My scheduler is fabulous. So as I read Tony Blair’s new book, I thought the following quote just about sums it up:
“Kate Garvey was the gatekeeper, the custodian of the diary. There is a whole PhD thesis to be written by some smart political student about the importance of scheduling….to call it being ‘in charge of the diary’ is like calling Lennon and McCartney people who ‘wrote songs’.”
Tony Blair, My Journey, p. 22
I’ve been thinking lately about the various mechanisms that research institutions use to both acquire and then subsidize advanced instrumentation such as MRI’s, Mass Specs, or Two Photon Microscopes. Obviously there are the direct charges to research grants, but in practice, that may not be enough–especially when there are technician salaries, depreciation costs and service contracts to worry about. So here’s a bleg: how does your institution support such shared equipment? Are there cross-subsidies such as start-up packages?
Here in Washington, we can already see the orange and red of leaves on the streets of our neighborhood. This weekend in the mountains, the passing of summer was even more abundantly clear with crisp temperatures, and the velvet Milky Way extending across the night skies, Cygnus nearing the zenith. This has been the hottest summer I can remember in Washington. But it also was the snowiest winter on record. A year for extremes I guess.
This past week I got a hardhat tour of the new Phase II construction including a harrowing trip up to the new roof. What a view! The new Krasnow will have have many more wet laboratories to complement our computer modeling. I hope to expand greatly on our translational research partnership with Inova Health Systems, to continue our investment in integrative neuroscience using the full spectrum of methods from molecular and cell biology, and to move into new model systems (for us) such as zebra fish. At the same time, we keep our eyes firmly on our bread and butter–the scientific opportunities that have already brought us success–in neuroinformatics, computational neuroscience, cognitive sciences and a massive integration of all of these areas with the computational tools for studying complex adaptive systems.
A week from this Monday, I’ll be giving the academic year’s inaugural Monday afternoon lecture on the State of the Institute. To telegraph a bit of my remarks, Krasnow is thriving, two decades following its founding.
My favorite New England village, Woods Hole, hasn’t face the likes of this since Hurricane Bob visited us on August 19, 1991. That was a very exciting day.
In the meantime, I can recommend to loyal readers this wonderful post by Conor Friedersdorf while guest blogging at Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish. Conor, like myself, grew up in Southern California. His perspectives on the Ivys reflect my own conflicted ideas regarding the elite schools in the Northeast–yes, they are meritocratic, but no they don’t adequately serve as a good filter for membership in our society’s decision-making elite.
Chrispian Jago’s cool map is here.
It’s become a tradition at the Institute–we welcome back faculty, staff and students with a picnic barbecue. Today, the weather is picture perfect–the torrid heat of the Washington summer is in transition to the much more temperate norms of Fall–the University’s dormitories are being refilled as I write these words with new incoming freshman and a huge crane is pouring the concrete for the slab on the second floor of the new Krasnow expansion building.
I’m looking very much forward to today’s events and for a productive semester.
For the readers of this blog, I’ll be posting from around the globe this semester as my travels take me overseas.
I haven’t commented to date on the case of prominent Harvard cognitive scientist Marc Hauser basically out of respect for the investigatory process. However with the report of Harvard FAS Dean Michael Smith here, I think it’s time to weigh in, at least to the general issue of scientific misconduct, without commenting on the specifics of the Hauser case itself.
Any case of scientific misconduct is both sad and at the same time extremely serious. The progress of science requires, from all investigators, the highest levels of professional conduct. From my perspective these include the active prohibition against: falsification of data, fabrication of data and plagiarism (FFP as we teach it to graduate students).
Any example of a scientist, particularly a very prominent one, being found to be guilty of scientific misconduct erodes the web of trust between scientists themselves, and as importantly between scientists and the public which funds science through their tax dollars.
I’ve been thinking carefully about the role of institute director as I commence my 12th academic year at the head of Krasnow. It seems to me that just as important as the internal role–which I liken to serving as cheerleader-in-chief, is the external role, which involves a complex set of cultivation, diplomatic and social sensitivity skills that for me, are constantly evolving.
One aspect of this external role involves the complex interactions with other deans and directors at the University, each doing their best to serve their own unit’s interest, but at the same time, also aware of the overall strategic vision for George Mason as it moves forward. The key point is that from my standpoint as institute director, it’s incumbent upon me to consciously keep the larger University interest in mind and then to figure out how to align the Institute’s interests with the University. That doesn’t mean compromising the central scientific mission of the Institute. Rather, it means understanding that it doesn’t work to simply say no when that answer would make the most sense if we existed in a stand-alone context (as many of our sister institutes in fact do).
So how to get to yes? That’s the central external skill actually. To get to yes, it’s not enough to simply rejigger a proposition to be obviously win-win–that ignores political and emotional considerations. Sometimes, it takes simply the patience to wait things out, to patience to allow individuals to gain more knowledge, the patience to understand that even when a counterparty indicates no, they actually are saying yes.
Just got back from our annual planning conference–this year held on campus at the brand new Mason Inn and Conference Center (which we’ll be using for our executive short courses next summer). Take away message: the University is in good shape. I found my colleagues to be enthused and full of energy about the new academic year. There is a strong consensus for combining the strengths of a major research university with an institution dedicated to excellent teaching, and the notion of students as scholars, not just learners, as a way to differentiate ourselves going forward.
Discoverers and Discoveries 
