thinkfetti

A subtitle for this post might be: “on saying ‘no’.”

In the last month, I have said “no” more often than I ever have since I was two years old. One difference between now and then is that when I was two, I imagine my “no” frequency probably owed a lot to having recently learned that “no” is a power word — a word that apparently contains much more influence than the mere sounds or ideological content associated with it. “No” makes a difference. “No” is a declaration of individual relevance.

Now, the reason I’ve been saying “no” so frequently is that I’m a department chair. More specifically, as a department, we (and also as an individual, I) have come up with some goals for how student registration should be treated so as to distribute teaching loads among our faculty. Part of the idea is that if students unable to enroll in their first choices for courses are channelled to courses that will satisfy their needs as far as graduation requirements, our faculty may have balanced teaching loads (within a factor of two or so). So when students not getting their first choices have been coming to see me, part of my responses to them has frequently been to say “no.”

“No” isn’t the end of my interaction with them, though. I try to find out what they’re trying to accomplish. In almost all cases, I have been able to help or direct the student to an alternate way (an alternate course, with available seats) to satisfy their primary interest: making progress toward their undergraduate degree.

In a very few cases (usually medically-related or students planning to graduate at the end of the current semester), I have, after exhausting the alternatives I tried instead, authorized them to what we call “overrides” into the courses they were trying to enter. I’d say this was in about 5-7% of the cases.

So my “no” is not generally “no.” It has been “no, but….” followed by a (frequently successful) attempt to accommodate interests, rather than positions. (For a good summary on the difference, take a look at Fisher and Ury’s Getting to Yes) I’ve done a lot of problem solving and facilitating. And although my job can be very wearing (more on that later, when I write about the tragedy of the commons), I feel confident I have provided a service — both to the individual students and to the department I work in — by saying “no.”

I’m an “outside member” on a search committee. “Outside” means I’m in a different department from the one looking to hire a new professor. “Member” means I was invited to participate in the selection process, and my opinions make some difference.

The search is for a Chemical Engineering position, and although I know the chemical engineering job panorama isn’t as grim as mine (music/conducting/humanities), I hold to the somewhat old-fashioned idea that applicants should take the time to make sure the materials they submit for consideration are professional-looking and as error-free as possible. (I’m sure that part of the reason I hold to this idea is that I spend hours upon hours paying attention to these details whenever I apply for anything, and that I feel slighted whenever I receive a poorly-worded rejection form letter in reply. But enough about me.)

The applications I read today were, on the whole, indicative of souls who loved research, were tolerant of the expectation to teach while at a university, and were absolutely impatient with the expectation that they were expected to communicate effectively and thoughtfully in their job applications.

I am far from the final say when it comes to the selection process. I will express my discontent (and even exasperation) to the other members of the committee, but the final selection will possibly have little to do with my commitment to thoughtful, careful writing in the job application venue. But I will offer this plea to future job applicants:

Please pay attention to what you write – even if you’re applying on a statistical basis (oh, let’s see. I have a 0.5% chance of getting this job, if the recipient is chosen at random. I’ll just throw something together, and if it works, it works. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t), please show — in a convincing way — that you care. Merely saying that you care isn’t enough, for me, at least. Be professional. Be detail-oriented. Don’t let the first page of your resume end with a heading….with the content only continuing on page two. In your statement of teaching philosophy, don’t say how you “would” without saying how you “do,” except if you haven’t yet had a chance to teach. In that case, why haven’t you? Just tell me – don’t hypothesize without context.

I want to read your application – I do, and we all do. But please, take my time as seriously as you take your own time…for both our sakes.

In the spring, I’ll be teaching (or at least facilitating) a course called “Creativity and Innovation and Interdisciplinary Problem Solving.” It’s a “pilot” course, meaning an experimental course, but I’ll be drawing on materials I’ve used in several other courses I’ve taught.

I’ve just set up the (first try at a) blog for the course at http://nmtdesign.blogspot.com/ because I read on slashdot that Google has released Blogger from beta testing, and I figured this is as good a place to start as any.

