science and technology

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Will Periscope, a Mobile App, Open Up Academic Conferences?

Link here for the Inside Higher Ed version of this entry which can more easily be shared & printed.

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Nearly 9,000 people, myself included, attended the annual conference of the Association of American Geographers (AAG) in late April 2015. The size of the conference has been growing over the last several decades and it has become a de facto international gathering despite the ‘American’ moniker; a trading space of sorts to present papers, share ideas, formulate collaborative research proposals, source prospective faculty, share gossip, have good times, etc. Of the 8,950 people who flew/drove/trained it to Chicago this April, 5,716 came from the US, 726 came from Canada, 666 from the UK, 257 came from China, and nearly equivalent numbers (35 vs 37) came from Singapore vs Mexico. All told, attendees came from 84 countries in total and they’re mapped out below courtesy of my department’s Cartography Lab. Needless to say this map highlights a highly uneven pattern of attendance with curiosities such as why are there so few geographers from nearby Mexico at the event, or why are more Canada-based geographers attending the AAG versus than annual meeting of the Canadian Association of Geographers (nearly 400 will be attending that event in lovely Vancouver shortly).

AAG2015-01This year’s AAG conference received a lot of very positive feedback (e.g., see posts by Jeremy Crampton and Rachel Squire) in part because of the nature of how well the event was organized, the scale of the event (the largest ever, meaning people are finally accepting it for what it is versus wishing it were a smaller & easy-to-manage gathering), and the iconic setting of downtown Chicago.

Coincidentally, in the weeks after the AAG conference, some interesting debates emerged about academic conferences more broadly, stirred up by Christy Wampole’s ‘The conference manifesto’ (New York Times, 4 May 2015) – see here for two of these reactions:

Christy Wampole’s response, appropriately titled ‘Response to Responses to “The Conference Manifesto“‘ is worth a read too.

While the debate about Wampole’s opinion piece is fascinating, if a little humanities-centric, I was more struck by the similarly timed debate about the impact of a mobile app (Twitter’s Periscope) on the Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs Manny Pacquiao boxing match. See, for example:

IMG_4924Periscope is a “teleportation device” – a mobile app that allows anyone to broadcast what they’re experiencing, and anyone with a link to the stream to watch, for free.

Now mobile phones were abundant at this year’s AAG – I’ve never seen so many people wandering around like zombies, staring at their screens while almost tumbling down Hyatt Regency escalators. And the emergence of new apps like Periscope means that anyone at the next AAG annual conference (or any other conference for that matter, including the forthcoming #CAG2015 & the #RGSIBG2015) can stream keynotes, panel discussions, individual presentations, post session squabbles/debates, etc. Comments and color-coded hearts can be posted on streams, recordings and/or replays are possible, and so on. Are we all ready for this? I’m not so sure…

So, my preliminary read of things is this:

1) Most disciplinary associations are already behind the ball with respect to live streaming conference sessions, even keynote/plenary sessions, on platforms such as YouTube. Some keynotes or prominent panels are recorded and posted, though in highly variable patterns. In short, most academic associations lack the capabilities to strategically think through and adjust to the demand for live and on-demand video and audio (e.g., via SoundCloud).

2) Given (1), most disciplinary associations have limited capability to cope with what happened in the Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs Manny Pacquiao boxing match – individualized live-streaming, via mobile apps, of performances.

3) Faculty, postdocs and graduate students may, for good and/or bad, be increasingly live streamed in their sessions. Who knows, for example, who’s just taking a photograph of a session or else live-streaming an entire talk. How will speakers message out their desire not to be recorded? Do associations need to “ask speakers to explicitly label if they don’t want content tweeted” (or periscoped) or put symbols on slides “with data not for dissemination“? Will specialty groups, like the Economic Geography Specialty Group (EGSG) that I recently chaired, coordinate streaming of select sessions? Will/can/should these recordings be archived and assembled into a disciplinary-specific content repository, effectively morphing conference sessions into open educational resources (OERs) for use in courses?

4) The broader implications of mobile app-based streaming has yet to be thought through. If this phenomenon takes off will this open up access to conferences and better serve members of associations? Will this enhance or reduce prospective national and global demand to attend conferences once people see talks, dialogues, etc., including some like the sessions/conference practices critiqued by Christy Wampole in ‘The conference manifesto’? Will streaming enhance access to sessions for those with limited resources to travel all the way to an expensive city like Chicago, and/or will it enhance anxiety re. missing out (assuming the streamed sessions are indeed high quality)? And will this phenomenon ramp up the use of Twitter in academia?

These are but a few preliminary thoughts on the potential implications of video streaming mobile apps for academic conferences. We’re unlikely to see the same types of debates about video piracy as those associated with high profile boxing and other sporting events, but academics and our associations are not immune from the potentially unsettling/exciting dynamics of a sea of free ‘teleporting technologies,’ downloaded in mobile phones, digitizing our bodies, voices, and ideas, for anyone who has access to the associated feed.

 Kris Olds

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‘Hotspots’ and international scientific collaboration

The OECD Science, Technology and Industry Scoreboard 2011: Innovation and Growth in Knowledge Economies report was released on 20 September.  While I’ve only seen the summary (which is the source for the first three images below) and an informative entry (‘A Changing Landscape: University hotspots for science and technology‘) in the OECD’s Education Today weblog, it is interesting to see a now common pattern and message emerging in these types of reports, and in a series of like-minded conferences, workshops, and associated reports (e.g. the Royal Society’s excellent Knowledge, Networks and Nations: Global Scientific collaboration in the 21st century, March 2011):

(a) relative stasis or decline in the OECD member countries (though they still do dominate, and will for decades to come);

(b) relatively fast growth within the so-called BRIC countries; and

(c) increased international collaboration, both as outcome and as aspiration.

And it is the aspiration for international collaboration that is particularly fascinating to ponder, for these types of scoreboards — analytical benchmarking cum geostrategic reframing exercises really — help produce insights on the evolving ‘lie of the land,’ while also flagging the ideal target spaces (countries, regions, institutions) for prospective future collaboration. National development processes and patterns thus drive change, but they interact in fascinating ways with the international collaborative process, which drives more international collaboration, and on it goes. As Alessandra Colecchia of the OECD puts it:

What does this [the changing landscape, and emerging ‘hotspots’] mean and why is it important? As students and researchers become more mobile, new sets of elite universities outside of the US could materialize. Whether or not we call it the “Banyan” or “Bonsai” League is yet to be determined, but it is clear that OECD countries may no longer have the monopoly on scientific excellence in higher education.

