Sparking Enthusiasm by Turning Points

GATEWAY STUDY OF

LEADERSHIP

TURNING

POINTS

SCHOOL OF

SOCIAL SCIENCES

Sparking Enthusiasm

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 Fostering Curiosity Overcoming Obstacles

Rice University School of Social Sciences

Gateway Study of Leadership TURNING POINTS

{series IV | 2011 - 2012}

Sparking Enthusiasm

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

Ashley Leeds, Ph.D. Taking Initiative

2. Ashley Leeds, Ph.D. 3 Study Broadly 3.

Cliff Morgan, Ph.D. Using Math in Interesting Ways

Cymene Howe, Ph.D. Be In It for the Long Haul

Fred Oswald, Ph.D. Good Mentorship

James Dannemiller, Ph.D. Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t Fear Mistakes

Jessica Logan, Ph.D. Engaging with Community

8. 9. 10.

Justin Denney, Ph.D. A Fulfilling Career

Mikki Hebl, Ph.D. Service Leadership

Phillip Kortum, Ph.D. Real World Inspiration, Real World Application

11.

Richard Stoll, Ph.D. Leadership

12.

Richard Stoll, Ph.D. Seeing the Process from the Inside

13.

Rick Wilson, Ph.D. Know Your Goals, Know Your Roles

14.

Steve Klineberg, Ph.D. Author Your Own Experience

15.

Steve Murdock, Ph.D. Different Perspectives

16.

Ted Temzelides, Ph.D. Leader Mentors

About the Contributors 41 Acknowledgements 49

TURNING POINTS ONE

Taking Initiative Ashley Leeds, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Political Science, Rice University

I think of leadership in a different way in academia. I think there’s a scientific process, and we’re all collaboratively pushing forward knowledge, but I think that academia requires leaders to get public goods provision. It’s very decentralized. We have lots of faculty and no one really has a boss, so there’s not much organization. What we need leaders to do is to bring people together to create good phenomena within the discipline. So one of the things that I’m most proud of that I’ve done in the discipline is I and a few young women at the time—this was ten years ago— started a group called Women in Conflict Studies, because in international relations and particularly the quantitative study of international security issues, there were very, very few women. We felt like a lot of women were dropping out of the 1

discipline, and we wanted to create a place where women could network and meet other women in the field and get questions answered, get mentoring, and things like that. It’s actually quite a thriving group now, and there are many more women in the field. Not just because of this group, obviously, but it’s the kind of thing that required leadership for people to get together and say, “What we need to do is invite a bunch of women to one place to talk about what the issues are and to figure out what we can do to help.” What we decided is what we could do to help would be to hold gatherings at national meetings and get a lot of female grad students to come and learn that there were people they could turn to with gender related or non-gender related issues. And it became a real mentoring group. So that’s the kind of place where I think that these things don’t naturally happen until entrepreneurs go out and make them happen. I would say we all are motivated to lead with our research, but where the leaders really come out are the people who start a new conference or who really get people together to do things that increase the human capital and the way we interact with each other in the discipline. 2

TURNING POINTS TWO

Study Broadly Ashley Leeds, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Political Science, Rice University

It’s so hard to look back and say, “What would I do differently?” because I’m happy with where I ended up and who knows if you change any part of the history what would’ve happened. I think that if I had had the opportunity to go to a place like Rice where I could’ve been really involved in research, known more about what was going on, that might have made a difference in choosing a grad school and things like that. Whereas I was really going into the process very blind, but it ended up working out really well for me, so I certainly can’t complain too much about that. My parents told me I could go to any public school in the country, but they didn’t feel like they could pay for private school. I don’t think that I did enough in researching scholarships and things like that. So in terms of choosing a school, 3

I probably didn’t do as much research as I should have, but it wasn’t that it was a bad experience for me. Then in school, I took the classes I was really interested in, and I was a political science major and a history minor, and I really loved those things. Once I got to grad school, I felt like, “Wait, it would’ve been really smart to take more economics, more math, more of those kinds of things, and not specialize so early.” Because the political science you learn as an undergrad isn’t as closely related to what you do in grad school, and I thought maybe having more of the technical background would’ve been better for me. But I chose my classes based on what I was interested in doing. So I think the advice I give people now is to study much more broadly as an undergrad, that you’re going to have a lot of time to specialize later, and therefore, I think that if I had done more that I didn’t know I was interested in, I might have found other things I was really interested in and had other skills that would be useful today.

