Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast

For Dr. Lilian!

I can't wait to hear what Lilian's last word is! As per special request (see comment from this post), here is my original post about the dissertation last word (via this Blogos post):

"They won't call me a [student] when I get to heaven..."

And the post where I posted my actual last word (which did, BTW, survive my revisions):

Headline News

Comments to these two are closed. (Too much spam.) But I invite Lilian and anyone else to share here the last word of their dissertation or masters thesis.

Greatest Academic April 1st Joke Ever!

Or at least in the top 10.

Some Brown University mathematics professors were confused and dismayed this month to learn that the university planned to admit 20 percent of its next freshman class completely at random — by putting names in a hat and drawing them out.

The Brown professors were reacting to an e-mail message they received from a colleague reporting on his work on the university’s Admissions Advisory Committee. Complete with the sort of verbiage and citations one might expect in a report from an august institutional panel, the memo outlined the reasons Brown was going to “merit-blind admissions” and the comparable actions of peer institutions. Naturally, professors reacted to this memo, with some expressing concern about random admissions. Had they followed a link provided in the memo, they would have realized that there was no cause for concern. However irrational many people find elite private college admissions, it isn’t in fact being replaced with drawing names out of a hat...

(IHE full article here)

Dissertating Black History

Today's 32Days entry is supposed to be about books. But instead of books per se I am going to highlight several dissertations from last year related to Black history and culture. I wouldn't be a proper academic (and one who so recently completed a dissertation herself) otherwise. I hope to write more later this month comparing my experiences doing scholarly research on a "Black" topic (M.S. @ Purdue) and a non-Black topic (here at the U. of MN). For people of color these can be two very different experiences, and to do either one must be brave in different ways.

But today's focus is on these recent dissertators.

A quick search of Digital Dissertations and I was surprised at the wide range of topics, institutions, research methods, and disciplines. The abstract excerpts below represent just a sampling of 2007 dissertations. I hope some of these (and some of the others) soon find their way from thick tomes on committee members' desks to mainstream publications and journal articles so that more folks can benefit from this important and fascinating work. In the meantime, congratulations, Doctors!

Give us this day our daily bread: The African American megachurch and Prosperity Theology
by Patterson, Charmayne E., Ph.D., Georgia State University

This dissertation explores the simultaneous rise of megachurches and Prosperity Theology within the black church.... My research begins with an examination of the traditional African American church and pastor, and an exploration of the recent growth of megachurches within the black community. In an attempt to better understand the Prosperity Gospel, I evaluated it in comparison to the Social Gospel, discovering the similarities and differences between the two movements.

...This dissertation compares the ministries of Dr. Creflo Dollar, Senior Pastor of Atlanta Georgia's World Changers Church International and Bishop Joseph W. Walker, III, Senior Pastor of Mount Zion Baptist Church in Nashville, Tennessee.... An examination of the teachings of Dr. Dollar and Bishop Walker indicate that Dr. Dollar's beliefs put him at odds with many traditionalists in the black church. In contrast, Bishop Walker's ministry more closely resembles that of a traditional African American church.... The research conducted suggests that Prosperity Theology may be useful in facilitating the goals of economic, social, and political empowerment historically advocated by the black church.

Aaron Douglas and Hale Woodruff: The social responsibility and expanded pedagogy of the Black artist
by Bey, Sharif, Ph.D., The Pennsylvania State University

This study examines the expanded pedagogy and formal instruction of Aaron Douglas and Hale Woodruff, two African-American artists who came to prominence during the New Negro Movement, in the 1920s. The decades following the New Negro Movement marked a new era for the art education of African-American students when renowned African-American artists began to prepare future generations of artists and art educators. Douglas and Woodruff spent their tenures teaching the visual arts at historically Black universities in Nashville, Tennessee, and Atlanta, Georgia, respectively.... I specifically explore to what extent and for what goals racial consciousness and Black content were a part of the instruction, artwork, and lives of Douglas and Woodruff....

An osteobiography of an African diasporic skeletal sample: Integrating skeletal and historical information
by Renschler, Emily S., Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania

Human skeletal and dental material, as sensitive recorders of environmental conditions during life, can provide a rich storehouse of individual historical events. This characteristic is the basis of an "osteobiography" of a sample of crania from individuals who died shortly after arrival in Havana from Africa during the era of the Cuban slave trade....

The results of this examination are generally consistent with historical information. First, skeletal age data indicate that the majority of the individuals in the sample were adolescents and "prime-age" adults.... Second, as to the ancestry of the individuals represented, craniometric data supports an African origin as well as a high degree of individual heterogeneity within the sample.... Finally, paleopathological analysis of the sample suggests that these African born individuals faced less physiological stress than comparable individuals born into slavery in the New World.

Accomplishment and abandonment: A history of the Freedmen's Bureau schools
by Troost, William Frank, Ph.D., University of California, Irvine

The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, commonly referred to as the Freedmen's Bureau, was a governmental agency set up to assist freed slaves in their transition to their new lives.... While the bureau had many functions perhaps its most important was in helping to establish and maintain a system of schools for free blacks.

This study utilizes new data that makes an analysis of the bureau's educational activities possible. First, a data set on the location and number of bureau schools in a county is constructed from archival documents on the bureau's educational activities. The second resource that makes this analysis possible is newly available individual-level census data. This individual-level data makes it possible to assess the reach and impact of the bureau's educational effort in the early Reconstruction period....

Affirmative acts: Political piety in African American women's contemporary autobiography
by Ards, Angela Ann, Ph.D., Princeton University

"Affirmative Acts: Political Piety in African American Women's Contemporary Autobiography" examines works written in the last decade of the twentieth-century in response to the rise of social conservatism stateside and imperialism abroad: Warriors Don't Cry by Melba Pattillo Beals of the Little Rock Nine; Unafraid of the Dark: A Memoir by journalist-cum-minister Rosemary Bray; and Soldier: A Poet's Childhood by poet, essayist, and activist June Jordan....

Under the assumption that cultural memories are the means by which societies constitute and re-constitute themselves, "Affirmative Acts" tracks the myriad ways these authors invoke, then consciously invert, the classic narrative of the civil rights movement: its iconographic events and images, as well as the religious tropes of suffering and sacrifice in which it has been traditionally framed....

Found insane in 'the Holy Land': Psychiatry and the African American experience in Illinois, 1870--1910
by Harris, Sean J., Ph.D., University of Illinois at Chicago

This work presents the encounter between African Americans struggling northward and the expanding state sponsored psychiatric system in Illinois. In the spirit of recent scholarship in disability history, it treats people who experienced disability as its subject, specifically individuals who belonged to two minority groups, one racial and the other disabled. Yielding insights that shed new light on American history generally, a disability studies approach here fills two particular voids by illuminating the experience of African Americans in psychiatric care and the history of medicine from the patients' perspective. In addition to exploring many unique facets of individual experience in the community and in the hospital, this dissertation examines how race became a criterion for distinguishing pathology from criminality, as well as determining the type and quality of mental health treatment....

P.S.: Want more scholarship on Black history? Check out the January special issue of Journal of Black Studies, Blacks in Canada: Retrospects, Introspects, Prospects.

The Academy According to Kitty and Biggie...

I was at home packing up some of my books when I came across several academic survival guides. (I discuss a few of these books here and here.) Prior to graduate school and throughout both my masters and PhD programs I consumed these books like food. Survival guide to graduate school for women students, and how to write your dissertation, and getting the most out of graduate school were just a few of the themes in these publications. I guess reading them did me some good--This is assuming that having been granted your PhD and living to tell the tale qualifies you as having survived.