Luckily for us, education is generally not a zero-sum game. When others gain important insights and breakthroughs in science and technology, the entire field benefits. So wherever you are in the world, you can wear your college sweatshirt with pride.

True, though questions remain about the principles/missions/agendas driving international collaboration. For example, there is an ongoing scramble in Europe and North America to link up with research-active Brazilian institutions of higher education; an issue nicely summarized in today’s OBHE story titled ‘Brazil leads the charge from Latin America.’

As noted in the fourth image below (which was extracted from the Royal Society’s Knowledge, Networks and Nations: Global Scientific collaboration in the 21st century), the nature of coauthor-based collaboration with Brazil is changing, with some countries edging closer because scholar-to-scholar ties are deepening or thinning. The reconfiguration is most likely deepening from 2008 on as a slew of new policies, programs and projects get promoted and funded in both Brazil and actual or potential partner countries.

Some of the questions that come to my mind, after participating in some workshops where relations with Brazil are discussed include:

  • What values drive these new initiatives to reach out across space into and out of Brazil?
  • What disciplines are factored in (or not), and what types of researchers (junior? senior? elite? emerging?) get supported?
  • What languages are they dependent upon, and what languages will they indirectly promote?
  • Are these international collaboration drives built on the principle of ‘you are only as strong as your weakest link’ (i.e. an exclusive one), or are they attendant to the need for capacity building and longer time horizons for knowledge development?
  • Are these international collaboration drives built upon implicit and explicit principles of reciprocity, or otherwise?
  • What about the territorial dimensions of the development process? Will we see hotspot to ’emerging hotspot’ linkages deepen, or will hotspots be linked up with non-hotspots and if so how, and why? Can an archipelago-like landscape of linked up hotspots ‘serve’ nations/regions/the world, or is it generative of exclusionary developmental tendencies?

These are but a few of many questions to ponder as we observe, and jointly construct, emerging ‘hotspots’ in the global higher education and research landscape.

Kris Olds

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Note: the first three images were extracted from the OECD Science, Technology and Industry Scoreboard 2011: Innovation and Growth in Knowledge Economies (Sept 2011). The fourth image was extracted from the Royal Society’s Knowledge, Networks and Nations: Global Scientific collaboration in the 21st century (March 2011).

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Rising Above the Gathering Storm, Revisited: Rapidly Approaching Category 5

Note: the image above is a Worldle word cloud of the Executive Summary of Rising Above the Gathering Storm, Revisited: Rapidly Approaching Category 5, a report released today by the US’ National Academies Press.

See this NatureNews story (‘“Gathering Storm” back on the radar‘) for one perspective the report development process and (alarmist) message, as well as below for the official summary description:

In the face of so many daunting near-term challenges, U.S. government and industry are letting the crucial strategic issues of U.S. competitiveness slip below the surface. Five years ago, the National Academies prepared Rising Above the Gathering Storm, a book that cautioned: “Without a renewed effort to bolster the foundations of our competitiveness, we can expect to lose our privileged position.” Since that time we find ourselves in a country where much has changed–and a great deal has not changed.

So where does America stand relative to its position of five years ago when the Gathering Storm book was prepared? The unanimous view of the authors is that our nation’s outlook has worsened. The present volume, Rising Above the Gathering Storm, Revisited, explores the tipping point America now faces. Addressing America’s competitiveness challenge will require many years if not decades; however, the requisite federal funding of much of that effort is about to terminate.

Rising Above the Gathering Storm, Revisited provides a snapshot of the work of the government and the private sector in the past five years, analyzing how the original recommendations have or have not been acted upon, what consequences this may have on future competitiveness, and priorities going forward. In addition, readers will find a series of thought- and discussion-provoking factoids–many of them alarming–about the state of science and innovation in America.

Rising Above the Gathering Storm, Revisited is a wake-up call. To reverse the foreboding outlook will require a sustained commitment by both individual citizens and government officials–at all levels. This book, together with the original Gathering Storm volume, provides the roadmap to meet that goal. While this book is essential for policy makers, anyone concerned with the future of innovation, competitiveness, and the standard of living in the United States will find this book an ideal tool for engaging their government representatives, peers, and community about this momentous issue.

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The global geographies of stem cell research activity and policy

Today’s Financial Times includes a full page analysis (‘An industry to grow‘) that examines aspects of state-society-economy relations with respect to stem cell research.

The author, Clive Cookson (who also runs the FT.com Science Blog), deftly weaves five threads through the article: the role of the state, and inter-state competition, in shaping a very geographically uneven development process; the role of key university-based researchers (like UW-Madison’s James Thomson) in spurring on innovation; the evolution of technology in shaping the research process and associated ethical debates; the evolving role of the private sector in fueling (or not) stem cell research and associated commercialization dynamics; and the factors shaping the actual and perceived temporal dimensions of stem cell research.

See below for some fascinating maps that the FT drew upon for their associated graphic in ‘An industry to grow‘. Our sincere gratitude to William Hoffman of the University of Minnesota’s Medical School for permission to reprint his maps.

Hoffmann1

Hoffmann2

Hoffmann3

Kris Olds

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Smaller classes, bigger science, and the increasing need to engage

In the middle of checking with colleagues at a variety of peer institutions about the evolving nature of teaching loads, yesterday’s New York Times distracted me with two fascinating articles about forces that are pushing educators and researchers to work with both smaller and larger groups of people.

Small groups and quality learning

On the downward push side, the article ‘At M.I.T., Large Lectures Are Going the Way of the Blackboard’ by Sara Rimer, explores how physicists at universities across North America are:

pioneering teaching methods drawn from research showing that most students learn fundamental concepts more successfully, and are better able to apply them, through interactive, collaborative, student-centered learning.

The article, which primarily focuses on MIT and the discipline of physics, notes that students still take basic introductory classes, but:

today they meet in high-tech classrooms, where about 80 students sit at 13 round tables equipped with networked computers.

