Deans' Weblog: Dalhousie Graduate Studies

"Vacation vs. Stress"

Finally, after weeks of endless PhD defences, grade reassessments, academic integrity issues, appeals, planning for the future, etc., etc., etc., I'm supposed to start a two-week vacation on Monday. Hurray, relaxation time. But wait. Reality check. By the looks of it, it appears that I may have to spend a considerable amount of vacation time catching up with unfinished work. That said, I envision my vacation to be similar to that of most PhDs and PDFs, as illustated in Jorge Cham's vacation vs. stress graph below. It seems, PhDs, PDFs and Deans have certain things in common.

Enjoy the rest of the summer, while it lasts.

 

Dieter

Advice for Graduate Students and Faculty in Tough Economic Times

The transition in the FGS Deans' Office is proceeding smoothly. Bernie and I today had the first real chance to talk about the future of the Deans' Weblog. As of September, Bernie, I think, will be firmly committed as a co-blogger. The idea we're floating right now is to post our blogs on a bi-weekly basis.

Between now and September, I will be manning the blog fort alone; from now on, I will be posting also on a bi-weekly basis. The posts won't be the essay-type posts, you've seen from Mike in the past. For today's post I decided to rely again on Jorge's PhD comics. In a funny way, this comic covers a serious topic, which, years later, still is a worldwide concern.

Have a great weekend. I'm looking forward to blogging to you again in two weeks.

 

Dieter

Superstition

Friggatriskaidekaphobia - this is not an easy word to work into your average cocktail conversation. Or your average blog, come to that.  It's not all that easy to say out loud either, what with the Norse and Greek etymology. Friggatriskaidekaphobia is the fear of Friday the 13th. 

Many years ago I worked with a fabulous student from Colombia, Carlos by name.  When Friday the 13th inevitably came 'round, as it inevitably does at least once each and every year, I asked him whether he was perturbed by this development. Carlos was confused.  Discussion ensued. At the end of the meaning-negotiation, an amazing piece of trivia emerged.

In Spanish and Latin American cultures, Friday th 13th is not unlucky; it's Tuesday the 13th - what is called "martes y trece". So scientifically speaking, we can't be holding the weekday accountable for bad luck. Thus we are left with triskaidekaphobia, fear of the number 13.

Looking into numerology in various cultures, it turns out that number significance is highly variable.  The Koreans, Japanese, and Chinese are very much worried about the number 4.  The Saudi Arabians are biased enough in favour of the number 5, that they tell me the auction for the vanity license plate with that digit on it is quite vigorous since it is associated with luck and wealth. These various perspectives on the importance of numbers in the universe can't hold much water in the real scientific, law-of-physics kind of way, since they are inconsistent. Incommensurate even.

Still, superstition is very common, even among the well-educated. I have this discussion with my MBA students, when I talk about the epistemology of information systems. You know what I mean, that whole data-information-knowledge-action model you see all over the internet. In my lectures I add a vertical dimension to classify particular quantitative considerations to the model, wise, irrelevant, foolish, as in (wise/irrelevant/foolish) categories of (data/information/knowledge/action). Send me an email to sunny.marche@dal.ca if you want the PowerPoint on this.

This inevitably invites the question from a student. What do you mean by "foolish knowledge"? The answer is "superstition" as a category. Can you be more specific, they ask.  At this point, I choose the sport that lines up with the season. For Canada in May it is the Stanley Cup, emblematic of supremacy in Canada's national religion - ice hockey. Does anyone believe whether the goalie puts on his left skate before his right one has any impact on the outcome?

Students take immediate issue with the implied view in this question. They are not shy about debating the professor, especially given their clearly superior knowledge of the game.  If the expression of superstition gives the goalie confidence they say, it is entirely possible the so-called superstitious practice could improve self-confidence and therefore performance. In other words, it’s functional not superstitious.

It turns out this argument has empirical evidence. Simply go to scholar.google.com and enter the term "superstition" and "performance". 

I am not done with them.  How many of you put on your favourite team's sweater and cross your fingers during the double overtime when you are watching on TV, I ask. There is uncomfortable shuffling of feet. I press the point.  How many of you imagine that wearing the favoured jersey and the crossing of fingers can have an impact on the outcome? Especially when there is likely an equal number of fans for the other team executing exactly the same superstitious behaviours.

