Sage Musings: Volume 1 Issue 1
This is the first, in hopefully a series of posts of collections of musings written by some of the travel analysis industry’s sages. We hope that their wisdom, or at least the issues they raise, will be useful to other academics and practitioners alike. Not all the topics will be technical in nature; in fact, many of them are not. This first issue has musings on:
- Exercising both sides of your brain, by Dr. Pat Mokhtarian;
- Pushing back on the publish or perish mindset, by Dr. Joan Walker; and
- The benefits of teaching undergraduate classes, by Dr. Ram Pendyala
I found it interesting and inspiring that given a blank slate, all three of these very distinguished professors chose to address the value of comprehensive, deep and diverse experiences.
If you have a topic you’d like the sages to address, please feel free to submit it.
Left brain, right brain
By Dr. Pat Mokhtarian, Georgia Tech
Recently at Georgia Tech, we were fortunate to have Ms. Kyung-Hwa Kim, Performance Analysis and Monitoring Manager of the Atlanta Regional Commission (ARC), join us for lunch and an informal presentation. In reading her bio, I was delighted to learn that in addition to her modeling and planning “chops” (Master’s in Urban Planning from Portland State, 20 years as a modeler at Portland Metro, and now 10 years at ARC), she was a psychology major and also a specialist in Korean Ethnomusicology. As she introduced herself to us, she made the point that her modeling skills exercised her “left brain”, while her psychology and music skills called upon her “right brain”. Most of us are familiar with the distinction by now: the left hemisphere of the brain “specializes” in analytical thinking, logic, organization, while the right hemisphere governs creativity and intuition. At the risk of “profiling”, Ms. Kim commented that city planners may tend to be “right-brain” people while modelers tend to be “left-brain” people. And — here’s the point — the fact that she has cultivated strengths in both halves has enabled her to bridge the sometimes wide gulf between planners and engineers/modelers, to speak both their languages, and to interpret each of them to the other. As a modeler, she needed to learn how planners think and what they consider important, and as a planner, she needed to know how to talk to engineers/modelers and what they consider important. Good advice to the students and faculty alike in the room!
So I would encourage all of us to practice strengthening our non-dominant brain halves! If you’re a logical, analytical thinker, do something artistic on an ongoing basis — preferably actually doing something, but at least be a spectator at an artistic performance of some kind (e.g. read “real literature”, not just journal articles, technical reports, and textbooks). If you’re a creative type, force yourself to read up on, or take a course in, logic or quantitative methods (I can recommend numerous books involving probabilistic and mathematical thinking in everyday life, written for popular, non-technical, audiences — I divide my bedtime reading between those kinds of books and slightly more literary works).
“Handedness” is associated with the opposite brain-side dominance: left-handed people (comprising about 10% of the population) tend to be right-brained. My father was left-handed, but I am right-handed — and definitely left-brained. Some years ago though, I decided to deliberately start “exercising” my left hand. Among other activities, I learned to use a mouse, brush my teeth, and use silverware with my left hand — and I am still doing it today. I like to think it helps to stimulate my creative and intuitive side! In any case, what could it hurt? Try it, or try something, to exercise your non-dominant half. You’ll be a better scholar/professional/person for it.
Pushing Back on the Publication Craziness
By Dr. Joan Walker, University of California Berkeley
“Professor Walker, let me introduce myself, my name is X and I have published 7 papers.” I can’t tell you the number of times that students have approached me with similar statements either in person or over email, almost immediately highlighting their large number of publications. My unspoken (until now) thought is, “that is too many for someone at your career stage.” And, from my own students, meetings starting with “Joan, I’m working on papers X, Y and Z,” focusing first on publications with the ideas seemingly taking a back seat. My spoken response to my students is, “let’s focus on the ideas, the papers will come from the great ideas that come about as you pursue this direction of research, and we don’t yet know what those are.”
Note that the students aren’t to blame. They’re smart. They are following the trend that our academic community is setting. “Publish or perish” is the common refrain, and sadly we’ve swung too far in valuing numbers over all else. This has led to thoughts being pushed out the door as soon as feasible, and the numbers are getting ridiculous: PhD students who need two hands or more to count their papers and Assistant Professors going up for tenure with well more papers than the number of years they’ve been alive. We all, from junior to senior, need to push the pendulum back towards quality. Don’t be proud of having produced a large number of papers; be proud of producing a small number of papers that represent thorough thinking of your most significant ideas. Conversely, let’s stop relying on paper counts as any form of metric. Producing paper is not of value. Let’s base judgements at all levels on a thorough review of the scholarship from a relatively small number of papers.
Many of you have heard me praise the book Slow Professor by Berg and Seeber (2016). The driver of their movement is that “if there is one sector of society that should be cultivating deep thought in itself and others, it is academia. Yet the corporatisation of the contemporary university has sped up the clock, demanding increased speed and efficiency from faculty regardless of the consequences for education and scholarship.” I have joined their resistance against the “culture of speed.” We must take things slower and think deeply about a smaller number of ideas. Not every thought and project warrants being published. Let’s target publishing the fewest number of papers that present our ideas powerfully, not slicing them into MPUs (minimal publishable units) and milking an idea to produce as many papers as possible. Just because things can be published this way, doesn’t mean they should.