Instead of blackboards, the walls are covered with white boards and huge display screens. Circulating with a team of teaching assistants, the professor makes brief presentations of general principles and engages the students as they work out related concepts in small groups.

Teachers and students conduct experiments together. The room buzzes. Conferring with tablemates, calling out questions and jumping up to write formulas on the white boards are all encouraged.

The article reminded me of a day I spent in the Wharton School‘s lavish building at the University of Pennsylvania (see the pictures below, taken in 2005).  I was impressed with the dialogue-oriented classrooms, and the small semi-private meeting spaces for student teams in the hallways (to the left of the corridor) with more public computer desks on the opposite side; spaces clearly designed from the ground up.

wharton1 wharton2

wharton3

‘At M.I.T., Large Lectures Are Going the Way of the Blackboard’ resonates with debates underway in numerous quarters about the learning process, classroom technologies, pedagogical practices, and so on. Yet one cannot help but wonder how the effects of the current economic crisis will restrain most public universities from moving in this logical direction, one that our institutions have long known about (witness the praise for colleges like Harvey Mudd), yet have resisted or been unable to act upon.  Indeed, as I noted to one of my colleagues in Minnesota yesterday, long term underfunding of public higher education systems generates structural forces that see faculty-student enrollment number balances tilt the exact opposite way – away from small group quality learning – as witnessed in Australia and Canada in the 1980s and 1990s (see some indicators here in ‘Analysing Australia’s global higher ed export industry’). MIT and Penn have the resources to do the right thing, but does the average university in most continents?

Big science, research, and the centralization impulse

The 13 January issue of the same New York Times included a guest column by Aaron E. Hirsh titled ‘A New Kind of Big Science’. This article, which is also getting a lot of attention, discusses what Hirsh deems a “very broad trend” in scientific research: the creation of huge international teams of researchers, and associated research infrastructures, that are enabled by the forces of centralization:

Across many different fields, new data are generated by a smaller and smaller number of bigger and bigger projects. And with this process of centralization come changes in what scientists measure — and even in what scientists are.

And:

It’s not only scientific instruments, but also the scientists themselves who are transformed by centralization. If the 19th century was an age of far-flung investigators alone in the wilderness or the book-lined study, the 21st century is, so far, an age of scientists as administrators. Many of the best-known scientists of our day are men and women exceptionally talented in herding the resources — human and otherwise — required to plan, construct and use big sophisticated facilities.

In a way, centralization seems unavoidable. The governments that fund research have themselves become far more centralized, so perhaps science has been pulled along in the process. But even without that prevailing wind, science would, I think, head in the very same direction.

A young discipline is bound to move first through the data it can gather most easily. And as it does, it also defines more exactly what it must measure to test its theories. As the low-hanging fruit vanish, and the most precious of fruits are spotted high above, bigger investments in harvesting equipment become necessary. Centralization is a way to extend scientists’ reach.

I quote at length, here, for he raises some important issues worth pondering for those interested in the construction of new knowledge spaces. These include:

  • the degree to which collaboration and partnerships (many international) are becoming indispensable to the research endeavor.
  • the need to extend and guide heterogeneous networks to enable such research to be undertaken, and the double-edged role of centralization in enabling this extension/guiding process to function.
  • the rarely examined effects such collaboration, and such centralizing impulses, have upon the subjectivity of researchers (and of administrators, I might add).
  • the difficulties that exist in building an emotional attachment to what Hirsh calls Big Science, an issue ‘outreach’ and development planners in universities (including my university) are also concerned about.

Hirsh’s column, especially his idea of a national initiative in Citizen Science – to complement Big Science – in the US, has generated 100+ comments, some of which are insightful.

In closing, I can’t help but note that both pushes – smaller groups of people when teaching, and larger groups of people when researching – require greater, not less, social engagement, and of both virtual and face-to-face forms. Resource constraints aside, do we have the quality institutions, structures, technologies, programs, etc., in place, and knowledge about them, to enable and facilitate better quality social engagement in the local spaces of the classroom, and the broader spaces of Big Science?  Citizen Science might help resolve some problems associated with Big Science, yet we are arguably lacking up-to-date support systems to enable us to engage better, to be better partners, in the worlds of teaching and research.

In a future entry I’ll come back to the issue of inter-university consortia and associations (e.g., the US’ Committee on Institutional Cooperation) in providing one element of these needed support systems. Enough procrastination for today though…I have syllabi to finish writing!

Kris Olds

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Europe’s new Strategic Framework for International Science and Technology Cooperation

Over the course of the last several years, it has become abundantly clear that the people guiding the future-oriented development strategies of many universities, virtually all national funding agencies, and most ministries of higher education and research (or equivalent), are seeking to facilitate the creation of global research imaginations and networks. This is a theme we have incrementally addressed in GlobalHigherEd, including in ‘Globalizing research: forces, patterns, and collaborative practices’. Since this 4 August 2008 entry was posted, Brandeis University kindly let us know about a related event (a 2008 symposium titled ‘The Global: Implications for Research and the Curriculum‘), which highlights one of the more exemplary examples of rethinking underway right now at the university level.

A global research imagination, and its associated research practices and networks, are posited to enable ‘global challenges’ to be addressed, to bring together complimentary expertise (which is not always distributed evenly across space), and to facilitate greater innovation in the research process. The forging of global research networks also enables ties to be created, maintained, or perhaps rekindled; a process that ostensibly brings concepts like ‘brain circulation’, versus ‘brain drain’, to life, as well as geographically dispersed virtual communities.

euflagsA new Strategic European Framework for International Science and Technology Cooperation

It is in such a context that we need to view the European Union’s 29 September 2008 Communication, titled A Strategic European Framework for International Science and Technology Cooperation. For the non-European readers of this entry, a Communication is a paper produced by the European Commission (EC), most often to the key institutions (e.g., Council of the European Union or the European Parliament). It is generally the outcome of a series of initiatives that might follow this sequence: the production of (i) a staff working paper, (ii) the development of a consultation paper that asks for wider inputs and views, and then, if it keeps proceeding it is in the form of (iii) a Communication. The decision to move to this stage is generally if the EC thinks it can get some traction on an issue to be discussed by these other agencies. This is not the only pattern or route, but it does register that issue has wider internal EC backing (that is in the nerve centres of power), and a sense that it might get traction with the Member States.