TURNING POINTS THREE

Using Math in Interesting Ways Cliff Morgan, Ph.D. Professor, Political Science, Rice University

My interest in political science was pretty much an accident. When I was an undergrad I took intro courses and really decided I liked it, and when I was getting ready to graduate, it wasn’t that I knew exactly what I was going to do. I thought I would go to graduate school and see what I thought of it, and I found things going on in political science that I didn’t know about before and really fell in love. So, I got really interested and found out that you could kind of make a decent living studying things that are fun to study. I just sort of fell into it and kept going. The things that I discovered about political science that I liked better is, well, as an undergraduate, we did what I think is typical of a lot of undergraduate programs—that political science was a lot more of just current events. You know, so there was a lot 5

more of the international relations stuff like, “What should the United States do with respect to Libya now?” Political science courses were more like diplomatic history courses. What I found when I got to graduate school is that people were using math in really interesting ways. Some of that was statistical, to be able to evaluate hypotheses and test them in generalizable and systematic ways, and I thought that was pretty cool. Then, what I really fell in love with was when I found that people were using math to be able to make their theoretical arguments much more rigorous. I think part of it was—for people going into political science at the time—I was a lot better at math and had a lot better of a math background than most of them. To some extent, that isn’t the case anymore, but at the time, I think that that gave me a real comparative advantage to doing that sort of work. You know, it was fun and interesting, and I really like the puzzles and coming up with the explanations for the phenomena we observe. 6

TURNING POINTS FOUR

Be In It for the Long Haul Cymene Howe, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, Anthropology, Rice University

It’s very difficult to get a job as a professor in anthropology and, I think, in all fields now. You need to go to a great institution and get great training. You also need to do a great project because it marks you for so long. Your dissertation project is your identity for a decade, at least. It needs to be on target, and if at all possible, it needs to be cutting edge. Right now in the department, we’re hiring for one faculty position, and we have over 150 applicants. That’s after we narrowed it to three specific topical areas of expertise. If we had an open call and said, “We’re hiring a cultural anthropologist,” we’d have had over 400, I’m sure. The job market is very difficult. You need to really stand out and so your research project has to be really solid and really 7

exciting, because there are just so many people out there that have done really good research on really interesting topics in really important parts of the world. Almost all applications are like that. I read through them, and I think, “This is so interesting,” or “This looks great.” But you know that your mission in reading through these files is to put more of them in the “discard” pile than in the “keep” pile. That application has to really shine. I guess the real concrete advice here is to be very astute going in and to do research that will have an impact. If you want to become a professor, if that is your sole calling, then you need to make sure that you’re really geared up for that task. If you are going into anthropology and you thought to yourself, “I could go and do development work,” or if you become a professional researcher for USAID, or work in a think tank or something like that—which is another great career path, but it’s not being a professor—if you wanted to do those kinds of things, then you can prepare yourself for that work too. Or both. If a student came to me and said, “All I want to be is an anthropology professor,” that my advice to them would be, “Great! Your project better be really spot on.” 8

