Remaining always relevant in Academia - A talk by Prof. Ramadhar Singh

Measures of Effectiveness

• Academic careers are long, upto 70 years in India

Tasks that academics are called upon to do

• Teaching
  • Core courses
  • Electives
• Research
  • Advancing the field (Basic Research)
  • Solving other problems (Consulting)
• Service
  • Administrative
  • Professional bodies
  • Government

Teaching

• Core courses
  • Participant ratings
  • Upgradation of course outline
  • Cooperation with other academics on creating a compelling experience for students
• Electives
  • Number of participants
  • Participant ratings
  • New elective courses developed and taught
• Development of Teaching materials
  • Educational Material
  • Textbooks (how much used, how many editions)

Research

• Advancing the Field
  • Grants
  • Conferences
  • Students supervised
  • Publications
  • Chapters in editied volumes
  • Citations
  • Invited colloquia
  • Keynote addressed
  • Awards and Fellowships
• Solving other problems
  • Demand for consultation and fees
  • Rating by clients
  • Acceptance of recommendations
  • Eventual solution proposed and implemented

Service

• Administrative
  • People hired
  • Programs initiated
  • Reputation of Institute built
• Professional bodies and government
  • Memberships
  • Revisions of grant proposals
  • Committee memberships
  • Editing journals
  • Reviewing journals and books

More thoughts

Teaching

• Its about transforming lives
• Treat students individually
• Imparting education not only enlightens the receiver but also broadens the giver
• Reasoning -> Imagining -> Caring : Rabindranath Tagore
• Figure out potential of the learner
• Be a live long learner
• No failures, only lessons : Cherie Carton-Scott, 1998
• Things can be achieved with effort
• The only mistake in our life is a lesson not learnt

Research

• Make the best use of graduate school
• Research has two objectives:
  1. Get a degree and a good job
  2. Begin enjoyment of making a contribution to knowledge
• Continue to collaborate with supervisors and peers
• Persistence is a must
• Always ask why multiple times
• Life is unkind and unfair, get over it
• If manuscript rejected, take criticism and suggestions, resend, repeat till published
  • Could be reviewer’s mindset
  • Have faith in your finding
  • Important to enjoy what you do, not everything you do would be acceptable, get your work recorded whereever it succeeds
• Research is always painful
  • Enjoy inflicting pain on yourself :-)
• Idea -> Devise method to test -> obtain resources -> gather data -> publish

Service

• Take service as a challenge
• By no means any less important
• Get involved in professional bodies TODAY
• Contibue to engage yourself in self-renewal activities
• Opportunities for roles in Nation building
• Be constructively critical as possible for ideas, methods proposed, implications, new literature, line of thought e.t.c.
• Has the author considered alternative interpretations of the results and ruled them out accordingly?
• Regarding dissertation
  • Judge brevity and clarity of writing
  • Be constructively critical
  • Magnitude of novel contribution might not be earth shaking
  • First draft is a draft, sleep over it and relook at it.
• Your students can be your teachers
• You do not have to be better than all people around you and in all respects

General

• Gladly move from institution to institution
• New challenges, new tasks
• Take sabbatical and renew
• Revise your vita every 6 months and look at it. Are you happy with how it is developing? and the direction it s taking?
• Update information on your webpage regularly. Accurate information is useful to peers and agencies searching for experts
• Live as if you were to die tomorrow, learn as if you were to live forever.