep on the floor in the day and at night near where you check in… we are right above a Dominos Pizza shop and down the street “Ruby Tuesdays”, mixed in with the local places... including "Chinese"... Indian Chinese of course… in the morning, I walk down to a small "24 hour" store and buy Tropicana orange juice in a pouch… and a can of cold coffee… I can get bottled Starbucks Frapachino and yogurt. I walk back to my accommodations stealing glances at the migrant workers who live under blue tarps in the shade of trees “in the nice area” near my lodging… in the morning they are pouring large buckets of water over themselves, washing before they go to work on a nearby project. I get cable TV but no internet access in the room… the cable has many channels… channel 710 in Delhi is “God TV” (seriously)… it’s the Christian evangelical channel… I feel right at home… maybe I’m still in Indiana?

No Starbucks… it’s still a few months away from opening the first Indian outlet… how could I have beat Starbucks here?… it’s a bit of a revelation… however, the coffee at the local places is very good… only the coffee shops don’t open until 11am… I can’t wait that long… and getting a “to go” cup is still somewhat novel… one of my friends, seemed surprised when I suggested it… and the tops just don’t fit right… despite the Domino’s below my room it’s still not much of “to go” society…

People still stare at me… and talk about me… the good news… I’m still a novelty… I'd hate to be just part of the landscape.

We grab a cab to go do our presentations at a nearby university… road construction everywhere… much of it done by humans with few large machines in evidence and more migrants living near these road projects, small trash dumps along the way, some naked children with their mothers and then next to these what is probably a small internet café with a laptop or two on a small table near the road… poverty and dispair in abundance but when you look at the faces of the children, they smile, and their mothers... beauty and dignity amidst incredible poverty... you can't help but reflect on your life and upon their courage... and the smells, just like South America… wood burning and the smell of people in close proximity in hot weather… some bikes, but not as many as I expected.

The traffic is crazy in Delhi, not as many cars as in Beijing and about as crazy as Naples, the drivers skim very close to each other and lanes seem to be little more than suggested paths… didn't see a single traffic cop, you are encouraged to blow your horns to warn others (especially buses) that you are near… unlike some other cities where the use of your horn is discouraged… the cars all have scrapes and dents… badges of courage from city traffic… my friends claim no one gets their car fixed… it’s a losing proposition… you drive it until it stops and then you get another. Don’t know if it’s true or not… good story though. I couldn't drive here.

Went to dinner at a private club for Indian bureaucrats last night as guest of my friends' relatives … the club, white washed with lanes lined with Royal Palms is surrounded by high walls and is in the Embassy district… it’s about 150 years old… formerly a domain of the British bureaucrats (their pictures line the walls) and now, with it’s formal ballroom, billiards room, swimming pool and lounges… a place for retired and current Indian bureaucrats and their families… it’s still the same place and atmosphere… only the faces have changed… an oasis of privilege in the middle of Delhi. It’s across the street from where Mrs. Gandhi was martyred… a somber thought in this place and I’m the only person of obvious European decent there tonight… things change and stay the same…

Well, that’s my first two days… it’s been nonstop movement… now we get busier… it’s about 5:45am… my internal time clock is still not localized… about 8am… I’ll take a walk, search for a snack… then at 9:30am we talk to journalism and marketing students about Purdue… seems a bit surreal…

....Just got back from Amenbad last night… it was a great trip, the place is so different than Delhi… once outside the Amenbad city center you can see fields, water buffalos and camels pulling carts… the desert is nearby and the women here dress differently than Delhi, more Arabic influence and at the same time more women out at night… night in Delhi has become less safe for women… there are reports of harassment on the buses and trains… the newspapers are always reporting incidents and I know some of the young women feel a bit like prisoners… either they go out with their men or stay at home… in Amenbad it seems a bit more open, girls on motorcycles smiling… singles and in twos… you don’t see this much in Delhi… for a few more pictures click here.