These forms of ‘white paper’ style policy documents are fascinating, but sometimes challenging to make sense of given all of the messages they need to convey. One vehicle to do so is to simply identify the sections and subsections for they themselves send out a message about what really matters. In the case of this 14 page long Communication, we see the following structure presented:

Key strategic goal for international cooperation in science and technology and universal access to ICTs

1. PRINCIPLES UNDERLYING THE EUROPEAN FRAMEWORK FOR INTERNATIONAL S&T COOPERATION AND THE NEW INFORMATION SOCIETY PARTNERSHIPS

Widening the ERA and making it more open to the world

Ensuring coherence of policies and complementarity of programmes

Fostering strategic S&T cooperation with key third countries

Developing the attractiveness of Europe as a research partner

Launching results-oriented partnerships on information society regulation

The European Community and Member States working together

2. ORIENTATIONS FOR ACTION TO MAKE THE ERA MORE OPEN TO THE WORLD

2.1. Strengthening the international dimension of the ERA
• Integrating Europe’s neighbours into the ERA
• Fostering strategic cooperation with key third countries through geographic and thematic targeting

2.2. Improving the framework conditions for international S&T cooperation
• Tackling scientific challenges through global research infrastructures
• Mobility of researchers and global networking
• More open research programmes
• Intellectual Property Issues
• Pre-standardization

3. IMPLEMENTING A SUSTAINABLE PARTNERSHIP

era-logoscreenThe Communication, which is designed to help advance the development of the European Research Area (ERA), speaks to Member and Associated States, but also the rest of the world. This said, it is our sense that the core audiences of this document are Member States, which are being asked to work with the Commission in a much more coordinated manner, and select countries that have a significant presence in the global research landscape.

While this is not the place to outline the historical path that led to the creation of the Communication, it is important to note that it was developed in the aftermath of:

  • The emergence (2000), review, and relaunch (2005) of the Lisbon strategy, all of which provide impetus and traction for a more expansive research imagination and development agenda;
  • A broad 2007-2008 consultative process to rethink the ERA, some seven years after it was formally established in 2000 (readers interested in this consultative process should see this site, and the associated Green Paper, for further details).

The Communication also ties into related initiatives that we have profiled on GlobalHigherEd, including the so-called “Fifth Freedom” (see ‘Mobility and knowledge as the “Fifth Freedom” in Europe: embedding market liberalism?’), and is a follow up, of sorts, to the 2006 Commission Communication “Towards a Global Partnership in the Information Society” and the public consultation launched in July 2007 regarding how to open up new global markets for Europe’s ICT industry.

Now, the broad tenor of this well crafted Communication is in some ways nothing new. For years the EU has sought to facilitate a global research imagination, and enhance researcher mobility and expansive networks. Related initiatives like ERA-Link have been developed to forge ties with the many expatriate European researchers who reside around the world, especially in countries like the US. But, and this is a key but, the Communication deepens and refines thinking about how to build a global research imagination, and extend research networks:

  • inside Member States;
  • out to “Neighbouring countries” to build a “broader ERA”;
  • out to “Developing countries” to build “S&T capacity, sustainable development, global initiatives”, and
  • out to “Industrialised” and “emerging economies” to enhance “mutual benefit” and better address “global challenges”,

all of which theoretically provides feedback loops that simultaneously build the ERA and Europe’s standing in the global research landscape. It is not for nothing that Brussels released a summary of the Communication titled ‘Putting Europe high on the global map of science and technology: Commission advocates new international strategy‘ (24 September 2008).

While many elements of the Communication are worth noting, we will only focus on one right now – the principle of reciprocity. In a subsequent entry we will focus on the issue of how such region-derived frameworks for international science and technology cooperation generate structural pressure on less-developed countries to create supra-national regional structures when engaging about such issues.

eufp7The principle of “reciprocity”

What this means is that the EU will actually open up its research largesse to non-Europeans if their funding agencies do the same, subject to negotiations that end in consensus. As the Communication (p. 13) puts it:

EC bilateral S&T agreements are based on the principles of equitable partnership, common ownership, mutual advantage, shared objectives and reciprocity. While these principles have not always been fully implemented, reciprocal access to research programmes and funds should be pursued to enhance the mutual benefit of international S&T cooperation. FP7 [Seventh Research Framework Programme] is open to third country partners. Funding is normally limited to participants from international cooperation partner countries. However, since open competition promotes excellence in research, funding for collaborative projects could be extended to include research organisations and researchers located in industrialised third countries where reciprocal funding is made available for European researchers.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison, for example, received a 30 September notice that profiled the new Communication. In this notice, the Delegation of the European Commission in Washington DC stated:

US research teams are eligible to receive EC funding when the research component is deemed essential for the success of the project.

This is a significant shift in policy and especially practice. And while the specific details of what “reciprocity” means remain to be formally developed, it highlights a willingness to use material resources to create and/or deepen new transnational research networks. Thus foreign researchers, and research teams, will be enrolled in European networks much more easily. Yet, it is also important to be cognizant that the criteria underlying the granting of access to said monies are first and foremost those of an intellectual nature, and only if the EU views the projects to be associated with strategically important themes/sectors. It is also worth noting that the elevation of reciprocity enables the European Commission to create Europe-led virtual research teams; a strategy that helps overcome the ongoing challenges of creating the Blue Card scheme in Europe, a scheme somewhat similar to the US’ Green Card (a card Kris holds, which grants permanent residence, and virtually all rights except for voting). In other words, this initiative weaves together intellectual and labour market logics in some creative and realpolitik ways given intra-European debates about immigration and mobility (even of skilled labour).

In closing, A Strategic European Framework for International Science and Technology Cooperation is a strategy document that seeks to enhance international cooperation in science and technology, and thereby facilitate the creation of a global research imagination and associated research practices. “Strategic cooperation” with third countries, this said, needs to be enhanced through much more that fashioning frameworks: cooperation needs to be brought to life at a range of levels, and in a variety of forms, and this involves bodily presence and face-to-face.

euusworkshoplogo2One mechanism to do so is the sponsorship of policy dialogues. One of us will be attending such a dialogue – the EU/US Research and Education Workshop: Internationalization of Research and Graduate Studies and its Implications in the Transatlantic Context – which will be held in Atlanta Georgia on 17-18 November. This workshop will deal with a range of transatlantic development topics, including the new framework, the Global Dimensions of the Bologna Process, and other related issues.

euusworkshoplogoWorkshops such as these get the word out about the various dimensions of new frameworks, and build trust and mutual understanding between stakeholders about opportunities for cooperation.

