Fostering Curiosity by Turning Points

GATEWAY STUDY OF

LEADERSHIP

TURNING

POINTS

SCHOOL OF

SOCIAL SCIENCES

Fostering Curiosity

Turning Points Series Discover nuggets of unconventional wisdom through the excerpts of student interviews with Rice University faculty. Copyright 2012 Rice University. All rights reserved. No parts of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the School of Social Sciences at Rice University. Requests for permission should be directed to ipek@rice.edu.

Other books in the 2011-2012 series: Choosing Academia Finding Inspiration Sparking Enthusiasm Overcoming Obstacles

Rice University School of Social Sciences

Gateway Study of Leadership TURNING POINTS

{series III | 2011 - 2012}

Fostering Curiosity

Gateway School of Social Sciences Rice University 6100 Main Street Houston, Texas 77005-1827 U.S.A.

Turning Points Series PRODUCTION TEAM

Ipek Martinez, Director of Gateway and Turning Points Mark Seraydarian, Gateway Post Baccalaureate Fellow Kaitlin Barnes, Daniel Cohen, Neeraj Salhotra, Amol Utrankar, and Catherine Yuh, Gateway Study of Leadership Fellows Brittany Fox, Editor Vinita Israni, Graphic Designer The 2011-2012 Turning Points series is made possible from excerpts of faculty interviews conducted by the following Gateway students: GATEWAY STUDY OF LEADERSHIP LEADERS & FELLOWS:

Nadia Khalid, Joe Pullano, Mark Seraydarian. Kaitlin Barnes, Nivriti Chowdhry, Daniel Cohen, Navtej Dhaliwal, Chris Keller, Sherry Lin, David Liou, Abby Marcus, Zachary Marx-Kuo, Asia McCleary-Gaddy, Marc Sabbagh, Neeraj Salhotra, Rohini Rao Sigireddi, Amol Utrankar, Pin-Fang Wang, Catherine Yuh. GATEWAY INTERNATIONAL AMBASSADORS & SUMMER FELLOWS:

Kelsey Lau, Dylan McNally, Kelly Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Connor, Christine Pao, Emma Stockdale

A NOTE FROM THE GATEWAY DIRECTOR

The 2011-2012 Turning Points series shares excerpts from student interviews with the School of Social Sciences faculty to bring a slice of life experiences to view for the Rice University community and beyond. In the fall of 2011, the School of Social Sciences Gateway program initiated Gateway Study of Leadership (GSL), which brought three undergraduates together to organize and lead a group of sixteen student fellows in interviewing social sciences faculty and hosting distinguished guests to discover career journeys and inspiration behind research endeavors. The GSL team hosted twelve guest speakers and conducted and transcribed thirty-seven faculty interviews. They found many thought provoking life experiences and interesting stories during their candid conversations. Most interviews had an essence of a â&#x20AC;&#x153;turning pointâ&#x20AC;? regarding the decisions involved in attending college, selecting majors, pursuing advanced

degrees, encountering mentors, finding inspiration for research topics, and developing a refreshing new approach to handle criticism in order to build knowledge and propel ahead. The faculty shared tangible advice for current and prospective students, sparking their enthusiasm and fostering their curiosities. We gathered few excerpts from these conversations to share as the GSL Turning Points series, in five booklets titled: Choosing Academia, Finding Inspiration, Overcoming Obstacles, Fostering Curiosity, and Sparking Enthusiasm. Ipek Martinez

CONTENTS

Anton Villado, Ph.D. Build Links Between Fields

2. Ashley Leeds, Ph.D. 3 Learn How to Think 3.

Cliff Morgan, Ph.D. People Are Nice

Cymene Howe, Ph.D. Vehicle for Information

Dagobert Brito, Ph.D. Guardian of Knowledge

Fred Oswald, Ph.D. Practical Benefits of Testing

James Dannemiller, Ph.D. To Be Curious

Jessica Logan, Ph.D. Change the World Locally

9. 10.

John Ambler, Ph.D. Preparation and Enthusiasm

Mark Jones, Ph.D. How Other People See the World

11.

Melissa Marschall, Ph.D. Hands-On Assignments

12. Mikki Hebl, Ph.D. 33 Curious About Everything 13.

Phillip Kortum, Ph.D. Listen to Lead

14.

Richard Stoll, Ph.D. Classes of Situations

15.

Sarah Burnett, Ph.D. Recognize Fun in Questioning

16.

Songying Fang, Ph.D. Speak Up

17.

Steve Murdock, Ph.D. Demographic Factors

18.

Ted Temzelides, Ph.D. Intellectual Curiousity

About the Contributors 53 Acknowledgements 61

TURNING POINTS ONE

Build Links Between Fields Anton Villado, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, Psychology, Rice University

You could specialize in something as an undergrad, and you can double, triple, quadruple major, and thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s great. But I often share with students that now is the time to go out and experience as broad an array of fields possible. But students should also take several biology classes, several chemistry courses, some courses in engineering, and some courses in computer science. Go out and get a broad understanding of things and hopefully that will help you to see links between all of these different fields of study. Psychology does not occur in isolation. It is so dependent upon biological issues and chemical issues and engineering plays into it, our daily experiences. So I would say youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve got to use this 1

time not necessarily to specialize—medical schools and other graduate schools might tell you something different. But don’t worry about that. Use this time to explore and touch base with all of these experts. Where else do you have so many different experts in one, easy to reach location? I think I would encourage students to really think about, really spend some time thinking about the purpose of the time they spend doing anything, including earning a bachelor’s degree.