TURNING POINTS FIVE

Good Mentorship Fred Oswald, Ph.D. Professor, Psychology, Rice University

In undergraduate, I had a professor that really influenced me to go into this whole line of work. He wasn’t that important outside of the classroom— although actually, I was so interested in his work I would talk to him after class and that kind of thing. So there was definitely an intellectual mentorship going on there. Really, my mentors became stronger once I was in graduate school, both in terms of senior grad students who were there when I first entered grad school, who would show me how the ropes worked in the lab or whatever, or just go to happy hour and socialize. And then my academic advisor was a real support. He himself was a huge introvert—maybe you have to be a little bit to do research—but at the same time, if I ever came to him with research questions – or an idea that later I found out was completely dumb – he was very 9

supportive and, especially in retrospect, I see that he really was looking out for my better interests. Definitely those are the kinds of influences that I am both grateful for and inspired by. Good mentorship has to be carefully timed; for instance, there are times when getting realistic feedback might not be good for you, right? Or at least there are times when realistic feedback needs to be more general versus very specific when starting graduate school. For instance, there is a time to understand that as a young graduate student, you’ll be confused at first until you start learning this material. That’s why you’re in grad school. It’s to be confused at first. That’s the advice I give to new grad students: you have to suffer through some confusion and negative feedback and so on in order to develop yourself. Just like when I talked about the social setting— that’s actually a parallel. I mean, you force yourself into some uncomfortableness in order to get in the direction you want to be in. And, I think, as you get older, you get more comfortable with ambiguity and confusion; you don’t always resolve it, professionally or in life.

TURNING POINTS SIX

Don’t Fear Mistakes James Dannemiller, Ph.D. Professor, Psychology, Rice University

If I had to make one recommendation for undergraduates, it would be very simple: do not be afraid to make a mistake. Sometimes I’ll ask a question, and nobody wants to answer. Why? Over the years, I’ve concluded that people are afraid that they’re going to make a mistake and that their friends are going to think, “Well, that was silly. Why’d you say that? That was stupid.” My one recommendation is let it go. We all make mistakes, and nobody knows everything. That’s exactly what professors live for, for somebody to have the courage to answer a question, even if it’s not right! What’s the harm, right? I think students should understand that professors don’t think the worst of them for having answered a question that might not be exactly correct. At least they gave it a shot, they tried, or they started a discussion. I do think if there were one aspect that 11

could be improved about students, it would be that. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s not true for everybody, but I do see that a lot.

TURNING POINTS SEVEN

Engaging With Community Jessica Logan, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, Psychology, Rice University

I tell people that, if they aren’t sure about graduate school, to wait. To take whatever time they need to figure things out or to do whatever they need to do, whether that’s getting a clinical experience, or working in a lab, or doing their own project. It’s important, before you start graduate school, to feel pretty excited about it. It’s like getting married. It needs to be at the best level, because it’s just going to get harder. There are great times and there are difficult times, so you have to have some core of, “I think this is great,” in order to get through it and believe in yourself for it. I entered graduate school right after undergrad, but I feel like I had all that training from my peer counselor experience that I felt, “Yes, I know I want to do this.” I know students who take the GRE, the GMAT, 13

the LSAT, or whatever, because they think, “I don’t know what I want to do, so I’m going to see how well I do on these and then we’ll see where I go.” You don’t have to know exactly what you want to do in graduate school. I certainly didn’t. I’d be embarrassed to read my personal statement now, because I don’t think I did anything related to what I said. I think what people are looking for is an idea of why you want to be in graduate school. The other thing I tell people is basically what Dr. Spellman told me a long time ago, which is, “Don’t tell yourself ‘no.’” So you might think, “Oh, I could never do that.” If you want to, just try it! What’s the worst that’s going to happen, right? So fine, you won’t be able to do it, or somebody will say no. But at least you tried, and I think students could be surprised with how far they could get or the things they could do by giving themselves a shot. I think that’s really important for students to keep in mind. Don’t be your own worst critic, even though we all are. I think a huge challenge is learning how to make 14

the kind of progress that you want from your job— whether that’s making money or publishing or whatever—while balancing that with staying part of a community. I realize that whatever you’re doing in your job should be serving the public in some way. That’s how I see it. When I give community talks, that’s how I see it, that I am part of this community. I’m funded in a lot of ways by this community, whether it’s from a grant or a trustee, and so I need to be giving back. Anything I’m working towards should be for the public good. I think the biggest challenge is figuring out ways to make fields like Wall Street, that aren’t really known for giving back to the public good, make more of those connections. I’m not necessarily advocating something like socialism or communism, or any particular political philosophy, but just basic humanism in any world, whether that’s a corporate world or an academic world. I think if people feel like part of the community they’re in, that is going to change the decisions that they make and make some of their sacrifices easier. It’s also going to increase creativity. If we’re working 15