But there is always another level of "survival" in the higher ed game. Having survived graduate school, how can one survive a post-doctoral experience? If you survive that, what about the tenure track job search process? Assuming you make it through that hoop, what about surviving the promotion and tenure process? If you decide (or are forced) to go the non-academic route, how are the survival rules different there?

Well, I have few answers to these questions (though I do have several books covering those topics). What I have found helpful, though, are a couple of recent Inside Higher Education articles that have effectively used non-scholarly metaphors to give helpful advice for getting on and getting along in the academy.

In this piece posted just today Rob Weir calls on academic types to learn from cats:

Academic squabbles are often compared to cat fights, but as one who has owned cats for several decades, I’ve come to believe that such analogies are unfair to felines. Cats, for instance, instinctively know to terminate a chase when they would consume more calories than their prey would provide. And even the pugilist tabbies I’ve owned eventually learned to give wide berth to rivals who consistently bloodied them. All of this suggests that cats may be more evolutionarily advanced than a lot of academics.

Weir then goes on to discuss several academic debates from 2007 that he believes "aren’t worth the calories, let along the anguish" and thus should be terminated, cat-like, by folks in higher education. In light of my interest in the transformation of higher education into a more market-based delivery model I was particularly interested in his third example of a battle that needs to be walked away from:

Should the Academy Operate According to a Consumer Model? If you answered “no,” prepare to be boarded; your ship has been vanquished. The high price tag of higher ed makes it a market-place commodity and it’s as naïve to assert that a college education is its own reward as to believe that the Olympics are a still bastion of amateurism. Whether we like it or not, kids shop for courses just like they hit the mall. Profs and departments can assume the crusty purist’s demeanor, or they can start making course offerings jazzier and sexier. The latter path leads to the vitality, the first to extinction.

Among other issues, he also gives feline-inspired responses to the questions What Do We Do About Poorly Prepared Incoming Students? ("How about teach them..."), Why Should Faculty Be Forced to Be Tech-Savvy? ("Because it’s the 21st century..."), and Should Colleges Be Required to Dip Deeper into Endowment Funds? ("Yes...").

Some very relevant thoughts. Though I do not agree with all of the specific points, I do agree with the overall premise of the advice. Not to say that there are not some battles that are worth fighting. But I agree we can learn a lot from our fine feline friends by developing the ability to know when to slink silently away: our tails down, head up, and paws at the ready--just in case. (By the way, my only quibble with this article is that I wish it had been illustrated with some lolcats!)

Now, maybe you are not a cat person. In that event, you might be served by the simple observation that "all hustles obey the same logic"--thus the academic hustle can be informed by guidelines of a hustle in a very different sphere. That is the premise of this piece I read in IHE last summer. I did not revisit the comments this time, but did recall that when the piece originally appeared folks either hated it or loved it. At any rate, Phil Ford introduced his advice with the following:

We’re staring down the barrel of another academic year. Time for a refresher course in professional deportment — by which I mean “The Ten Crack Commandments,” by The Notorious B.I.G. All you professors starting out at new institutions (like me) will be getting orientation sessions to show you the academic ropes — procedures on academic misconduct, FERPA guidelines, sexual harassment policies, etc., but you can save some time and just listen to hiphop.

Ford directs the second point particularly to academic bloggers:

Never let ‘em know your next move/Don’t you know bad boys move in silence or violence. Or, as MF Doom says, never let your so-called mans know your plans... Seriously, bloggers, always assume that everyone you know, and everyone you might want to know, will read your blog. It’s easy to get suckered into the illusion that you’re confiding your innermost thoughts with an anonymous Them you’ll never actually meet. Nope, and when you confide stuff about yourself that you wouldn’t announce from the lectern of a plenary session of the American Musicological Society, you could end up like Youngblood Priest from Superfly, who accidentally kills his best friend when he drops the name of his connection in a nightclub.

I do not want to get into the whole "Tribble Controversy" here again, but suffice it to say that this is a good piece of advice. Yes, blog if you want to. But though it may well be good advice to "dance like nobody is watching," the same is not true for blogging. Even, I might add, if you do so (or think you are doing so) anonymously.

I also appreciated the advice about not believing your own BS, or, as Biggie would say "never get(ting) high on your own supply." Ford notes about this point that it may be hard to see its relationship to higher ed types:

But think of it this way: when you are up in front of your students, you are not necessarily “being yourself.” You have a persona, or several personae, that you adopt as a way to frame the meaning of the material you’re teaching, and to impart a sense of your own relationship to that material... Keep clear, if only in your own head, the distinction between who you are for professional purposes and who you are at home.

I think the same thing holds for one's "research personae" and any other Self one displays in an academic setting. Not partaking of your own product is advice easier rapped than followed. We tread a fine line in the higher educational setting that runs right between needing to bolster our confidence--for example, so as to overcome the "imposter syndrome" that many of us suffer from--and needing to maintain a sense of perspective and humbleness. On that note I'll close by offering my own piece of survival advice courtesy of a joke I adapted a while back. It doesn't have a happy ending. But I know you would much rather hear real advice than a bunch of feel good lies, right?

Grad Student Hero of the Month

There's a new doctor* in the world: Brian May, PhD! (*Pending some revisions and other hoops to jump through.) And he is the latest lesson in graduate student stick-to-itness, defending his dissertation in astrophysics decades after he left his program. According to his blog entry dated last Friday:

Yes. It's done, and after about 37 years, I am finally a doctor. The oral examination of my thesis, and of me, lasted about 3 hours, and then I retired with Prof Rowan-Robinson, for a few moments, for my two examiners to confer. After only a couple of minutes they called me back into the room and offered their hands in congratulations. Yes, my category was number 2. I understand pretty much nobody gets a 1st category - which is "This is perfect - here's your PhD."

Mine is "We like it. Make these adjustments, and it's yours."

Dr. May has one of the better excuses for taking so long to finish: he was busy seeing the world, playing guitar, as part of Queen!

So if you are reading this now, send a tribute to the freshly doctorated May right there in front of your computer: clear a space at your desk...get your hands flexed...ready?

pound pound CLAP pound pound CLAP pound pound CLAP...

Rock on, Dr. May. Rock on!

SITBB Vault: Queen for a Day

I love academic rituals.

Some cry at weddings. I get teary-eyed at graduations. All that music, all the velvety colors, all those smiling moms... (Perhaps that is the real reason behind my continued educational quest: More degrees = more graduation ceremonies.)

It is important in one's graduate school career, however, to have intermediate rituals besides those that mark the major transitions like completing a degree. I once created my own (albeit short-lived) academic ritual of this sort: When I finally completed the first half of my written preliminary examination (critical review paper, for you FSOSers) I wore a crown all day long. A crown. I borrowed it from my daughters' dress-up box--wore it to drop them off at day care, during my classes, and at a college-wide committee meeting. Every time someone commented on it (and thank goodness they commented instead of just assuming that my wearing a crown was some sort of normal occurrence) I got the opportunity to share my news and receive congratulations. It was wonderful.

Well, this academic ritual, marking the major milestone of the awarding of tenure, is one that I had not heard of. It is truly wonderful, and I hope that wherever I end up getting tenure has adopted this practice:

Earning tenure is cause for celebration--and a few universities honor that milestone in a way that combines academic values: They invite newly promoted professors to pick out a book to be added to the library.

The University of Wisconsin at Madison started such a program last year, at the suggestion of Peter D. Spear, the provost, who got the idea from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Spear said that the program both honors professors and "recognizes the importance of our libraries and the central role they play in the scholarship of the academy."

