Sorry for the delay in this announcement, there have been many mitigating circumstances.

The computer was smart. I have been offered a position in Cornell’s Anthropology PhD Program with funding.

Some of you already knew this. Others guessed it. For a variety of reasons I needed to keep it under wraps until I had the chance to talk with some key people. I’m really excited! Blown away in fact. I’ll be working on Citizen Journalism in the US. I’ve already been back and forth a few times to Ithaca and this really seems to be the program for me.

As to why not much blogging has gone on, there’s always a balance. With good comes bad. Dre’s had another lupus flare and spent time in Rochester General Hospital. We keep learning more about this disease and with that comes a lot of frustrations. Today we found out that things are a little more complex than we had thought. And right now that’s weighing a bit on my mind.

We’re both really excited about the future and there’s lots more to come over the next few weeks.

Aaron just e-mailed me the article from RIT’s University News. Obviously I’m really happy to see this. From previous postings you know that I felt Destler was the better candidate for the future of RIT. That’s what most of the on campus faculty believed. And that’s what many alumni believed. I am happy that the Board agreed.

In earlier statements I said I was concerned that the decision was already made. I’m extemely thankful to be proven wrong. This process has been very transparent, and I compliment the board on making it so.

I’m also thankful to everyone who wrote to the board to express thier opinions.

I believe that the future of RIT has never looked brighter.

Thanks to the previous post on RIT’s search for a new president, I’ve had a noticeable jump in traffic. Thank you to everyone who e-mailed, left comments, or talked to me in person about the points I raised in the last post. More importantly, thank you so much to everyone who has taken the time to send a note to RIT’s Board of Trustees.

For those new to the site, the short version is this: RIT is in the process of picking a new president. There are concerns that the Board of Trustees may lean towards Dr. James Watters, RIT’s CFO. He’s the wrong choice for all the reasons listed in my previous post. I am asking anyone connected with RIT, especially Alumni, to communicate to the board that they feel Dr. William Destler, Provost of the University of Maryland, is the correct man to lead RIT into the next stage of its development.

I truly believe that if enough alumni, student, faculty and community voices are raised, the right man will be offered the Presidency here at RIT.

In the meantime, if you are still unsure about the situation, or need to see more opinions as to why Dr. Destler is the right man for the job, take a look at the following:

• A two part interview with Dr. Destler conducted by an independent faculty publication at the University of Maryland (Part 1) (Part 2). You’ll find that while Destler may not always give the answer the interviewer wants to hear, he’s always open to discussion, willing to admit when he’s wrong, and honest about a number of University shortcomings.
• Comments from RIT’s American Association of University Professors public discussion board:
  • ProfRay: Dr. Destler is a well rounded and accomplished leader whose capacity to manage the interests of a large and diverse research institution make him eminently qualified to bring his vision, perspective and ability to our Institute. He will be able to grow this place financially and conceptually. I genuinely believe RIT is on the verge of achieving critical mass with regard to its unique attributes and its overall identity. Destler has the capacity to synergize RIT, leading us to greater prominence both nationally and globally.
  • longRITer: I greatly admire Dr. Watters - his vision, his business acumen and his abilty to bring together talent to get jobs done. A university president needs these skills. My concern is that RIT will move more towards business excellence while further losing sight of its academic mission. The colleges will become cost centers rather than centers of scholarship. That the physical plant will be beautiful while the campus slips further from its academic mission. It is clear to me that unless we reverse this trend, the campus will never move to great…. I went to Wednesday’s forum expecting Dr. Watters to be dynamic. He had the hometeam advantage - yet, his presentation and responses fell short…. The crowd was electric at Dr. Destler’s presentation. The crowd for Dr. Watters gave him every chance to pull it off. It didn’t work. It would be great to practice promoting from within the ranks of RIT. I am convinced that noble idea is too risky this time.Dr. Destler impressed me at the open forum. He comes closer to the kind of academic leader I believe RIT needs. Some of his ideas for RIT and some of the programs he has implemented at Maryland are moves in the right direction in my opinion.
  • TAD: Dr. Destler seems to me to be marvelous choice for the position that I see as that of university president. His background has allowed him to gain vast experience in the classroom, in research, in leadership and management of academic units from the department level up to the university level, as well as in fundraising. He would definitely bring an infusion ???fresh blood??? into an administration that seems to me to have become rather inbred with internal promotions, which many of us view as having become a bit of an ???old boy???s??? network (no gender issues implied)…. Having been on the faculty at RIT for almost a quarter century, I have always found it peculiar that we have never seen a person from technical field (science, math, engineering) appointed to any position in the tower. Need we be reminded of the ???T??? in RIT? Some may argue that RIT is not a traditional institution and therefore the traditional academic path to the top is anathema in a leader. Let us not make a decision here just to show the world that we are iconoclasts. In order to direct the course of RIT insofar as new directives and programs, the person at the helm will need to have more than a passing familiarity with the role of technology in our culture and society. It seems to me that the choice between these two candidates is an obvious one.

