The real work of academia is done by research assistants: those hardworking, underpaid, never thanked, graduate students; hoping to make a name for themselves, pay a few bills, and somehow keep it all balanced until they graduate.
Our university doesn’t have a formal research assistant program for our scholars, so last year I put together an internship in leadership development. To date, I have been blessed with some very talented and gifted interns who have made my work and life immeasurably easier.
The original posting reads like this:
Health care administrators and managers are often key individuals in leadership development roles. Leadership development courses and talks are often offered via human resources classes, retreats, conference presentations, and other formal and informal channels.
This internship combines both research and practical application of leadership development. It is especially designed for those students who want to include leadership development in their career path, but not necessarily as a college-based faculty member. Students will research and develop their own skills in creative thinking, virtual team leadership, change leadership, and storytelling as a leadership tool.
I should explain that our Master’s program has just over 200 active students and my personal advisee list is just over 40 of those students. Out of our best students, I am fortunate to hand select 3 or 4 each year who work with me in this Administrative Internship.
The first intern in this concept project is still working with me, developing a focused segment of our Change Leadership Seminar on the role of journaling and coaching employee change.
Another of these gifted scholars took on the creation of a presentation to a state wide quality conference on the natural conflicts which exist between the ideas of quality and quality improvement. I’ll present the results of her work again in April.
Interns are not reqired to fetch coffee - but it is always greatly appreciated. Photo Copyright 2008 by Jim Frazier
Working with me now, on the creation of an introductory lecture to our leadership skills, is another of my Interns who is also a dual degree Podiatry student and a military officer. This scholar also took on the difficult challenge of working with me in the classroom during the Storytelling in Health Care Leadership Seminar held in the last few weeks.
And while the ongoing projects continue, new work begins in March with a new Intern as she completes her MPH practicum with Walden University. She will be instrumental in the organization, review and selection of additional reading resources for “We Are What We Eat: The nutrition, policy and public health of America’s diet“. This new addition to the team will be working remotely from New Mexico, and will be helping to develop an iTunes U version of our course as a pilot.
I also confess (with pride) there are moments when I review their collective CV’s and marvel at what each has accomplished to date. I am fortunate that they chose to share their strengths — and my mentorship — as they round out their graduate study.
Later this month, I lead one of our Leadership Seminar Series on Storytelling in Health Care Leadership. I found this video by NPR’s Scott Simon on You Tube and I anticipate including it in our discussions.
A lot of people run into these etiquette errors as they are getting used to a new social network. I have a presentation that I’ve delivered several times (often for fifty bucks and bus fare) where I describe LinkedIn as a Grey Flannel Suit and Facebook as a Hawaiian Shirt. It’s good to have both in your wardrobe, but if you show up at a board meeting in a Hawaiian Shirt you look like a goof and if you show up on a boathouse roof in a Grey Flannel Suit you look like an ass.
Scientists and the public often don’t see eye to eye
Most people view scientists favorably, but the lack of scientific knowledge on controversial issues can impact policy decisions.
The Monitor’s article highlights a study by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the Pew Research Center.
Organizations like the AAAS are trying to encourage scientists to do a better job of communicating what they do to the general public. It’s a notion that seems to be resonating with many younger scientists, Dr. Leshner and other say, although it’s still tough to do while trying to teach, conduct research, and hunt for the grant money that will pay for the research.
As readers of this blog know, I live in the academic world. Everyone in academic has their strength a dn key skill sets. Just as I would be out of my strenghts in most clinical research labs, many of the scientist-academic-researchers I work with are lost in the world of telling their story to the public. I read grant proposals often with gritted teeth and rolling eyes and I struggle through their prose. While it is often successful at attracting grant dollars (which is the point after all) its the kind of stuff that makes any Microsoft user manual seem like a cliff hanger.
It’s a double edged sword, like any professional development. On the one edge, successful researchers feel “if its not broken, why fix it?” It the grant dollars are coming in, the scholarly papers are being written (for a shrinking audience of peer reviewers and the rank, promotion, and tenure committee) then why change?
On the other edge of the sword, as the study points out, public policy is being made without the benefit of their scholarly knowledge, which is a huge global loss.
The AAAS web site shares this insight:
As the 40th anniversary of the moon landing approaches, just 17% say U.S. scientific achievements rate as the best in the world, compared with nearly half (49%) of scientists who hold that view.
