update assocdean

assocdean250410.md

@@ -12,7 +12,7 @@ Note: Thanks so much for that introduction, Charlene, and thanks to all of you f
 
 Note: The search committee provided me with this prompt for this talk -- and I want to apologize a tiny bit for starting today with the classic lit-crit move of asking some questions about the prompt, but it's crucial to me to make sure that we're starting the process of thinking together about our collective future with as much of a shared understanding as is possible.
 
-**(CLICK)** So let's start here: I firmly believe that the diversity of methodologies, theoretical approaches, and disciplinary backgrounds represented in the College of Arts & Letters is not a challenge to be overcome, but rather a source of our strength. I say this as a scholar with an MFA in creative writing and a PhD in English and American literature, and as an author whose writing has confounded a lot of disciplinary expectations. I say this as a faculty member who started her career jointly appointed in English and Media Studies, and as a digital humanist whose primary work has involved network building. I've straddled a lot of lines over the years, and am convinced that the more we can do individually and collectively to build connections across the disciplinary boundaries that try to divide us, the stronger we'll be, both individually and as a college.
+**(CLICK)** So let's start here: I firmly believe that the diversity of methodologies, theoretical approaches, and disciplinary and personal backgrounds represented in the College of Arts & Letters is not a challenge to be overcome, but rather a source of our strength. I say this as a scholar with an MFA in creative writing and a PhD in English and American literature, and as an author whose writing has confounded a lot of disciplinary expectations. I say this as a faculty member who started her career jointly appointed in English and Media Studies, and as a digital humanist whose primary work has involved network building. And I say this as someone who gave up tenure and left the academy for six years to help lead a large scholarly society into the digital age, but who had the extraordinary fortune to come back to campus and bring what I'd learned at the national level back with me. I've straddled a lot of lines over the years, and am convinced that the more we can do individually and collectively to build connections across the disciplinary boundaries that try to divide us, the stronger we'll be, both individually and as a college.
 
 
 ## our <span style="color:red">diversity</span> is our <span style="color:red">strength</span>
@@ -27,7 +27,12 @@ Note: We study our world's cultures and their modes of thought and expression, a
 
 Note: This belief is in part the basis for the arguments that I've made in my last two books, *Generous Thinking* and *Leading Generously* -- that, in order to create the best possible conditions for success for the work that we are all committed to doing, we have to do it together, and that "together" requires us all to reground ourselves in collaboration rather than competition, in listening to and learning from one another rather than thinking of our differences as barriers to understanding. I don't at all want to suggest that this is easy -- collaboration is hard, listening and learning are hard, and building and supporting diverse teams are hard -- but that's the work I've committed myself to over the last fifteen years, and that's the work that I hope I will be able to keep doing in the college.
 
-The difficulty of all of this points to another part of the prompt that I want to revisit:
+
+![Knowledge Commons logo](KCommons.png)
+
+Note: Additionally, over the last ten years I've been working with an amazing group of colleagues to build and support open, values-enacted, community-governed platforms and tools for collaboration and communication among scholars, practitioners, instructors, students, and other publics who want to do their crucial work in online and connected ways. Knowledge Commons is housed here at MSU but hosts more than 45,000 users across the disciplines and around the world. It's been funded over the years through 14 external grants from two federal agencies and five private foundations totaling more than $3.4 million dollars. That project has given me a deep understanding of a lot of things, not least that managing both to do the work and to raise the money to do the work (not to mention reporting on spending the money raised to do the work) is a lot, and requires enormous support. I was the recipient of a lot of such support over the years from Bill Hart-Davidson and the rest of the deans team, as well as from the amazing college Research team, and key among my goals over the last few years has been paying that support forward, finding the means to help folks both here in the college and on the Commons do their work.
+
+The growing challenges involved in gathering the support necessary to do the work, however, points to another part of the prompt that I want to revisit:
 
 
 *You should give a 45-minute talk (with 15 minutes for questions) addressing graduate education and grant and research support for faculty and students. <span style="color:red">The talk should be forward-looking, as much as it can be in these times of uncertainty.</span> We ask that you give specific examples of what you would like to accomplish. In addition, we would like you to talk about how you would overcome the challenges of leading a unit whose research includes the humanities, social sciences, visual arts, performing arts, and interdisciplinary research.*
@@ -105,7 +110,7 @@ Note: Similarly, the SPG, or Strategic Partnership Grants, support team-based re
 Note: Two projects that include CAL researchers were  successfully funded in the first round of the TETRAD program, which launched in Fall 2023 and is designed to support new cross-unit and cross-college collaborations.
 
