Abstract:

The following report describes my development in citizenship over the course of the Faculty Development Seminar.

Goal Progress

As part of the Faculty Development Seminar, I set goals for development as a citizen. Below, I enumerate these goals, report on my progress, and describe lessons learned and future plans for improvement.

Goal: Provide service to the Rollins Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology (CET) by serving as a judge or mentor in at least two campus-hosted competitions.

In fulfillment of this goal, I served as a mentor in the CET’s speed mentoring session at one of their Founders events. I also was a judge in the Big Idea competition. Ultimately, course conflicts prevented me from serving as a judge in the Business Model Competition, although I mentored several teams that participated in the series.

I see the CET as a reliable source for service opportunities: the challenge will be managing the amount and intensity of my commitments to the center, so that each service can be of high quality and that I can be a citizen in other capacities. Otherwise, I could easily allocate more than half of my time to mentoring teams or working on Center initiatives, and this is not part of my faculty expectations document for my department. I have been able to manage requests well to this point, but I anticipate it will be harder as my status as ‘new faculty’ recedes. I will continue to work with my group leader to limit my responsibilities to the Center to a reasonable amount each year.

Goal: Take more initiative in arranging informal activities with my department and Marriott School colleagues.

Consistent with my goal to lead out more in holding informal activities with my colleagues, I was the impetus of several lunch meetings with colleagues over the recent months. As a result, I was able to discuss a potential new collaboration with a colleague, and I have been able to apply some of my analytical tools to help colleagues with their projects. One informal ‘drop-in’ I conducted a couple of weeks ago uncovered significant complementarity between a new project I am launching and that of two of my colleagues. We will soon hold a follow-up conversation to determine how our projects may be conducted jointly. I have learned from this experience that opportunities for collaboration are more abundant than I realize, and simply increasing the quantity of conversations and the variety of my contacts can make these opportunities more apparent.

I do observe that I tend to associate with the same crowd in my department. While ties with these colleagues have strengthened, I would like to do more to reach out to others in my department and college who I do not know as well. I notice that Fridays at the lunch hour tends to be the unspoken time that colleagues are willing to meet. I would like to reserve at least one Friday a month to try to have lunch with a colleague I have not yet, or that is not a member of my department.

Goal: Invite two scholars from other universities to present in the OLS department research seminar, and assist in coordinating their schedules.

My department changed its approach to how scholars were invited to speak in our department. I submitted names, but these individuals were not chosen. I also tried to take advantage of a scholar’s attendance at a conference nearby, but we had another scholar coming at that time. For now, I will look for similar opportunities in which someone I want to meet is in the area, and I will then make the case for inviting them to visit.