Teaching Undergraduate Classes is a Win-Win Proposition
By Dr. Ram Pendyala, Arizona State University
I recently engaged in an interesting conversation with colleagues on the role and involvement of full-time, tenure-track faculty members in teaching mission-critical undergraduate classes. In an era where institutional rankings, reputation, and glory are largely driven by research prowess, there are legitimate concerns that spending precious faculty bandwidth on undergraduate instruction may come at the expense of expanding and growing research activity. After all, there are adjuncts, lecturers, industry professionals, graduate students, and faculty-wannabe post-doctoral scholars who could take care of teaching undergraduate courses and labs so that the full-time tenure track faculty can focus their attention on research activities and PhD students. Statistical trends suggest that this is indeed the paradigm that is being embraced by many a university, with large fractions of undergraduate classes taught by individuals not on the tenure track.
If you are a relatively new faculty member in academia today, the pressure is intense. You’re expected to establish your lab, write proposals and secure sponsored research funding, recruit and mentor PhD students (and graduate at least one PhD student prior to being granted tenure), publish your work at a torrid pace in respectable journals, attend and present at major conferences and local professional events, serve the profession and university in many different ways, and develop new graduate courses in your specialized area(s) of expertise. And you have to prove that you’re good at doing all of this by the time your third year probationary review comes around, lest you receive the dreaded notice of non-renewal of appointment or a letter of renewal laced with warnings and notes about shortcomings in performance.
But let not these considerations, however real they may be, deny you the joys of teaching mission-critical undergraduate classes. If you’re at a university that has a significant undergraduate student population, make the time to adopt, take (joint) ownership of, and teach annually at least one key undergraduate class in the curriculum. Yes, it will be challenging, but the time and effort will be worth it. When I was a PhD student at the University of California at Davis, I was often awestruck to see my late advisor, Professor Ryuichi Kitamura, teach a couple of civil engineering undergraduate courses on a very regular basis — Probability and Statistics for Engineers and Statics! When I served as a teaching assistant for him and complained about the travails of undergraduate instruction, he simply smiled and said “You should do it… it’s good for you”. I have personally heeded that advice for as long as I have been a faculty member and am grateful that I did.
Why would you want to do this? There are many reasons, including but not limited to the following:
1) Teaching undergraduate classes helps you maintain a good base of up-to-date knowledge in a broader array of topics that transcends your specific field of expertise (which presumably constitutes the subject of your graduate courses). This knowledge-base, often laden with fundamentals that define the science of the field, can prove useful in developing ideas for research proposals, collaborating with other faculty members in complementary areas of expertise, and connecting with industry professionals who work in diverse areas.
2) Undergraduate students, who are unlikely to have been significantly exposed to the topic areas of the course, have ideas and perspectives that are raw and not fully formed. This is your opportunity to mold the workforce of the future (given that a very small fraction will pursue graduate study). It is very satisfying, if not exhilarating, to see the intellectual transformation of an undergraduate class over the course of a semester or a quarter.
3) It is intellectually stimulating and invaluable to hear the thoughts of undergraduate students who are not shy to challenge the status quo and question your own perspectives on various issues. You never know who might plant the seed for the next great paper that you’re going to write!
4) When you get student feedback in an undergraduate course, it is honest and often brutal… reading their comments and seeing how they rate you will keep you grounded, help you improve your teaching skills, and give you a sense of purpose as you strive to do better the next time around.
5) Undergraduate courses are great sources of future graduate students; why deny yourself the opportunity to influence young minds and excite some students to potentially pursue graduate study under your supervision?
6) When it comes time for your probationary review or tenure-promotion review, administrators and committees at various levels of review are likely to look for evidence of significant contribution to undergraduate instruction and a reasonably strong track record of undergraduate teaching performance. Even if your own department chair doesn’t necessarily think that it is critical for you to develop a strong record of undergraduate instruction, it does not mean that other levels of review at your institution will necessarily view your package the same way. Don’t be surprised if you get dinged for lack of solid undergraduate instruction at various levels of review even if your department chair indicates that it is no big deal.
7) It always helps to be seen as an individual contributing to the core mission of the unit and the university at large, especially when you are up for tenure and promotion. Being a good citizen of the institution often calls for contributing in meaningful ways to the many different endeavors of the enterprise. Not only will your superiors appreciate your contributions, but you too will feel a stronger sense of ownership and belonging in the institution.
8) If you teach key undergraduate classes, you will have a larger body of students who know you, feel connected to you, and will champion you when the opportunity to do so arises. As these students enter the workforce, you will begin to have a broader network of connections in the industry and a solid alumni support system.
9) Who knows… you may end up creating the transportation equivalent of “The Feynman Lectures on Physics”!
If you’re nervous about the time commitment and the potential loss of research bandwidth, don’t be. It may take significant effort and time in preparing to teach a new course initially, but the effort and prep time quickly diminishes once you’ve got it down. The return on initial investment is often quite substantial. You should feel free to consult faculty colleagues who may have taught the course previously to get notes, exams, homeworks, and solutions — along with any other tips for teaching the course. Many institutions have a center for teaching excellence (or similar) that can provide many helpful resources on how to most effectively prepare for a new course and apply proven pedagogical techniques in the classroom. You will also find a wealth of resources online or through the textbook publisher who may offer you access to instructor materials if you adopt a specific textbook in the course. Your department may be willing to provide you graduate teaching assistant or grader support, thus easing the burden to a significant degree.
So, if you’ve been undecided whether to teach that undergraduate class, hesitate no more; as a smart man once told me “You should do it…it’s good for you!”.
What did you think? Let us know.
The Zephyr Foundation’s mission is to advance rigorous transportation and land use decision-making for the public good by advocating for and supporting improved travel analysis and facilitating its implementation.