with the community, certain businesses or academics might think they know the paradigm. We know this is the right way to go. This is what we’ve decided based on our research, based on our marketing, whatever. But if you’re engaging more with the community, you might actually come up with totally new ideas. It’s not just one-size fits all. I would say that civic engagement and figuring out how to incorporate it in areas that aren’t normally known for it are important. It is important to make it a priority and not just an aftermath.

TURNING POINTS EIGHT

A Fulfilling Career Justin Denney, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, Sociology, Rice University

One piece of advice that I always give anybody who asks and some people who don’t: it’s difficult to figure out what you want to do with your life, it’s difficult enough to figure out what you want to major in, those are all very difficult decisions that you should take seriously, but I truly believe in following your interests—let your interests drive you in your path and I just don’t think you can go wrong in doing that. If you are pursuing what you are interested in doing and what stimulates you, you are going to do better in your courses at Rice, you are going to come closer to finding that career that fulfills you or at least gets you somewhere that you want to be, and you have to keep in mind that following your interests is, in a lot of ways, better than following something else, because I think today people will average changing careers five or six times 17

in their lifetime, and so if you’re not following your interests and you are following something else, you’re sort of putting all of your eggs into one basket, and you don’t know if that’s the basket you’re going to stick with. I just think that life and career is more fulfilling, and it’s easier to combine them, when you do follow those interests.

TURNING POINTS NINE

Service Leadership Mikki Hebl, Ph.D. Professor, Psychology, Rice University

One of the hardest things in college is to really figure out what you want to do. Not just to say, “I want to be a doctor, I want to be a lawyer.” But to pick something after fully questioning yourself on why you want to be that. What is it that you really want to do and why? List the five reasons why you want to do that, and once you’re able to do that honestly, your hard work is done. Then, just make it happen, and don’t stop. Rice students have the resources to do whatever they want to do, but I think maybe it’s about spending enough time reflecting inwardly rather than taking the pressure of what everybody else is doing and concluding things like “Oh my God, they’re double majoring, I’ve got to double major or triple major.” It’s saying, “What do I really want?” That’s hard for 20 year olds to do.

I have to say that one of things that Rice students do really well is they get out in the trenches and volunteer -- they’re service-oriented. I think that an often-missing component of leadership is understanding and working at all levels of the organization and being willing to pull up your sleeves and say, “Hey, what are the experiences of every person in every level of the organization?” I think it’s important for our students, many who will quickly rise to the top, to fully understand what it’s like at the bottom and to always engage in service leadership and give back. I hope (and have seen many of) our students become leaders who not only make money and have power but also importantly utilize these resources to do well for others. That is the culture at Rice. I don’t know where it was generated. I remember being in a conversation with people who were working on admissions. They came across a Rice person, and they said, “This is a Rice person, yeahhh!” And, they said, “Actually, this isn’t a very good Rice person, they’ve done no service.” I thought that was very telling about our wonderful culture. 20

TURNING POINTS TEN

Real Word Inspiration, Real World Application Phillip Kortum, Ph.D. Professor-in-the-Practice, Psychology, Rice University