I was very pleased to see mentioned in this article the choice by one of our own Department of Family Social Science alumni:

Harriet the Spy, selected by Ramona Faith Oswald (human and community development) and who said that the children's classic had been her favorite since she was 9 years old. "She inspired me to research people's personal lives and not be afraid of controversy," Oswald wrote, adding that Harriet is "the queer kid trying to figure out how the world works and where she wants to fit in."

What a wonderful choice! My girls and I read a portion from a chapter book at bedtime. We've read "Alice in Wonderland" (of course!), "Stuart Little," "Winnie-the-Pooh." We will soon begin "Pippi Longstocking." I think I'll put "Harriet" on the list for next year.

Anyway, I can hardly wait to pick out my title for when (whenwhenwhen) I am awarded tenure. Of course I have to graduate from here first. (Which means I have to actually finish my dissertation first!) So in the interim, I am dreaming of donning my colorful hood, adjusting my silky tassel, and feeling the heft of my gloriously embossed degree in my hands.

I know of some graduate students who have skipped their graduations. I guess they retain too many bad memories of their struggles to finish. Or too much of their campus is associated with times of avoiding their advisors because they were draft-less, thus making further avoidance at graduation time seem automatic. Or maybe they already have positions and are just too busy to return to campus for the ceremony. Someone once told me no one else from his cohort would be there as they had all graduated (or left the program) years before, so he did not see the point of attending himself.

Whatever the reason, it is a shame. I know I will be at my graduation. Not only that, I plan to shake everyone's hand: the president, the provost, my advisor, the person in charge of adjusting the mic--anyone and everyone who is on that stage. I may even stop at the podium to say a few words. They'll have to play that Academy Award-speech music to get me to shut up, perhaps summon security to escort me from the stage.

Heck, I may even wear my crown.

Paying Forward, PhD-Style

Great IHE article about SisterMentors, "a unique D.C.-area program working to nudge girls and women of color through the notoriously leaky academic pipeline at all levels":

...SisterMentors will send its first group of five high school students off to college this September, just as the organization, which started as a dissertation support group in 1997 and expanded to mentor young girls in 2001, celebrates its 10th anniversary. The essence of the program is simple, but significant: Female minority doctoral candidates living and working in the D.C. area while they write their dissertations benefit from mentoring one another through a long (they’ll say prolonged) process. They then “pay it forward,” so to speak, in their work mentoring the middle and high school girls (many of whom, it’s worth noting, are avid young volunteers themselves). More minority girls go to college, with the hope that more minority women will be there ready to teach them...

During my most pessimistic moments, I believe that higher ed access for folks of color will be up to grass-roots groups like this as there appears to be little will or ability or both to fight for it on a large-scale institutional level. Although maybe there is hope to be found in this College Board report, “From Federal Law to State Voter Initiatives: Preserving Higher Education’s Authority to Achieve the Educational, Economic, Civic, and Security Benefits Associated With a Diverse Student Body” (pdf). As reported in Diverse Issues in Higher Education:

According to lead author Arthur L. Coleman, the paper was written in response to the questions posed in the light of Michigan Proposal 2 and other ballot initiatives in Washington, California and the executive order in Florida.

“It was an effort to educate higher ed leaders in order to preserve their diversity goals… and to provide strategies to legitimize the need for the compelling nature of diversity in their institutions,” Coleman says.

A number of strategies to deflect or defeat voter initiatives need to be considered, say the authors. Coalition groups need to be built not only with education leaders, but also with business, military, government and other leaders to help shape future policy. Advocacy should reach across a broad spectrum of people, and must represent everyone’s interests. Finally, besides full-scale public discourse about the benefits of a diverse student body, the report says “the complexities and nuances of research regarding the many benefits associated with student diversity must be effectively translated into common-sense propositions that have meaning to voters.”

...“We can’t divorce the message from the messenger, or policy from the public perception,” he says. “This is for college leaders to go beyond the four corners of their institution and do the educationally smart thing and the legally right thing.”

In conclusion, the report says it is important that higher education leaders not lose sight of the core issues and challenges associated with access, opportunity and diversity throughout the education pipeline.

“Thus, attention to longer term investments (such as support for pipeline-building programs) and shorter term strategies (such as rigorous evaluation and pursuit of all available avenues — race-conscious and race-neutral — likely to advance institutional goals) can frame a comprehensive and coherent action agenda that is compelling in the court of law, just as it is in the court of public opinion,” says the report.

Hmmm: the "educationally smart thing" and the "legally right thing" to do. Have we completely given up on the economically smart and morally right things to do?

Related Note: Remember to check out this conference if you're in the Twin Cities area next month.

Show Me the Funding!

One thing you may think as you move through your graduate school journey is

"I can't wait until I get a faculty position or post doc! Then all my funding problems will be over!"

Well, sorry to burst your bubble, but if you plan an academic career as a researcher, a large part of your life will forever be spent on issues related to funding: Searching for relevant grants, filling out massive amounts of paperwork, waiting anxiously for word, the agony of rejection--and the ecstasy of funding receipt. Soon followed, of course, by the stress of grant/project management and accounting for their money and your progress. (Or lack thereof.)

So, while you may be able to upgrade your diet from dried noodles in a rectangular plastic package, you will still be spending an inordinate amount of time begging--er, I mean, applying for research funding.

In this context, I believe it is never too early to begin familiarizing yourself with grant opportunities beyond the grad school level. That may seem like an odd bit of advice. Afterall, it is already a full-time job keeping up with deadlines and requirements for graduate student funding. But I think this is a necessary task if you suspect that research will even be a small part of your future career.

A great, great, great place to start is the National Institutes of Health (NIH) "New Investigators Program" web page:

New investigators are the innovators of the future - they bring fresh ideas and technologies to existing biomedical research problems, and they pioneer new areas of investigation. Entry of new investigators into the ranks of independent, NIH-funded researchers is essential to the health of this country's biomedical research enterprise. NIH’s interest in the training and research funding of new investigators is understandably deep and longstanding.

If you, like me, are a researcher in a social/behavioral research discipline, you may be wondering what this all has to do with you. Well, the NIH recognize that knowledge from non-biomed fields is necessary to the mission of improving the nation's health--especially in the areas of translating "basic" science to practice and evaluating effectiveness. There is even an entire office at the NIH concerned with behavioral and social research called, appropriately enough, the Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR). The NIH and OBSSR define "behavioral and social science research" as

a large, multifaceted field, encompassing a wide array of disciplines. The field employs a variety of methodological approaches including: surveys and questionnaires, interviews, randomized clinical trials, direct observation, physiological manipulations and recording, descriptive methods, laboratory and field experiments, standardized tests, economic analyses, statistical modeling, ethnography, and evaluation. Yet, behavioral and social sciences research is not restricted to a set of disciplines or methodological approaches. Instead, the field is defined by substantive areas of research that transcend disciplinary and methodological boundaries. In addition, several key cross-cutting themes characterize social and behavioral sciences research. These include: an emphasis on theory-driven research; the search for general principles of behavioral and social functioning; the importance ascribed to a developmental, lifespan perspective; an emphasis on individual variation, and variation across sociodemographic categories such as gender, age, and sociocultural status; and a focus on both the social and biological context of behavior.

The many, many NIH webpages contain a wealth of information to help you begin to see how your work and interests might fit with the NIH mission. There are even webcasts of conferences and seminars highlighting exciting work being conducted by people with degrees like ours. One I have viewed and recommend is the "NIH Roadmap: Interdisciplinary Methodology and Technology Summit" that was held last summer.

I can't guarantee you that allocating a little of your time exploring these opportunities now will result in you getting a post-doc or K-award later. But at the very least it will give you something interesting and informative to do while you're eating your piping hot bowl of noodles.

