Overview Faculty Voice articles March 2014 edition

Changing the Academy, Changing Society

By Nelly P. Stromquist, College of Education, UMCP

Institutions reflect their surrounding social environment and, at the same time, create their own. Periodically, both need drastic change for human conditions to approach that optimum point on their ever-evolving continua. One element of our academic environment that now cries out for such a change—one that affects more than most imagine—is the underrepresentation of women as faculty members, especially in scientific and technological (STEM) fields. This condition persists despite the growth in the number of women gaining Ph.D. degrees in all fields. Is this purely the consequence of women’s own individual choices? Does gender socialization pressure women into avoiding certain careers? Do institutions of higher education exacerbate the problem through diverse forms of discriminatory practices?

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I Knew You Before I Met You. How Social Media Has Changed the Way We Communicate

By Jennifer Brannock Cox, Communication Arts, Salisbury

Love it or hate it, social media has become the next “big thing,” revolutionizing how humans communicate in new, exciting, and sometimes dangerous ways. Social media has given us the power to break geographic boundaries, establish worldwide conversations, and transform virtual revolutions into real, physical change. That’s the good news.

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Medical Education

By E. Albert Reese, Dean Medicine, UMB

In December last year, The Chronicle of Higher Education published a commentary written by Richard B. Gunderman, M.D., Ph.D., Professor of Radiology, Pediatrics, Medical Education, Philosophy, Liberal Arts, and Philanthropy at Indiana University, about the shortcomings of current medical education. In his article, Gunderman argues that, due to cost-cutting and a reliance on new technologies to teach students, medical school faculty members have been reduced to “content deliverers,” not teachers or role models, who only focus on the “competency” of students, rather than training excellent future physicians, through a “mass production” of graduates, and not highly-skilled trainees. He cites a recent Annals of Surgery study, which surveyed surgery fellowship program directors who felt that 56% of their fellows could not suture, 21% were unprepared for the operating room, and the majority of fellows could not design or conduct academic research projects. Gunderman points to this study as evidence for an “ailing” medical education system that no longer holds excellence and patient care in the highest of regards. He posits that re-establishing a diverse culture of superior quality in medical education, which holds human relationships at its core, can “cure” the system.

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Journalism Today

By DeWayne Wickham, Journalism & Communication, Morgan State U

In truth, the current crisis in journalism has more to do with how we do our work than how we deliver the news. Still, too many people see the troubled state of print and television news and ask the question: “Is journalism dying.” My answer is that it is alive and doing exceedingly well. People who think otherwise confuse news delivery systems with the news those platforms deliver.

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Morgan State University’s Center for the Built Environment & Infrastructure Studies

B y James E. Whitney II, Engineering, Morgan State U

The Morgan State University Center for the Built Environment (CBEIS) building is one of the newest buildings constructed on the Morgan State University (MSU) campus. Ground-breaking for building construction was on April 2, 2010. The building opened on September 20, 2012 with an official opening ceremony including Maryland State Governor Martin O’Malley, past and current MSU Presidents Earl S. Richardson and David Wilson, respectively, Dean of the Engineering School, Dr. Eugene Deloatch, and Dean of the School of Architecture and Planning, Dr. Mary Anne Akers and several other dignitaries. The CBEIS building houses the School of Architecture and Planning, Urban Infrastructures Studies, Transportation Studies, National Transportation Center, and Civil Engineering programs.

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Barriers to Implementation of Interprofessional Education

Poem by Richard Dalby

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Nineteen Years Later

Poem by Robert Deluty

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Academic Notes

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03.18.14

by facultyvoiceumd

I Knew You Before I Met You: How Social Media Has Changed the Way We Communicate

By Jennifer Brannock Cox, Salisbury

Social media also has its pitfalls – weakened personal and national security, fragmentation of relationships, and shortened attention spans, just to name a few. But I’ll get to those in a minute. First, it is vital to understand the global scope of this phenomenon, just to give you a sense of its reach and potential for power.