I study several different aspects of engineering psychology or what we call human factors. I look at the intersection between technology and humans. We try and figure out, how do we make systems that are highly usable, how do we reduce errors in systems, and how do we prevent human error from causing adverse consequences with these systems? I look at a wide variety of things. I’ve got some research going on into how people use voting systems. I’m building some interfaces to help physicians better and more accurately interpret patient data. And I’ve also got a couple projects on how users use mobile devices. We’ve got some large field trials where we’ve given mobile devices to people for a year and watched what they do and how 21

they use them. And I’m also really interested in trying to figure out how we measure the aspects of usability. We do a lot of research trying to figure out the best way to say, “This system is usable, and that system is not usable.” In my field, inspiration is pretty easy to come by because you just look out in the world, and you can see where the problems are. You can say, “Gosh, after the 2000 elections, the usability of that butterfly ballot in Florida caused an unexpected result,” and as a human factors person, you can see why that happened. And we wanted to study that and figure out, how do we stop those things from happening in the future? So that’s using human factors to secure democracy. When you look at the Institute of Medicine Report that came out in 1999 that said 98,000 people a year die from preventable medical errors, it’s a huge problem. And you can immediately say that a class of those deaths are due to human factors issues and so we should try to attack those. So for human factors professionals, I think inspiration just comes from being cognizant of what’s going on in the world, seeing where there are difficulties, and then trying to figure out if there’s research that we can do to help eliminate those problems by understanding those fundamentals. 22

TURNING POINTS ELEVEN

Leadership Richard Stoll, Ph.D. Professor, Political Science, Rice University

One of the things we’re trying to do at Rice is to encourage students to be the best they can be. Sometimes that involves a student taking a leadership position. But that’s not because we say, “Go be a leader,” or because we talk about leadership. Frankly, as a faculty member, I don’t consider myself to be a leader. But I know some of the students who’ve had my classes who come by have become leaders, and I would like to think that I, in some small way, contributed to that. The only thing I can claim leadership on this campus, to be honest with you, is that I wrote the memo to Rice President George Rupp that proposed the idea of the Baker Institute. He said it sounded like an interesting idea. But the people that made the Baker Institute a reality were President Rupp, Dean of Social Sciences Jim Pomerantz, Rice Board 23

Chairman Charles Duncan, President Malcolm Gillis, Board Chairman William Barnett, John Rogers, and, of course most importantly, Secretary Baker. I didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t lead the charge. I put the menu item on the table. I am proud of the fact I came up with the idea but the real leadership that made the Baker Institute a reality was exercised by other people. But remember this: be careful â&#x20AC;Ś people actually read your memos!

TURNING POINTS TWELVE

Seeing the Process from the Inside Richard Stoll, Ph.D. Professor, Political Science, Rice University

Most people who decide to get an academic Ph.D. don’t figure this out until junior year, or even their senior year. And if you were to come to me and say, “I’m a political science major,” or “I’m a sociology major,” and thinking about getting a Ph.D., I would be happy to talk to you. But if it’s the fall of your senior year and you go off and apply and undoubtedly get accepted, you don’t have the opportunity to see the process from the inside because it’s too late. That’s unfortunate because if you can figure this out earlier, you will have the opportunity to see what the experience of graduate school will be. I figured out in my sophomore year that I wanted to get a Ph.D. in political science, but I realize that 25

my experience is pretty bizarre. But because of this, I was able to take four graduate courses while I was an undergraduate and also serve as a research assistant to a professor. The graduate students treated me as if I was one of them, which gave me great insight into their lives. The other advantage that I had was a particular professor at Rochester at the time named Bruce Bueno de Mesquita—a very prominent guy; he’s even been on the Colbert Report! — and he convinced me that the University of Michigan was the place I needed to go to pursue my interests in international conflict, and he was absolutely right. And he told me all the ins and outs of the department. This was very important because at that time the University of Michigan’s political science department was like Germany during the reformation. There were all these little faculty fiefdoms that were fighting against each other. He clued me in to everything. So when I stepped onto that campus, I knew if I associated with professor X, professor Y would not talk to me. It was just dumb luck that I went to the University of Rochester and discovered early on that I was interested in research. So I acquired all this information about graduate 26

school and, in all honesty, I was much better prepared for graduate school than my peers because of that rather unique experience

TURNING POINTS THIRTEEN

Know Your Goals, Know Your Roles Rick Wilson, Ph.D. Professor, Political Science, Rice University