SITBB Vault: Egocasting and CV-ing

I have been rather busy lately...a little friend called a dissertation. But I also enjoy keeping this blog. As I have said before, this is an extension of the journaling--personal and academic--that I have always done. My compromise has been to largely post brief entries of things I have read elsewhere, with perhaps a little commentary from me. Lists also seem to be a quick, enjoyable way to keep a blog going--and, a main initial feature of SITBB was my making lists of things that I seemed to not be able to get to.

In this vein, a while back I thought I might post a list of the summer reading I wanted to do. But while I was compiling in my head what I would post here to the blog, I found myself excising a few of books from the list.

What was that about?

Well, these books were "light reading"--what some would even call "trash." As this blog is, in large part, about my PhD journey, posting such non-intellectual fare would have been like admitting to the world that I planned to spend the summer on the couch watching "Three's Company" re-runs on one of the nostalgia TV channels.

Blogger as Product

"I am so hip even my errors are correct."

--Nikki Giovanni, "Ego Tripping"*

My being loathe to make such an admission was the first I had realized that I was intentionally and strategically using this forum as a way to reveal some things about myself--and, more interesting--to cloak others.

I have heard ths kind of on-line self-presentation called egocasting. And it appears that blogging could be part of the realm of technologies of personalization. Just as I can use my iPod to listen to my own personalized 24-hour radio station full of only those songs I like, just as I can use my television and remote and DVR to view only those programs I like, I can use my blog to "broadcast" only those aspects of my graduate school experience that I like.

Even if I reveal my frustrations and errors, I can wait to craft a post until I have successfully overcome and corrected them. Even if I reveal my shortcomings, I can spin them in such a way that procrastination appears to be reflection, lack of divergent thinking becomes focus, pathological perseveration becomes dedication.

I can be a product of my own production.

Same Broadcast, Different Station

You ain't ridin/ You ain't bumpin like I'm bumpin/ You ain't sayin nuthin homie/ You ain't fresh az I'm iz...

--Bow Wow, "Fresh Azimiz"

It just so happens that while I was having this summer reading/egocasting epiphany, I was also updating my CV (or, resume, for you non-academics). In a stroke of convergent thinking (or, in a sure sign of being mired in a mental rut) it occurred to me that a CV is a much older and much more widespread type of "egocasting." In my CV I broadcast the professional self that I hope will be pleasing to my "audience"--prospective employers. I do not (purposefully) reveal my negative qualities, perhaps hoping to give the impression that I am in possession of none.

Not only do I try hard to broadcast myself in the best possible light (evident, for example, by spending inordinant amounts of time deciding between "developed" and "designed") but I implicitly try to convey that I am better--muchmuchmuch better--than any other egocast my audience may be tuning into on their prospective employee dial.

Again, I am a product. Plus I am a better/fresher/tastier/faster product than the others.

"Become the Boast..."

Well, anyone who has ever sent themselves off to faceless others in the form of a multipage listing of awards, accomplishments, and action words knows that such an endeavor can be pretty rough on the ego. You're supposed to be confidently tooting your own horn, but just as often you feel as if you may be sounding discordant notes. The act of egocasting via plain old CV-writing can be undermining to one's ego.

In true spin-making form, though, I have decided to look upon both my blog writing and my more formal professional presentations of myself not as occassions for doubt and worry, but as opportunities for goal attainment. My CV is a catalog of my proudest moments for others; But for me it can be a "how-to" manual for even more proud moments to come.

And no, I can no longer claim that this blog is "just an on-line journal"--It is also a digital representation of a (somewhat/some times) carefully crafted on-line self. But it does not have to turn into a forum for private self-guessing and self-authentification--It, like my CV, can be part of the road map to my personal mission.

In that spirit, I just may post that summer reading list. And think what you may if it is not packed with great classics or deep literary prize winners. I will likely list a few of those in the hopes that my seeing those titles here will serve as motivation to actually read (not just purchase) them. I like to think of it as having a healthy balance between work and play, seriousness and fun. (Though I could also think of it as my being shallow and frivolous.)

Whichever way you slice it: Both my CV and my blog are me--or at least a part of me that I decide is ready for public consumption. Whatever perfection contained herein is true even when it doesn't tell the complete story. And of course, any lack of perfection is part of the story, too. But at least a part of the rest of the story is my intention to reach higher...

I am so perfect so divine so ethereal so surreal. I cannot be comprehended except by my permission. I mean...I...can fly like a bird in the sky...

--Nikki Giovanni, "Ego Tripping"*

*(Recorded spoken word available on iTunes and here on Amazon)

Carnival, Carnival

Take a break from your work this evening and browse some of the entries at the 3rd Carnival of GRADual Progress hosted by Fumbling Towards Geekdom. November's carnival will be held at My Life, My Pace (details here).

SITBB Vault: Stewards Without a Ship

I may have mentioned this here before, but it's funny how one develops keen insights into doctoral education--insights necessary to thrive as a PhD student--just as one is finishing the degree. I have been reflecting on one such insight recently, the very basic question:

"What exactly is a PhD student?"

A simple answer is: "Someone who is enrolled as a student in a PhD-granting unit or department."

But what if you are a part time student instead of a full-time one? If you used to be enrolled, but dropped (or were kicked) out? If you are taking dissertation credits for two or three years?

And are you "married" to your unit or department? Or can you be placed in a different one while still maintaining your status as a "PhD student"? Are you ("instead of" or "in addition to") "married" to your discipline? To your specific content area within that discipline?

Are you a student only if you have been taken on by an advisor?

The answer I have come up with reflects the extent to which I have bought into the Carnegie Foundation's Initiative on the Doctorate's definition of the purpose of doctoral education. In their "conceptual analysis of doctoral education" the CID defines the purpose of PhD programs as being to prepare people to be "stewards of the discipline."

This steward is someone "to whom we can entrust the vigor, quality, and integrity of the field." Further, this person

"has developed the habits of mind and ability to do three things well:

responsibly transform those understandings through writing, teaching, and application."

So my answer to that very basic question, "What is a PhD student" is "A PhD student is someone who is actively preparing to be a steward of a discipline."

The whole CID statement on "stewardship" is worth a full, careful read. And like I said, I have purchased this assessment at full price. I do acknowledge, however, that it poses a particular challenge for PhD students like me who are preparing to be stewards of disciplines that have more fluid boundaries. For example, one of the tasks of stewards-in-training is to conserve the discipline, to develop:

...an understanding of the history and foundational ideas of the discipline. Disciplines evolve continuously, and stewards have responsibility for maintaining the continuity, stability, and vitality of the field. A Ph.D. recipient should understand the foundations of the field; which ideas to keep and which to reject. Moreover, a steward should understand how their discipline fits into the intellectual landscape, have a respectful understanding of the questions and paradigms of other fields, and understand how their discipline can speak to important questions.

Some disciplines are not clearly markated in terms of their origins, or their "foundations" are collaged from many different disciplinary materials. Landscape-fitting is made more challenging for students in such departments due to the "blind-men-touching-the-elephant" nature of the intellectual tree/bush/vine (or rock/mountain/sand...) these students are being entrusted with. For these students, the very vitality of their discipline is thought to lie in its intellectual diversity, a diversity that makes "stability and continuation of what?" a crucial, persistent--and not often agreed upon--question.

So. If PhD students are folks preparing to be stewards of their discipline, what are "multidisciplinary" ("transdisciplinary"..."interdisciplinary"...) PhD students going to be the stewards of?

