Academic foolishness

Oh lord, what fools these mortals be. Especially that one down there named Alice.

I've had two particular moments of foolishness in the last few days that have smacked me upside the head. And because the Scientiae theme for April (shockingly) is "fools and foolishness," I feel compelled to share them with you.

There will be drama, politics, famous names, remorse, public humiliation... I tell you, it's worth looking below the fold.

Yesterday, the president of our university came to visit our new building. She spoke with all kinds of people throughout the college from NAE members to recent CAREER awardees to the departmental heads to students. In the middle of the afternoon, there was a reception with the faculty, and I decided to go (although I made a colleague come with me).

Our president spoke a little bit about all the different kinds of people she met over her day, and the kinds of successes they had been having, and how she sees how they all interact at the institutional level to make Purdue a great institution. Because the building is new, she talked about the impact of how our facilities and space make a difference in how we teach, what we're able to teach, on the students' learning experiences and so forth.

When she had finished, she asked for questions. There was a pause. Which continued. She looked around at the crowd. Still no questions. I was thinking furiously. She said something along the lines of "last chance?" and something prompted me to say, "yes, I have a question." Darn something.

So I asked my question, in front of the president, the dean of my college, my associate and assistant deans, my departmental head, my senior faculty, my colleagues, the interim provost, the head of facilities. I asked something like "You've spoken about how the development of these facilities impacts the students' experience at Purdue. What are the conversations at the institutional level around environmental sustainability?"

I confess that I don't remember much of her answer, except that she integrated environmental sustainability into a "broader definition" of sustainability (a popular extension these days it seems) and also connecting my question to choosing to not use styrofoam cups and such (a pile of which were just to the side of the room for the food line). Unfortunately she didn't remember that the new mechanical engineering building wing on campus will be the first LEED-certified building, but she had a lot to remember already. I would have tried to remember more of her answer, but I was having too much of an adrenaline rush that was making my ears roar.

I felt simultaneous pride at finding the nerve to ask a question, and mortification at singling myself out. However, my colleague nudged me to say "good question!" and several people came up to me afterwards to say they had appreciated the question.

So, in my stronger and more egotistical moments, I might think of this experience as an example of the usefulness of a Shakespearean fool or the jester in academia - someone of miniscule rank who asks pointed questions of someone in considerable power in order to goad or trick them into reflecting on the potential truism. In my more frequent and self-doubting moments, I might think of the ridiculousness of a new assistant professor trying to seem pointed in asking such a toothless yet risky question.

Today, in contrast, I played a fool of a different colour. We have monthly lunches amongst the women faculty in engineering, organized by the director of the college's Women in Engineering Program. I don't often get to go, but today I went. There were probably twelve or so other attendees, including the dean of my college (who, by the way, I think is great). And I got so into the conversations - about why, despite an increase in applications from women we don't get an increase in the number of women admitted into the college, about why women aren't underrepresented in engineering in some other countries, about how and when students find engineering a different animal than they thought it was - shared a really kooky part of me that I am trying not to regret.

I talked about some research that I'm really excited about doing this summer, namely studying engineers' identity transitions from student engineer to industry-employed engineer. So that's all cool - the theory is that students learn what it is to be an engineer in school (with some industry co-op experiences and such), and that it might be a different set of characteristics or identity markers that they have to take on to be an engineer in industry. So how do they do that? What are the similarities and differences?

The kooky part though is that I want to study this in the context of ... get this. Feminine hygiene products. :-) So undergraduate students learn that engineering is modeling and estimation and scientific or mathematical thinking and problem-solving for real people and such. But they tend to do it in the context of engine function or concrete composition or petroleum distillation. So many students construct their understandings of engineering in non-gendered or (arguably) hegemonic male-gendered contexts (certain kinds of industries, commercial products or military applications). But, as most women will tell you, things like tampons are critical and often don't work very well, and as the engineers of these objects will tell you, tampons and sanitary pads are complex technological objects that require considerable designing.

So why don't students study them in school?

Aside from the fact their faculty would have heart-attacks, it could alienate the women students because of a whole host of gender ideology surrounding menstruation, and the right wing ideologues would say things like, "why are our tax dollars being used for this sort of thing?," of course.

You can't understand this situation without putting gender theory into the mix. And that's what I want to do.

So sharing this idea with the lunch crowd - I got a few snickers, some shocked glances, and some nods that there is indeed complex engineering involved, and then people got up to leave. I left also, and walking into the sunshine I thought...

... oh my god, what have I done? I just explicitly demonstrated to a room full of women faculty including my dean (not usually a risk in most colleges of engineering) how totally off-the-wall I am.

Usually I try to let people get to know the non-crazy side of me, figure out I'm a nice person, before I let the crazy out. But here the crazy came out early. Oh well.

So this story is about the kind of fool that is really a buffoon, and memorable because of the crazy costumes and antics. I guess I won't have to worry that people won't remember who I am now, a strange kind of notoriety which I will have to decide whether it is a good thing or not. I'll let you know.

But I guess the thing I've learned from these two particular encounters with foolishness is that half of being in academia is a combination of bluffing your way through situations, dealing with the mess you've made (whether in success or failure), and then calling the whole process an "opportunity;" and that it's still good to ask pointed questions, even if you doubt yourself afterwards, 'cause then you can go introduce yourself in person.

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