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Intra-University Collaborations
or How to Win Friends, Influence People and
Get Resources?
Hal Stern
Department of Statistics
University of California, Irvine
Workshop of Department Chairs
Salt Lake City JSM, July 27-28, 2007
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Background
• My experience:
5 years as Chair of new department at UCI
• Previously on the faculty at
Iowa State, Harvard
Your mileage may vary!
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Working with the Administration
• Planning (strategic and otherwise)
– “Strategic Planning” (especially as top-down
administrative exercise) can be a hard sell – But strategic planning is important
• Hiring priorities
• Programs (undergrad, graduate, joint)
• Research areas• Space and infrastructure
– Involving the Dean
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Working with the Administration
• Don’t be afraid to ask for resources
– Examples
• unique hiring opportunities
• resources to support teaching initiatives
• administrative support or matching funds for grants
• pilot money for research centers
– You will often get “no”
but occasionally get “yes”
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Working with the Administration
• (Self) Promotion is important
– Especially true for a field like statistics (contributions
may not be known to all) – Pursue ASA, IMS Fellowships (and other recognitions)
and then publicize them
– Make sure folks know about
• Grants• Media appearances
• Significant publications
– A key point is that other Departments do this well!
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Working with the Administration
• External Reviews
– One important mechanism for having theadministration learn about the department
– Not without risk
• Key issues
– Identifying the committee (usually candidates)
– Selling the Department’s strengths
– Identifying where the Department can use help(opportunities not currently addressed because of needfor more resources)
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Collaboration across Departments
• Key in the current research environment (bigscience grants in both NSF and NIH)
• There are often others willing to step in on the
quantitative side of a project – Mathematics
– Computer Science
• Need to
– Encourage faculty to collaborate – Help them succeed
– Value collaborative research in reviews
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Collaboration across Departments
• Rainmaking 101
– Chair (or other senior faculty) can play a key
role in helping junior faculty get involved – Find out what campus colleagues are doing
and look for connections (Chairs have many
opportunities)
– Involve junior faculty (mentoring) – Ideally they will run with it
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Collaboration across Departments
• Consulting Center
– Subject of Academic Repssession last year
– Positives
• Can provide access to problems andidentify potential collaborations
• Can be a resource for trainingstudents
– Negatives
• Can be a real (unrecognized) drainon resources
STATISTICS
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Collaboration within Departments
• Communication
– Meetings
• Agenda• Invite comments from all (especially junior faculty)
– Informal
• Learn the best way to communicate with people
• Email works best for many but not all• Alternatives include drop-in visit / scheduled
meeting / phone
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Collaboration within Departments
• Hiring
– Have the fight before the interviews are held
(rather than after)• Position description
• Creating the medium list (anyone should be able toidentify someone for this list)
• Creating the short list (try to create a comparablegroup or subgroups) – Not just one senior person to be interviewed
– Not just one genetics/bioinformatics
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Collaboration within Departments
• Hiring – The interview visit
• Remember the interview is about selling your Dept as well as
exploring candidates• Solicit input from everyone who spent time with the candidate
– After the interviews• Non-binding, anonymous vote/poll
• Lots of discussion (lessons of CRLT (UM) Theatre Program)
• If no clear choice, then – Discussion
– Additional information
– Can meet more than once
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Collaboration within Departments
• Promotion
– Mentoring (informal / formal)
– Frequent reviews• Many universities have formal periodic reviews
• Equally important to have annual “informal” review(review of CV, meeting)
– Identify issues early• Non-productive junior faculty
• Disagreements among senior faculty
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Collaboration within Departments
• Service – Ideally addressed at the hiring stage
– Senior faculty are key (culture of service)
– Strive for even workload – Ideally faculty have different interests (computing,
space, undergrad program, grad program)
– The poor team player is a difficult problem at mostuniversities due to limited leverage
• Merit reviews
• Discretionary funds
• Teaching assignments