TURNING POINTS TWO

Learn How to Think Ashley Leeds, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Political Science, Rice University

In general, one of the things that I’ve come to really believe is that there should be less separation in our undergraduate and graduate teaching in terms of what we teach. I think that’s because if what we’re teaching our grad students is the cutting edge of what we believe research is saying today, why would we want to teach our undergrads anything else? Why would we want to teach our undergrads the “received wisdom” if it isn’t what we really believe explains the phenomenon? So I would say that in terms of what I want students to learn, it isn’t necessarily that different. And I think the other thing that’s not different is I think that in political science and social science in general, we don’t need to be teaching people substance as much as we need to be teaching them how to think about problems. In 3

particular, I study and teach international relations. Things change, right? There are core patterns that remain, but what’s going to be more useful to students is to learn how to think about problems. To think about how you would analyze a new question or a new situation and then to know how people have analyzed the past ones. This way, we study how we’ve analyzed past situations and think about how we would do this when we approach a problem in the future. To me, the job that we do is teaching people to think about problems, teaching people to think, speak, and write analytically and critically. And that’s true for undergraduates and graduate students. That being said, graduate students have already chosen a specialty and what that means is they have to fit into a particular set of norms of the research methods that you use, the jargon that you know, the background that you appreciate, those kinds of things. And in that sense I would say there’s even a difference between—I regularly teach Introduction to International Relations and in that class, half the students are not political science majors. In that 4

class, my goal is to make people ready for other political science courses, but also to help them be more informed citizens of the world. Once you’re teaching just political science majors, you know that they’re going to be good citizens, and now it’s about pushing their knowledge a step further. I think that in terms of the skills that we want to teach, they’re pretty similar, but the difference is in the background you assume. Obviously as we go up in the levels, we assume more background and the specialization that’s necessary. I would say that also varies based on the kind of class it is. In an intro IR class, the syllabus isn’t going to change that much because we’ve got seventy people and there’s a contract, to some extent, about it. Once we go into more advanced classes, particularly smaller classes and especially graduate classes, it’s easier to tailor the class more to what the students really want to be doing. Certainly in more advanced classes, I say, “You know what, let’s skip this topic. Let’s do this instead.” It’s also the case that our graduate program here is small enough that you know before you design the syllabus approximately 5

whoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s going to be in the class, so the syllabus gets designed with the people in the class in mind as well.

TURNING POINTS THREE

People are Nice Cliff Morgan, Ph.D. Professor, Political Science, Rice University

I think the whole world is fascinating. I think seeing how different people in different cultures react the same or differently to similar sorts of situations; learning how there are different mores and norms in different places. I think to some extent, what fascinates me most or what I find most interesting is just how darned nice people are. I mean, really, I’ve never been anywhere where I thought the people weren’t very welcome or nice. Sometimes you hear stories of people saying, “Oh, you know, you go abroad, be sure you tell ‘em you’re Canadian because they all hate Americans.” I’ve never found that, ever. People may get angry at American policy, but they seem really able to set that out from the people. Most people in most parts of the world are so understanding, even if you don’t 7

speak the language. Theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re so kind and welcoming; I just think thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s amazing.

TURNING POINTS FOUR

Vehicle for Information Cymene Howe, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, Anthropology, Rice University

The first time I went to Latin America, I was traveling with a friend and her family. She was a good friend of mine; she lived half a block away, and we had been friends since we were three years old. Both her parents had been in the Peace Corps, and they were pretty entrenched in the 1960s ethos and had joined the Peace Corps right after it had started. Her parents were very adventurous in that sense. They had lived in the Philippines, they had lived in India. From California it was very easy to go to Mexico. We would go and get in their van and go to Mexico. It was an adventure! Later as an undergraduate, I did a more structured program. It was through something called the Sierra Institute. I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know if they still exist. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a study abroad program, except that you are not 9

located in a university. It’s more like a field study, so you’re moving all the time. We went all over Guatemala, all over Belize. You would meet with different community leaders and you would meet with different academics and intellectuals in different towns and regions. But you’re constantly moving to different places and learning from that, from where you are. Sometimes we stayed in little hotels but we also camped a lot and did a lot of rainforest ecology. We would meet with farmers and talk about crops. We spent a lot of time in the highlands of Guatemala talking to people whose families had been victims of the genocide in Guatemala and the civil war. So to meet with them and talk to them was very anthropological and it was very hands-on in that way—meeting people and kind of “roughing it” too because the conditions were sometimes rough. I will never forget having to hike twenty-two miles through the rainforest in knee deep mud only to find that our only source of drinking water was a large puddle on the ground that was rife with insect larvae twitching and thrashing around in this murky water. Not microscopic mind you, but fully visible to the naked eye. Our task was to drop a water purification pill 10