In the light of Barack Obama’s recent election, and abundant evidence of European support for him at the end of eight years of strained Europe/US relations, it will be interesting to see how the discussions unfold. The US is, after all, a key element of the global research landscape; one of the few countries with capacity to create the so-called “global research infrastructures” that are needed for “major scientific advances”. Yet this is also a time of considerable financial turmoil on both sides of the Atlantic, and the new fiscal austerity realities that will inevitably emerge cannot help but dampen the euphoria that is sure to be in evidence.

In an experiment of sorts, an attempt will be made to provide some insights about the deliberations in Atlanta. For now, though, take a read of A Strategic European Framework for International Science and Technology Cooperation, for it is an important document that reflects new thinking about the logics and strategies associated with furthering collaboration across space; collaboration that, the Commission hopes, will put Europe “high on the global map of science and technology”.

Additional links

Kris Olds & Susan Robertson

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Searching for KAUST: of salaries and future insights

Auriele Thiele loaded up an entry three days ago in her insightful blog (Thoughts on business, engineering and higher education) that reminded me how amazed I am when I see what search terms bring people to GlobalHigherEd.  As Auriele notes, people use a wide array of approaches to searching, primarily via Google, and not all of them make sense. This said something is happening, hence the traffic to our site. Google’s algorithms send people to us, though I have no idea how this formally works.

Now the search terms that people use are interesting in that they arguably identify key concerns, and emerging debates, in the world of global higher ed. “Global university rankings” is clearly an issue of concern, and while we do not have many entries on this theme, the hunger for material on this phenomenon is striking.

Another topic we get a lot of traffic on is KAUST (also known as the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology), pictured to the right in June 2008 (courtesy of KAUST). We’ve developed a few entries on the new knowledge spaces emerging in the Middle East, including KAUST in Saudi Arabia, as have other higher ed media outlets like the Chronicle, Insider Higher Ed, and the Times Higher.

Let’s unpack the nature of the KAUST search terms bringing traffic to us, though, for this is what is most fascinating.

Over time the terms have shifted from “KAUST”, and “King Abdullah University of Science and Technology”, to a significant concern with KAUST + salaries, and now, most recently, KAUST + criticism. I might be over interpreting things, but KAUST’s development strategy seems to have been an enormous success on a number of levels, with the recent KAUST-IBM supercomputer announcement but the latest release stirring up attention in the global higher ed world. In other words KAUST has become a presence before it has become a real university (in Thuwal, Saudi Arabia).

The contrast with places like Quest University – Canada’s first secular private university (and pictured to the left) – is breathtaking, for Quest’s backers, while well connected, have had to incrementally push their new initiative forward, maneuver through several funding-related twists in the development path, and be ultra-efficient and effective to survive. There is no King Colombie-Britannique to secure this new university’s existence.

Now, is the volume of searches regarding salaries at KAUST a worrisome indicator regarding the base priorities of academics who seem to be in search of mammon, much like Daniel Plainview in There Will be Blood (2007)?

Or is this a sign of the challenging reality of constructing new knowledge spaces that generate an impact, and fast. The corollary here is if Canada, or British Columbia, were as serious as the Saudis and the Singaporeans (e.g., see Singapore Management University) about diversifying the higher education system, they would have seriously endowed Quest University from Day 1 to propel it into action even though it is ‘private’.

A third view is that this a sign of what is needed to draw globally mobile faculty and staff to places like Saudi Arabia where rigid social rules cannot help but guide academic life, limits on freedoms (including freedom of female faculty to drive, or fly out of the country to conferences without first receiving the approval of their husbands) will exist, and machine guns will never be far from sight on the protective borders of the KAUST campus. As with the National University of Singapore (where KAUST’s current president, Shih Choon Fong, used to be based), high salaries are a recognized mechanism to tempt ‘quality’ faculty to become more mobile, and transplant, if only temporarily.

But I do wonder what the fixation with salaries will lead to, on the ground, when all of the faculty and some of their families start arriving and living in the Seahaven of Saudi Arabia.  These people will be surfing on top of the oil-fueled development boom, yet never far from the surface, including in the compound being built, a different reality will emerge; a more complex reality of happiness and/or angst about international schooling, relative salary positioning, social cleavages (on the basis of race, ethnicity, and pedigree), leave of absence strategizing (for the tenured), contract renewal uncertainties (for the untenured), transnational family strategizing (inevitably many will leave spouses and children back ‘home’), dual career challenges, competitive pressures to perform, gripes about the time it takes to fly back to city X or city Y, what to do on the one day off per week, the bubble effect, the maid (domestic help) dynamic, teenagers (not) running amok, and so on.

KAUST will continue thrusting ahead given that it is a defacto sovereign wealth fund, prospective faculty will continue sniffing around GlobalHigherEd for salary details (sorry, this is the wrong place to check!), and a new manufactured world will unfold over the next decade. Yet I hope some of the faculty and their families get active weblogs going from the land of KAUST, for we need far more than official representations to really understand what is needed to construct these type of knowledge spaces. It would be a shame if KAUST micro-managed the production of reflective insights on the development process, for this is an experiment worth not only promoting (as they clearly must do), but also rigorously analyzing.

And at another level, is it not time for agencies like the ESF and the NSF to get more strategic, and bring together research teams, to assess the KAUST development process? The pace of change is too fast with respect to this type of initiative – more of a global assemblage than a national university – to merely stand by and wait for proposals from faculty.  The cranes are up, but not for much longer…

Kris Olds

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Surveying US dominance in science and technology for the Secretary of Defense

The global higher education and research landscape is a fast changing one at this point in history. Amongst many indicators we have increasingly powerful players (e.g., Kaplan, Thomson Reuters), new interregional and global imaginaries starting to generate broad effects (e.g., via the global dimensions of the Bologna Process), a series of coordinated multi-university attempts to create action on what some stakeholders deem “global challenges” (e.g., see The Global Colloquium of University Presidents), and a recent US-based attempt to create ostensibly global higher education action for global development.