 
-## collaboration
+# collaboration
 
 Note: Those last three programs (SRIP/SPG/TETRAD) point to the growing importance of collaborating not just within our fields but across them. In many -- not all, by any means, but many -- of our fields, that form of collaboration has not been baked into our training; we need to think about how we might learn from the science of team science and put some of those lessons to use in our own research processes.  The research team has for several years run grant kick-off meetings once funding has been received in order to make sure that everyone involved -- faculty, staff, and administrators -- are on the same page about the processes for making hires and purchases and for reporting on the grant's progress. I would like to see us move some of that work even earlier in the flow: for instance, to establish *proposal* kick-offs, so that folks coming together to work with the research team on a grant proposal have some crucial conversations before submission. 
 
@@ -114,64 +119,66 @@ I would also like to see us develop some collaboration support processes and agr
 
 # centers
 
-Note: Returning for a moment to the SPGs: the evidence of future external support potential that these proposals require, especially at the center level, might encourage us to think about developing more intentional pathways for the projects and labs and centers that have recently proliferated across CAL. We need to develop some college-level policy around how they get started (and with what support), how they are charged with becoming sustainable, and how they are sunset at the appropriate moment. But I also want to think a bit about that proliferation, and have us ask ourselves some hard questions about our priorities. There's a running joke at a number of other institutions about every faculty member having their very own center; the issue isn't that the centers aren't doing important work, but rather that this proliferation calls for a lot of often redundant resources, and it winds up creating more silos rather than more spaces for collaboration. Rather than creating a new center for each new purpose, could we consider bringing some of our centers together into larger units that serve more faculty and graduate students?
+Note: Returning for a moment to the SPGs: the evidence of future external support potential that these proposals require, especially at the center level, might encourage us to think about developing more intentional pathways for the projects and labs and centers that have recently proliferated across CAL. We need to develop some college-level policy around how they get started (and with what support), how they are charged with becoming sustainable, and how they are sunset at the appropriate moment. But I also want to think a bit about that proliferation, and have us ask ourselves some hard questions about our priorities across the college. There's a running joke at a number of other institutions about every tenured professor having their very own center; the issue isn't that all of those centers aren't doing important work, but rather that this proliferation calls for a lot of often redundant resources, and it winds up creating more silos rather than more spaces for collaboration. Rather than creating a new center for each new purpose, could we consider bringing some of our centers together into larger units that serve more faculty and graduate students?
 
 
 ## Center for the Arts & Humanities
 
-Note: My most aspirational idea here might in fact be establishing a singular Center for the Arts & Humanities that could learn from the best such centers around the country, including the Denbo Center for Humanities and the Arts at the University of Tennessee, the Dresher Center for the Humanities at the University of Maryland-Baltimore Country, the Center for 21st Century Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, the Institute for Advanced Study at the University of Minnesota, the Humanities Research Institute at the University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign, and more. A center for the arts & humanities, like many of the centers I've named, would ideally be able to offer faculty and grad student fellowships to support research and creative activity and to create community among the fellows by having weekly lunch gatherings to share work, as well as opportunities for presentation and feedback. This center could bring together the work of some of our existing centers, and could coordinate resources to help avoid duplication of effort around things like project management, event planning and hosting, and more. I could imagine some of the large-scale college events including the Legacy Lecture, the Signature Lecture, and so on, being brought together under this banner. The center could also offer infrastructure to support longer-term collaborative projects, and could serve as an incubator for other labs and centers, allowing them to get started and then spin out as they obtain the necessary funding.
+Note: My most aspirational idea here might in fact be establishing a singular Center for the Arts & Humanities that could learn from the best such centers around the country, including the Denbo Center for Humanities and the Arts at the University of Tennessee, the Dresher Center for the Humanities at the University of Maryland-Baltimore Country, the Center for 21st Century Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, the Institute for Advanced Study at the University of Minnesota, the Humanities Research Institute at the University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign, and more. A center for the arts & humanities, like many of the centers I've named, would ideally be able to offer internal faculty and grad student fellowships to support research and creative activity and to create community among the fellows by having weekly lunch gatherings to share work, as well as opportunities for presentation and feedback. This center could bring together the work of some of our existing centers, and could coordinate resources to help avoid duplication of effort around things like project management, event planning and hosting, and more. I could imagine some of the large-scale college events including the Legacy Lecture, the Signature Lecture, and so on, being brought together under this banner. The center could also offer infrastructure to support longer-term collaborative projects, and could serve as an incubator for other labs and centers, allowing them to get started and then spin out as they obtain the necessary funding.
 