There were a number of things that I always wanted to do in my career, and one thing, right from the get-go as a graduate student, was to go be a program officer for the National Science Foundation (NSF), which I did. And another goal was to become an editor of one of our major journals. In both instances, I think those positions have a real influence on the kind of science thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s done in the discipline. So Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve never had any real interest in becoming an officer of any of the associations. I think my keen interest has always been in the kind of science that we do and how can I have an effect on that science. So I like to do things that put me in the position where I can have an effect, not only through my research but also in the choices I make. For the case of NSF, what gets funded. For the case of the American Journal 29

of Political Science, what gets published. So I like being a gatekeeper. I do the same with students. As academics, our task in the university is to provide knowledge and produce knowledge. And I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know how citizens can make intelligent decisions without knowledge. I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t know how policymakers can make decisions without knowledge. And so, academics have a role of not only producing knowledge but making that knowledge accessible. I wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t say that anything that I publish in AJPS is accessible to most policymakers, and yet the information is important for the community. The community can then do what it can to translate that information. I also, however, think that its important that we not only address our own narrow political science community or social science community, but we make it clear that what we find and what we know is communicated more broadly to the general science community or to policy makers. I think that is really critical.

TURNING POINTS FOURTEEN

Author Your Own Experience Steve Klineberg, Ph.D. Professor, Sociology, Rice University

The biggest lesson for me, I think, is the degree to which we actually help to construct the world we experience. If you see the world in positive terms, that affects how you act on the world. There are self-fulfilling prophecies all around us, so it makes sense to be an optimist rather than a pessimist. It makes sense to expect the best rather than the worst, to look for the good in people, and to trust them as much as you can. When you do that, you tend to get what you expected. Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re happier. You live longer. Above all, youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re likely to find yourself surrounded by many wonderful people. We are, to an important extent, the authors of our own experience. We have choices about how to interpret and frame the events of our lives, and those interpretations matter. As a Divisional Advisor at Lovett College, I give a 31

very short talk to the freshmen during Orientation Week to try to explain what the social sciences are, since so few have had any exposure to those fields in high school. What I tell them is that the social sciences ask the questions of the humanities and use the methods of the sciences to answer them. There’s nothing more interesting or challenging than that. We are all the products of our society, and yet we also shape that society. We have the opportunity and the obligation to help move the trends in the right direction. I also see that as part of my responsibility as a teacher. I’ve taught a course on environmental sociology off and on for the past thirty years. When I first started teaching that course during the Reagan years, I felt it was my job to convince students that there are some serious issues here, despite the rhetoric of “morning in America.” I would try to get the students to recognize that many of the societal patterns that were occurring at that time simply could not, as the saying goes, “bear the weight of extrapolation into the future.” Later, the teaching challenge had changed. Now I find myself trying 32

to convince the students that things are going to be okay. We need to recognize that, despite the very legitimate fears for the future, there are nevertheless a lot of things going on in the world that suggest a positive future may yet be possible for ourselves and our children. We also need to know that the outcomes will ultimately depend on the actions, commitments, and decisions that we collectively make today.

TURNING POINTS FIFTEEN

Different Perspectives Steve Murdock, Ph.D. Professor, Sociology, Rice University

As we go forward, the demographic issues are not going to become less important, they’re going to become more important. We see a convergence right now. In other words, we see big parts of Africa that still have population growth that is too rapid. It’s leading to starvation and other kinds of issues. At the same time in Europe, we have a good example of what happens when there is too little growth. Part of the problem in Italy, in Greece, is virtually no population growth. So when you have no growth you have no growth in markets, you have no growth in businesses, you have no growth in revenues. We could very likely get there in the U.S. depending on what happens to our population patterns. Growth is still very critical. Age is a phenomenal issue, not only in the U.S. but across the world. We have an aging world with proportions that didn’t occur 35