Again, if you’re interested about the future of RIT, join the conversation. We all need to be discussing this! Or take action. Make sure to complete the Academic Senate’s Survey (note: it’s a different survey than the one on the main RIT site and allows for comments) and e-mail your thoughts to our Board of Trustees!

Think about it, discuss it, and act!

Let me preface this by saying that I hope I’m wrong. I’m writing this to vent a concern and hope that in some little way it might help.

The Rochester Institute of Technology’s eighth president, Albert Simone is retiring at the end of this academic year. Over the last few days, the two candidates for his position, Dr. William Destler (curriculum vitae), currently the senior vice president of Academic Affairs and provost at the University of Maryland (College Park) and Dr. James Watters (curriculum vitae), RIT???s senior vice president for Finance and Administration and treasurer of the Institute, met on campus with students, faculty, staff, alumni and trustees.

One of these men is eminently qualified for the position. One isn’t.

Unfortunately a number of signs suggest that the better man will not get the presidency.

(Before I go on, if you know what I’m talking about and want to have an effect on the situation, e-mail your feelings to the RIT Board of Trustees - RITBOT@rit.edu- I’ll reproduce this link at the end too.)

I’m not mincing words, I support Destler. From what I can tell, so do a large amount of the faculty and students. In his two days on campus he showed himself to be a smart, straight shooter with a strong vision for RIT. We, including the most cynical of my fellow staff members, had the same reaction: He get’s it. We resepect him. We’re willing to work to his vision.

From an academic standpoint, Destler’s qualifications are solid. While his school is in the sciences, he comes from a family of humanities scholars. A mechanical engineer, his PhD and post doctorate work was conducted at Cornell. Drestler rose through the ranks at Maryland, starting as a professor and advancing to the role of Provost. He’s served as the head of PhD committees and authored and coauthored a large number of papers.

In administration and fundrasing, he’s no slouch either. He helped bring a significant number of endowments to Maryland (including negotiating the naming rights for the their sports arena with Comcast). He also spearheaded the development of a number of multidisicplinary programs at Maryland as well.

Destler sees RIT as a place where he can make a difference. In an open discussion he explained that he had turned down a leadership position a “Big 10″ school for the chance at the RIT presidency. The reason why? He felt he really could make a profound difference here, something that wouldn’t be possible in the other setting. Destler believes that RIT can develop into a pragmatic research institution, focusing on the R&D needs of businesses that, due to the current economic climate, can no longer afford to conduct this work internally. He also emphasized the role of the humanities and arts play in this type of problem solving. He acknowledged that for all it’s bluster, RIT has a lot of “maturing” to do, and now is the time to do it. In short, he had a vision that got all of us excited.

But, like I said, I don’t think he’s going to get the job.

His competition is RIT’s CFO (in spirit, if not in title). Dr. Watters may be an excellent Treasurer, but he isn’t the leader we need (I’m still trying to figure out if he’s even a true leader). He isn’t an academic. By that, I don’t mean to infer that his PhD is in Higher Education Administration isn’t a legitimate degree. Rather, beyond a total lack of published scholarship, he’s never held a full time teaching position or gone through the tenure process (which we suspect is one of the reasons that the Board of Trustee’s likes him). His classroom experience is limited to adjuncting. While this might not seem like a big issue, the fact is that he is lacking an understanding of the life and pressures that a significant number of his employees lead. And while I am new to the teaching game, I cannot articulate how much my perspective on things has shifted as I’ve made the transition from adjunct to visiting professor. Nor can I think of any major university headed by someone who hasn’t gone through this process.