 A center like this would require significant fundraising to get off the ground, but it might be an exciting naming opportunity for the right donor, and I would be delighted to have the opportunity to work with our next dean and director of development on building the relationships that might lead to such a gift. In the meantime, we could begin laying the groundwork by thinking with the center and lab directors about how they might share resources and build shared projects, how they might come together to apply for funding for collaborative work, and more.
 
 
 # graduate studies
 
-Note: From here, I want to turn my attention to graduate studies. The associate dean for research and graduate studies supports the graduate program directors and associate chairs for graduate studies as they lead their programs and support their students. The landscape for graduate studies has changed as radically and painfully as that of research funding in recent weeks; we have all heard stories about institutions such as the University of Massachusetts at Amherst that have rescinded all of their graduate admissions for next year, and other institutions that are radically downsizing their graduate programs. MSU in general, and CAL in particular, are NOT taking these radical steps right now. I cannot promise that they won't be imposed on us -- we have no idea what could still be ahead for us -- but I can promise that we will do everything in our power to ensure that our programs continue, and thrive.
+Note: From here, I want to turn my attention to graduate studies. The associate dean for research and graduate studies supports the graduate program directors and associate chairs for graduate studies as they lead their programs and support their students, and represents the college's programs and grad students at both the Graduate School and university levels. The landscape for graduate studies has changed as radically and painfully as that of research funding in recent weeks; we have all heard stories about institutions such as the University of Massachusetts at Amherst that have rescinded all of their graduate admissions for next year, and other institutions that are radically downsizing their graduate programs. MSU in general, and CAL in particular, are NOT taking these radical steps right now. I cannot promise that they won't be imposed on us in the future -- we have no idea what could still be ahead for us -- but I can promise that we will do everything in our power to ensure that our programs continue, and thrive.
 
-But it's important to note that the people that are being hit the hardest by the federal changes right now are some of the most vulnerable members of the college community -- our international graduate students, whose freedom of movement is threatened and whose ability to conduct their research in their chosen areas of the world is being undermined. The grad team has been working with the Graduate School as well as the Office for International Students and Scholars to ensure that our international graduate students are as well-protected as they can be, that they have access to emergency support to allow them to stay in the US this summer in the event it's too risky for them to travel, and so on. We're also encouraging their graduate programs and advisors to work with them to develop alternative plans for their work in the event their research abroad is no longer possible, and to help any graduate student who must travel abroad prepare a plan B in the event they're not able to re-enter the country.
+But it's important to note that the people that are being hit the hardest by the federal changes right now are some of the most vulnerable members of the college community -- especially our international graduate students, whose freedom of movement is threatened and whose ability to conduct their research in their chosen areas of the world is being undermined. The grad team has been working with the Graduate School as well as the Office for International Students and Scholars to ensure that our international graduate students are as well-protected as they can be, that they have access to emergency support to allow them to stay in the US this summer in the event it's too risky for them to travel, and so on. We're also encouraging their graduate programs and advisors to work with them to develop alternative plans for their work in the event their research abroad is no longer possible, and to help any graduate student who must travel abroad prepare a plan B to allow them to continue their work in the event they're not able to re-enter the country.
 
 
-## grad futures
+# grad futures
 
 Note: In the face of all of that, it's challenging to think right now about what we'd actually *like* to do in order to make the graduate experience better, rather than just to keep it from getting worse, but there are some strategic ideas that I'm hoping to have the opportunity to work on in the years ahead.
 
