[ Home | Contents | Search | Post | Reply | Next | Previous | Up ]
From: phn
Date: 9/3/2003
Time: 11:58:56 PM
Remote Name: 24.93.191.143
Peter's post is a good start, and while I hope there is a positive role for this discussion forum to play, I would also advocate very regular (i think once weekly is a minimum) and vigorous meetings that have focused agendas and objectives will also be necessary if we are going to put a viable proposal together...and by viable, i mean not only one that the regents will accept, but one that starts a program that is true and effective. I do not think the committee can do this with sporadic and 'isolated' input from a bunch of us responding to one another asynchronously over the web, followed by a half day retreat or some similar format. I do believe the committee has a pivotal role to play, however, in helping facilitate regular meetings, organize and plan a timeline with milestones (i.e., a strategy) and document our collective findings. It is unlikely that all faculty will participate in such meetings, but the final product will reveal shortcomings in participation...one way or another. I think that the narrower the base (people making substantive contributions) of input from the beginning, the more likely we will not be able to finalize a healthy proposal or program. That does not mean that discussion with many participants about topics for which there are likely to be broad perspectives and deep disagreement will be easy...nevertheless, we will have to tackle that now or later. I happen to think that identifying and tackling the deep issues now is better becuase there is time to do more than react and disagree and stall...if we have clear objectives and a strict timeline, we can negotiate our way through problems, getting through the most difficult by majority opinion after careful evaluation, not necessarily by consensus. For most of the difficult parts consensus would be impossible, but strong majorities will be necessary. As an example of a place to start that would be quite different from my understanding of what the committee is now doing, it was suggested that defining the skills and behavior of students who would come out of our phd in integrative biology, was a good place to start thinking about what the curriculum should look like (and how such students would be different from other phd programs; and why other programs don't produce such students). This is entirely consistent with Paco's idea that what integrative biology training means is that students are prepared to tackle and even invent the emerging research questions of the future. They are trained to enter and discover emerging fields, not merely equipped with skills and a narrow view of their discipline such that they are only prepared to be left behind when research focus and technologies change. If that is a reasonable approach, how do we do it? If that isn't a reasonable approach, what is an alternative? At our last impromptu meeting there was another sentiment expressed that we need to be practical; that inventing something too new would doom the proposal to failure. I personally think that if a practical approach centers around having our three specialization areas separately discuss ways to 'increase' or 'institutionalize' (by way of 1, 2 3, or however many courses) interaction among faculty/areas that don't currently interact, then we will likely end up with a weak proposal and program (if we even get that far). Finally, i think we should meet every friday (or something like that) for a 2 hour block...and methodically define our timeline, the process...and then starting working our way through the agreed process. 2 hours a week seems like a lot of time when you put it on the calendar...but over the course of a semester, that might be just over a full-day's effort toward putting a draft together for what is arguably the most important initiative our department has ever or will ever undertake.