Watters lack of academic grounding isn’t the only issue. His talks to the campus were anything but inspiring. He regularly used the words “training” and “educating” interchangeably. While this might seem like a picky note, it concerns me deeply that he sees RIT’s role as training people. I’m sorry, vocational schools train. The job of the university is to educate. Does that mean that we shouldn’t prepare people to enter the sphere of industry? No. But given the choice, I’ll take education over training any day.

Watters also discussed that he felt the job of a university president is to be a CFO (which is troubling because his current job is to be the CFO). In his opinion it’s the provost who should oversee academics on campus. The problem with this naive view is that the Provost is ultimately beholden to the president. This is not a power sharing arrangement. As has been demonstrated by the often chilly relationship between our current provost and president, in matters academic the President’s word carries the day. For a presidential candidate to deny that will be the case seems ignorant at best and disingenuous at worst.

He also displayed a distinct lack of vision. Where Destler continually built upon a the idea of fostering innovation on campus, Watters vision was to “continue the 135 points of excellence plan.” I’ve been here for a year and have no idea what the “135 points of excellence plan” is. And any vision that is articulated across 135 points is, quite frankly, too unwieldy to execute anyway.

In the end, Destler’s message is RIT has come a long way, but to reach the next level we have a lot of work to do. Watter’s message was, we’re very close to our goal and our primary problem is that we are not marketing the school well enough.

Utimately, Watters is a “Carp.” Please note that this is a comparison between him and Kodak’s former CEO, not the fish. As a former Kodak employee, I see a number of comparisons between him and Dan Carp. Both were individuals who, while good in financial roles, were leaders without vision. They are “company men” through and through, chosen because they were known commodities. And at points where a bold vision was necessary, they were content to play caretaker and hope for the best. And I truly believe that as Kodak ultimately suffered under Carp’s lack of decisive vision (particularly in the digital space) so RIT will suffer under Watters. And much like Carp, given how young he is, I expect that Watters will stay in his post for far too long.

So the choice seems clear. But the problem is that I expect the board will go in the opposite direction and choose Watters. This is in part because Watters has been groomed for years as Simone’s heir apparent. At his open campus forum the board member who introduced Watters referred to him as “eminently qualified for the position” (an introduction that Destler did not receive). Much of Watters presentation was about how he would work with the board as opposed to the staff. He joked with board members during his talk. I couldn’t help but feel that we were all sitting in on a “boys club meeting.”

And that leads the crux of the issue. Over the last decade, intentionally done or not, an almost adversarial relationship has formed between the faculty and the board. The rumblings I hear is that the board would prefer a so-called “business straight shooter” as opposed to a “woolly academic.” Perversely, there is a strong chance that they would reverse the campus pick for these reasons (something that has happened a number of times during the last year).

The sad part is, such a choice would be so Rochester - choosing a known and safe commodity over a visionary (see the example of Carp). And while in the end Watters wouldn’t hurt RIT, I don’t think he will help it. I think that under his reign, we will remain what we are today: A solid regional university desperately trying to convince ourselves that we’re top tier — all the while shying away from the hard work that it takes to make those words a reality. In other words, the curse of smugtown continues.

Like I said, I hope I’m reading the tea leaves wrong. And even i I’m right, I wish I really felt like there was more that I could do about this decision.

Update: There is something that can be done. E-mail your feelings to our Board of Trustees - RITBOT@rit.edu!

This is a cautionary tale of curiosity gone awry.

If you’ve been following this , you know that I’m awaiting word on whether or not I have been accepted to a PhD program. To this date I’ve heard nothing. So, drawing a naive allusion to the famed cat, one might say that, as far as I know, I’m both accepted into and rejected from all of the programs. Seems simple enough.