One of my committee members, Carl Elliott, has a satirical piece called "How To Be An Academic Failure: A Guide for Beginners" (The Ruminator Review, Winter 2000, pp. 15-16. Available at http://www.uwlax.edu/faculty/giddings/Commentary/failure.htm)

He writes that "if failure is what you?re looking for, then you can hardly do better than the academic life." One route to failure is to choose to be a PhD student in an interdisciplinary field:

What about interdisciplinary degrees, you ask? Aren't they supposed to be a sure-fire waste of time and money? Well, there are two schools of thought about interdisciplinary degrees, both of which have merit, depending on the kind of failed career to which you aspire. If what you are looking for is difficulty finding a job, then yes, an interdisplinary degree can be very useful. A degree in "social thought" or "medical humanities" or "bioethics" will limit your job opportunities drastically. When you apply for jobs in mainstream departments, the chair of the search committee will roll his eyes, laugh, and toss your CV straight into the rubbish bin. It sounds appealing, I know. Yet on the other hand, these sorts of programs are often much happier places than traditional departments, and you probably will not be expected to write narrow, technical articles uninterpretable by all but 7 other people in the world. So it is a trade-off. How much happiness are you willing to undergo for the pay-off of being unemployed later? It is a difficult choice.

Why is being an inter/multi/transdisciplinary PhD student looked at this way? My opinion: Because a legitimate steward must be in charge of something. If a steward finishes her training, but the trained-for discipline does not exist out there in the world--in "traditional departments" or elsewhere--then that calls into question the whole training process. This is the case no matter how good or rigorous or intellectually compelling or well respected or highly rated or anything else this training might be.

Who is in the ideal position to define what the stewards are to be stewards of?

Perhaps the captains. The folks training the stewards. They certainly have a big role. And on the CID site there are wonderful essays by captains of various disciplinary programs, attempting to do just that.

But also, this is a job for us stewards-in-training ourselves.

As we are in training, as we are doing our PhD student thing, we are creating and defining our discipline. We are deciding--by the advisors and minors we choose, by the classes we take, by the topics of the papers we write, by the rules we abide by and those we buck, by the leadership activities we involve ourselves in--what ship we're on. By these and many other tasks we are defining what it means to be a PhD in X.

If you are enrolled in a doctoral degree program--any degree program, but particularly one in a multidisciplinary field--and you are not actively participating in your own stewardship- and discipline-defining, then you are not a PhD student.

You're just a tourist, passing through.

Marrying for Love and PhD

I had planned to blog at greater length about this, but I probably will not get around to it. "Want to Get Ahead? Get Hitched" is IHE's headline about a study by a graduate student in economics at Cornell University that showed the benefits of being married on graduate school completion and abtaining a tenure track position. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the most benefits go to married men. But what may be surprising to some are the benefits relative to single women and men for married women. Even more surprising considering the multi-taskers that the married female grad students tended to be:

Price said it was notable that a majority of women in his study who were married had children, and yet they were more productive and successful than single women. He said he hoped that those admitting graduate students to programs and hiring them would take note. “We shouldn’t view married women as being less able to do well in graduate school and the professoriate,” he said.

I can certainly attest to the married-woman-with-children scenarios. The biggest factors for me? Having a spouse who brought in real income ("real" does not equal graduate stipends) and time management-by-gunpoint. In fact, I completed my masters degree program as a partner- and child-free woman: I often think that I could have discovered a cure for cancer during that time if only I possessed the juggling skills I had to develop in my PhD program!

SITBB Vault: Being Less Critical About the Critical Review

I will be out of town (in warmer climes--YAY!) when a panel of grad students visits the Quantitative Methods class to discuss the Critical Review Paper (CRP). But since being invited to participate on the panel, my mind has occassionally drifted back to my experiences with this paper and departmental program requirement. At first my reactions were something akin to what someone suffering war-related PTSD feels when suddenly hearing a car backfire. Yes, I am exaggerating a little here. But not by much.

A colleague in my cohort famously said that trying to complete the CRP was like being constipated, and finally turning it in was like finally getting some...eliminatory relief. This description is apt. However, if for my colleague the CRP was a bout of constipation, for me it was full fledged chronic irritable bowel syndrome. (Please excuse my scatological metaphors. I am inspired by spending much of yesterday with a dozen 5 and 6 year olds, and if you've ever spent any time with that age cohort you know that all conversational/humor roads lead eventually to talk of the potty.)

Where was I? The Critical Review Paper.

For those who do not inhabit the third floor of McNeal Hall of the U of Minnesota, for our department the CRP is part one of our written preliminary examination requirement. According to the FSoS handbook, the CRP is "a measure of the student’s ability to critically analyze existing literature focusing on theoretical concepts, research methodology, and application of the findings on a specific topic."

I think a turning point for me in finally "getting" exactly how to go about this task was when my advisor (your prof, for those of you in the Quant Methods class) asked me "What research question are you attempting to answer with your review?" Prior to that I had been looking to review articles such as those found in the Journal of Marriage and Family decade review issues for guidance. Mistake. These are generally not critical reviews, but more like comprehensive reviews.

Once I thought about that research-question question, I conducted another literature search. This time I looked for articles--on any topic--in which the title was in the form of a question and that also contained "a review" or "literature review" in the title. By skimming some of these articles I was able to get a sense about how one goes about organizing a critical review paper that seeks to answer a research question. Thinking of the CRP in this way allowed me to limit my efforts: No longer was I trying to find everything written in my subject area. Instead, I was able to develop a single, focussed question in order to review articles that shed light on this question and this question only. Finding those articles was simple once I had this question in mind. And as a result, I can generally now look upon my time of CRP-ing a lot less critically than when I was in the midst of the process.

Examples

For that first crucial turning point I really had to read other articles that seemed to take the research question approach to a literature review article. It did not matter what the subject was, or even if I could understand the content. For example, consider the following examples of real journal articles and note how each one poses a specific research-type question:

(1) External cephalic version: a safe procedure? A systematic review of version-related risks

(2) Is Self-Complexity Linked to Better Coping? A Review of the Literature

(3) To justify or excuse?: A meta-analytic review of the effects of explanations

(4) What do we know about child neglect? A critical review of the literature and its application to social work practice

(5) Is Self Special? A Critical Review of Evidence From Experimental Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience

Now, in the first example I haven't the foggiest idea what external cephalic versions are let alone whether they are safe. But whatever they may be, I presume that what the author will not do in the review is present a full decade-long treatise on the history, development, and measurement of all cephalic versions, internal, external, and other. It is more likely that the author will review articles in which results indicate that these types of versions are OK and contrast these with articles claiming they are risky. Ideally the author will present a clear argument for one stance or the other--based on the research reviewed. Are the studies reliable and valid? What instruments were used? What were the sample characteristics? What about the theoretical assumptions? If no answer to the title question can be drawn, what does the reviewer suggest with regard to directions for future research that might answer this question?

The same thing goes for the second example: Either self-complexity is or is not associated with better coping. (Note: Not a review of self-complexity generally, or of coping generally.) An author poses this as a legitimate question and might come down on one side or the other based on the quality of the studies reviewed. Or more complexly, it may be that the reviewed research seems to suggest that under circumstances involving X the answer is affirmative while under Z types of circumstances the answer is negative. In the third review article example, it may be that there are five or so effects of explanation recognized in the literature. But perhaps the author has some reason (which she or he would, if she or he were completing this review for the CRP assignment in the Department of Family Social Science, articulate clearly in the "delimitations" section of the review) for choosing just these two possible effects. In this case, it appears that in addition to reviewing articles that address this question, the author is also doing some re-analysis of the data--perhaps computing effect sizes, for example--to bolster the concusion.