Superstition is when you "know" something, and especially when you act on it, when there is no reason or real evidence to support this knowledge or action. For example driving extra carefully on Friday the 13th, or Tuesday the 13th as the case may be. Or throwing salt over your left shoulder after you spilled it.

No-one know who said it, and it's a damn shame. "It ain't what we don't know that gets us into trouble; it's what we know that ain't so." That phrase is not far from my thoughts as an academic administrator. For example, which applicant is most likely to be successful in a given program, whether the student is really guilty of plagiarism, where our limited scholarship money will do the most good, whether a given examination is a fair assessment of appropriate learning outcomes, etc.

I 'm pretty sure that most of the decisions I made this week have good reason and real evidence. 

Knock on wood.

Sunny 

 PS  I prepared this blog and previewed its publication at the end of the workday on May 13, 2011 – Friday. I duly assigned the appropriate categories and pressed the “publish” button.  By 9:00 p.m., it had vanished into cyberspace. It is exactly these kind of events that produce superstitious beliefs in the first place. Post hoc ergo propter hoc.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Teamwork and Contribution

As many of you know, I came to academic life relatively late, i.e., after 25+ years working in the public sector, the private sector, and as an independent management consultant. The initial transition was not smooth, and there are a number of people who say it is incomplete :).

One of the biggest surprises to me was around the related question of teamwork and contribution. Outside the academy in absolutely every working environment there were clear teamwork expectations. Of course there was a predictable variation in capacity and contribution, but a combination of performance review processes and peer pressure tended to keep most people on track.

I've talked to many academics about the issue of differential contributions by people; the general view holds the following things to be true:

• there is often a huge variation in the practices and in performance among academic units, and among individuals ostensibly of the same rank and approximately the same pay;
• local peer pressure at the unit level is more likely than anything institutional;
• "social loafing" - to use the organizational behavior term - seems more acceptable in some academic settings.

I had a look in scholar.google.com for research on the last matter.  A quick review yielded lots of studies on student social loafing, "free riding", "coat-tailing" - pick your noun of choice, but I could not find one studying the phenomenon among faculty members.  The phenomenon surely exists. Does anyone know of any research on the topic?

One of the consequences is that we continue to depend on a group of committed contributors for the many "service" needs we have in Grad Studies, needs such as:

• members for a nominating committee for Faculty Council;
• members for an award committee to adjudicate winners of academic and service awards (many of the volunteers on the committee deserve to be nominated for the service award they are judging!);
• members to serve on the search committee for the next Dean.

This last bullet is especially problematic. The choice of decanal leadership is a serious opportunity and risk too. The inimitable Marsha Scott, the administrator in the office, brightly suggested that the selection of the Dean could be delegated to university staff instead of faculty. She's pretty sure she could round up a panel of volunteers in about 15 minutes, even on a Friday afternoon.

Maybe that's worth considering...

In the meantime, one rule continues to be true. If you want something done, you have to ask a busy person. We in FGS are truly grateful for the busy folks on FGS Council that continue to prove the rule. We can name a dozen people who are carrying the load for a hundred.

 

Sunny

 

 

 

The value of a graduate education

Here in the deep winter doldrums, I struggle with brain cramps brought on by limited sunshine and cognitive vapour lock. Not a pretty picture on so many fronts...

You may have seen my Twitter plea for a blog topic (http://twitter.com/#!/SunnyatDal). My good colleague Rick Nason responded right away with a provocative question (it's pretty much the only kind of question he asks).

Would education be valued more if it were free but only one tenth of current students could attend?

The first thing that springs to mind is what we might mean by "education" - university, community college, private trade school, for profit university? I have taken the liberty of restricting the question to graduate studies given that this blog belongs to the three Deans in the Faculty of Graduate Studies.  Even in that narrower context, this is a complicated and interesting question. It invites a whole lot of clarifying questions.

1. Do you mean valued by students who get in? The students who didn't get in? Parents? The community? Employers? 
2. Does the word "free" include tuition, books, transportation, residence, food? Does "free" mean with no strings attached, or would it require service to the community on graduation?
3. What are we going to do with the other 90% of the students who could attend? Create a different form of schooling, such as technical training?
4. What would we teach this small elect group, and how would we choose them?

