I think I mentioned here before that this academic year I have been serving on one of the University's strategic planning task forces. My committee, the Task Force on Graduate Reform: Discipline Evolution, was involved in working out recommendations for identifying and fostering emerging academic disciplines and supporting collaborative scholarship between disciplines.
Our preliminary report is now out. More about that in a moment. But first, I thought I'd comment a little on what the process of serving on this committee has been like for me as a graduate student.
Committee work in academia falls under the catchall category of service. Of all of the three major duties (research, teaching, service) this seems to be the one that is least defined and most dreaded. There are all sorts of reasons for this attitude--much of it, from what I can tell, well founded. But my experience with this committee (as well as with the search committee I have also served on this year) has been a wonderful example of a positive service experience.
Penny Gold, in The Chicago Guide to Your Academic Career, gives the following four point guideline for deciding whether any particular service request is one that a faculty member should take on. (Her comments are aimed at new faculty, but they apply equally to graduate students.) She advises that you
figure out if this is something that (1) you have the talent or skill for, (2) you have a strong interest in and commitment to, (3) you think has a good chance of bearing fruit, and/or (4) will help you connect with other people you're interested in working with.
My involvement with the Discipline Evolution Task Force fits all three suggestions. Taking the points out of order:
As a graduate student it is not likely that I would have otherwise ever had the occasion to know deans of colleges other than my own, administrators within the Graduate School, or folks from provosts' offices. Plus there are faculty members and (in some cases) fellow graduate students from different departments that I would, also, otherwise never come into contact with. Getting to know these people has been incredibly important in expanding my social network. The number of people I now know has exponentially expanded--These people know other people, who know other people. And so on, and so on.
Interdisciplinarity is a strong interest of mine. Both my major department (FSoS) and minor unit (Center for Bioethics) are inter- and multi-disciplinary. Together they are--I don't know--supradisciplinary. My major research area (adoption) is a topic that necessarily requires an interdisciplinary lens. I am also fascinated by thinking about and planning for the future of disciplines. (See my previous related post here.)
I guess it is for others to judge the extent to which I am talented and skillful in interdisciplinarity. But my own humble opinion is that, yes, I am. Partly because it is something I have genuine interest in, I tend to look at topics from different disciplinary stances. Since I love questions, this is a wonderful way to generate them. Since the search for answers is exciting to me, this multiple view means I am able to put to use many of my disciplinary tools--as well as learn how to use new disciplinary tools.
And here is where I come to the results of my work on this committee. It is a great experience to have something tangible result from service, and I count our report as meeting this requirement for observable results. This is only one step of the "bearing fruit" process, though. I hope that our hard work will pay off further by having the University community thoughtfully and seriously consider our recommendations. And further, I hope that many of our ideas can be put into action.
At any rate, the time and effort has been worth it. And not only was the experience painless, but actually enoyable. Service with a smile, you might say.
Executive summary (pdf, here)
Full report (pdf, here)
Please provide your feedback after reading the recommendations! You have until the end of this month to submit comments (here).
Posted by perry032 at April 3, 2006 02:04 PM | TrackBackThanks for posting that, very interesting. And for representing graduate students on the committee My advisor has been involved with some of the other committees round the same theme (interdisciplinary centres), so I've been loosely paying attention to what's going on.
How is it possible that all these concerns are being raised that the university has one process which is suggesting greater co-operation and sharing (the interdisciplinary stuff) and another (the new budget model) that will make it harder to do that?
Posted by: Evan at April 3, 2006 03:09 PM