Dean’s Blog: A Day in the Life
“Woke up, fell out of bed. Dragged a comb across my head. Found my way downstairs and drank a cup. And looking up, I noticed I was late. Found my coat and grabbed my hat. Made the bus in seconds flat.” -- The Beatles, "A Day in the Life"
My day starts somewhat as the Beatles proclaim. I am always late getting to work, not because I just got up, but because I got absorbed in some data science-related task. Working at home was not a thing in Sgt. Pepper’s era. I don’t go on the bus but ride my motorcycle along pristine country lanes. I don't drag a comb across my head as alas I don't have much hair, and most of all I rush to work because I really want to be there. There's nothing mundane about a day in the life of a founding dean of a School of Data Science. It's amazing and a true privilege. This blog tries to explain why.
By way of a preface. First, founding a school as dean involves different job functions from running a school in a steady state to starting from scratch. We are flying the plane as we build it, but after four years we at least have something that is airworthy. That said, many adjustments are still needed to embrace a fast-growing group of faculty, staff, and students.
Second, in data science the opportunities are changing fast and boundless. Major strategic decisions revolve around what not to. So with that background, here is “a day in the life” or more specifically, a day in my life.
6:00 a.m. Big pot of coffee brewing, and it's time to work up a draft of our space guidelines for the new building that will house our school permanently. I described previously what it is like to have a stake in the ground as a new school. We move in next April and already furniture has been ordered. How we designed the building to maximize interaction is a distant memory. One thing I do know from a long career in academia, space -- or more specifically fighting over space -- is one of the most contentious and time-consuming issues. With a new building, we have a clean slate but once folks move in, occupancy becomes 9/10ths of the law. Hence the space guidelines. The plan is to have all faculty sign on to these guidelines before one book or laptop enters the space. Drafting such an agreement and getting faculty buy-in ahead of the move-in date is the first step. The guidelines will define space reallocation as needed and, as best we can, the uncertainties that surround the nature of work post-COVID.
7:30 a.m. Time to review today's meetings and prep for whatever is coming my way. Blessed with an outstanding executive assistant, I have complete trust in what has been laid out for me. On Monday that begins with the dean’s dossier that highlights actions I need to take for the whole week. I review that and today’s calendar. Some of what is listed is a memory jog for meetings that were set weeks ago and for which I have no immediate recollection. When I have a meeting, I keep a paper trail of outcomes and actions to help with an aging memory. Microsoft 365 for the official stuff, Evernote for my personal notes, and Google docs for non-secure stuff with collaborators outside of the University.
9 a.m. Beautiful sunny day. Off to work on the BMW GTL 1650cc inline six-cylinder motorcycle. When describing the bike via voice to text it changed “the ultimate touring machine” in BMW speak to the “ultimate Turing machine” in data science speak. Something spooky there.
9:30 a.m. Having had a good singalong into the full-facial motorcycle helmet it's time for a meeting with a new team member. The school is now at the size (approximately 110 people) that I cannot meet with all candidates that interview with us, so when they do sign on I like to get to know them. I’m always amazed at the diversity and energy of the people we hire. Each academic year as new faculty and staff arrive our character changes but not the culture of the school. New voices, new ideas, new actions. It's incredibly exciting to watch and also to realize that my role too changes year after year. There is more delegation than there used to be and a change of job functions for me. For example, more fundraising, hence my next appointment.
10 a.m. Meeting with a prospective donor who wants to talk about interesting projects. Every day multiple folks reach out to meet with the dean on a broad variety of topics. This is a really fun part of the job, but with limited time one has to choose meetings carefully. I only have one rule as far as potential donors are concerned: ask for money you get advice; ask for advice you get money. I stick to the advice part and leave everything else to our excellent director of development. Philanthropy and public-private partnership are an integral part of the business model of a university and a school, as my 11 am attests. It turns out the prospective donor was interested in supporting a project on autism. We have already done significant work here through the Mentoring to Increase Neurodiversity in Data Science (MINDS) program and possibilities abound.
11 a.m. Budget meeting with my associate dean for administration and the director of finance. There are four financial pillars for the School: tuition, indirects (also called F&A) on grants, philanthropy, and public-private partnership (PPP). In my mind financial sustainability requires keeping a balanced portfolio across the four pillars. Thus far, our balancing act is going well, helped by some amazing benefactors who believe in what we are doing. If tuition is set too low we can't hire the best faculty; if research dollars do not come in our scholarship and reputation suffers as well as our contributions to society; without PPP our workforce pipeline is impacted. You get the idea. It’s an important meeting.
12 p.m. Seminar. Today it's a job talk. We have a lot of those. I am always amazed at the scholarly diversity of our speakers and what we learn. Data science touches all disciplines. Today it is AI inequality.
1 p.m. Time for a walk to the sandwich shop across our beautiful campus. (Thomas Jefferson called it “Grounds” in deference to its exceptional beauty.) I like to do that on my own to gather thoughts and to have a mid-day decompression. Particularly important today as I meet with the provost.
2 p.m. The Provost is the chief academic officer for the University and to whom I and the other 11 deans report. We meet as a group during the academic year every two weeks, and I meet 1:1 with the provost every 2-3 weeks as well. This is a time to raise issues we are having as a School as well as pitch new ideas. I enjoy these meetings which start with a brief recap of the latest happening in English Premier League soccer and quickly get into weightier issues such as how the University should respond to the emergence of Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, state government relations, and how our undergraduate data science program (if approved by the state) will be overrun with interested students.
3 p.m. Meeting with my research lab. Our research has morphed to be more toward data science than data engineering in biology and medicine. I have trouble keeping up with research developments when the school requires so much of my time and attention. On the positive side, I get to see the school in a similar way to our faculty, which is a useful perspective to have. Equally important there are frustrations as dean. Thinking about research, I can switch off and contemplate an unsolved problem in our field. It's a great way to refresh.
4:30 p.m. The day is winding down. Time to address important emails, wander the corridors and exchange pleasantries, and hear any concerns from our faculty, students, and staff before heading home along those beautiful country roads thinking, as Winston Churchill did when someone suggested he drank too much, “so much done and so much to do.”
