How has your work evolved over the last year?
Dr. Dale W. Laird Professor More about his research http://bit.ly/LairdLab Contact Info dale.laird@schulich.uwo.ca (519) 661-2111 Ext. 86827
“As we continue on with COVID, it's remains challenging to have a How normal year. In the fall, I was going into the office every day for the most part. My laboratory continues to function within the restrictions that we have. It’s a bit challenging, but I think people are continuing to make the best of it. Also starting last September, I began a new position which is an Assistant Dean of Research Chairs and Awards. This is an administrative position for me. My portfolio is a new one, and it includes looking after what we call endowed research chairs. Schulich has about 42. These endowed chairs are in perpetuity and held by Faculty members. The revenues from these chairs are used to either offset research costs or provide some salary support. My job is to oversee this program. The other part of my job is to encourage Schulich faculty to seek awards and honors, which not only brings recognition to the individuals, but it also brings recognition to the faculty as well as the University. It’s been good fun. I call it my ‘good news Dean’ job, because most times I'm calling up people to encourage them to go for something they will find personally rewarding and I participate by helping them shape their nomination packages.”
What do you generally do on a daily basis?
“Right now, I'm probably dedicating the equivalent of one to two days a week to my Deanship role. My other duties essentially have to do with teaching, which tends to occur mostly in the fall. I coordinate two fourth-year cell biology courses. I participate in first year medical teaching, and I also engage in spot teaching for different courses where I do anywhere from one to four hours within a unit or as a small segment of somebody else's course. On the research side of things, I’m constantly trying to drive our laboratory’s research mission in gap junctions. I meet with my staff our regularly as we strive to ourcan research students and staff regularly as students we strive and to reach research objectives soreach that we move objectives so that we can move towards publishing papers. In my towards publishing papers. In my world publishing papers is something that we do all the time – world publishing is something that we do all thejobs. timeI'm – we’re constantly moving data through to the finishpapers line. I also have a lot of university-level we’resubcommittees, constantly moving through to the finish line. I also have on Senate, I sit on a couple of Senate anddata I server on different search committees. a lotupofhaving university-level jobs. on“service Senate,duties”, I sit onwhich a couple of As a professor at Western, you end a lot of what weI'm call can be subcommittees, I a server differentforsearch rather time-consuming but alsoSenate transient. In the last yearand I wrote coupleon of reviews major committees. As a professor youtime. end up having a lot journals that are pretty high profile. Those reviews took a lot at of Western, preparation Collectively, all of what we call “service duties”, which can be rather time-consuming these activities keep cycling year after year.” but also transient. In the last year I wrote a couple of reviews for major journals that are pretty high profile. Those reviews took a lot of preparation 20 time. Collectively, all of these activities keep cycling year after year.”