previously. We have not mastered many of the physical aspects of aging, so we are looking at larger and larger proportions of dependent people. You can take a whole set of issues that have demographic components. I’m obviously biased. To me, the demographics are kind of at the base. I would recommend to go at it in terms of demography and applied demography because I think that demographic components are going to be critical as we go forward in time just as they have been in the past. I think the issues are very critical that we’re looking at from a demographics standpoint, but if I were a social psychologist or a political scientist, I would argue the same thing. One of the things that makes academia really interesting is the fact that we can see the world from so many different angles. It’s not that one discipline has all the answers. Maybe it’s the fact that all of them have parts of the answers, and that’s what makes the diversity in the university academically so important. I think what is so useful to students is to be able to get these different perspectives and see what excites you the most. Because that’s what you want to do as well. Most of us know that there are other areas where we 36

could have made more money, but we chose what we chose because it excited us. It made us feel like we’re doing important things. If you don’t think what you’re doing is important, it’s awfully hard to keep dedicated to it.

TURNING POINTS SIXTEEN

Leader Mentors Ted Temzelides, Ph.D. Professor, Economics, Rice University

I don’t know much about leadership in the sense that I haven’t studied it and it’s not part of my studies. There are people who do, and being a college master and a senior professor in my department, my work involves an element of that. But whether I’m good at it, I think the jury’s still out, so I don’t know if my advice counts for anything. One thing that I’ve always been intrigued by is the axiom that leadership cannot be learned. It’s not proved but it’s almost postulated that either you’re born a leader or you are not born a leader and you are never going to be a leader. I’ve always been intrigued by this axiom. I don’t know if it’s correct or not. One thing that I have learned is that whatever leadership ability I have has greatly been improved by having proved leaders take me under their wings, so to speak, and having mentors that are proven, 39

strong leaders. So, I guess my advice for what itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s worth, again, that Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m agnostic about whether leadership can be learned, but I can tell you from my own experience that being close to people who have leadership abilities and witnessing how they perform has helped me tremendously. My advice is to try to find some senior mentors who have a good leadership record and see what you can learn from that. But as I said, this is not a scientific suggestion, so take it with a grain of salt.

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

Justin Denney is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Associate Director of the Urban Health Program within the Kinder Institute of Urban Research. As a health researcher with sociological and demographic training, he is principally interested in identifying individual and structural conditions that jointly contribute to health and mortality inequalities. His publications have focused on both domestic and international settings and have addressed topics such as the effects of family formations on individual suicide risks, neighborhood contributors to obesity, and the effects of nation-level social and economic development on socioeconomic gaps in unhealthy behaviors such as cigarette smoking. Dr. Denney is currently involved in multiple projects aimed broadly at clarifying the effects of context on individual health and mortality prospects and hopes his work can inform public policy and ultimately lead to healthier populations. 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.

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. Stephen Klineberg is a Professor of Sociology and the

founding co-director of Rice University’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research. In 1982, he and his students initiated the annual “Kinder Houston Area Survey,” now beginning its fourth decade of tracking the remarkable changes in the demographic patterns, economic outlooks, experiences, and beliefs of Harris County residents. Co-author of The Present of Things Future: Explorations of Time in Human Experience, Dr. Klineberg has written numerous journal articles and research reports and appears frequently on radio and television. The recipient of twelve major teaching awards, including the Lifetime Award for Excellence in Teaching and the Piper Professor Award, he is featured in a 2012 film on the 30 years of Houston surveys. Dr. Klineberg earned a B.A. from Haverford College, an M.A. from the University of Paris, and a Ph.D. from Harvard. 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). 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. 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. Rick Wilson is a Professor of Political Science. His research focuses on human behavior. In the past, his work focused on political history and the design of political institutions, especially the U.S. Congress in

the pre-Federal and early-Federal period. His current work focuses on human cooperation and conflict. Of special interest are the evolutionary, biological, and neurological foundations of human behavior. Dr. Wilson teaches courses on the U.S. Congress, Common Property Resources, Institutional Analysis and Design, Evolutionary Psychology, and Behavioral and Experimental Politics. He currently serves as Editor of the American Journal of Political Science.

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.