As Rick very well knows, "value" is one of those attributes that depends heavily on perception rather than objective measures. Usually our perception of value is shaped by cost. It's certainly the way most people buy luxury goods such as jewelry and wine . When a man buys an engagement rings, the colour of the box is an important semiotic to "value" (i.e., the blue box from Birks or the light blue box from Tiffany's). The colour, cut, clarity, and carat weight of the stone is something most of us are unable to judge. When it comes to wine, the empirical evidence is that it is easy to change perceptions (cf. http://tinyurl.com/48bpwua), and in my experience the simplest way is through the price signal. We know this wine is good, because it is expensive.

On the other hand, restricting access to graduate education to a small elite (using that word in its most positive sense) would change the perception.  Certainly universities generally and graduate school specifically are serving a much different community that they used to 30 years ago. 

There is a middle ground. Folks in my office have described in which the barrier to entry in first year and the cost of the program is very low. Thousands taking first year medicine, say. But the number of seats available for second year is very limited, and everyone knows teh rules before signing on That's an interesting model too.

It turns out there is exactly such an institution here in Canada, one which is "free". It's the Royal Military College. It is free in the sense that tuition, books, residence, meals, summer employment / training, uniforms are all paid for. But there is an obligation to serve. So the counter-example is not exactly what Rick is thinking about. Is the education there valued more than many students at civilian universities?

I suspect so. But speaking from personal experience, the other costs are much higher.

Maybe the real lesson in today's reflection is that we should think more carefully about the expectations and demands we make of students. Maybe we are not asking enough.

 

Sunny

 

 

 

Performance Expectations

On July 23 an American hotel was kind enough to deliver a complementary copy of USA Today newspaper to the door of my room.  As a compulsive reader, it simply never occurred to me not to read it. A story on the front page beneath the fold immediately caught my attention - "Plan cracks down of for-profit colleges" said the headline.  The first line of the story was equally arresting:

"The Education Department, concerned that some students are graduating from short-term training programs with excessive debt and worthless degrees, is cracking down on the for-profit college industry."

The idea is that it is bad federal policy to allocate taxpayers' money for colleges and programs where graduates have a poor prospect of improving their employability "for careers such as the culinary arts, medical support and automotive technology." 

The reference URL is:

http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20100723/1aforprofit23_st.art.htm?loc=interstitialskip

but it might be quicker to copy the first line of the article and put it into Google.

This was something of a sobering thought - that someone might hold universities accountable for what they promise, whether directly or indirectly, about employment, student debt, and actual employment outcomes.

I already know what the counter-argument is.  The university is not about employment; it's about developing the individual intellectually, physically, emotionally, etc. It's about the life of the mind, creating and disseminating knowledge.  The dirty world of commerce and practicality are of secondary or even tertiary consideration.

This view may not be shared by some of the significant others who are stakeholders in post-secondary education, such as the students (for example in medicine, law, engineering, physiotherapy, nursing, pharmacy, dentistry, etc.) for whom the degree is necessary for entry to professional practice. That's before we ask the MBAs, MPAs, etc about their expectations around being prepared for employment.

Of course we could also ask the parents, the community, prospective employers, and the governments who collectively provide most of the funding for our institutions what their view might be.

Or not. Perhaps best to leave sleeping dogs lay, at least for as long as possible.

I'm just happy that this new policy on the part of the federal government in the USA isn't likely to be an export product to Canada anytime soon, at least not for the university sector.

Sunny

Leadership matters...

Given the story begins in my third undergraduate year, it's tempting (and accurate) to begin this blog with the traditional opening... "Long, long ago, in a far away land..."   At the time the powers that were made us attend a presentation on leadership delivered by a guest lecturer. The evidence of just how long ago this must have been is the fact a university administration was able to compel its undergraduates to attend a guest lecture!

To my eyes, the lecturer was impossibly old, with one metaphorical foot in the grave.  He could not have been a day under 42 years old. From a previous century in point of fact… And the main message he seemed intent on delivering was:

 

“leadership matters, across the whole organization”.

 

At the time, he spoke specifically about the role of the CEO. I had a lot of trouble believing that a person as remote from my daily concerns as the CEO was could have the slightest impact on what I was doing.  It seemed obviously ridiculous, and I put it out of my mind.

 

Eventually, I began a long career in management consulting, in which I had the opportunity to work with many different organizations (e.g., provincial government departments, federal government departments, huge corporations, tiny corporations, not-for-profit organizations, etc.) at many different levels (from clerical supervisors to board of directors and everything in between ).  