The point of the blog is to see if a bunch of networked students in a class about networking can or will initiate some interesting (to me and to them) communication behavior and get some great work done.

What follows is the gist of the course, excerpted from a document I presented several weeks ago to the chairs of the engineering departments:

Intended target audience:

Advanced undergraduate students currently involved in junior or senior design courses or working on other research projects at NMT.

Texts:

V. Fey and E. Rivin, Innovation on Demand: New Product Development Using TRIZ. Cambridge University Press, 2005. (Required.)

S. Savransky, Engineering of Creativity. CRC Press, 2000.

Description for students:

This course will introduce you to the TRIZ framework, an outstanding tool that will enable you to analyze design problems effectively and develop innovative design solutions. TRIZ (a Russian acronym that stands for Teoriya Resheniya Izobretatelskikh Zadach, the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving) was initially developed in the 1940’s but only began being used outside of the former Soviet Union in the 1980’s.

TRIZ is helpful in avoiding design compromises. For example, if we wanted an object to be stronger without being too heavy, a compromise solution might suggest settling for some added strength and some added weight. A TRIZ-generated solution, by contrast, might allow for substantial improvement in strength with no additional weight.

TRIZ can also help an analyst forecast technological development of a product. Insights into what kinds of qualitative changes a system will undergo as it evolves can help engineers and other leaders make strategic decisions about where R&D efforts will be focussed. The tools TRIZ brings to bear on this problem were developed by studying tens of thousands of patents and distilling trends of technological evolution of systems.

During this course we will also examine the more abstract design problem of how to facilitate effective communication between individuals and groups who have differing specialties and who may model problems completely differently from each other. With the many technologies now coming online for realtime communications, there should in principle be many opportunities for engineers, scientists, and other scholars and entrepreneurs to collaborate in spite of their geographical separation. A current NSF-funded project will begin to explore the possibilities and emergent problems of using the cyberinfrastructure (CI) as a collaborative tool for scientists. As part of the NSF program, a seminar entitled “CI in Science” will be attended remotely by graduate students and scientists at several universities in the Southwest including New Mexico Tech. In this course, we will use the “CI in Science” seminar as a case study to study the technical, organizational, and communication-related problems of a complex system.

“Interdisciplinary” is a Janus word.

Let’s reach beyond the relatively literal meaning, “between disciplines” (Is there perhaps some implied longing here? As in between meals? Between relationships? Middle Ages? I wonder how many people alive in 1100 C.E. would have thought of themselves as ‘between ages’?)

Like Janus, this word looks both backwards and forwards; it is present at a threshold.

“Interdisciplinary” looks back to a definition – condescendingly bestowed by the “disciplinists” – connoting “not this and not that either.” And it looks forward to an intersubjective (uh oh, the language is circling back on me now…) understanding that my identity depends on – no, IS – the tangle of all the relationships of which I am inseparable part.

My teaching can hardly be called “disciplinary.” In my music courses, I am not preparing students to be future music academics. In my creativity and innovation courses, or in the design and leadership courses I have taught in the chemical engineering department, my teaching does not lend itself to being described as being “within a discipline.” I am not (even?) an engineer.

But let’s transcend the hardly, the not‘s. It’s time for a new story (joined to and enjoying many other concurrent stories).

The blend, the hybrid. Silko’s half-breed Tayo. Risk, leaping the gap. Poetry.

In a previous post, I wrote about a few of the most significant challenges facing me as a music professor and conductor at a small science and engineering university located in a remote area. But I don’t think the issues are specific to my location. Instead, looking at the folding of major orchestras in this country and many other factors such as educational trends and funding models, I believe this is a widespread, multifaceted cultural phenomenon. Now, given these challenges, what can/should be done?

In product design, it’s common to talk about a product’s life cycle. There are plenty of empirical and model-based theories about life cycles, most of which talk about growth, maturity, and decline phases. What would happen if we were to talk about the orchestra as a product, a designed system that has a relatively well-defined functionality? Into which phase of the product life cycle would you put the orchestra?

Going further…. If you were the product manager of this particular product, the orchestra, how would you evaluate the market situation, and what would you suggest?