According to the U.S. Census[1], there are about 7.1 billion people on the planet right now. Of those billions, more than 1 billion have Facebook accounts, including 67% of people in the U.S.[2]

Still not sure just how far-reaching social media is? Here are some more statistics:

YouTube – 1 billion unique visitors each month; 6 billion hours of video watched each month[3]
Twitter – 500 million users; 1 billion message every 2.5 days[4]
LinkedIn – 225 million users[5]
Tumbr – 170 million blogs; 76 billion posts[6]
Instagram – 150 million users; 16 billion photos shared[7]

The bottom line – social media is “in,” and although the technologies and preferred platforms change almost daily, virtual networking is not going anywhere anytime soon. So, what does it all mean? In a word – change. Social media is changing the way we interact with each other in the world, creating both opportunities and liabilities never encountered before.

The most noticeable change for many social media users is to their interpersonal relationships. Traditionally, we have been constrained by geography, meeting and mingling with those in close proximity to us. We meet at work, in class, at bars or other local venues and form relationships that are often largely reliant on convenience. Whether those relationships last after physical closeness is no longer possible is often said to be the true test.

With the advent of social media, users now have the ability to connect based on shared interests rather than proximity. These interactions can lead to meaningful in-person encounters, as well. People with shared interests in everything, from quilting to baseball to astrophysics, can form online communities and use social media to arrange meetings to grow their relationships.

Case in point, more than 41 million Americans have tried online dating sites, such as Match.com and eHarmony, to find mates who share their interests, and 17% of all marriages last year were the result of first encounters on sites like those[8]. That being said, online friends and lovers have greater opportunities to misrepresent themselves or omit details regarding their physical characteristics and background, which can lead to disappointment, embarrassment, and even danger during face-to-face encounters.

Social media can also lead to community engagement, connecting people for a common cause. The most striking example of this type of engagement last year was the story of “Batkid.” In November, five-year-old cancer survivor Miles Scott wanted nothing more than to ride with the Caped Crusader, Batman. Thanks to a Make-A-Wish social media campaign that went viral, approximately 12,000 people gathered to transform San Francisco into Gotham City for a day, helping make Miles’ wish come true.

Not only did social media play a role in the organization of Batkid’s dream day; it garnered unprecedented recognition for the Make-A-Wish Foundation, which could assist in making many more dreams come true. Batkid’s day of fighting crime was shared across all forms of social media in 117 countries[9]. The result: more than 400,000 tweets in one day, more than 21,000 Instagram and Twitter photos, and a 1,400% increase in traffic on the Make-A-Wish website during the day.

Some social scientists have argued social media has actually lead to a decrease in community engagement, with more people staying online rather than meeting to participate[10]. While that might be true of some, social media has the potential to unite neighbors for a common goal faster than any meeting or petition ever could.

Social media has also changed the construction and dissemination of popular culture. Traditionally, decisions about what was to be popular were made by mass media executives based on their perceptions about what the general public might like. With the rise of YouTube, blogs, and other platforms for displaying talents, opinions, and ideas, the consumer has become the producer, gaining fame and popularity based on their actual mass appeal rather than the prediction of it.

As captivating as 6 billion hours of YouTube can be, it can also be very distracting. Millions of Americans regularly visit social media sites during working hours, leading to decreases in productivity[11]. Additionally, a recent study found constant connectivity online has lead to increases in depression among college-age students, as students find it difficult to look away from the computer and focus on other productive endeavors[12].

Going beyond entertainment and personal use, social networking sites have been responsible for revolutions on national and international scales. In his attempts to organize the “Occupy Wall Street” protests, Change.org founder Ben Rattray relied heavily on social media sites to rally participants. Rattray told the Huffington Post, “The best way to get people away from their computer is through the computer; you can’t organize thousands of people in New York City [the way Occupy Wall Street has] without the web.[13]”

Social media was also credited for the political revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya in early 2011, known as the “Arab Spring.” When dissidents’ opposition to leadership regimes were silenced in public, they took to sites like Twitter and Facebook to spread their messages and organize protests that eventually toppled the governments in those countries. Meanwhile, the rest of the world marveled, following issues they didn’t know existed and watching these revolutions in real time from the perspectives of those fighting. However, as these countries remain in turmoil, the real meaning and impact of those communications has yet to be determined.