From the Corner... Comments on Academic Life

2006-10-26T16:33:00.000-07:00

First China Conference on Communication and Public Health

October 13th and 14th 2006 in Beijing... The conference was hosted on the campus of Tsinghua University... most of us (foreigners) were staying at the Friendship Hotel about a 20 minute ride away from campus... it would have been about a ten minute ride if Beijing's traffic was not worse every day... 30,000 additional cars per month on Beijing's highways... they reached the saturation point in 2003... seven years ahead of schedule. I understand the government will take care of the traffic during the Olympic Games in 2008 through mandatory vacations... my friends call it "the Chinese solution." Apparently it worked in Shanghai a few years ago and they think it will work again, mandatory vacations and shut down the nearby factories a week or two in advance and you may even be able to see the sky in the summer... got to love em.

The conference as originally envisioned was to be 44 people, invitation-only... as things developed (Chinese Ministry of Health got involved and Dean Li from Tsinghua's School of Journalism and Communication recruited more sponsors) it got bigger and by kick off there were about 130 attendees. The program was pretty eclectic with academics, CDC China reps, others from the CDC Foundation in the U.S. and still others from industry like Bayer and Webber Shandwick. The meeting began with the usual formalities and welcome speeches... then Tsinghua presented awards for outstanding reporting in health and HIV/AIDS and a documentary film on AIDS in China received a special award... for me, what distinguished this from similar events was the response from the Chinese journalism community... in the U.S. it would have been hard to get the journalists to attend... I don't think one of those honored was missing... I think this says several things...

I was impressed by the sincerity of these journalists... you hear a lot about censorship in China and restrictions on reporting on health crises but these reporters seem determined to "get out their story" and in this regard it really added value to this conference... kudos to these folks and to Dean Li from Tsinghua for organizing this aspect of the conference...

I will make available a copy of the conference program in pdf format very soon. If you want to consider another aspect of communication and public health in China (images from NIH's collection of Chinese Public Health posters) you might look at a recent post on the Technology, Health and Development Blog. Click here for more pictures of this conference.

Day two of our trip was a visit to You'An Hospital in Beijing which is a well known infectious disease hospital and a workshop for the CEOs of several Beijing hospitals. After this workshop a group of Purdue faculty and graduate students visited HIV/AIDS patients at You'An and toured the facilities.

Personal observations... the You'An staff are very proud of their work with HIV\AIDS patients. There seems to be a high degree of professionalism and quality of care seems high. This hospital has hosted a number of high profile visitors including former US President Clinton and Chinese President Hu Jintao.

Notes on Academic Life... (Dec. 29, 2006)

You know you are an academic if…

1. You insist on wearing black and spending at least a month in Europe each summer.
2. Your children think daddy/mommy is “always playing on the computer.”
3. You don’t know anyone who watches the Fox network.
4. Your mother was always asking about when you were going to finish “that long paper” (aka…dissertation).
5. Everyone you know is “the world’s leading expert” on something.
6. You have never traveled business class.
7. The kids think “research,” “vacation,” and “convention” are synonyms.
8. You have a hard time explaining to your relatives what you do when you are not teaching “only two classes a week.”
9. You’ve repeatedly gone out of the house with mismatched shoes… and didn’t realize it until walking to your last class of the day.
10. Your office looks like it’s been burglarized… but it hasn’t.
11. The only time you go out for a good meal is when “the dean is paying for it.”
12. You have a hard time explaining to your relatives about why you write books that don’t make any money.
13. You resent anyone who has a “reserved” parking place.
14. Half your friends are vegans.
15. You know that Foucault is not that new restaurant downtown.
16. You know how to spell “Foucault”.

Notes on Academic Life (January 7, 2007)

I just clean up after the elephants…

Last year I was hiding in one of our local coffee shops working on a “soon to be due” instructional equipment grant. I had been hard at it for about 2 hours when I looked up and noticed one of our graduate students pull up a chair at a nearby table. I paused, saved a copy of the file, took advantage of the wireless connection, attached the file to an email and sent the proposal to our College IT director. Then I closed my notebook, gathered my materials and got up to leave. On my way out I stopped by his table nodded a greeting and introduced myself to his companion who ended up being his wife. He smiled and said to his spouse, “this is the man who keeps the show on the road.” I smiled and departed… as I left I thought a lot about his statement and wondered… do I really keep the show on the road?