In the fourth example, perhaps the author groups "what we know about child neglect" into a trio of answers. Then the articles being reviewed might be organized under these results. "Some research finds that we know X"...then an integration of discussion of the several articles that typify this conclusion; "Other research, however, has concluded Y"...then a discussion of these studies, perhaps contrasting them with the first group; etc. Also what this example does is specify the intent of the article: not methodological analysis, not theoretical critique, but what the articles reviewed might mean for practice in a specific field.

Finally, in the fifth example the author seeks, again, to answer with the review a research question. In this case the title does a nifty job of specifying the two fields that the literature is drawn from. The author might briefly discuss why these two fields were chosen and not others. And in this case it may be that the idea of self being special is given a different spin in these two disciplinary traditions. Perhaps the author is affiliated with one discipline and wants to argue that conclusions from the other one provide greater insight. Or perhaps the author is in a third discipline, one in which self-specialness is taken as a given, but she is providing evidence from reviewing articles in these two disciplines that such a view ought to be abandonned.

At any rate, these are just hypothetical examples but hopefully they illustrate my point. Your CRP issues may not involve this difficulty at all. But for me, this tactic provided much needed clarity that helped me complete this program requirement. Best of luck!

Useful article on writing literature reviews in the family field:

Benson, M. J., Sporakowski, M. J., Stremmel, A. J. (1992). Writing reviews of family literature: Guiding students using Bloom's taxonomy of cognitive objectives. Family Relations, 41, 65-69.

The U Wants My 52 Cents (and Other Post-PhD Updates)

What a wonderful few days! Friday I received my final billing statement from the University. This semester I only had to register for empty, zero-fee credits for this semester and I had already paid my library fines, so I was not worried or anything. But imagine my surprise when I found that I had a credit on my account! Fifty two cents, to be exact!

Then Sunday--a gorgeous day of warmth and sunshine following days and days of cold and rain--my mother safely arrived in town from Dallas and my father safely from Indianapolis.

In the case of my father, however, without his wallet. (You have no idea how difficult it is to find the correct number to call for lost and found at airports and airlines.)

Anyway, Monday afternoon I successfully defended my dissertation. More people than I expected came to the presentation. My father counted 24. (And snapped a photograph of every single one of them. But that is another story!) Minus my four committee members (who had to be there), and my parents, that is a pretty good turnout.

(Oh! And while I was setting up the laptop for the presentation, my father got a call on his cell phone: His wallet had been found, turned into MSP airport security, and everything--including cash--was intact!)

The meeting with my committee members following the public portion of the defense went very well. Turns out, the revisions I need to make to the dissertation are relatively minor. I plan to knock those out as soon as possible while my motivation and momentum are still high.

Yesterday I turned in my official graduate school paperwork. There had been a snag with one of the forms: The graduate school had typed in my correct first and middle names, but gave me the last name of another defending PhD student whose first name is also Yvette. (And who, coincidently, I happened to know.) That had previously been resolved through multiple phone calls to multiple offices: my defense chair received permission to cross out the incorrect name and write in my correct one. (But had it been necessary/quicker I was prepared to legally change my name to match the form.) I thought that upon seeing the form with the crossed out and edited name, the person receiving it would object. And I had failed to get the name of the person who gave my committee member permission to change the form.

But the woman at the desk didn't even blink. She merely stamped the form and congratulated me!

I then visited my new office where I'll be post-doc-ing (the key they issued me works!), and attended a lovely luncheon.

Then today I received my first invitation to join the U alumni association. The alumni association--I am now an alum! I can start making legacy gifts to the University and whatnot! Unfortunately all I have now to donate is that 52-cent credit. But it was nice to receive the email just the same.

THANK YOU to everyone who came to the presentation, who has supported me over these years, and who wished me well over the last few weeks. I feel a great sense of satisfaction and relief. But in a way I also wish I could rewind the clock and start over again at about the point of the last few writing weeks or so. I know that sounds crazy. But it's like when you're at an amusement park and you're waiting in a 3-hour line for the ultimate roller coaster and you can't wait to ride, but it seems you'll never get there and it's hot and uncomfortable and your feet hurt and some of the people smell funny, then you do get there to those stalls right in front of the tracks behind the thick yellow line and then the next car comes and you actually get into the ride it is finally your turn!

And then the whole thing is over in three minutes.

That's how it is for me. I barely remember the presentation or my meeting with the committee afterwards. Oh well. I know it must have happened. Everyone tells me so.

And now the next chapter begins. Several folks have commented that the subtitle of this blog is no longer accurate. That is true. I have no idea what purpose SITBB might serve now that I am no longer on that particular journey through that particular looking glass. But since I've grown kind of attached to this space, I'm sure I'll think of something. So, please stay tuned.

In the meantime, know that if I can make it through this journey, it is certainly not impossible for you!

SITBB Vault: (W)rites of Passage

1. Search in all those folders in my basement to
2. retrieve my childrens' immunization records to
3. determine if/when they have received a chicken pox vaccine so that I can
4. fill out the "Verification of Chicken Pox Immunization" form and
5. turn it in to the child care center by the deadline.
6. Update my CV for the upcoming conference employment matching service

All very worthy tasks that likely will not get done today. In the past I have tried to do what How-to-PhD books (and other books on other how-to motivational topics) tell me to and break up larger tasks into smaller ones. That is supposed to make the task seem less daunting. But that motivational trick has not worked for me when steps 1-5 above have been on my "To Do" List (as opposed to this "Probably Won't Do" List). The reason, I think, is that I secretly want my children to get the chicken pox.

I remember when the physician first told my husband and me about this vaccine. We both hesitated, decided not to give our kids the shot (much to the doctor's surprise), and had to sign a legalese-filled paper indicating we had been offered the vaccine and understood what it was for but still declined anyway.

This anti-chicken pox drug was not around when I was a child. When I was young, getting the chicken pox was just something that naturally happened--like losing your baby teeth or figuring out and accepting the non-logic of Santa Clause.

The summer I got the "chicken pops" (as my little sister called it) my three cousins were staying for several weeks with us. One by one, we all came down with it. I remember stinky but soothing creams and lotions, long baths in a powdery substance, and directions to NOT SCRATCH OR ELSE YOU MAY BE SCARRED FOR LIFE. I'm sure I experienced discomfort. But what I remember more was me, my sister, and cousins all going through something together and how nice it was to receive so much attention and nurturing from the adults.

It was a rite of passage.

I remember being amazed at the time with the idea of going through something major and painful, but then never having to endure it again. Having and then overcoming the chicken pox would prove that I had achieved an important marker separating childhood from a slightly more mature childhood.

I am not sure that my children, with their much more comfortable and safe (car seats? What about riding around the bed of my grandfather's truck with rusty wrenches and loose nails rolling around?) childhood, will experience many rites of passage--at least not ones that are more or less "natural," shared by almost all other children of their cohort, and that might inspire such wonder as contemplating the deeper meaning of chicken pox inspired in me.

SO, what does this have to do with filling out that immunization form, and further what might this have to do with disscratination* ?(*n. procrastination in starting/completing tasks related to the doctoral dissertation)

First, turning in that form will, I am afraid, reveal things about my selfishness. I think I remember that eventually, after several wellbaby visits to the doctor and several times filling out that legal form where I admit I am a bad mother for not protecting my child from the pox--eventually I think we decided to go ahead and get it. Part of our reasoning was that our children were older, they could better withstand any potential negative reactions from the vaccine. But another part--at least, speaking for myself--was the disapproval I perceived I might get from other parents, teachers, and others. How would I be viewed if I had not taken the steps to avert an avoidable discomfort for my children? And more importantly, wouldn't getting the chicken pox lose its status as a rite of passage if most children do not have to go through it anymore?