 

By the time I reached 42 years old, a consistent and persistent lesson from this experience became clear to me . You guessed it:

 

“leadership matters, across the whole organization”.

 

The second thing these experiences taught me is that leadership is not nearly as top down as many people think it is.  There is a lot of bottom up to it, too.  Leadership is partly something we grant to others based on our experience with them and our confidence in them. That’s one of the reasons Carolyn Watters was effective as the Dean of FGS – she earned the confidence of the team, and a lot of other people too.

 

One last thing about leadership seems pretty clear.  It is about influencing others to work towards the goals we collectively agree are important. That’s why the phrase “… across the whole organization” is so important.  We all have responsibility for leadership.  

 

It’s something to think about on return once more to the Deans’ Blog here at Dalhousie. A new role, some new team members, some not so new, and a continuing commitment to serving graduate students of the past, present, and future. The leadership necessary for this important goal is important, earned, and shared.  As the new Acting Dean here at FGS, I am grateful for the help with the heavy lifting on this front. Dieter. Mike. Marsha. The core FGS team http://dalgrad.dal.ca/contact/. The extended grad studies community.

 

Sunny

Bon Voyage et Bonne Chance

So, Carolyn is moving two floors down to her new office in the Henry Hicks Building, while moving up through the ranks of academic administration to her new position as Acting Chief Academic Officer (CAO) of Dalhousie University. To paraphrase Neil Armstrong, that’s a small step in terms of physical distance, but a huge leap in terms of responsibilities. Being the numbers aficionado of the FGS outfit, I couldn’t resist digging up some recent statistical information about the job of CAO. [Likewise, I can’t resist noting a factual error in Carolyn's last blog: I joined the blog team one year, not a couple of years, after Carolyn and Sunny started the blog.] So, here we go.

On June 27, The Chronicle of Higher Education published an article by Tim Mann, a former program director and senior analyst at the Eduventures Academic Leadership Learning Collaborative, entitled “Attrition Among Chief Academic Officers Threatens Strategic Plans.” The statistics presented therein show that CAO’s view the job as less stable than in the past. A national study of 323 chief academic officers, conducted by Eduventures Academic Leadership Learning Collaborative [Tim Mann was the project leader for this study] found “that 43 percent believed provosts were holding their positions for shorter periods of time compared with five years ago. The top three reasons cited were: expanded responsibilities without sufficient resources (57 percent), economic issues at the college (50 percent), and faculty discontent (30 percent). Perhaps as a consequence, 40 percent also said that the job had become less desirable.” The article continues “High turnover of chief academic officers takes its toll in several ways. It costs time and money to conduct an effective executive search. Productivity suffers during a transition period because of lost momentum. It takes time for a new provost to build relationships and assess the political and cultural landscape, along with institutional strengths and weaknesses. This is especially true at a time when provosts, in addition to providing leadership on numerous academic and faculty projects, must also deal with such complex issues as the shifting demographics of high-school graduates, the growing presence of online education, the challenging financial environment, and the need to innovate.”

Finally, the article concludes “The changing demands of the job offer a great opportunity to rethink how chief academic officers should be trained and supported in ways that will promote their longevity and success. What will the training for such a job entail? Will candidates with proven leadership, planning, and problem-solving abilities be as attractive as candidates who have exceptional records of research and teaching and have effectively managed an academic program? Provosts surveyed in the Eduventures study said the next generation of CAO's would need skills in seven key areas: leadership (66 percent), change management (56 percent), financial management (47 percent), academic planning (46 percent), strategic planning (46 percent), organizational communication (42 percent), and program development/innovation (40 percent).”

In my humble opinion, having been the Dean of Graduate Studies, aside from being the best job on campus, will have prepared Carolyn well for the challenges ahead. Graduate education, as university education in general, requires a campus advocate who can speak and work for all (graduate) faculty, students, and programs. Such advocacy is needed because responsibility for (graduate) education is so fragmented across the university. As Weisbuch argues in Academe (November-December 2005 issue), graduate deans (and CAO's) “can help remove barriers between (graduate) departments. Graduate deans (and CAO's) can cross the gridlines of the disciplines; they can create interchange among departments, influence campus culture, and help to link a university with its local community.” This commitment is the source of what power graduate deans (and CAO’s) may have. Aside from being a great boss, mentor and friend, Carolyn has done an excellent job in all the areas above as a graduate dean. Thus, I believe the future for Carolyn’s journey ahead as an Acting CAO looks…..