in our water bottles filled with this live water, wait a minute until the larvae stopped moving and then, “bottoms up!” It was pretty horrifying. In that sense, it is maybe surprising I became an anthropologist! I was always very committed to pursuing my interests. From the very beginning, I declared my major in Women’s Studies as an undergraduate. I declared that major in my first semester of my first year. I just really knew that’s what I wanted to do, and I was very sure, and I never regretted it. So I think I really enjoyed my intellectual experience at that level. When I was thinking about going to graduate school, I did consider doing master’s programs. For example, there was a joint program in Latin American Studies and Public Health that would’ve been a great program to do certain development work in Latin America. I mean, you’re not a doctor, per se, but you can manage those projects. So that was a consideration, but then when I looked at the coursework in anthropology and the kinds of classes that were being taught, I just immediately knew that’s what I wanted to do. I was inspired by the intellectual work that was going on 11

at the doctoral level in cultural anthropology. I was also very influenced by a book, an ethnography about Nicaragua that I read while I lived in Nicaragua after finishing my undergraduate degree. So that book too was part of the reason for switching from Women’s Studies into Anthropology. Later on my dissertation research took me back to Nicaragua. The activists for sexual rights who I’ve worked with there were very interested in getting their story told. I was working with activist groups who are marginalized in their own country and whose country is marginalized in the world. Nicaragua is the second-poorest country in the Western Hemisphere after Haiti. In these difficult economic conditions and given other factors, political, historical and cultural, these activists are very proud of the work they’re doing. They feel like they’re making changes, so they would say to me all the time, “Please tell the gringos what we’re doing here. We want you to be our mouthpiece. You’re the researcher, you’re the anthropologist, you’re the one who’s going to write the book in English. Go tell them what we’re doing.” So there was a strong 12

feeling of support for the research project among the people that I was working with. So that is good for me to hear and to know. I get to feel like Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m a vehicle for getting that information out to others in the wider world.

TURNING POINTS FIVE

Guardian of Knowledge Dagobert Brito, Ph.D. Professor, Economics, Rice University

I think one function of university faculties is to be a living storehouse of knowledge. Think of it this way. Suppose every mathematician in the world and everyone who knew any math were killed. All that was left of mathematics were math books. How long would it take to recover mathematics? You have to start from scratch and learn the notation and rediscover many very subtle concepts. I believe that mathematics is really embedded in the minds of living human beings, and the books are like sheet music to guide the mind. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s true for many subjects. The primary role of an academic is to be a guardian of knowledge and transmit it to the next generation. The reason we write papers and do research is to prove that we are performing that function. The advancement of knowledge is a by-product. The corollary to this is you never know 15

what research going to be important. Work that most people at the time thought was going to be completely useless has turned out to be very important. Subjects that were considered central to the graduate curriculum in economics in 1970 are no longer taught. Graduate students today would not recognize most of the big names in many fields of that era. Thereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s no one with the wisdom to make the judgment about what work will be important. So you just basically have to let people alone, let them work on problems that interest them. This does not mean that I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have strong opinions about much of the scholarship being produced. In my old age, however, I have become more careful in voicing those opinions. The other important role of faculty is to spot talent. Most students at Rice are very good, but every so often you meet one with real talent. They are not necessary the strongest students on paper, but they are the ones that ask questions you did not expect and demonstrate deep knowledge of their subject. You know these students may make a difference, and one of the more pleasant aspects of being a faculty member is to mentor them. 16

TURNING POINTS SIX

Practical Benefits of Testing Fred Oswald, Ph.D. Professor, Psychology, Rice University

My work deals with trying to understand how tests are used for high-stakes settings, like college admissions and employment, but it’s also centered on what these tests are trying to predict. So in the broader context, it’s not just that you take a test and hire people or select them into college. However, that’s where most test-takers are worried, obviously, because they want to get in; regardless of what these tests are trying to predict, you want to get into a job if you are a job applicant or into college if you are a high-school student. But that latter question— what are tests trying to predict? What is the goal of testing?—it’s a philosophical one and a practical one. It’s philosophical because in the college admissions process, for instance, your big questions such as: Why do we have colleges? What are we trying to develop in our students? Do they come here with the 17

skills already in hand? Do you select them not with the skills in hand, but with the promise of developing those skills in college? If college admission officers are not thinking about these questions when they engage in their recruiting and selection procedures, they end up answering them by default. I would argue that the former approach is better, that it pays off to think hard about the “big picture” and not just in the context of mission statements that sound good, but in terms of actual college admissions practices. There are folks who are generally “anti-testing” and skeptical of my line of work and say, “Let’s not test.” Let’s try and get some greater, they might argue, richer sort of holistic information and get the intuition and expertise of decision-makers into play—you see this in the form of so-called holistic applications and assessments—and colleges might try and do selection that way. But, without giving a lecture on the topic here, I’ll say that even though holistic tests have some merit, standardized tests are generally more efficient in terms of taking them; they’re more consistent across those who are taking 18

the test, and theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re more fair to people with diverse experiences and backgrounds. These practical benefits of testing, combined with the psychological theories that help to develop tests, are together why I enjoy my job and think it has some importance to society.