Second, this whole anti-chicken pox thing is haunting me with its analogies to the process of completing a graduate school degree.

I am well aware that in many ways, getting a PhD today is easier than any other time in the history of higher ed. Ask someone in their 60s about their process and you will hear of hand-drawing graphs and figures, of entering data on a punch-card and then walking halfway across campus to the building that housed the huge mainframe computer in order to get that data analyzed. For example, in my own department, I just passed my written preliminary exam: 2 time-consuming, publishable-quality papers. But cohorts just a few years senior than me still had to sit in a room and sweat bullets while they typed out essay answers to some obscure written prelim questions designed by faculty members who themselves had to endure such a process. (And many departments still do written prelims this way.)

So, when going through a PhD program some "illnesses" are endured because we do not have tools to "cure" them (e.g., computer technology). But there are others that are endured (and inflicted) because many people hold to the idea that they are rituals that are important as rites of passage. Unlike my imaginary parenting-police audience, though, it is probably common to think that grad students who do not go through the pain and suffering of whatever PhD rite have not really achieved that special something that turns students into scholars. Like atheletes who use steroids, finding a way to circumvent the common aches of getting a PhD is seen by many as taking the easy way out.

I also suspect that some grad students make things harder on themselves, believing that if they are not broke, tired, hungry, lonely, over-worked, overwhelmed, and over-committed they are not gradstudenting the correct--and authentic--way. And the resulting lack of mettle will be even more evident once on the jobhunting trail (see #6 impossible task above). Or, some may think that this lack of connection to previous generations of scholars will make any sense of isolation they may be feeling even more pronounced.

(Or, maybe we graduate students just like the attention?)

Thus, my disctracting thought for today is:
When is a graduate school task an important rite?
When is that rite a "right"?
When is it, alternately, something that should be cured, exorcised, having outlived its usefulness?

Headline News

And my LAST WORD is...

LISTEN.

A while back Blogos had a wonderful post about the last word of your dissertation. Before I even had a single chapter written I projected here that my last word would be "transformation." Not bad, but I like my actual (for now) last word even better. I do not know if it will hold: The diss is now in the hands of my four committee members, and I have not even defended it yet before a jury of my peers, so that may change on the final copy I submit to the Graduate School.

At any rate, I'm just happy to have a last word. THANK YOU SO MUCH to everyone who has congratulated me here, via email, in the halls, etc. It is a huge boost to get these pats on the back. I will have a lot more to say about the closing weeks of this whole process soon. But for now, let me just say that it can be done. If you are just starting this process, or are stuck somewhere in the middle, or trying to leap over one of the final hurdles--just keep on keepin' on. I know that sounds simplistic, but that's the best general advice I can give right now.

Still Sexually Ambiguous After All These Years

One of the things that I am able to do now that the dissertation is done (for now) is catch up on my TV viewing. I am NOT one of those academics who (claim to) only watch C-SPAN or public television or (the horror!) proudly proclaim that they do not own a television. I like watching TV! I even have a dish--and a PVR! Well, anyway, one of my husband's and my favorite programs is FX Network's Nip/Tuck, and I finally caught up on the season last night (the season finale from last season and the first episode from last week.)

*NOTE: Mild spoilers ahead. Do not read further if you haven't seen these episodes yet.

This is the fourth season. Part of the problem this season, as I see it, will be keeping the "edginess" in a show that has already pulled out all the shocking elements that it seems possible to pull out. So far, it seems like the series may be sticking to a tried and true formula: When in doubt, hit 'em with sex and gender exploits. Transgendered heavies! Brokeback Medical Practice! Sex organ-less crazies! Incest! As much as I like the show, I have a sneaking suspicion that this season may be it--at least for me, if not for the network. Any regular viewers want to guess what will be N/T's "jumping the shark" moment?

At any rate, I was very happy that the show got a little color this season in the form of one of my favorite actresses, Sanaa Lathan. Looks like she'll be a recurring character, so it'll be interesting to see how this will play out. So far, it seems they're doing the whole "let's not mention that she's Black" thing. (Remember Aisha Tyler's recurring role on Friends?) That'd be too bad if the show's producers and writers keep that up. Or maybe they think there's just nothing edgy any more about race?

Light-Bright, Making Theory with White

Speaking of race, I have been pleased to see this study getting a lot of publicity recently: “Putting Whiteness Theory to the Test: An Empirical Assessment of Core Theoretical Propositions.” Here is a Diverse Issues in Higher Ed piece on the study; It was also featured recently here on MPR's Midmorning program; And here are a couple of University press releases about it: MNDaily and UMN News.

If you're an FSoS'er you may remember one of the PIs/co-authors, Douglas Hartmann from our Sociology Department here at Minnesota, from his lunch seminar in our department a while back where he presented some of his fascinating work on race and sports.

This study is part of the American Mosaic Project. From the website:

We hear a great deal about the diversity of American society—ethnic, racial, and religious. Sometimes, our diversity has caused commentators, and leaders, to fear that we are headed toward a divisive "culture war." At other times, we have celebrated our diversity and understood it as being at the heart of our vitality as a nation.

Sponsored by the David Edelstein Family Foundation, our three-year project has explored these issues, with particular focus on race and religion as key forms of difference that shape American life and experience....

The American Mosaic Project is designed to contribute to our understanding of what brings Americans together, what divides us, and the implications of our diversity for our political and civic life. We are most concerned with how Americans themselves understand the nature and consequences of diversity for their own lives and for our society as a whole....

Power to the Pipeline

I attended this wonderful symposium a few years ago. I highly recommend it. And if you attend, drop me a line and we can get coffee! From the conference website:

Keeping Our Faculties of Color Symposium; April 12-14, 2007; Radisson University Hotel, Minneapolis, Minnesota

This exciting and interactive symposium, the fourth Keeping Our Faculties meeting, will provide presentations that will energize and empower people as well as help to break down barriers to full inclusion; offer opportunities to share narratives and experiences from individuals and discrete groups from which to discover commonalities; share best practices for ensuring diversity from the academy, and from public and private sector organizations; engage attendees in the development of action plans and strategies for their campuses; and present scholarly research to frame issues of faculty diversity and provide approaches and solutions.

Sessions will focus on strategies that have been successfully employed to date; approaches for developing a pipeline to retain students of color and recruit and advance persons of color in academia; models for leadership to promote change; and strategies to empower faculty of color, transform institutional cultures, and produce change within and outside the academy...

Call for abstracts here (pdf).

SITBB Vault: 60 Minutes with 3 Bulls

Just before I cross the street, on the start of my walk from Parking Lot S101 to my building, I can see them there. They are gathered in the grass, flanked by trees. One, the one I have come to call the Leader, raises his head. Every day he looks out for me. Every day he is there to be sure that I am there, returning to campus for another day of work.

I move closer. Now I am across Carter Avenue. The Leader whispers "Ah, it's you" and goes back to looking out for other students, professors, and assorted campusfolk.

But today I do not keep walking. Today I stop for a while to visit with the 3 Bulls.

This one, I call him Number Two, looks over to the one I call Sleepy. I do not think he approves of Sleepy, perhaps because Sleepy is always...sleeping. Well, except for that time he was about two feet from his current position, and tipped over on his back. When these Bulls were first installed, they would every once in a while be in new positions. The campus paper at these times claimed the Bulls were the victims of student pranksters.

The possibility that they are, actually, alive never occurred to most people.

