David Turpin was installed as President at the University of Alberta earlier this week. His inaugural speech was good. Very good. Read a shortened version of it here.
(Full disclosure: I spoke at a leadership function at the University of Alberta in August, for which I received a fee. The University has also recently purchased two of our syndicated research products. Make of that what you wish.)
The speech starts out with what I would call some standard defences of the university, which any president would give: we seek truth and knowledge, we innovate, and we create jobs, yadda yadda. Where it gets interesting is where he starts his appeal to the provincial government. Let me quote what I think are the key bits:
“Our task continues to be to ask unexpected questions, seek truth and knowledge, and help society define, understand and frame its challenges. Our goal for the future is to find new and innovative ways to mobilize our excellence in research and teaching to help municipal, provincial, national and international communities address these challenges.”
Note: the truth/knowledge tasks “continue”, but now we’re adding a “goal” of mobilizing the university’s talents to address “challenges”. And these are not just abstract challenges. Turpin gets very, very specific here:
“To our municipal partners: We will work with you to address your major goals on poverty reduction, homelessness, downtown revitalization, infrastructure renewal and transportation.
To our provincial partners: We will work with you to strengthen a post-secondary education system that serves the needs of all Alberta’s learners. We will provide our students the educational experience they need to seed, fuel and drive social, cultural and economic diversification. We will advance social justice, leading reconciliation with our First Nations and protection for minorities. We will conduct research to sustainably develop Alberta’s wealth of natural resources and improve Albertans’ health and wellness.”
These are really specific promises. If I’m a municipal or provincial official, what I hear from this is “Cool! U of A is going to be my think tank! It’s going to put expertise at my disposal in areas like poverty reduction and economic diversification”. That may or may not be Turpin’s intent, but it’s what they will hear. And that’s well beyond the traditional role of a university in Canada, and in some ways beyond even some of the “state service” commitments that exist in US Land Grant institutions. Sure, ever since von Humboldt, universities have been there to serve and strengthen the state, but I think the way Turpin is articulating this is genuinely new.
Now, no doubt the University has enormous resources to help achieve all of these things. But those resources are mostly faculty members and grad students. And while the university can ask them nicely to help folks at city hall/the legislature when they come calling, the question is: what’s in it for the profs and grad students to drop what they’re doing and go help the city/province (especially if they feel they have better things to do)? Is the expectation that staff will do this out of a collective desire to contribute to their communities, or will incentives be put in place?
This goes deep to the heart of a university’s research mission. At research universities like U of A, tenure and promotion is based mostly on publication records, and time is supposed to be spent 40-40-20 on teaching, research, and service. But if your provost walks down the hall and says “hey, I just met with a couple of MLAs, and they’re hoping they can borrow your expertise for a couple of weeks”, do those expectations now change? Will tenure/promotion committees actually take into account work done for government as equivalent to work done for an academic publication?
(For those of you not native to academe, it may seem amazing that research done for public policy, something that changes the way government makes decisions in a certain area, is not rated as highly for tenure/promotion as publishing things in journals that on average are read by a handful of people. It is amazing, yes. But true more often than not.)
If the answer to those questions is no, then I don’t think this initiative will go far. But if the answer is yes, then Turpin is literally talking about a new kind of university, one that is prepared to sacrifice at least some of the prestige associated with being a “world-class university” with a laser-like focus on publication outputs, in order to contribute to its community in very concrete ways. It’s not a reduction in research intensity, but it is a different type of research intensity.
The risk, of course, is that this new type of intensity won’t come with as many dollars attached. I hope that’s not the case. But in any event, this could be quite an exciting experiment. One definitely worth keeping an eye on.
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When I read this post, my mind immediately goes to the business of engaging students in the human, social justice and economic development organizations in their community — especially the commitments to poverty reduction, homelessness, social justice and providing students “the educational experience they need to seed, fuel and drive social, cultural and economic diversification”.
Will there be a focus on the development of informed and connected citizens through co-curricular activity, required service learning, graduation requirements … or other ways of enabling students to “apply” their learning in real and tangible ways that benefit their communities and the province?
More is needed than simply leveraging the research activities of faculty (and presumably graduate students) in service of community. For Turpin’s lofty goals to truly take root and grow, every person associated with the university must be engaged in a structured way. This too will take incentivization of learning by offering credits and other rewards for getting out of the residence hall and showing up to help out at the food bank once in awhile. And this too will take some budget commitment.
Interesting initiative. I share your skepticism, but it’s even harder than you suggest to provide the incentives. Even if UofA allows greater weight on ‘community service’ that doesn’t really matter much for incentives unless all universities internationally do. If I blow my time on something my own university recognizes that no one else in my field cares about, I might get tenure from UofA but I won’t gain any standing in my field at large. That matters for scholarly ego, and also for cold hard cash because scholarly standing at large determines grant funding and external hiring offers. You’ve essentially locked yourself into UofA in a hiring market that is very internationally fluid.
In economics, status depends almost entirely on publications in top international journals. Everything else is charity. Some people are charitable with their time; others aren’t. But whatever my own proclivity for charity, it is unlikely to be changed if a nrequest comes from my Dean to give up more of my own time so the university can earn brownie points with the local government. Myself I give a lot of time to non research things, but I much prefer to choose those things myself.
Hi Kevin. Presumably that would matter less to people who’ve decided to stay the rest of their career at a single university, though. Presumably the need to have a CV that impresses other unis only matters pre-tenure, and if one wishes to be mobile, no? I wonder how big that second group is.
True, many people are not mobile. But they will still likely care about external opinions on their CVs if they a) want external research funding b) want market salary adjustments c) want to give their grad students best possible chance on job market d) want to feed their academic ego by having a ‘big dog’ reputation when they are at an international conference. In my experience, (a) through (d) still motivate a lot of academics who aren’t mobile.
That said, there are also people who don’t care about (a) through (d) and have spare time on their hands. Maybe they’re looking for something to do–and providing local service might be a better offer than whatever else they were doing.
My major thrust here is that you are right that getting academics to spend time on stuff is easier said than done. Moreover, what I’m trying to add to your point is that it is not just internal UofA tenure incentives but also external incentives that drive time allocation behaviour.
Yes, agreed. This was I was thinking of when I said “the risk is that it might come with fewer dollars attached”.
Kevin, an accurate (and thus unfortunate) account of career thinking for academics at research institutions.
“Deciding” to stay at one university, i.e. becoming unemployable at comparative institutions, means dropping your salary/benefits leverage to zero. A very short-sighted move for employees anywhere including universities. So faculty at a globally competitive university would be very unwise to (significantly) sacrifice international standing for local brownie points. What Alberta can do (and what others do) is to balance the service to community against teaching. Think of it as an alternative buy-out policy. Would be interesting to see if Alberta is willing to go this route.