TURNING POINTS SEVEN

To Be Curious James Dannemiller, Ph.D. Professor, Psychology, Rice University

It’s almost a cliché, but I think it’s true. What a good undergraduate education does is it teaches you how to think. It teaches you how to ask questions. It’s not so much drilling you with knowledge and drilling you with facts. Being able to converse, to ask questions, to be curious, that’s what the best education does. Communication is really important. If you have a cause, that is going to help you to better communicate your message, so I think that it’s vitally important to have a cause. The other day on the news, there was a story about bringing the Internet to very, very poor kids in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The difference that it’s making proves that this is opening their world, expanding their world, and that’s another example of what education can do. It can 21

take you beyond where you are and make you think about the bigger world. There’s a continuum in fostering curiosity. There are some students who really are very curious. I have students working in the lab with me who are very motivated and ask a lot of great questions. It’s hard to instill curiosity. I do think you can model it. I try to model curiosity when I see or hear something interesting. For example, in the lab meeting, I don’t hold back or hesitate. I say, “That’s really curious, that’s really interesting, why is that the case?” So you can model it to some extent. Maybe somebody will pick up on that.

TURNING POINTS EIGHT

Change the World Locally Jessica Logan, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, Psychology, Rice University

When I first started, I thought that the biggest impact that I would have as an academic was through my research and that my research would somehow help people. Now that I’ve been a professor since 2006, taught at Rice, and have a daughter, I think the biggest impact that I will have as an individual is probably not through my research, but through my teaching. I think as an academic, the lifeblood for a lot of research and the passion that you have as an academic, at least for me, comes from teaching students. That is not just working in the classroom, but I also mentor graduate students and undergraduates, and it’s absolutely my favorite part of the job. If I had to do my research in isolation, I wouldn’t feel like I was contributing that much. The fact that my research is combined with mentoring and teaching makes me feel like it’s going to have 23

that bigger impact. I think there are certain things that academics can certainly contribute on a local level, a national level, and some on an international level, but not all of us are going to be rockstars. You don’t have to be. A couple of times a year, I’ll give community talks or talks at Rice that reach broader audiences beyond fellow academics or students. I taught a couple of classes over at the Continuing Studies School, and it reaches a much broader audience than what I typically see in the classroom. Sometimes, I will speak for an organization, like the Alzheimer’s Association or something like that. It’s a much smaller contribution than what we’re thinking of this big impact of, “We’re going to change the world!” You sort of change the world locally that way. You inform people, you get people excited, you build relationships, and I think that also helps to support future research.

TURNING POINTS NINE

Preparation and Enthusiasm John Ambler, Ph.D. Professor, Political Science, Rice University

My general theory of teaching has two critical ingredients. The first one is preparation and the second one is enthusiasm. If you don’t know what you’re talking about, how can it be effective? But if you don’t present it in a way that students think is interesting, is relevant, you’re not going to catch and keep their attention. There are a variety of ways in which enthusiasm can be communicated. I had a philosophy professor as an undergraduate course who was inarticulate, bumbling and yet highly inspirational because you knew that he was passionately interested in his questions. If you listened long enough, you discovered that he knew quite a bit. And then I’ve had instructors who were beautiful lecturers and were charismatic in a very different sort of way. The 25

common ingredient for all good teaching, it seems to me, is this enthusiasm for the material. I met a TA once who started out a class saying, “Well I don’t want to be here, and I’m sure you don’t want to be here. We just have to make the best of it.” And it rolled downhill from there. Unless you give students a sense that this is important material, this is interesting material, we’re going to kind of learn together about this, you’re not going to succeed. Rice students are wonderful to teach. They’re smart, they’re by and large diligent. It’s not hard to get a response out of them. I always tell my students, “You get special points if you find a mistake in my lecture.” I get students catching me every once in a while. I like the interaction. Rice has been a wonderful place to teach for that reason, and its one of the reasons that I’m happy that I came here rather than staying at a state university. You have to try to keep up. I don’t know that you have to try to keep up methodologically. I don’t keep up methodologically with my field in the way that some of the younger people do. I’m not nearly as quantitative as they are, 26

but I have to keep up with the world. I have to make sure that examples that Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m using, that theories Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m laying out, are relevant to the world today.

TURNING POINTS TEN

How Other People See the World Mark Jones, Ph.D. Professor, Political Science, Rice University

I think that study abroad is a great experience; I think that everybody should do it. I think that it helps you from the language perspective, but it also helps you from understanding point of view and how other people see the world, particularly how they see the United States, how they see politics, how they see culture, and that empathy is really useful throughout your life and your career, realizing that not everyone is going to look at things the same way. And you can agree or not agree, but if you are conducting business or trying to work with people through diplomacy it doesn’t really matter if you don’t agree with them, that is really beside the point. If you are trying to sell something to them, if you are trying to do business in China, the argument of “This isn’t how we do business in the United States,” 29

you’re doing it wrong. That isn’t going to make you very successful.