On this latter initiative, deemed the Higher Education Summit for Global Development, I can’t help but think that the cost to organize and operate such a ‘summit’ was significant when compared to the related announcement of “$1 million [644,000 euro] to fund 20 partnership-planning grants of $50,000 to plan long-term collaborations between African and U.S. institutions of higher education“. Money of that scale is characteristically snatched from a dormant account inside some department to produce a ‘deliverable’ and seems somewhat incommensurate (in material and symbolic terms) with the stated ambition of the event, even if it is just the marker of a new phase of action.

The pace of globally-framed higher education and research change was abundantly clear to me last week when I was in Brussels (pictured to the left) meeting with a wide variety of informed and creative stakeholders; stakeholders who are actively creating elements of this new global higher ed/research architecture. The combination of insight and resources was impressive, and another reminder of what happens when states focus on building intellectual infrastructure for the medium to long term.

In this context, today’s entry briefly profiles one new contribution to challenging dominant views on the status quo of thinking about aspects of the globalization of higher education and research, though from the other side of the Atlantic – in the USA.

On 12 June the Rand Corporation released a major report titled U.S. Competitiveness in Science and Technology. The associated press release can be accessed here, and a summary Research Brief here.

This new report is a 2008 “companion report” to the 2007 collection, Perspectives on U.S. Competitiveness in Science and Technology, in which we flagged the Rand Corporation’s inclusion of one chapter by Jonathon Adams, a UK-based private consultant whose firm (Evidence Ltd) provides services in relation to the UK Research Assessment Exercise (RAE).

U.S. Competitiveness in Science and Technology presents findings that challenge notions of a slide in the dominance of the United States in the global science and technology landscape, especially with respect to research. In summary fashion, Rand notes:

Is the United States in danger of losing its competitive edge in science and technology (S&T)? This concern has been raised repeatedly since the end of the Cold War, most recently in a wave of reports in the mid-2000s suggesting that globalization and the growing strength of other nations in S&T, coupled with inadequate U.S. investments in research and education, threaten the United States’ position of leadership in S&T. Galama and Hosek [the Rand authors] examine these claims and contrast them with relevant data, including trends in research and development investment; information on the size, composition, and pay of the U.S. science and engineering workforce; and domestic and international education statistics. They find that the United States continues to lead the world in science and technology and has kept pace or grown faster than other nations on several measurements of S&T performance; that it generally benefits from the influx of foreign S&T students and workers; and that the United States will continue to benefit from the development of new technologies by other nations as long as it maintains the capability to acquire and implement such technologies. However, U.S. leadership in science and technology must not be taken for granted, and Galama and Hosek conclude with recommendations to strengthen the U.S. S&T enterprise, including measures to facilitate the immigration of highly skilled labor and improve the U.S. education system.

Coverage of the report is now emerging in outlets like the Economist, in the general media, and in the blogosphere (e.g., see this critique of the Rand message in the Computing Research Policy blog)

U.S. Competitiveness in Science and Technology is also noteworthy for it is produced by Rand for the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), a relatively sprawling institution as is evident in this organizational diagram:

As the inside page to the report puts it:

The research described in this report was prepared for the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD). The research was conducted in the RAND National Defense Research Institute [NDRI], a federally funded research and development center sponsored by the OSD, the Joint Staff, the Unified Combatant Commands, the Department of the Navy, the Marine Corps, the defense agencies, and the defense Intelligence Community under Contract W74V8H-06-C-0002.

The logic of the OSD funding NDRI-produced research likely relates to the US defense establishment’s concern about emerging science and technology (and research) ‘footprints’ of powers like China, India, and Europe vis a vis intra-US capacities to educate, produce knowledge, and have this knowledge disseminated (and generate effects) at a range of scales and via a variety of channels. Yet the report also seeks to use data and analytical narratives to prick holes in the emerging taken-for-granted assumptions that the era of American hegemony, with respect to global knowledge production, is over. It reminds me, a little, of the informed testimony of Michael S. Teitelbaum, Vice President, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, on 6 November 2007 before the Subcommittee on Technology and Innovation, Committee on Science and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives. Finally, the report is very clear in flagging the dependency of US science and technology capacity, and the US’ global research presence/impact, upon highly educated foreigners.

In an overall sense, then, U.S. Competitiveness in Science and Technology could be read as a detailed and insightful contribution to ongoing deliberations about the scale of US science and technology might, and an effort to reshape the contours of a critically important debate. I’m not sure if it could be classified as a contribution to thinking about “war by other means”, but rather as a reflection of a “new threat environment ” where thinking and analysis focuses on:

[h]ow and in what way do new challenges–from terrorists, insurgents, weapons of mass destruction, and the proliferation of technology–that the United States faces at home and abroad color America´s definition of and approach to national security? How will changes in the international economic, diplomatic, political, and alliance environments affect U.S. interests and capabilities? How will those changes and threats–from states, non–states, and other traditional and non–traditional sources– affect the United States´ ability to engage and project its power?

Regardless of the logics behind it, the report is thought provoking, laden with data and well designed graphic images, and is clearly written.

Finally, readership. I can imagine the current Secretary of Defense quite enjoying this read given that he was most recently President of Texas A&M University, and “also served on the Board of Directors and Executive Committee of the American Council on Education” and “the Board of Directors of the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges”. I am not as sure about the previous one, though. If he is still on the OSD mailing list perhaps he’ll be perusing the text for indicators of the declining health of “old Europe”!

Kris Olds

29 June update: This letter to the Economist (26 June 2008) is worth reading:

SIR – Referring to the conclusions of a RAND report on research and development in science and technology, you claimed that fears that America is losing its competitive edge in innovation are “overblown” (“What crisis?”, June 14th). Your evidence is that “America has lots of sources of R&D spending: federal money accounted for only $86 billion of the $288 billion it spent on R&D in 2004” and that “spending on the life sciences is increasing rapidly, a reasonable bet on the future.” The important point to be made here is that the composition of American R&D has changed markedly over the years.