Over the last fifteen years I’ve been a department head at three different universities with an associate dean stint in between head appointments but I’ve never really thought about “the show.” Obviously, there are many different “shows” but for some reason my thoughts were drawn on that day to the notion of "the show" we get when we go to the circus... the “the big show”.

I’ve found over the years that Department Heads are often introduced with some degree of formality by graduate students… so perhaps he envisioned me as a kind of circus ring master… busy directing a complex array of acts, basking in the spotlight, orchestrating change, encouraging excitement from an audience of alumni, undergraduates, administrators and an adoring public. There are certainly times when you have a good week, support a successful tenure case, learn that one of your colleagues received that teaching award you had worked hard to get her, etc… One can have heady periods, successes, triumphs….

But you know there are other circus roles to consider… "lion tamer" comes to mind… sometimes your colleagues expect you to do battle with the dean… but more often it’s a tougher opponent, a tenured full professor with an ego the size of Rhode Island. That’s a tough one… should you use the whip? Maybe the gun? Or, can you just get away with the chair? Obviously, this is dangerous work… and you hope there is only one lion… what if there is a pride? In any case, it’s likely your colleagues will linger around, there is always a chance of some blood… and then you realize what’s going on. This is not a modern circus. In fact things seem to have taken on aspects of a Roman circus and the audience expects to be entertained in an entirely different way. If at this point you go for a win-win decision, you strike a compromise, shake hands; the crowd gets bored and moves back to their offices… some mumble that even working on that journal review or reading The Chronicle on the Internet is better than this.

Of course there are other jobs in the circus, on occasion I’ve thought that being a department head was a lot like performing a high wire act… walking by yourself on that wire. Often working without a net. One misstep and you’re history. Your plunge would be swift and probably inelegant. Get angry on a Friday afternoon… put your true feelings in an email, send it and you get your packing orders from the dean on Monday… “Perhaps it’s best if you return to the faculty” the memo reads…

On the other hand I often think I’m just one of the clowns… I'm there to entertain the audience. I drive up by myself or with a group of companions, we stumble out of our fire truck spraying each other and generally fumbling around. We are the comic relief. We have been elected by our peers to play this role… after all we get summer salary… we should be good for some entertainment.

But the truth of the matter is that the role of department head is often even less glamorous. It’s true that occasionally we bask in the spotlight, sometimes we take on the dangerous role of lion tamer and on occasion we act like clowns but more often than not we are in the trenches getting our hands dirty. We are working on those grant proposals to update our computer lab, to get that new video camera. We are writing letters of support for everyone and everything. We are talking to other deans on campus to find travel funds so that new assistant professor can get to the important conference in Italy this summer. Sometimes we bring in our tools and put up the tents, assemble the conference tables and desks on the weekend because the university no longer has the staff to do it. We paint offices, shop for and put down carpeting, hang prints, move furniture, clean out the microwave and sometimes even sweep the floors. We work with graduate students after a social gathering to clean up the dean’s house. We drive job candidates to the airport and carry luggage.

Let’s face it… most of the time, a department head is not in the center ring. Our job is to spotlight others. Effective department heads make sure the light shines elsewhere. If you really analyze it, most of our job is to do the little thing that ensure that the big show continues to run smoothly… putting out fires, soothing over troubled egos, looking over student evaluations, listening to and acting on complaints, finding support funds, writing letters to parents, alumni, etc... We are more likely to be circus ticket takers, run the booths, make sure each ride is in good working order… But in truth, a good amount of our time is spent cleaning up after the elephants.

Notes on Academic Life (January 15, 2007)

Random thoughts on Engagement...

In academics we worry about how to distribute our “load”… how do we balance, “teaching, research and service”… or what we prefer to call “learning, discovery and engagement” at Purdue.