TURNING POINTS ELEVEN

Hands-On Assignments Melissa Marschall, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Political Science, Rice University

Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve asked students to do a lot more assignments that have been kind of hands-on. Like the group of students did a transportation simulation where they had to take public transportation somewhere and write about their experience. A lot of them really liked that. We did a blog assignment at the end of the semester where students blogged on topics related to urban politics. It was interesting for me; it was interesting for them because a lot of them were from different fields, so they could take advantage of video or images. It really came alive in a way that wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t possible before. I think nowadays itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hard for students to not be around their technology, but they need to get used to focusing on one thing. 31

TURNING POINTS TWELVE

Curious About Everything Mikki Hebl, Ph.D. Professor, Psychology, Rice University

There are a lot of award winning teachers at Rice. So even though I would like to think that I’m not a dime a dozen, I know that I am. But at Rice, a dime a dozen is a great thing. What do I do to try to be successful? I have passion, I do experiential learning, and I care about students. But I know lots of other teachers who don’t exhibit great levels of passion, don’t do experiential learning, and maybe don’t even care that much about the personal lives of their students, and yet, they are tremendously successful. So I don’t have the secrets of what makes a good teacher figured out. One common ground seems to involve maintaining interest and staying intellectually curious. For me, it’s staying curious about everything and about what the students might be thinking this round or this year or 33

even this class. Because there are always some new ones who surprise you, make you question things anew, and ask you to provide insights you didn’t before address or consider. So, I try very hard to be open and be curious. What makes me excited? I think at the end of the day, what makes me feel proud is to think about helping students get excited about new material and helping to usher them safely to the next stage in their lives. I think about a lot of the guardian angel teachers that I had, and I hope I’m one of them to some of my students. It would dishearten me to know that I am not encouraging them. Life is hard, and it’s difficult to find your way in the world when you are 17-21, and I’d like to help be a tour guide for young people, just as others have helped me find my way.

TURNING POINTS THIRTEEN

Listen to Lead Phillip Kortum, Ph.D. Professor-in-the-Practice, Psychology, Rice University

Most of the Rice students tend to be pretty good leaders. They’ve demonstrated that in their applications. They all tend to be involved in many opportunities. I think one of the things that can help anybody, particularly students, become better leaders is to understand that we don’t work in a divided world anymore, that almost every project now involves cross-disciplinary teams. Working with and trying to understand viewpoints from people who don’t share your exact educational background becomes very important. If you’re an electrical engineer, it’s likely that you’re not just going to sit in a team with electrical engineers. You’re going to sit on a team that has social scientists, electrical engineers, computer scientists, and business people. And you have to appreciate what everyone else 35

is bringing to the table. And if you start that as a student, I think that helps you, particularly when you start leading those teams, because you recognize that everybody can contribute a key piece of the final project. But you have to be willing to listen. You can’t just say, “Well I’m an electrical engineer, so I’m only going to listen to the electrical engineers.” You have to say, “I don’t quite understand what this group does, but I know what they bring to the table contributes to the success of the company.” Or the department, or whatever. I think getting undergraduates into broader experiences is really important in developing leadership skills. A lot of my ideas come from the failures of my studies. You go out there, and you give it a try. Just the iterative process of science, you have to go back to the drawing board and revise your ideas and develop new ones about however things work. I also get a lot of ideas through conferences, talking to colleagues who are working in similar areas, through reading the literature. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to attend more broad, cross-area 36

lectures for me to feed my ideas. There are a lot of people in business for example who are interested in issues around age or even political science or sociology that are interested in the ideas of facing an aging population.

TURNING POINTS FOURTEEN

Classes of Situations Richard Stoll, Ph.D. Professor, Political Science, Rice University

For the most part, when I teach undergraduates, it is at the introductory or intermediate level. One of the things Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m trying to do in my undergraduate courses is not to talk about current events for their own sake, but as examples of a class of situations. For example, the NATO involvement in Libya had a lot of similarities to what NATO did in 1999 against Serbia. So when Libya happened, I gave a lecture on the basics of the situation. What I wanted the students to consider was this: what happens when you try to use air power against an opponent when there is almost no ground power on your side? So what I want students to remember is not the details of Libya (or Serbia), but the more general features of this kind of situation. Let me give you another example. Many Americans 39

noticed that during the Bush administration the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense did not get along very well. Most media coverage attributed that to personality problems. What I stress is this was not the only time the people in those two positions have been in conflict. What I want a student to take away from my lecture is that unless youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re willing to assume that every president appoints the same personality types to those two offices, there has to be something else going on. Now, what might that be? Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll have to take Political Science 211 to find out!

TURNING POINTS FIFTEEN

Recognizing Fun in Questioning Sarah Burnett, Ph.D. Professor, Psychology, Rice University