Federal support for basic research at universities in the physical sciences and engineering—the type of research most directly coupled to technological innovation—has withered relative to spending on research in the life sciences and R&D carried out by industry. The increase in privately financed product-development (often the D in R&D) and biomedical research are both good, but neglecting basic research investments of the type that gave us the internet, solid-state electronics and medical imaging is not a recipe for future success.

Given that it typically takes 15 years for new ideas dreamed up in the laboratory to become commercial, America may be losing the technology race even while seeming to remain on top. At the very least, America’s relative position in the world is slipping, which bodes ill for the future economic standing of the United States.

George Scalise
President
Semiconductor Industry Association
San Jose, California

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Science and the US university: video lecture series by editor-in-chief of Science and former (1980-92) Stanford University president

The Center for Studies in Higher Education at the University of California, Berkeley, is one of the more active centres of its type in North America. They sponsor an excellent working paper series (e.g., see ‘Universities, the US High Tech Advantage, and the Process of Globalization’ by John Aubrey Douglass. CSHE.8.2008 (May 2008)), workshops, seminars, and so on.

This newly posted lecture series, that the CSHE organized, should be of interest to GlobalHigherEd‘s audience. The speaker is Donald Kennedy (pictured to the left), the current editor-in-chief of Science, and former president (1980-1992) of Stanford University, amongst many other titles and responsibilities. The Clark Kerr Lecture Series on the Role of Higher Education in Society has been running since 2001.

I will paste in the CSHE summary of the Kennedy lectures below. The first two lectures were given in November 2007, while the third (and final) lecture was given in March 2008. If you click on any of the three titles you will be brought through to the UCTV site where the recorded videos can be accessed. Kris Olds

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Clark Kerr Lecture Series on the Role of Higher Education in Society sponsored by the Carnegie Corporation and the Center for Studies in Higher Education

Donald Kennedy, Editor-in-Chief, Science Magazine

Science and the University: An Evolutionary Tale, Part 1: The Endless Frontier

In which President Roosevelt asks Vannevar Bush and others,-including may helpers and some revisionists, to transplant the federal governments apparatus for wartime science into the infrastructure for growth of research in the nation’s universities. The result is not what Bush originally hopes — a single Foundation responsible for all of the nation’s science — but it ushers in a period of extraordinary growth and transformation. Universities deal with the challenges of allocating and rebalancing new resources of unexpected scope, but the twenty days after war’s end resource growth flattens and new challenges appear: federal support brings more control, and a new generation has new questions about the value of science.


Science and the University: An Evolutionary Tale, Part 2: Bayh-Dole and Enclosing the Frontier

In which universities, having been partly weaned from federal support, are recognizing new sources of help. Their quest is assisted by a new concern from the government: the money being spent on basic research is producing more prizes then patents. Congress finds a solution: in the Bayh-Dole Amendments of 1980 it forswears collection on intellectual property rights resulting from university research it supports. The result is a dramatic growth in academic centers devoted to patenting and licensing faculty inventions. This brings in new money, accompanied by new challenges: should the university go into business with its faculty? Can it retain equity of treatment across disciplines. Perhaps most significant, had the enclosure of the Endless Frontier created economic property rights that will change the character not only of science but of academic life?

Science and the University: An Evolutionary Tale, Part 3: Science, Security, and Control

In which science and its university proprietors confront a new set of questions. Whether in the later phases of the Cold War or in the early phases of the Terror War, universities find themselves witnessing a replay of the old battle between science, which would prefer to have everything open, and security, which would like to have some of it secret. Struggles in the early 1980’s regarding application of arms control regulations to basic data resulted in some solutions that some hoped would be permanent. But after 9/11 a host of new issues surfaced. Not limited to arms control considerations, the new concerns included the publication of data or methods that might fall into the wrong hands. At the same time, science was confronting a different kind of security problem: instead of being employed to decide policy, science was being manipulated or kept secure in order to justify preferred policy outcomes.

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Cultivating scientific creativity in the city: what role for science festivals?

Editor’s note: many cities, regions and countries aspire to become ‘centers of excellence’ in science and technology for economic prosperity. Scientists strive to make breakthroughs and businesspeople seek to bring them into the marketplace. However, members of the public often have a hard time comprehending the associated scientific jargon, or merely recognizing what is going on behind the walls where scientists conduct their research.

In order to solve the problem associated with ‘science literacy’, some city-regions are now attempting to bridge between the science community and the general public by designing outreach programs. One of the most well known of such bridge programs is the Cambridge Science Festival (partly captured in the photo by Kris Olds to the right) in the US state of Massachusetts.

The Greater Toronto Area (GTA), Canada’s “powerhouse of research and innovation“, held its first science festival, titled Science Rendezvous, on May 10, 2008. This entry is designed to convey some features of the event, and is written from the perspective of a South Korean PhD student (Jae-Youl Lee), based at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, though kindly hosted for six months by the University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies (with field work helpfully supported via the Government of Canada’s Canadian Studies program). Jae-Youl’s report, which is based upon a day’s worth of field notes, pays particular attention to the ways through which Science Rendezvous, as a cultural event, helps people understand the current whereabouts of science in the City of Toronto.

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Science Rendezvous: Toronto’s New Science Festival

Hosting an annual science festival is becoming increasingly popular around the world – see, for example, the Edinburgh International Science Festival (Scotland), the Australian Science Festival, Pittsburgh’s SciTech Spectacular (United States), and two Cambridge Science Festivals (one in England and the other in the Boston area). While some festivals have existed for more than a decade (e.g., Edinburgh, Australia, and Cambridge in England), others were recently launched (e.g., Cambridge in the US). Most of the science festivals are organized by a consortium of various levels of government, universities and research institutions, but some such as Australian Science Festival are led by private entities which collect fees. In any case, science festivals are usually composed of public lectures and demonstrations, panel discussions, guided tours, exhibitions, hand-on experiments, etc.

Before launching a science festival, learning from existing events is a common practice. For example, the pioneers of Australia Science Festival were inspired by its Scottish counterpart in the late 1980s (for details, see here). Similarly, Dr. Dwayne Miller, professor of chemistry and physics at University of Toronto (UT), proposed Science Rendezvous after he experienced Lange Nacht der Wissenschaften in Berlin (Germany) three years ago. Dr. Miller told the Globe and Mail (April 26. 2008), a media partner to the Rendezvous, that “I was amazed to see the way in which the locals were getting into [science]”. The experience led him to organize Toronto’s science festival in partnership with not only UT’s collaborators, but also the university’s main local competitors (Ryerson University and York University). On the day of Science Rendezvous, citizens of all ages were invited to a dozen locations (including universities, research institutions, hospitals, shopping malls and even pubs) throughout the metropolitan area.