 
 ## broadened career pathways
 
-Note: First, I want to place significant emphasis on expanding support for broadened career pathways for our doctoral students, as well as for broadened training opportunities during the degree process. One of the things that has inhibited many graduate programs around the country from thinking actively about the many career paths that should be open to their graduate students is a kind of parochialism, partly driven by the assumption that the best possible outcome for every PhD candidate is a job like ours -- despite the fact that we know that such jobs are harder and harder to get, and despite the equally true fact that however great our jobs may be, *there are other equally if not more rewarding career opportunities that we undervalue*.
+Note: First, I want to place significant emphasis on expanding support for broadened career pathways for our doctoral students, as well as for broadened training opportunities during the degree process. One of the things that has inhibited many graduate programs around the country from thinking actively about the many career paths that should be open to their graduate students is the assumption that the best possible outcome for every PhD candidate is a job like ours -- despite the fact that we know that such jobs are harder and harder to get, and despite the equally true fact that however great our jobs may be, *there are other equally if not more rewarding career opportunities that we undervalue*. 
 
-Those career paths also remain undersupported because we don't know how to prepare our students for those kinds of careers; we haven't worked in the other roles on campus that hire advanced degree recipients in the arts and humanities, and most of us haven't worked in the other kinds of educational, cultural, and social organizations that hire them either. But we do have colleagues on and off campus who *do* work in those roles, and who might be recruited to help us think about what the future of graduate training in the arts and humanities should look like in order to open up those career possibilities for our students.
+Those career paths that move outside the classroom and across and beyond the academy also remain undersupported because we don't know how to prepare our students for those kinds of careers; we haven't worked in the other roles on campus that hire advanced degree recipients in the arts and humanities, and most of us haven't worked in the other kinds of educational, cultural, and social organizations that hire them either. But we do have colleagues on and off campus who *do* work in those roles, and who might be recruited to help us think about what the future of graduate training in the arts and humanities should look like in order to open up those career possibilities for our students.
 
 
 # ~~Plan B~~
 
-Note: I want to emphasize as strongly as I possibly can that these career possibilities are *not a plan B*, not a second-rate alternative; these are in many cases the goals and aspirations that our grad students come to our programs with, and that they often don't tell their advisors about for fear of disappointing them or being seen as somehow less worth their time and attention. In fact, placing our advanced degree recipients in academic jobs outside the classroom, or in positions outside the academy, should at every turn be seen as a victory -- because now more than ever we need well-prepared critical and creative thinkers, researchers, writers, and makers *out there* working to change the world. So how do we get there?
+Note: I want to emphasize as strongly as I possibly can that these career possibilities are *not a plan B*, not a second-rate alternative; these are in many cases the goals and aspirations that our grad students come into our programs with, and that they often don't tell their advisors about for fear of disappointing them or being seen as somehow less worth their time and attention. In fact, placing our advanced degree recipients in academic jobs outside the classroom, or in positions outside the academy, should at every turn be seen as a victory -- because now more than ever we need well-prepared critical and creative thinkers, researchers, writers, and makers *out there* working to change the world. So how do we get there?
 
 
-## rotation model
+# rotation model
 
-Note: If I could do anything, I would learn from medical schools and create a rotation model for graduate students in the arts and humanities, and give every grad student the opportunity to gain multiple kinds of work experience through a suite of different GAships and internships, whether in editing and publishing, in research labs, in digital project management, in student and faculty affairs and other areas of academic administration, in libraries, archives, and museums, and so on, in addition to getting teaching experience in our programs. In an ideal world every grad student would in fact be *required* to take on multiple kinds of work over the course of their studies, selecting the two or three options that are most aligned with their long-term goals.
+Note: If I could do anything, I would learn from medical schools and create a rotation model for graduate students in the arts and humanities, and give every grad student the opportunity to gain multiple kinds of work experience through a suite of different GAships and internships over their time at MSU, whether in editing and publishing, in research labs, in digital project management, in student and faculty affairs and other areas of academic administration, in libraries, archives, and museums, and so on, in addition to getting teaching experience in our programs. In an ideal world every grad student would in fact be *required* to take on multiple kinds of work over the course of their studies, selecting the two or three options that are most aligned with their long-term goals.
 
