Leadership in Science
Like Peter, I was a problem grad student, spending much of my time engaged in non-research projects. I did student government. I helped to start a community-service focused undergraduate orientation program. And I took a semester off to write virtual reality video games (long story).
The student government and orientation program were unusual activities for me, since I had been a pretty hardcore nerd in college and high school. The inspiration for these activities came from two sources. A public policy class taught by Bruce Payne changed my perspective on what it meant to be a leader. The muddy idea of leadership in my 19-year-old brain involved people on stages in front of large crowds, not researchers in labs or college kids in class. Leaders were people very different from me. Payne's class changed that idea in a big way. He made me realize that leadership wasn't just an activity of distant, famous people working in a national or global arena. Rather, it's about taking the initiative to make change in your own world. And, just as importantly, the necessary skills aren't innate -- they can be learned. My work with an innovative outdoor education program gave me the opportunity to try out some of the ideas from Payne's class for myself. These two experiences were among the most important things I gained from my time as an undergraduate.
The reason I bring this up is that last night I attended a little reunion of people who had been a part of Payne's program at Duke. The people in attendance described their careers -- all had gone on to do interesting things. One thing struck me, though: I was the only scientist there.
There is a huge need for leadership in the sciences. Stem cells, global climate change, and other areas in which science ends up on the national agenda are obvious places. But I think the places where better leadership skills would make the biggest difference are less visible and more mundane: Running departments. Administering programs at funding agencies. Running labs. Teaching.
We as a community don't do a lot to prepare younger scientists to take on leadership roles. There are few rewards and little recognition for leadership activities, except possibly for very senior people (quick: name an award for leadership in science that would ever go to someone young). Leadership positions are often viewed as not particularly desirable or even as a step down (are people lining up to be the your next department chair? your dean?). And there is relatively little training in leadership, especially for junior people.
The only program I'm familiar with for cultivating leadership in young scientists is the congressional fellows program. I don't know of anyone who has done that program who has returned to an academic career (though I am sure that such people do exist), so I think its impact on academic science is fairly limited. (Project Kaleidoscope also appears to do some leadership training, but I don't know anything about the program or anyone who has ever participated - perhaps it is small? or focused at a narrow audience?)
The attitude I sensed while I was an academic was that leadership activities were not for younger people. Younger people should keep focused on science. Only when you get tenure, when your work slows down, when you can't do science 24x7 should you engage in such things. To see the problem with this approach, turn it around. What kind of science would we have if there was no training and people were discouraged from engaging in any real research activities until they were well into their 50's?
At the reunion we had a brainstorming session about ways we could engage current undergraduates. I suggested trying to work with graduate students as well, but was met with blank stares.
There were a lot of MBAs present, and some suggested working with undergraduates to put together business plans for interesting projects or nontraditional companies. They described a recent group of students who had worked with the city government and had raised money to transform an abandoned lot in a bad neighborhood in Durham into a sports field lighted for nighttime play; other recent graduates had just started an import business designed to help unemployed South Africans in Capetown. The ideas that were bandied about were intriguing, but not really right for grad students or postdocs. The discussion got me thinking, though, about some variants that might work.
While it would be nice if more scientists had skills for changing the world, I think a more attainable goal is to try to increase the ranks of those capable of making change within their institutions. What if, instead of pairing MBAs with undergrads to write business plans, one paired, say, an interested professor and/or someone with a background more like mine or Peter's with some grad students / postdocs to put together a plan for some sort of institutional change? A postdoc office, say, or a new institution-level training program. Instead of going to a random dean with some half-baked idea and being surprised when s/he says no, one could go to the right person with a detailed plan in hand, complete with operating costs, sources of personnel and funding, and ideas of impacts on other programs. I think it would make a new idea a much easier sell, plus it would give people some valuable experiences negotiating the labyrinth that is the modern research university.
What do people think? Refinements? Other ideas?
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on Wed, Dec 06, 08:12PM
Geoff,
You have touched on a subject that is near and dear to my heart. For many disciplines outside of science leadership is discussed and even developed explicitly in curricula. In my MBA leadership was discussed, there were courses and seminars on leadership, and outside speakers focused on the subject. Leadership is valued at the undergraduate level. Leadership is certainly valued in th eoutside world.
So what gives?
There are a puzzling set of cultural barriers in science that tend to limit how we value leadership and what we consider leadership. In his landmark book Leading Minds (http://www.amazon.com/Leading-Minds-An-Anatomy-Leadership/dp/0465082807) Howard Gardner explores the various styles of leadership we see in the world. Gardner profiles a range of leaders, from the political, such as Martin Luther King to scholarly, such as Margaret Mead and J. Robert Oppenheimer. Some are explicit leaders - people who can capture the sentiment of a nation by tapping into a common story . But those who lead in academia tend to lead indirectly, by example. This is why, paradoxically, we scientists and engineers seem to embue leadership authority in those of us who have made great strides in science. We scientists and engineers seem to look down on other types of leadership - preferring to be led by someone who's technical credentials are superlative.
Why do we think that technical achievement correlates to managerial acumen? If you think about it, it's the rare scientist or engineer who combines the focus, discipline and imagination required to make advances in science with the extroversion, communication skills and sense of humor required to be an effective leader. Most often, the qualities that make for a good academic researcher (obsessive-compulsive disorder, for example!) make for disasterous management!
There are a few places around the US where scientists and engineers are exposed to concepts and teachniques of leadership. The University of Texas at Austin has a wonderful program called Intellectual Entrepreneurship (https://webspace.utexas.edu/cherwitz/www/ie/index.html) that exposes graduate students of all disciplines to a range "non-technical" skills including leadership. Stanford University also has a program where they mix science and non-science graduate students for discussions on such subjects.
Scientists and engineers assume (incorrectly) that leadership is something that you are either born with or not. If you want to see the extraordinary power of leadership training, just look at the men and women in the Armed Forces. These kids (average entry age is 19) often come from extremely humble, difficult backgrounds, yet the focus on leadership and training in the military turns them into remarkable leaders.
If anyone else knows about some leadership programs oriented towatd scientists and engineers I'd love to hear about them.
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on Wed, Dec 13, 05:12PM
D'oh. I meant my last comment to be a reply to yours, Peter. Let's take this discussion to a new article (or two)
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on Wed, Dec 13, 04:12PM
I agree wholeheartedly that technical skills are more or less orthogonal to the kinds of skills we want in a leader. I don't want a chemist doing my taxes, even if she has a Nobel prize. Or a Fields medalist defending me in a criminal case. Scientific skill is simply irrelevant for a lot of important non-scientific things that matter to science.
I think a useful way to start making change would be for professional societies to establish some form of recognition for young people who demonstrate leadership in science. The folks who have been working hard to do things like get postdoc associations and offices going deserve some credit -- after all, they have stepped in where their senior colleagues have dropped the ball. It's a real problem if we fail to reward efforts like these that improve the health of the entire scientific enterprise.