Science Rendezvous in Discovery District

The City of Toronto officially designated a downtown area bounded by Bloor Street, Bay Street, Dundas Street West, and Spadina Avenue as Toronto’s Discovery District in June 2002 (see this map). Biomedical and related sciences were chosen as the District’s strategic sector, and the City has implemented supporting policies in cooperation with provincial and federal governments, business communities, universities, and research institutions. The key project is the building of MaRS Centre, with Phase I of MaRS opened in September 2005.

As a part of Science Rendezvous, a select number of biomedical research labs at the MaRS Centre were accessible to the public in guided tours. Dr. William Wei briefly introduced the main function of MaRS in the beginning of a tour, in which he showed the use of 3-D display technology in new drug development. In a nutshell, the MaRS Centre was built to overcome a widely known problem in the biomedical industry: it normally takes for twelve to fifteen years to complete all the phases of preclinical and clinical tests to get a drug approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), but a pharmaceutical patent expires in twenty years (for details, also read Profile 2008: Pharmaceutical Industry compiled by PhRMA, or Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America). In other words, the owner of a pharmaceutical patent enjoys its commercial benefit for only five to eight years before generic drug makers can use it for free. The Centre’s key concept of ‘convergence’, in which biomedical scientists, businesspeople, investors, and legal services providers locate together, is believed to shorten the time of drug approval so that MaRS tenants can get commercial benefits for a longer period.

The tours at MaRS Centre generated an additional dimension of convergence – they sought to be one with the public. Diverse visitors endeavored to achieve their own goals in the tours. For example, people in my tour group included parents with kids, a science journalist considering his new office in the Discovery District, a doctoral student in biomedical science from University of Waterloo in search of her future career, an accountant accompanied by his wife who works for Ontario government, etc.

The tour provided great opportunities for socializing as well as learning. Not only were a couple of kids in white medical lab coats happy at seeing cells through a microscope at Dr. Li Zhang’s cellar biology laboratory, but adult people were also enthusiastic. To some participants, the tours provided a venue for doing job-related activities. For example, a female employee working for corporate relations division at UT Scarborough was busying exchanging business cards with MaRS people at every presentation. It was her role to help undergraduate students at the school get hired at this state-of-the-art facility.

Right across the University Avenue, Mount Sinai Hospital also prepared programs for visitors (see this map again). Like MaRS, the Hospital had guided tours to upper-floor research labs, where the DNA of non-human organisms such as fruit flies was researched to advance our knowledge about cancer. Unlike MaRS, the Hospital opened booths for volunteers’ demonstrations and visitors’ hands-on experiments. At the booths, visitors learned how to extract DNA from a banana, tested their own knowledge about genetics, watched forensics demonstrations, etc.

Café Scientifique

Besides places of seeing and doing science, Science Rendezvous also offered places of talking about science. The Café Scientifique at The Rivoli, a pub in Queens West area, was such a place. The Café was not a special event prepared for the Rendezvous. Instead, the Café have been a monthly event in Toronto. Ontario Science Centre organizes the regular meeting. Begun in Leeds (United Kingdom) in 1998, the Café Scientifique is spreading around the world (link here if you want to find one near you, and here for Canadian offerings). At any Café Scientifique, all the participants are encouraged to discuss current issues related to science and technology over coffee, beer, or wine. As the organizer of Toronto’s Café Scientifique emphasizes, “it’s not a lecture! It’s a place for group discussion and audience involvement is the most important ingredient”. However, the Café usually begins with expert presentations.

Following the conventional procedure of holding a Café Scientifique, four panel debaters were invited to present their opinions on the topic of the day. The issue was the relationship between science and media. All the experts showed concerns over misleading and selective media reports about scientific discoveries. In particular, they pointed out, the media exaggerates the commercial benefit of science discoveries such as stem-cell research, pays far more attention to reporting ‘new’ discovery than helping people get out of science illiteracy, and neglects reporting perspectives different from (or, opposed to) the dominant view. For example, Shelly Ungar, sociology professor at University of Toronto Mississauga, pointed out the ‘silencing’ of politically and socially unacceptable scientific findings such as one that found out ‘passive smoking may not kill’. Similarly commenting on the view on climate change, Stephen Strauss argued, the fundamentally different methodology between science and media (i.e. experimental modeling vs. narrative style) is the main reason for the distortion and selectiveness common in the media report. When the expert presentations were all finished, the moderator of the Café encouraged the audience to participate in small group discussions about the issue.

TO Live with Science Culture

Toronto’s Mayor David Miller proclaims in the Agenda for Prosperity (p.2) that “we must put creativity at the heart of Toronto’s economic development strategy.” The Agenda’s supporting document Creative City Planning Framework (p.24) spells out two ways through which creativity can drive the City’s economy. The first is to develop an array of specific sectors such as cultural industries (for details, see Imagine a Toronto) and high-tech industries. The second is to normalize creativity as an everyday practice among citizens. In other words, encouraging citizens to behave more creatively is also believed to drive the City’s economy.

At Science Rendezvous, activities associated with the sciences were mobilized as a medium to cultivate creativity and awareness amongst Torontorians. As I described above, they were seeing, doing, listening to, and talking about, sciences throughout the City. As Dr. Ron Pearlman, biologist at York University put it, they wanted to make the Rendezvous “more of a cultural activity” (Globe and Mail, April 26, 2008) such that experiencing and enjoying sciences as such became part of the cultural life of the City.

It remains to be seen whether a more creative culture generates economic value and to what extent the benefits spread over the society. Nevertheless, in my observations, Science Rendezvous seemed to help people understand the current whereabouts of the sciences, which will surely affect their lives in the future. Visitors to the places where I moved through during Science Rendezvous certainly have their own answers to questions such as why the MaRS Centre is necessary, what scientists at the Centre do, how studying fruit flies helps in the treatment cancers, and why people should be cautious while reading media reports about the sciences.

Jae-Youl Lee