“A rich man’s soup—and all from a few stones. It seemed like magic!”
— Illustration by Marcia Brown from Stone Soup (1947). Used here under fair use for educational commentary.
This image is included to illustrate the metaphor of “stone soup thinking” as applied to collaborative faculty research strategies. Its use falls under fair use based on its transformative purpose, non-commercial context, and limited scope within a university publication.
Hello, and welcome to my third contribution to the Global Futures Office of Research Development and Strategy (GFORDS) blog. An enormous amount has happened since the first two entries, in which I introduced myself (here) and in which I elaborated on some of the large-scale aspects of the structure of the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory (GFL), particularly the “Five Spaces.”
In this blog, I’d like to reflect on some of the challenges that have emanated from Washington, DC under the new administration, and some of the responses we might formulate.
The first thing to say is that this year has been difficult. It is hard not to feel like we are under assault – that our work and our vision and, for many of us, even our lives and our identities are not valued.
The second is that it may very well get harder. The assault on our values will likely not ease up, and the financial consequences of the federal cuts have yet to fully work their way through the system. The next federal budget is not shaping up to be much of a relief. If there are macro-economic consequences to federal policies, i.e., an economic slowdown, then budgets will get tighter still (e.g., TRIF funds derived from state sales tax will fall as economic activity falls).
The third is that we will pull through this – together. We have a mission with broad support both inside and outside the university, articulated through the Design Aspirations and the university Charter. We have students and external partners who rely on the work that we do. We have our individual commitments, together with our colleagues, to advance knowledge for the public good. We have great wealth in the collegial, collaborative environment of GFL and ASU.
So, concretely, how do we move forward without being able to plan on having the financial resources we have had?
My first partial answer to that question is about our disposition. I call it “stone soup thinking,” after the children’s book Stone Soup, by Marcia Brown (please do spend 9-10 minutes and have it read to you here). Everyone has something to contribute to advancing our common goals. It takes some effort to elicit the collaborations that will do so, but that effort doesn’t cost any money, and we can achieve important outcomes by engaging a wide set of participants. Over the coming academic year, GFORDS will be hosting “strategic doing” and other workshops aimed to boost new collaborations in a low-resource way.
My second partial answer is that there are also low-cost, high-reward research activities that we can focus on. For example, writing a really good review paper for your field takes nothing but time, and it turns out that review papers are cited much more highly than those reporting original research (according to one study, on average 3X the citation rate). Writing review papers can also be great for building a new or refreshed syllabus, particularly with a graduate student who might be going off to teach, or with an undergraduate student going off to grad school. To this end, I have a tentative commitment from Barry Bozeman, professor emeritus in the Watts College (and President Crow’s PhD advisor!) to teach a class for colleagues on how to write a kick-*ss review article later in the fall semester.
My third partial answer is that GFL will be taking a new, and I hope invigorating, approach to the focal areas and the Global Futures Scientists and Scholars network. As you may have seen in an earlier message, we are going to be treating the GFSS network as something like a professional society, and the focal areas as something like organized sections of that society. Every member of the society – all the Scientists and Scholars – will get to choose a small number of focal areas (2 or 3) to affiliate with. The list of focal areas will be open to expansion beyond the current 14 or so based on preferences elicited from the scientists and scholars. Focal areas will self-organize with some (very) modest administrative support from GFL, with the possibility that as they develop and as we can manage, additional organizational and financial support will be available to seed projects, etc. GFORDS will provide some services to focal areas that require them, in particular, the possibilities of:
- list/subscriber management, meeting support, and elicitation and sharing of focal area/membership achievements;
- assistance with developing research identity, research strategy and alignment for the focal area;
- training in research and impact storytelling; and
- the opportunity to engage in “strategic doing” and other activities that will help the focal areas prioritize areas of collaboration that do not require large amounts of money or time.
These efforts are all ways to build community across GFL and resilience to the radical new challenges in the environment, as well as to advance our common goals of discovery and impact. If you have other ideas about how to accomplish these goals in this environment, please let me know. Otherwise, please just let us know which existing or new focal areas you would like to participate in, and think about what ingredients you’d like to offer to GFL’s stone soup.