How much “service” should we expect from our junior colleagues? This is a question that I hear weekly in various forms. Many of my colleagues talk about “protecting” assistant professors from “harsh” service expectations. I’m advised by everyone to avoid “loading them up”… “they need to concentrate on their research”… “they need time to prepare for that new class they are teaching in the Spring.”. It’s a balancing act and many of my colleagues (and deans and provosts) will tell you that we need to “protect these folks”… but I’ve become concerned… when everyone chants the same mantra isn’t it time to take a close look at a practice and perhaps worry about the effects of such a policy.

I’ve spent most of my career at R1 universities and I understand that what really counts in this environment is research productivity and to a somewhat lesser extent, teaching. Service or “engagement” as we now refer to this part of our job is weighted less heavily although it does play a role in promotion and is clearly critical for the success of departments, schools, colleges and universities. Teaching and service are important but publications in good journals, major grants, and university press books are the currency of the realm. This is not a new development… in an era “national rankings” and “metrics” where we measure article “impacts” from citation indices we can all understand why the light shines so much more brightly in one area. If it’s easy to count, it will be counted and these counts will be published and compared.

Each institution competes for fans and funds and in the end there will only be so many “nationally ranked” athletic or academic programs. Almost everyone aspires to “move to the next level” and very few are happy being second tier in academics or athletics (when they know they should be at the top). The students don’t like it, the alumni don’t like it and the state legislators don’t like it… Rankings attract attention in any area and we are in an era of rankings. Research dollars can be counted, publications can be counted, the metrics of teaching excellence and service/engagement are a bit fuzzier. Teaching however is still at the core of what we do and so that relegates service to last place… and who likes all those committees anyway? Read The Chronicle of Higher Education… people are always whining about how much time they spend on committees and how everyone else is avoiding committee work… it’s pretty depressing to read this stuff but you find these complaints in almost every issue.

So, part of the job of any department head worth his or her salt is to find ways to reduce their junior colleagues' “service/engagement” burden… but since someone has to “man the walls” that means you go to “the regulars”… the “department citizens”… more often than not, associate or full professors who you can count on to show up for meetings, provide a good report, serve on that special “ad hoc” committee, do those all too frequent evaluations, etc… I guess to some extent it’s always been this way.

However, with the increased pressure of “rankings”, the “professionalization” of undergraduate advising and with the creation of new categories of “teaching” or “clinical” faculty, I think we are in danger of “overprotecting” and “under socializing” a whole academic generation of tenure-track faculty and that we are furthermore failing to develop important values of “participation,” “teamwork,” and “service” in these folks.

What might be the results? Perhaps we will see fewer individuals willing to step up to the plate and “serve” our departments in the future since they will have little or no prior experience or sense of obligation. I don’t have good data in front of me but I think we might already seeing decreased participation in faculty governance… “working on that paper” is more important than voting on curriculum changes or talking with colleagues about new internship opportunities for students… we see more teleconferences as many of our colleagues are “out of town for that grant meeting” and for no reason anyone can explain more of our colleagues just couldn’t get out of their offices and to that faculty meeting yesterday afternoon…

I’m also concerned about what this says to our graduate students… many of us have large graduate programs and most of our PhD students take faculty jobs at universities… when they look at their faculty graduate advisors will they have role models of an “engaged scholar” who takes all of her responsibilities seriously?…Will they understand that “faculty governance” takes a lot of sweat equity? In my view, we want our junior colleagues to know it’s critical to be involved in the day-to-day life of our organization, to participate in academic governance and if they have no experience in their early years what makes us think that on the day they are promoted a light will go off and they will say… “OK, now it’s time for me to start going to more meetings and do more service duties.” Somehow, I doubt it…

I’m not ready to suggest an “attendance policy” or that we start weighting committee assignments equally with refereed publications but it seems important to me that we find ways to reward service in our units and that we make sure that our engagement mission is part of the promotion and tenure process. Frankly, service can be a burden but if it’s shared by many the burden is lighter and the community as a whole benefits. But that’s my view… any volunteers? I have an ad-hoc committee I’m appointing next week…