While there are different opportunities and challenges for communication on social media, the takeaway is this: social media connects strangers. On an interpersonal level, we connect with people who share our interests. As a community, we connect with neighbors who might otherwise be strangers. In pop culture, social media creates common ground for strangers to share and reflect. And globally, social media prompts strangers to unite when there is seemingly no other way.

When we connect as strangers, we have unprecedented opportunities for positive change and union. However, we also open the door for reckless behavior that can put our identities, and even our lives, in danger.

Social media sites offer us the opportunity to express ourselves in new ways, but they also create potential for us to harm ourselves. In a fit of anger, you might post something offensive on social media, or to be funny, a friend might post an embarrassing video of you. Inappropriate postings have cost people their friends, loved ones, and even careers. Even if you are not on social media, information posted about you could also have potentially damaging consequences that are beyond your control.

More frightening is the ability to track people on social media. Many sites have geographic tags that allow others to see where users are when they post. Entertainer Jack Vale recently spooked social media users during an experiment by searching for people who had tagged themselves in his vicinity[14]. He looked on their profiles, gathered some basic facts and personal information about them, and confronted them in public. Although the result was humorous, the implications were not lost on his startled victims, who did not realize how easily they could be found and how much information they were letting strangers know about themselves.

With all its potential and pitfalls, social media makes for a fascinating study in human communication. As even more people adopt social media as an important, if not primary, tool for communicating, study of its possibilities and impact will likely continue to take center stage as researchers grapple for a snapshot of these sites during their coming of age.

Whether social media is for you is up to you, but one thing is for sure – it cannot be ignored. As educators, it is vital that we recognize its permeation among students. Even if professors chose not to integrate social media into their classes, we have to acknowledge the prospects and problems social media creates for our students and ourselves. You never know when a video of you might appear on YouTube or what your students are tweeting about during class….

[1] U.S. Census. “U.S. and World Population Clock.” <http://www.census.gov/popclock/> (Feb. 11, 2014).

[2] Cooper Smith, “7 Statistics About Facebook Users That Reveal Why It’s Such a Powerful Marketing Tool,” Business Insider, Nov. 16, 2013, <http://www.businessinsider.com/a-primer-on-facebook-demographics-2013-10> (Dec. 3, 2013).

[3] YouTube, “Statistics.” < http://www.youtube.com/yt/press/statistics.html> (Feb. 11, 2014).

[4] Brandon Griggs and Heather Kelly, “With Twitter Going Public: 23 Key Moments from Twitter History,” CNN, Sept. 19, 2013, < http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/13/tech/social-media/twitter-key-moments/> (Dec. 3, 2013).

[5] Salvador Rodriguez, “LinkedIn reaches 225 million users as it marks its 10^th birthday,” L.A. Times, May 6, 2013. < http://articles.latimes.com/2013/may/06/business/la-fi-tn-linkedin-turns-10-20130506> (Dec. 3, 2013)

[6] Tumblr. “About Us.” < http://www.tumblr.com/about> (Feb. 11, 2014).

[7] Instagram, “Press News.” < http://instagram.com/press/#> (Feb. 11, 2014).

[8] Statistic Brain, “Online Dating Statistics.” <http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/face-it/201302/connecting-through-online-dating> (Feb. 11, 2014).

[9] Chris Taylor, “How Batkid Conquered the World, By the Numbers,” Mashable, Nov. 18, 2013. < http://mashable.com/2013/11/18/batkid-numbers/> (Dec. 3, 2013).

[10] Robert Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), 65-78.

[11] Cheryl Conner, “Employees Really Do Waste Time at Work, Part II,” Forbes, Nov. 15, 2012. <http://www.forbes.com/sites/cherylsnappconner/2012/11/15/employees-really-do-waste-time-at-work-part-ii/> (Feb. 11, 2014).

[12] Conner, “Employees Really Do Waste Time at Work, Part II.”

