The need to train professionals, educate citizens and advance knowledge of our world has never been less, yet the academic environment where this takes place is changing at a pace where its easy to question what one is to do to contribute to its mission. In this continuing series on life in academia, I offer …
The gap between what academics do and what those outside of the academy think they do is enormous. The mysteriousness and elite status that universities enjoy may actually serve to undermine the very values of inquiry and education that it seeks to promote. In this second in series of posts on academic life, I take …
(Un)Building a Mystery: Peeking Behind the Curtain in the Academic Land of Oz Read More »
Universities haven’t survived hundreds of years by being risky, they have because they were safe (in spite of the occasional radical shift here and there). With complex social problems and the challenges posed by things like cancer, something risky is needed. Academics just aren’t positioned to embrace this risk unless the system changes — with them helping drive that change — to support innovation and not just talk about it.
Recently I was discussing what I do with someone relatively unfamiliar to my research, yet in the same field and I described my interest in systems thinking, knowledge translation, and eHealth and how they go together. Somehow in the conversation the term “sexy” was used to describe these fields along with “hot” and “upcoming”. It’s …