Bon Voyage et Bonne Chance!!! We all hope you’ll still occasionally find time to drop by for cake.

In the meantime, I’m manning the Graduate Studies fort with the two characters pictured below. The first who can tell me who’s who will win the one and only limited edition Graduate Studies coffee mug.

                      ?                                                                                   ?

Over and out. Enjoy the last weekend of World Cup soccer.

 

Dieter

So Long, Adieu

We once had a dog who would move to the front hall if a suitcase showed up and stay there with one paw on the bag, just incase we left without him. He sensed that something was up! Today I am sitting in my office with boxes about, getting pretty strong signals that something is up.

I am taking on a new challenge for a year down in the Vice President Academic’s office and Sunny will move his boxes and fridge into this office for the year as Dean. Not that far really, 2 floors. But I am realizing what a difference 2 floors can make. I have always argued that Dean of Grad Studies is the best job on campus. You see the whole enterprise; every Faculty with graduate programs from research to fundraising to quality of programs. Because we look after student and program interests we work with pretty much everyone on campus. And most of the time we get to help. How good is that!

From my small glimpse at the university through the VP lens, the world is quite different. Not less interesting but certainly different. It turns out there are all sorts of things we have been able to avoid up here; unions, undergrads, budgets, libraries, Deans, … Well, I like a challenge.

Sunny and I started this blog almost exactly four years ago, Dieter joined in a couple of years later, and Mike a few months back. A lot of blogs! The tag cloud reflects our passion for professional development and funding and, I must confess, my penchant for “whackyones”. Nonetheless, blogging has been at least as beneficial to me as blogger as to our loyal readers, I am sure. Every time just when I had nothing to talk about something would happen and there I was, Friday morning just typing away!!  I will certainly miss commenting on issues related (however vaguely) to graduate studies and grad students but I am pretty sure a blog/twitter/podcast is in my future somewhere.

I have loved being part of the Grad Studies Team. I could not have worked with a greater group of people or, for that matter, have better blogging partners!

So, so long, adieu, and all the best for the summer and for next year. Blog on!

Carolyn

“The Big Lie About the 'Life of the Mind'”

Mike is still sick and Carolyn is slowly recovering, while being overwhelmed with work at the same time. Thus, by default, the blog falls back to me. I started scrambling for a topic to blog on over the weekend and at the beginning of the week and hit a total blank on Monday morning, until Sunny came to the rescue. On Monday afternoon, he e-mailed “There is an interesting article in the Chronicle of Higher Education that is worth reading. It's about the problem of encouraging graduate students in non-professional programs when there isn't much to be encouraging about. I think the argument goes double for post-doctoral fellows.” Check it out; it’s truly worth reading; to do so, click on “The Big Lie About the ‘Life of the Mind’.” One sentence from this article really sticks to my mind; it's that kind of a sentence that has the potential to summarize an entire article. "There should be a special place in hell for the professors who - at the end of an advisee's 10-year graduate program with no job in sight - say, "well, academe is not for everyone." I’m putting this article up for debate and I would really appreciate your comments and suggestions from your perspective as Dalhousie's "highly qualified personnel (HQP)."

 

On a at first glance unrelated topic, the Chronicle of Higher Education published an article on February 7, 2010 entitled "For-Profit Colleges Change Higher Education's Landscape - Nimble Companies gain a fast-growing share of enrollment" by Robin Wilson. In essence, this article concludes that “At a time when American public higher education is cutting budgets, laying off people, and turning away students, the rise of for-profit universities has been meteoric. Enrollment in the country's nearly 3,000 career colleges has grown far faster than in the rest of higher education - by an average of 9 percent per year over the past 30 years.”

 

Just look at the photo below and compare it to some of the buildings at public higher education institutions across Canada and the US. What a difference.

 

 

Photo by Noah Berger for The Chronicle of Higher Education

"The University of Phoenix's San Francisco Learning Center, in the financial district, offers information-technology, business, and other degrees. As of this month, the university's total enrollment is 455,600. It is now the second largest higher-education system in the country - behind only the State University of New York."

The real challenge now is to decide whether the trends described in these two articles are linked, i.e., whether the big lie about the life of the mind at least in part contributed to the enrollment gain of for-profit colleges.

Over and out.

Dieter