[13] Craig Kanalley, “Occupy Wall Street: Social Media’s Role in Social Change,” Huffington Post, Oct. 6, 2011. <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/06/occupy-wall-street-social-media_n_999178.html> (Dec. 3, 2013).

[14] Jillian D’Onfro, “This Guy Stalks Strangers on Social Media and Confronts Them in the Street With Everything He Knows About Them,” Business Insider, Nov. 19, 2013. < http://www.businessinsider.com/jack-vale-social-media-experiment-2013-11> (Dec. 3, 2013).

Editor’s note: Having taken Latin in secondary school, I sometimes cringe when data, media, and other plural Latin words are followed by a singular verb. But the FV has decided that a strong author’s preference for the “wrong” singular verb should be honored – or at least accepted. Next thing they’ll ban cursive!

03.18.14

by facultyvoiceumd

Changing the Academy, Changing Society

By Nelly P. Stromquist, College of Education, UMCP

Nelly Stromquist

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has committed itself to increasing the representation of women faculty members in STEM fields nationwide and has invested over $135 million to this end in approximately 140 colleges and universities since 2001. Its ADVANCE initiative (Increasing the Participation and Advancement of Women in Academic Science and Engineering Careers) is NSF-wide, covering its seven directorates and its three research programs. ADVANCE’s strategy is to provide matching funds so that colleges and universities carry out additional activities that give impetus to new and revised hiring, retention, and promotion policies in STEM fields, address the work-family relationship that greatly affects women faculty members, and create all kinds of supporting mechanisms such as mentoring, lecture series, conversations with university leaders, research grant seeds, and social networking to increase awareness around gender dimensions. Institutions receiving NSF funds are given freedom to design their own array of initiatives. The impact evaluation, however, has been carefully delineated by NSF, and requires the provision of statistical indicators to show before and after conditions.

Three in the University Maryland University System have been recipients of NSF “institutional transformation” awards, of which there are about 40 in this country: the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC); the University of Maryland Eastern Shore (UMES); and the University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP). The UMBC grant, initiated in 2003 and completed in 2010, received $3.2 million. According to an external evaluation (Campbell-Kliber Associates, 2008), prior to ADVANCE women represented 27% of those in STEM tenured and tenure-track faculty positions; by the end of the project, their numbers had risen to 50%. There were no significant increases in the number of underrepresented minorities, however—a condition that UMBC also sought to remedy. While considerable improvement took place in numbers as well as in mentoring and faculty development plans, a survey of UMBC’s general work environment conducted at the end of the program found significant differences between women and men faculty members in nine of 11 work environment areas, with women perceiving much greater negative differences in four of these areas (degree of sexism, respect, civility, and collegiality). Institutional factors at the university level are not hospitable to women scientists, but of equal concern is the fact that fewer girls than boys continue to enroll in math and science courses in high school. A notorious example is computer science. The College Board reported recently that only 30,000 students in the nation took the AP test in computer science in 2013. Of these, 4,964 were female, about 8% Latina, and about 3% African American. The combination female/minority undoubtedly produces an even smaller proportion.

ADVANCE at UMCP is younger (initiated in 2010) and smaller ($2.7 million) than at UMBC. As Prof. O’Meara described in a previous article (The Voice, December 2013), our own ADVANCE initiative covers multiple activities that enable women to develop a stronger sense of individual agency through research focusing on gender dimensions, mentoring and networking, discussions on leadership issues, and provision of conferences by stellar women academics. Change, of course, takes time. Asked to reflect on climate changes concerning gender at UMCP, Marvin Breslow, an emeritus history professor with a 41-year UMPC experience and a former chair of the University Senate, observed: “We are still a white male faculty but one that is now much more aware of what the world is becoming.” He noted that among the 15 academic deans, seven are women (ARHU, Education, Information Sciences, Journalism, Libraries, Public Health, and Undergraduate Studies). Progress, however, is not even. For instance, at the School of Engineering, where women now represent 25% of those receiving a Ph.D., only 12% of its faculty are women.