Psychology is such a huge field that undergraduates can go into business, law, medicine, or research after graduation. I personally wish students would realize how much fun research can be. Now, unfortunately, because there is so much competition, it’s hard to get good jobs at the best universities, and that’s where you have the most fun doing research. I think sometimes students shy away from the idea of getting into research because they don’t understand it—it’s new to them. When you have the luxury to pursue your own ideas and really come up with a finding that can make a difference, it’s exciting. It’s like, “How can I design this experiment to actually answer this question?” And then we’ve got new knowledge, and that is really fun. I don’t think a lot of undergraduates quite realize that. But if they do 41

realize how much fun that can be, then I think they ought to consider pursuing it. Students just need to be sure to talk to enough people to get good advice about how to pursue what they want to do. But you know, one area that’s becoming harder right now is clinical psychology. I would be very reluctant to advise very many people to go into that right now because there’s just a lot of competition out there. People can still do well, and there’s still a tremendous need, but whenever you see something becoming appreciated, it seems like every other group tries to turn out people who do the same thing. That’s what’s happening both in clinical psychology and health psychology. Medical schools are now training people in what they’re calling “behavioral medicine” with master’s degrees, and they’re all doing behavioral things, so they’ve glommed onto areas that used to be considered the province of a psychology department. So the competition in some areas can be pretty stiff. There are more paths to the same goal than there used to be. One of the biggest mistakes students make is listening to just one person who is offering advice— 42

no one person has all the answers and no one knows what is best for an individual person. Oftentimes, it takes some trial and error before one figures out what he or she really wants to do. Fortunately, with psychology, a person can go in many different directions.

TURNING POINTS SIXTEEN

Speak Up Songying Fang, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, Political Science, Rice University

I think that there is more emphasis here than in China for students to participate in classes. You need to speak up instead of being quiet and just listening. In my own experience, during the first two years of graduate school, I tended to stay more or less quiet. But I would ask questions, of course, if there was something that I really didn’t understand. I adopted the approach to listen first to what others have to say because I didn’t have a background in political science, and there were language barriers at first. But independent of my own experience, my view is that the ability to listen and the ability to express yourself are equally important. Sometimes students feel that if they don’t know enough, they can’t contribute, so they tend to just stay quiet all the time. What’s important to remember is that others 45

are likely to have the same questions, and itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s more efficient to just raise the question than trying to figure it out on your own. On the other hand, if you donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have the patience and ability to listen to what others have to say, you miss out a big part of the learning process.

TURNING POINTS SEVENTEEN

Demographic Factors Steve Murdock, Ph.D. Professor, Sociology, Rice University

I’m a demographer.

I’m interested in how

demographic factors affect not only other demographic events but also economic and social events. And to an extent, how they inform policy makers about alternate implications of those changes and what happens if we do address them or if we do not. For example, if you take the education inequities that are developing in U.S. society, what happens? Well, very clearly, if we don’t do better in terms of educating the fastest growing populations in the U.S., we’re going to be poor. We’re going to be less competitive. That’s not our evaluative statement. It’s a statement I can show in dollars and cents and show in numbers to people. So we’ve done work, for example. I’ll give you two examples at the state level. Higher Education Board has a program called Closing the Gaps and the idea is to 47

close the graduation rates primarily between nonHispanic whites and Asians and African Americans and Hispanics. That program was based primarily on our research. After World War II, we dragged a massive GI Bill, which resulted in perhaps the most prosperous period in U.S. history at the end of World War II. It would not have happened if we said to GI’s, “Well, we appreciate what you did. Good luck.” Instead we said, “You’ve given so much for us. How would you like to have some education? Here’s a bill that will help you get that.” Most analysis of that suggests that that was incredibly successful not just for individuals, but for the public and private sectors. Some of the work we’re doing suggests we’re there again.

TURNING POINTS EIGHTEEN

Intellectual Curiousity Ted Temzelides, Ph.D. Professor, Economics, Rice University

There is an expectation that academic research must have an impact to society. There is a lot of pressure in that direction that makes Richard Feynman, the famous physicist, say that it makes scientists be a little bit dishonest and exaggerate the impact that research has because people expect it to have an impact. I think that there is a role for basic research that promotes understanding without necessarily making a better microwave oven or more effective car or things like that. Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m personally interested in questions that I find intellectually appealing, and I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t necessarily care about whether it will make somebodyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s life better down the road. I know it sounds weird, but I think there is a role for that and I think that there should be more tolerance in this society for this intellectual curiosity, this wonderful intellectual curiosity that can drive basic research 49

and improve our understanding of how the universe work, and for social scientists, how societies and economies work. Down the road, somebody can use basic advances in both social science and actual science to improve things. You can think of several major advancements in physics and biology that, down the road, somebody uses to make better medicine or more effective machines, and the same is true of economics as well. What drives me, to summarize, is intellectual curiosity rather than the potential usefulness of what will come out of my research. Having said that, some of the questions that Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m working on right now, I think they have direct implications for policy. For example, one of the questions that Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m studying is whether there is underinvestment in renewable energy R&D, and whether subsidizing R&D in renewable energy can act, potentially as an engine of economic growth. So, I think that there is a direct effect, potentially. Another question that I am studying is whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the optimum way of designing emissions trading systems, and that too has potential implications for limiting CO2 emissions in the atmosphere related to climate change. 50

Sometimes I feel sorry hearing an astrophysicist or an elementary particle physicist being interviewed on the radio, and the question is, “How is this going to make our lives better?” The poor scientist is desperately trying to find out a way to connect the purely theoretical and academic research to technological developments that could potentially come down the road, but clearly could not be pursued by the same scientist who is doing the basic research. People are usually rolling their eyes and saying, “People are really paying you to think for something that is not going to be even useful?” When it comes to getting grants, there is clearly a smaller amount of the role that is devoted to basic research than it is to applied or applicable potential research. That’s a little bit more serious, but in terms of academic freedom or encouragement to do abstract work, there has never been a problem.