However, thanks to the marvels of modern technology and my own tinkering nature, I’m now even more confused about my quantum status at Cornell University.

You see, a few days ago, I paid a visit to the Cornell site to see if they had any more information up about dates. There was nothing there to speak of. So I did some poking around on the graduate admissions page. One of the links there is “Accept an Offer of Admission Online.” Being the positive (and impatient) thinker I am, I figured “what the heck, might as well see what’s there.” A click or so later, I find myself at Embark, Cornell’s online application tool. This password protected website is how I submitted my application in the first place. And it’s requesting that I log in.

So I faced a decision: do I log in and possibly find out my status? Or do I wait to see if I get a big envelope or a skinny envelope?

Curiosity (or perhaps temptation) got the best of me, I logged in, and was asked if I want to accept the offer to attend Cornell.

This discovery has launched me into a existential/systems dilemma. Had I just gotten notification that I’ve been accepted to Cornell? Was the system “smart” enough to have that record on hand? Or had it been designed with the fundamental assumption that only people who had been accepted would follow that link? Did the programmers not envision someone like me?

As much as I wish this was confirmation of an offer, I tend to think it’s probably a “dumb” system.^[1] Considering that my notification note from Chicago was dated February 26th, there a good chance a final decision has yet to be made at any of the programs. And even if the decision has been made, typically computer systems are the last ones to know. But more than anything else, I don’t want to work myself up and then get crushed.

So, for the moment I remain both accepted into and rejected from all of the programs. Only I’m just a little more so at Cornell.

—-

^[1] - The irony that, once again, I’m twisting on the end of questions about Machine Intelligence isn’t lost on me. Just as with my work on bots, the crux of all of this is a question of whether or not the machine knows as much as I give it credit for knowing. Oh well, while these systems may be toying with my emotions, at least I didn’t give my credit card out this time.

Notice anything funny outside the office window?

A deer decided to bed down today outside the office of Professor Williams and Vogl. We’re not quite sure how long it was there for. It must have felt the row of small hedges gave it some protection from the elements (and the students). As for us professors, clearly aren’t perceived as a threat by anything — my students could have told you that.

a tale of two candidate???s video distribution strategies, my post looking at the recent spate of online candidate videos, has circulated a bit on the fringes of the political blog and citizen journalism communities. The first person to comment on it was Brian Russell (Yesh.com), who noted that Ruby Sinreich (lotusmedia.org) first shared the article with him. In that article I had linked to a YouTube video that Brian and Ruby had created responding to Edward’s presidential announcement. A few days later, the Yesh article was picked up by A Blog Around the Clock, which it turn was mirrored on Science Blogs. Finally, Aldon Hynes of the Orient Lodge and Greater Democracy responded to the dialog in post entitled Hope is Presidential.

Simply observing the circulation of my text is a revealing experience (as is watching the flow of related traffic to that post, thank you Feedburner). It also has been reinforcing the things one must think about when they endeavour to begin online fieldwork, especially if one chooses to do so in a public manner. In a wonderful little essay Fire, Loss, and the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Robart Sanjek, recounted the story about how the anthropologist Ethel Albert once discovered her Rwandan field assistant Muntu clandestinely interviewing one of Albert’s informants. When asked what he was doing, Muntu replied “Anthropological research, like you. But I know the language, so my research will be better than yours.”[1] Muntu made it clear that what he was recording was his research and he didn’t intend to share it. Of this incident Sanjek wrote:

[Muntu's] challenge to Albert embodies the present reality of a world in which those whom anthropologists study, everywhere, can read (and write) fieldnotes, let along ethnography. (Sanjek, 1990: 39)

I’m hard pressed to think of an environment this is more true of than the blogosphere. I can’t conceive of conducting online research and not placing some of it into online notes (be they a blog or a wiki). And the moment that occurs, your notes no longer belong to just you. So these types of discussions and circulations become an important part of the fieldwork process. Especially considering that the entire relationship between researcher and informants (or whatever the going term is these days) is so odd. We’re all creating media artifacts and putting them out there for the world to discover, never quite sure of who is viewing what.