Research on barriers to similar representation and status of women and men faculty members at institutions of higher education shows convergence on key obstacles. A study that traced the attainment of about 400 NSF women awardees in a program that existed from 1997 to 2000 found that the most significant challenge—by far—facing women scientists and engineers was their ability to balance career and family responsibilities (Rosser, 2004). The fact that there is a considerable number of dual academic careers among faculty members’ households complicates the problem because family responsibilities are not equally shared: women continue to be the main care providers and household managers in their families. Since provided at home is the most common type of childcare in the US, cumulative disadvantages accrue “naturally” to women, with corresponding less time available for research activities and campus presence. The career-family issue exceeds the limits of institutional action. Merely making private childcare information available to women (as ADVANCE proposes) is no substitute for actual access to reasonably priced and widespread childcare provision. The US provides less childcare and family support than any of its peer nations. The ADVANCE program at UMBC found that the most frequent obstacle reported by the newly recruited STEM women faculty was “family obligations.” It would seem that if women are to have equal professional opportunities, the issue of child care and elder care provision must be endorsed as a nationwide social policy. A serious alternative, of course, would be for colleges and universities to adopt a more gender-sensitive policy and offer childcare services on their own campuses. The other aspect of “family obligations” concerns the gender division of labor at home, where women continue to assume—whether by love, competence, or both—the greater share of domestic tasks and care responsibilities.

At UMCP, ADVANCE has now entered its fourth of five years. Results from two surveys on the work environment faced by women and men faculty members offer data that merit reflection. The first survey, administered in Spring 2011, found that the climate for work-life balance was rated poorly by all respondents, especially women, who identified a need for improved childcare. In the words of one woman faculty member, “The environment that you need to work 100 hours per week is deflating and demoralizing for those who want children.” Unsurprisingly, while 38% of women reported having experienced discrimination by gender, only 12% of the men had faced such an experience (O’Meara and Campbell, 2011). The first survey also found large and statistically significant differences by gender in the following items: “Opportunities for female faculty at UMD are at least as good as for male faculty,” “I work harder to be perceived by some of my colleagues as a legitimate scholar,” and “I have experienced discrimination based on my individual or multiple identities.” The second survey, given in Spring 2013—two years later—found identical results for those items. Interestingly, an item that had not reached statistical significance in the first survey now reports large differences to the disadvantage of women: “I am satisfied with my unit’s culture around work-life balance” (O’Meara, Garvey, Niehaus, and Corrigan, 2013). Could these results reflect that the new knowledge promoted by ADVANCE sharpened perceptions and thus led to heightened recognition of needs? Or simply that institutional change takes a longue-durée framework?

The social networks and mentoring provided through NSF grants work gradually but effectively among women faculty members. Even though such activities reach only a small group of beneficiaries, the mere idea of being targeted for assistance and included in a set of activities and venues previously out of their reach seems to give women faculty members a sense of confidence and self-esteem that can only be positive. I personally have benefited from participating this academic year as an ADVANCE leadership fellow. This allowed me, together with five other women and eight men, to hear monthly accounts by high-ranking administrators on various facets of their work, from budgets and leadership challenges to conflict management. These venues have provided an unparalleled access to frank and detailed conversations on key aspects of university functioning and performance. And the leadership provided by former Provost Anne Wiley in moderating these conversations has been exceptional. Will the new knowledge enable these and other ADVANCE participants to use their place of employment to create the capabilities that will prompt institutional changes at UMCP? Keep posted.

References:

Campbell-Kliber Associates. 2008. University of Maryland Baltimore County. ADVANCE Institutional Transformation Program. Final Evaluation Report.

O’Meara, K. and Campbell, C. 2011. The Work Environment for Tenure-Track/Tenured Faculty at the University of Maryland. ADVANCE Research and Evaluation Report I.

O’Meara, K., Garvey, J., Niehaus, E., and Corrigan, K. 2013. The Work Environment for Tenure Track/Tenured Faculty at the University of Maryland. Results from the 2013 UMD Work Environment Survey.

Rosser, S. 2004. Using POWRE to ADVANCE: Institutional Barriers Identified by Women Scientists and Engineers. NSWA Journal 16(1): 50-69.