Academic Careers for Experimental Computer Scientists and Engineers (1994) / Chapter Skim
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5 A Positive Environment for Academic ECSE
5 A Positive Environment for Academic ECSE
Pages 82-99
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From page 82... ...
MENTORING AND ADVOCACY When Odysseus set out for Troy, he entrusted the care of his household to Mentor. Although the burden to succeed properly belongs to the researcher, young researchers setting out on their academic careers still need mentors, loyal friends, wise advisers, teachers, faithful counselors, guardians, and advocates to help advance their interests.
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From page 83... ...
Following are several areas in which mentoring senior faculty can play important roles: · Establishing cooperative and collaborative environments. Since junior faculty generally lack reputations that attract resources, they are often dependent on senior faculty to obtain entry to established laboratories that can provide needed equipment, staff, and technical skills, as well as an intellectual community.
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From page 85... ...
Such identification may be particularly important in the case of an individual who makes intellectually substantive contributions to an unsuccessful project that failed for entirely separate reasons. Given that collaborative research projects are most often carried out under the direction of a senior faculty member, junior faculty collaborators may not be recognized publicly for their specific contributions without explicit acknowledgment and promotion of their efforts by the senior project director.
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From page 86... ...
It is important for mentors to understand the career and research goals of their ostensible proteges. The senior faculty have to take responsibility for becoming familiar with the peer groups, conferences, and organizations that are important to a young researcher's career.
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From page 87... ...
A POSITIVE ENVIRONMENT FOR ACADEMIC ECSE ::::::::::.B,,.,.O,, ,.,X,.,::::S,.:~.:~.,.:::: ~n Ad' ' ' ^~ ~ king | The~| ~ 87 ~ ~ 1 ~ - ~3s~i 0|~ |
From page 88... ...
Publications Many universities regard archival journal and book publications as the primary medium in which scholarly work is demonstrated, whereas "mere" presentations at professional meetings are regarded as second-rate. Although such practices are not the rule at universities with strong experimental traditions, anecdotal evidence suggests that they are considerably more common in universities without such traditions.
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From page 89... ...
The dilemma of choosing between the requirements for the "proper form" of an academic record and the "content" for ECSE was nicely stated by an assistant professor at a major private university in response to the CRA-CSTB survey: Tenure means that I have to spend an enormous amount of time writing papers for archival journals and conferences, so that people can peer-review me without understanding what I do. Most of the impact of [experimental]
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From page 90... ...
Artifacts A track record that might appear modest when assessed by counting journal articles may in fact be truly spectacular when evaluated in the context of a discipline in which a technical reputation is founded as much on functional artifacts as it is on publications. Production of artifacts is so important to the field that a standard part of any experimentalist's curriculum vitae should be a section describing computing artifacts produced by the experimentalist.
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From page 91... ...
An ECSE researcher who creates an innovative computing artifact whose primary impact has been on practice (e.g., an artifact that is embodied in a large number of nonresearch systems or used by a large number of "just plain users") has made a substantive and meaningful contribution in the tradition of ECSE, s~milar to that of a theoretician who proves an important lemma.
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From page 92... ...
Other factors, such as the letter writer's institutional location or status as a research collaborator of the candidate, should not be reasons for eschewing letters from such individuals. Of course, good arguments can be made to support the proposition that letter writers should not consist exclusively of collaborators or industrial scientists because of potential bias, unfamiliarity with the academic environment, and so on.
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From page 93... ...
Most ECSE researchers do require considerable funding in order to pursue their research; the only exceptions are those instances in which the faculty member is fortunate enough to make connections with an existing laboratory and experimental infrastructure or those in which the faculty member has been able to develop an experimental research program "on the cheap." Although funding is an enabling factor for ECSE research, it is not in itself necessarily demonstrative of intellectual achievement. Indeed, a faculty member who has structured his or her research to produce meaningful results, with high impact, on a limited budget deserves praise for creativity and good problem selection, rather than censure for not producing dollars for the university.
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From page 94... ...
, their intellectual independence, and even their records of public presentations of work. Moreover, because incoming graduate students may tend to avoid junior faculty in favor of senior faculty with established reputations, such assessment should also take note of the quality of the students available to the junior faculty member.
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From page 95... ...
Consulting relationships that focus on implementation at the expense of reportable scholarly work may remunerate the faculty member/consultant but do not advance the research enterprise. Instead, faculty members should seek consulting relationships that strengthen or enhance their own research programs or that provide opportunities, such as scholarly publication, in which they can obtain public recognition for their work.
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From page 96... ...
This provides significant opportunities for junior faculty to develop new courses in or near the area of their researchopportunities that may be less available in more established science and engineering disciplines such as physics, whose core courses tend to change much more slowly. At the same time, exploiting such 2 The relatively brief discussion of teaching in this section should not be taken to imply a committee judgment about the relative importance of teaching versus research.
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From page 97... ...
Innovative courses are being developed that use the arena of experimental computer science to bring industry into tighter contact with academic education. Documentation might include work toward establishing industrial advisory boards and direct consulting with industry to develop specialized courses for industry or new regular courses in the undergraduate curriculum.
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From page 98... ...
INSTITUTIONAL CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE ENVIRONMENT In addition to orchestrating a supportive intellectual environment for ECSE and evaluating ECSE faculty in accordance with the standards that characterize the field, departments and universities are directly responsible for certain other aspects of the environment: · Start-up funding. As noted earlier, beginning assistant professors are rarely able to secure outside funding in their first year.
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From page 99... ...
However, one of the most time-consuming aspects of developing these relationships is the resolution of matters related to potential intellectual,property arrangements with industrially supported research, or research undertaken jointly with industry. All too often, a faculty researcher lines up an industrial partner, only to see the actual start of research delayed by many months while the university's lawyers negotiate with the company in question.
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