 
-## internships
+# internships
 
-Note: A step toward that model might be for us to establish a suite of paid summer or semester internship opportunities off campus. We might in fact find ways to share the cost of such internships between CAL and the scholarly or cultural organizations with which the graduate student can be placed. Internships during the summer could be fully embedded on-site, and during fall or spring could be conducted remotely. I know from a colleague that the Modern Language Association has such interns coming to them from NYU and Princeton, and I imagine that other organizations might be willing to explore the opportunities with us.
+Note: A step toward that model might be for us to establish a suite of paid summer or semester internship opportunities off campus. We might in fact find ways to share the cost of such internships between CAL and the scholarly or cultural organizations with which the graduate student can be placed. Internships during the summer could be fully embedded on-site, and during fall or spring could be conducted remotely. I know from a colleague that the Modern Language Association has such interns coming to them from NYU and Princeton, and I imagine that other organizations might be willing to explore the opportunities with us as well.
 
-This is just one idea, and no doubt there will be others. I hope to have the opportunity to think with colleagues across the college about the kinds of experience that would most benefit your grad students, to help get them out into the 
+This is just one idea, and no doubt there will be others. I hope to have the opportunity to think with all of you, and with our grad students across the college, about the kinds of experience that would most benefit them, to help get them out into the areas of the arts and humanities workforce that they most want to explore. I also want to emphasize that this kind of work opportunity will be increasingly important for those graduate students who *do* go on to more traditional academic careers, as it will give them the basis for helping *their* students think broadly about their career paths as well.
 
 
 # CPIL
 
 Note: Finally, I want to take a moment to tie all of this -- both the ideas I've presented about the future of research and creative activity in the college and those about graduate studies -- in to CPIL: what is it to chart our own pathways to intellectual leadership in a time in which the infrastructure supporting those pathways is not just crumbling but in fact actively being destroyed?
 
-One of the things I have told friends and colleagues over the eight years since I've been at MSU, explaining why I love working here (and would rather work here than at the better-heeled institution just down the road), is that we're *scrappy*. We can try new things and take certain kinds of risks in the process precisely because we haven't gotten all bound up in the glory of our prestige. We have a kind of freedom to chart a different path, and to help our students chart different kinds of paths too. It's not just that we've got "uncommon will," as the slogan puts it, but that we're able to look at the ways that things have always been done and ask why, whether that's really what best serves us, whether there might be other possibilities that allow us to do more good in the world.
+One of the things I have told friends and colleagues over the eight years since I've been at MSU is that there are two key reasons why I love working here and honestly would rather work here than at the better-heeled institution just down the road. The first is that I am a product of an institution a lot like this one: I earned both my BA and my MFA from Louisiana State University, and I know first-hand the significance of what an institution like MSU can provide for the state and its students, and through all of the challenges of the last eight years I've been honored to get to be part of that commitment to serving the public good.
+
+The other reason that I value MSU as an institution is that we're *scrappy* in ways that lots of other institutions are not. We can try new things and take certain kinds of risks in the process precisely because we haven't gotten all bound up in the glory of our prestige. We have a kind of freedom to chart a different path, and to help our students chart different kinds of paths too. It's not just that we've got "uncommon will," as the slogan puts it, but that we're able to look at the ways that things have always been done and ask why, whether that's really what best serves us, whether there might be other possibilities that allow us to do more good in the world.
 
 CPIL has demonstrated that annual review, promotion, and tenure reviews don't *have* to stay fixated on the markers of success that were established in the second half of the last century; that research, teaching, and service are not eternal, and not eternally distinct categories that add up to the sum of our work on campus; that asking each and every member of the college community to think about their longest-term goals and how to reach them can not only magnify the impact of our work but also provide greater satisfaction in being able to do it.
 
 
 # my hope
 
-Note: My hope for the future, both here in the College of Arts & Letters and with the work I've been doing in supporting the amazing team working on Knowledge Commons, is to (something about creating the conditions for new possibilities for everyone, to help all of us imagine a new academy that is more open, more just, more equitable, etc. Is there something from my application letter I could end with???)
+Note: My hope for the future, both here in the College of Arts & Letters and with the work I've been doing in supporting the amazing team working on Knowledge Commons, is to continue paying the support I've received over the years forward; to help create the conditions of success for everyone in the college, whatever that success might look like; to help all of us imagine a new academy that is more open, more just, more equitable, and that can contribute actively and directly to building the better world that we all need today.
 
 
 ## thank you