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

John Ambler is a Professor of Political Science. He has published a number of books and articles on French politics in comparative perspective. His recent work has focused on comparative social and education policy in Western Europe. In both 1994 and 2002, Dr. Ambler was recognized for his outstanding teaching with the George R. Brown Prize for Excellence in Teaching. Alumni have also chosen Dr. Ambler for the George R. Brown Award for Superior Teaching four times. Dr. Ambler earned a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley. Dagobert Brito is the Peterkin Professor of Political Economy. His fields of interest include economic theory and public finance. His current research encompasses optimal tax theory, economics of defense, energy economics, and law economics. His research has addressed fundamental issues involving public goods and political decisions. He has developed models involving such disparate but important issues as arms races, common property resources, vaccines, and credit cards. Dr. Brito has made important contributions to such topics as the control of macroeconomic systems, the St. Petersburg Paradox, the Nash Bargaining Problem, optimal taxation, and nuclear proliferation. He has been recognized by the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy as a Baker Institute Rice Scholar. Dr. Brito earned his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. in economics from Rice University.

Sarah Burnett is an Associate Professor of Psychology. Her research interests focus on health psychology and memory. She started teaching psychology courses at Rice University in 1972 as the first woman hired in all of social sciences and later the first woman to receive tenure from the School of Social Sciences. She has also been involved extensively with the growth and changes to the university over the past 40 years, previously serving as Dean of Students, Vice President for Student Affairs, Jones College Residential Associate, and now as a Martel College Founding Associate. Originally from Tennessee, Dr. Burnett earned her B.S. at Memphis State University (now University of Memphis) then earned her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees at Tulane University. James Dannemiller is the Lynette S. Autrey Professor of Psychology. His research is directed toward understanding the development of visual attention during the period of infancy as well as how visual attention functions in the adult. He uses behavioral methods to try to understand how the processes responsible for visual selection develop. By comparing studies with infants and adults, he seeks to gain a better understanding of the changes that take place in these vitally important processes. Dr. Dannemiller earned a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin. Songying Fang is an Assistant Professor of Political Science. Prior to joining the faculty at Rice in 2009, she worked as an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota. Her research focuses on how international institutions influence state behavior using both game-theoretic modeling and empirical analysis. Dr. Fang received her Ph.D. from the University of Rochester.

Her work appears in leading scholarly journals such as American Journal of Political Science, International Organization, and Quarterly Journal of Political Science. Mikki Hebl is a Professor of Psychology. She is an applied psychologist who is part of the industrial/organizational program at Rice University. Her research focuses on issues related to diversity and discrimination. She is particularly interested in examining subtle ways in which discrimination is displayed and how such displays might be remediated by individuals and/or organizations. Research in the Hebl Lab focuses on issues related to identifying, understanding, and remediating discrimination. She blends a social, interpersonal with an organizational perspective to investigate discrimination. Dr. Hebl has earned numerous teaching awards throughout her career, including the George R. Brown Prize for Excellence in Teaching in 2003. Cymene Howe is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology and core faculty member in the Center for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality. Her research broadly considers how forms of subjectivity, advocacy, and knowledge are produced and mediated within particular political contexts. In Nicaragua, she has studied how sexual rights activists have employed the concepts and practices of human rights and global lesbian and gay liberation in order to develop a very specific set of political tools to challenge heterosexism in both its legal and cultural forms. Her current research, in collaboration with Dominic Boyer, investigates the political and social dynamics surrounding sustainable energy development. Currently, she and Professor Boyer are investigating how “climatological altruism” and “energopolitics” converge in

the political, economic, and social brokerage occurring in response to wind park development in Oaxaca, Mexico. Mark P. Jones is the Joseph D. Jamail Chair in Latin American Studies, Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science, and the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Political Science Fellow. Dr. Jonesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s research focuses on the effect of electoral laws and other political institutions on governance, representation, and voting. He has received substantial financial support for this research, including two grants from the National Science Foundation. His recent articles have appeared in journals such as the American Journal of Political Science, Comparative Political Studies, and Legislative Studies Quarterly. Dr. Jones has conducted research on political and public policy issues in the Americas for numerous local, national, and international organizations, including the City of Houston, the Inter-American Development Bank, the United Nations Development Programme, and the United States government. Phillip Kortum is a Professor-in-the-Practice and Faculty Fellow of Psychology. His research is focused on the development of user-centric systems in both the visual (web design, equipment design, and image compression) and auditory (telephony operations and interactive voice response systems) domains. For the last twenty years, he has studied hands-on human factors in the telecommunications and defense industry. This work was performed across a wide variety of human interfaces, from telephones and television set-top boxes to assembly aids and jigs. Dr. Kortum earned a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from the University of Texas at Austin.