The points that Brian and Aldon raised were all good things for me to think about. One thing in particular was Aldon’s comment:

Sen. Edwards??? announcement video on YouTube was a step in the direction of recognizing the different language of online videos, but there is still much further to go. What are the popular online videos? Ask a Ninja, Hope is Emo, Lonelygirl115 and various coke and mentos videos come to mind. Perhaps the 2008 candidates can learn from these videos.

Edwards and Obama can duke it out to see who gets ???Hope is Presidential???. Sen. Clinton, after her webcasts might think about engaging the folks at Ask a Ninja to come up with Ask a Candidate. The lesser know candidates can struggle to see who will be the next Lonely Candidate 2008. The real question is whose videos will be the coke and mentos of the 2008 campaign season. I haven???t seen any like that yet.

Aldon mentions Ask a Ninja, Hope is Emo, and Lonelygirl15 as YouTube exemplars. I’m not quite sure what the candidates can learn from these content creators, as they all are essentially “old media” examples in the new media space. All of these are professionally produced (read as scripted, acted, filmed, and edited by professionals). Lonelygirl15 is an even stranger example to invoke in an essay about grassroots “politicing,” considering that at it’s core Lonelygirl15 was a “manipulation” - professionally produced content presenting itself as reality. That notion of “reality” is at the core of recent political and YouTube discussions. It leads us to these questions that pop up both in regards to candidate’s online presence and to the YouTube/LiveVideo conflict.

What is authenticity in this digital space (provided it’s any different than authenticity in the so-called real world). The negotitation of it, like fieldnotes, is something I’m going to be doing a lot of thinking on in the weeks, months, and years to come.

References:

Bernius, M. (2007) a tale of two candidate???s video distribution strategies
Hynes, A. (2007) Hope is Presidential
Russell, B. (2007) Analyzing Campaign Video Distro Strategies
Sanjek, R. (1990) “Fire, Loss, and the Sorcerer’s Apprentice” in Fieldnotes: The making of Anthropology. Cornell University Press. Ithica NY.

I just found out today that the Associated Press will be carrying blogger’s coverage of the Lewis “Scooter” Libby trial! Here are key excerpts from the press releaser

[The Associated Press] partners with Media Bloggers Association to put bloggers’ coverage of high-profile trial of former Cheney aide on more than 600 newspapers’ websites…. The U.S. District Court in Washington D.C. has provided the MBA with credentials for two media seats at the Libby trial, which started Jan. 16 with jury selection. With jury selection now completed, the trial began in earnest with opening arguments today. …The MBA, which has about 1,000 members, is covering the trial from the overflow Media Center, which is equipped with video, allowing viewing of the trial, and Wi-Fi (wireless internet access), allowing the MBA to wirelessly syndicate a real-time feed of blogger coverage of the Libby trial.

This is huge news on multiple counts, both in terms of citizen journalism and my own research.

I had been aware of the Media Bloggers Association for a little while, but they had dropped off my radar.  Especially since I wasn’t quite sure where to start in terms of my broader cj research. This group seems to provide a wonderful jumping off point.

In answer to the question “why all this musing on campaign videos?”, if all goes as planned, I start my PhD studies in the fall. Provided I go the anthro route, I’ll be looking at citizen journalism and American politics. Internet video broadly, and YouTube specifically, play an important role in that mix.

Honestly, the more I begin to explore YouTube, the more complicated things get. It’s a mish mash. And the threads that are emerging from it are so varied I’m not quite sure where to start. All of it complicates this question of what exactly a citizen journalist is. There’s a lot of citizen commentators and folks who post clips from news networks. And activists.

I’m just not quite sure about “journalists.”

Just a quickie… I tried out the Kodak Easyshare V705’s panorama tool. Man, my former employer really nailed this one. I’ve been very impressed with the camera - both in terms of lens technology and the user interface itself. It’s great to see Kodak continuing to live up to its boo-yah, non grab-ass vision outlined earlier this year:

[youtube]Sz6XjXu-oT8[/youtube]

That’s about it. I’m currently closing a karma circle and writing a letter of recommendation for an excellent student who is hoping to get a summer internship at the NY Metropolitan Museum of Art.