The article wraps up with this
“A very small percentage of Americans know a scientist personally,” he explains. “Scientists are just not on their radar.”
To change that, “scientists need to reach out to America,” he continues. Personal contact may not change an individual’s worldview, Mr. Mooney suggests, but it does have the potential to demystify scientists and the way they approach their world more than huddling in a lab would.
My Twitter feed since Sunday has hit some brief highlights of a workshop I’m attending this week in Norman, Oklahoma.
It’s a workshop who’s attendees are facing incredible change in their world: newspapers are closing, television revenues are shrinking, and more and more citizen journalists are providing lower quality product for storytelling.
Lila Merideth directs a scene on her second day of the NPPA News Video Workshop. (Photo by Donald Winslow)
The NPPA News Video Workshop, for the last 49 years, has brought the concepts of visual storytelling to news photojournalists. When I first attended here in 1997, there was little awareness of the Web as a storytelling medium and most, if not all, attendees came from local TV stations. They captured their video using matching, standard-issue, multi-thousand-dollar broadcast cameras. Twelve years later, news shooters are nearly the smallest percentage of attendees. This uears workshop is made up of storytellers from the military, education, and newspapers as well. The cameras used here have changed, too, and now include small DV camcorders to the high dollar cameras.
What’s changing is the cost barriers to video storytelling . With the barriers to storytelling are lowering, one of the subtle goals of the workshop is to be sure the quality does not lower. And while there is a place for the quirky, poorly produced YouTube video of your neighbor’s welcome mat being stolen by a racoon, inexpensive equipment doesn’t mean the story has to be poor. (For example, this shared by NBC’s John Larson, (added 4-14, my friend Sue Ellen sent this better link via Vimeo) the shooting quality is very mediocre, but the story concept is solid (watch it all the way through to see it build).
Two toolboxes
The reason I am here is to build two conceptual toolboxes: the first will be used to tell better visual stories in my lectures and on line teaching. The second toolbox will be used when I teach a graduate seminar in Storytelling in Leadership scheduled for winter term on our campus. Teaching storytelling on a medical campus is a skill that will help current and future leaders understand was to effect change, improve quality, and guide their organization through the overwhelming challenges they will face in their careers.
“Anyone involved in quality improvement efforts knows that scientific principles are at the center of this work. But even the most evangelical quality engineer will caution that this is only part of the solution. Improvement strategies and measurement tools are most effective when embedded in an organizational cultural that ensures that changes are embraced and sustained. And there is no better means of inspiring cultural change than through the simple craft of telling stories. As Donald Berwick, MD, MPP, puts it, ‘Measurement is important, but it’s the stories behind the numbers that are the most enduring wellspring for change.’”
Local television news, done poorly, is banal, lame, and mind numbing. As is any poorly told story. Substitute “lecture” or “online class” for “local television news” and the sentence remains true. Strong effective storytelling, as demonstrated by the presenters here, become compelling, emotional, and the “wellspring for change” as Berwick mentions above.
How the workshop progresses
As I wait for her direction, Lila Merideth of the Associated Press prepares her camera during the NPPA News Video Workshop. (Photo by Donald Winslow)
The participants here have daily assignments and the format is essentially the same: they are given an assignment (usually a rambling description of a cultural trend and a series of lame questions.) Their task, in a mater of a few hours, is to create a commitment statement (what is their story about) and video record no more than 4 minutes of tape. The 4 minutes of recorded video is brutally critiqued and then, the participants edit it down to a one minute story. All of this without audio.
Critics of this workshop, and this style of news photojournalism, say the results are too formula. The attitude from many of the workshop presenters is to ask the participants, for this week, to follow the formula. To “play the game” in the words of long time workshop faculty Darryl Barton and to follow their step-by-step formulas.
How this relates to education
Storytelling — and video storytelling — does not supplant the lecture or the textbook. But it can add emphasis, pacing, and sequencing to learning. Done well, a visual story can lead a student to understand and synthesize ideas. it can illustrate concepst in ways a text book can not. The key, for the educator, is to learn the craft of storytelling first, then move to the digital media and learn how to adapt the storytelling techniques to the medium.
While there are limits to cameras like the Flip, the price point of $200 makes HD video affordable in the classroom. The techniques taught hee can apply to the simple Flip as wel as the $60,000 cameras. When learners see how effective storytelling can be, they can then be beter prepared to use storytelling and the techniques with the professional equipment brought by their AV departments, communication firms, or local television outlets.