Ashley Leeds is an Associate Professor of Political Science. She specializes in the study of international relations and particularly in the design and influence of cooperative agreements and international institutions. Much of her recent research has focused on the politics of military alliances. Dr. Leedsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; recent articles have appeared in American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, International Organization, Journal of Peace Research, and International Interactions. In 2008, Dr. Leeds was the recipient of the Karl Deutsch award, which is awarded annually by the International Studies Association to a scholar in IR under age 40 who is judged to have made, through a body of publications, the most significant contribution to the study of International Relations and Peace Research. Jessica Logan is an Assistant Professor of Psychology. Her research interests integrate both behavioral and neuroimaging (fMRI) techniques to explore episodic memory formation and retrieval in healthy younger and older adults. In manipulations of memory formation (encoding) and retrieval, she has used a variety of materials (word fragment completion, paired associates, facename pairs, and foreign language vocabulary words) to explore how basic principles of cognition can be applied to improving learning and retention in younger and older adults. Dr. Logan earned a Ph.D. in experimental psychology from Washington University in St. Louis. Melissa Marschall is the Albert Thomas Associate Professor of Political Science. Her research focuses on local politics, educational policy, participation, and issues of race and ethnicity. Her book, Choosing Schools: Consumer Choice and the Quality of American Schools

(Princeton University Press - coauthored with Mark Schneider and Paul Teske) was recipient of the Policy Studies Association Aaron Wildavsky Award for the Best Policy Book in 2000-2001. She is currently working on a project investigating immigrant parent involvement in schools, communities and politics (with Katharine Donato, Prof. of Sociology at Vanderbilt University), which is funded by The National Science and Russell Sage Foundations, as well Vanderbiltâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Center for Nashville Studies. She is also continuing work on a largescale study of minority incorporation in local politics. Cliff Morgan is the Albert Thomas Professor of Political Science. He uses formal modeling techniques in his research to explain foreign policy decisions and international conflict. His current projects focus on the use and effectiveness of economic sanctions and on how leaders choose foreign policy tools to accomplish their goals. Dr. Morgan earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin. Steve Murdock is the Allyn R. and Gladys M. Cline Professor of Sociology. He previously served as Director of the U.S. Bureau of the Census, having been nominated for the position by President Bush and unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate in 2007 and serving until the change in administration in January of 2009. He is the author or editor of 13 books and more than 150 articles and technical reports on the implications of current and future demographic and socioeconomic change. He is the recipient of numerous honors and awards. He was named one of the fifty most influential Texans by Texas Business in 1997 and as one of the twenty-five most influential persons in Texas by Texas Monthly in 2005. He is a

member of the Phi Beta Kappa, Phi Kappa Phi, and Phi Eta Epsilon national honor societies. Fred Oswald is a Professor of Psychology. His substantive research focuses on personnel selection issues in psychology, particularly the issues of (a) understanding and predicting multiple dimensions of job performance and (b) improving the conceptualization and application of person-job fit. His work provides important contributions to personnel selection in both academic and employment settings. His most recent research contributes to understanding and predicting multiple dimensions of job and academic performance. Another area of his research contributions is in advancing the conceptualization and application of person-job fit. Dr. Oswald earned a B.A. in psychology from the University of Texas at Austin and an M.A. and Ph.D. in industrial/organizational psychology from the University of Minnesota. Richard Stoll is the Albert Thomas Chair of Political Science and Professor of Political Science. An accomplished scholar of international conflict, he has used computer simulation techniques and statistical analysis to study topics such as arms competitions, comparative foreign policy, and political realism. Dr. Stoll recently participated in a ten university effort funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to collect data on militarized interstate disputes. Along with Devika Subramanian of Riceâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Computer Science Department, Dr. Stoll is engaged in an effort to create events data from online news sources and to predict the outbreak of serious international conflict. This research has been supported by the National Science Foundation.

Ted Temzelides is a Professor of Economics, a Baker Institute Rice Scholar, and the master of Martel College at Rice University. He has consulted for the Federal Reserve as well as the European Central Bank. His research concentrates on macroeconomics and energy economics; he currently studies the effect of R&D in renewable energy sources on economic growth and the design of emissions trading mechanisms. Dr. Temzelidesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; research has received funding from the National Science Foundation and has been published in some of the leading academic journals in economics, including Econometrica, the Journal of Political Economy, the American Economic Review: Papers and Proceedings, and the Journal of Monetary Economics. Dr. Temzelides regularly serves as a referee for academic journals and is on the editorial board of the journal Economic Theory. Anton Villado is an Assistant Professor of Psychology. His primary research interests involve individual and team training; the acquisition, retention, and transfer of complex skills (e.g., those used in the military and medical industry); personality; measurement of job performance; personnel selection and quantitative methods (metaanalysis and multi-level modeling). Dr. Villado earned a B.A. in psychology from California State University at San Bernardino, an M.S. in industrial/organizational psychology from California State University at San Bernardino, and a Ph.D. in psychology from Texas A&M University.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Special thanks to all Rice University School of Social Sciences faculty who made this project possible by sharing their career experiences and educational life stories with the Gateway students through one-on-one interviews. Much appreciation goes to Dean Lyn Ragsdale for her continual support, counsel and encouragement. Our heartfelt gratitude to the Gateway Associates and supporters of the Gateway programs for making projects like this possible. Many thanks also to the Turning Points team and Gateway Study of Leadership fellows for the tremendous amount of time and effort in bringing this series to life.