But here is proof that they are alive. See how the ground has been disturbed by Sleepy's breath?

One thing that is difficult to appreciate by mere pictures is how very appealingly tactile the Bulls are. Their deep night skin invites me to touch them. The crosshatches in their pelt tingle my fingertips as I play across them like instrument strings.

They gather, retain, exaggerate their surrounding weather. In the summertime, on our walk to Lot S101 from the U's day camp, my kids used to love to climb all 3. I could quell any disappoint ("Oh, Mommy, can't we stay at camp five minutes longer"; "But why can't we go to McDonalds for dinner"; "You said we could have a play date with ______--You said") by promising my daughters a visit with the Bulls. But some days, some too-rare nice and warm and sun-drenched Minnesota days, the Bulls were too hot to be climbed on or touched at all.

The 3 Bulls live across the street from the Dairy Building--which, as I recently found out, is actually called Haecker Hall. Haecker, like my building, McNeal, is located on the St. Paul campus of the Twin Cities (main) campus of the University of Minnesota. Our St Paul campus is kind of like the poor country cousin to the other two TC sites, East Bank and West Bank. This, even though these two Minneapolis campuses are only a 10-15 minute shuttle ride away from St. Paul's.

Once when I was riding the shuttle bus from the East Bank I overheard this conversation:

Student 1: "So, man, you gettin' off at the Gopher [parking] lots?"

Student 2: "No, man..." Softly, "I'm going over to the St. Paul campus."

Student 1: "St. Paul!" Laughs, "Man, I've been here four years, I don't think I've ever had a class Over There."

Student 2: "Yeah, man, it sucks big time...it's all, like, cows and horses and agriculture and shit. I don't even know why they put the ______ Department over there."

Student 1, getting off the shuttle: "A'ight, man, I'll see you tomorrow."

Student 2: (slouches in his seat as the shuttle pulls off and begins down the transitway to the St. Paul campus)

But I love the St. Paul campus. And I love the Dairy Building/Haecker Hall--even though I have never had a class or meeting in there. The very best thing about the Dairy Building/Haecker Hall is the bathrooms. Here, on the tiles, across from the big Bulls, are still more bulls--along with horses and pigs and all manner of other animals representative of "agriculture and sh**."

I've now spent an entire hour with the 3 Bulls. This, because of an exercise inspired by "Stretching" Exercises for Qualitative Researchers. It is exercise 4.2: "The Camera as an Extension of the Eye; The Eye as an Extension of the Soul" on page 92. I am not sure I have now succeeded in "finding out what kind of qualitative researcher [I] might become." I did see a familiar setting in a new light.

Tomorrow I'll go back to just passing my Bulls. The Leader will look up and acknowledge--and reinforce--my continuing presence on campus. Maybe if I get to campus early enough, I'll arrive to see Number Two look past Sleepy to the grassy quad beyond, where some folks from the Raptor Center might be helping an injured boreal owl take flight again.

There are not many places you can be protected by a bull's watchful gaze while owls and eagles fly overhead. In fact, the only place I know of is on the St. Paul campus.

***News story about the installation of the Bulls here.***

SITBB Vault: Should I Stay or Should I Go?

It's August again and that means two upcoming things in FSoS here in McNeal Hall--two upcoming rites of passage that, for the first time since my arrival, I am considering skipping. The first is the Minnesota State Fair and all its concomitant parking/walking/driving nightmares.

Not that I will be avoiding the fair itself: This is the highlight of my family's summer and gets more fun each year as our daughters grow older and are better able to appreciate it. Huge mutant pigs! Snickers bars dipped in batter and fried on a stick! Rides gallore! Political campaigning! Yes, I'll be there for all that. But the Saint Paul campus of the U of MN broders the fairgrounds. As such, I have no desire to plan out my day on campus to try to avoid and outfox the hordes of fairgoers taking up all the spaces in my usual parking lots or taking leisurely shortcuts through the library or asking for directions then immediately proceding to walk off in the direction opposite what I just told them.

Plus, my wanting to avoid the Fair crowds will give me a good excuse to miss the second rite of my life on the St Paul campus in late summer: the "welcome" events and orientations in my department for the new cohort of grad students.

By now every other student in my cohort has moved on to bigger and better things. Several folks from the cohort after me have now gone on to successfully defend their dissertations. I am on my own clock and accept this. I took a full 18 months off following the births of my daughters. I am proud of my own accomplishments and thus, find it easy to rejoice in the accomplishments of my peers. But I am not sure that I can take participating in the rituals meant to usher in yet another group of peers to the program.

And in my program we have nice rituals. First, everyone gets office space and a desk. Most of the first years share a large group office, in the process building community and a sense of belonging. Those coming into the program with RAs generally are incorporated immediately into the culture of their respective research projects. All first years take the introductory process seminar where they are introduced to the department, the faculty, and the ongoing research projects and teaching opportunities.

Second, the first years attend formal orientation. I understand this may be different this year after much discussion about exactly what--and how much-- information is necessary to throw at new grad students their first day. But regardless of its final form, the students will get to sit around conference tables and see each other and see the important people they will come into contact with almost daily for the next several years of their lives. They may or may not remember all the information coming their way. They may or may not feel like frauds who have been let in accidentally into this top ranked program. But at least they will experience, literally, occupying a seat at the Family Social Science table.

Third, our department has informal networking opportunities for new grad students worked into the start of the academic year. Most are paired with an "experienced" graduate student. Many will come in already knowing at least one existing student who has answered questions since the recruiting stage of their decision making process; Some will have been guests at their peer mentor's home during a previous visit.

And the best informal opportunity of all is the potluck lunch during orientation, attended by staff, faculty, and old and new graduate students. In some past years some folks have brought their instruments and provided live music while everyone mingles and eats. There has been a tradition of the new second years presenting "care packages" to the newbies who have taken their place on the lower rung of the graduate program ladder. Always there is a clever poem written and recited by a respected retired elder statesman of our department, Dr. Gerry Neubeck (see My Autobiography.)

And of course there are always introductions.

If I were on a therapist's couch right now, I imagine this is where the therapist would stop doodling, sit up with sudden interest, and interrupt me: "Tell me more about these introductions."

Well. Of course it is standard procedure to say your name, whether your program focus is family therapy or family science, where you're from--and what year in the program you are in. I think last year I made a joke out of this latter piece of mandatory introductory information, perhaps coughing in place of giving a year or offering a random variable, X, instead of a numeric year.

Sure, I got a laugh. I'm sure anything I'd do this year might get a laugh, too. I suspect that by this time I have become a part of the departmental legend--though, not anything near Dr. Neubeck in stature, of course. But the story about the PhD student who had twins her first year, ushering in another six or so subsequent babies (including another set of twins!) in a cohort of seven graduate students--well, that's quite a tale.

Sure, my story of babies and time off and publications and presentations and honors might serve as a hopeful tale for others, proving that family life and graduate school success (or, at the least, survival) can go arm in arm. Sure, I might provide a necessary reality check for those first years with their carefully filled-out program checklists detailing their hopeful (and likely unrealistic) three-and-a-half year plans. And sure, it would do me some good to meet these new students with their very different backgrounds and strengths and possibilities for teaching me something new.

But, you know...the parking...the crowds...the heat. Not to mention all this work I have to do... Plus I won't have child care because my children's kindergarten doesn't begin until September 8th...

As much as I believe in fully participating in the life and culture of the department, perhaps it is time for me to leave this particular rite to folks who don't feel the need to cough instead of revealing how long they've been students.

Then again, the girls and I could stop in quickly for the potluck. We could leave right after hearing this year's poem. Before the introductions.