When Research Matters

Allison Druin, Associate Dean for Research, iSchool

Ten years ago, I wrote an article questioning if doing my research was really all that critical to the world given the events of 9/11. I wrote, “…so much felt unimportant... All I could think about were my family and friends in New York City and at the Pentagon, my parents stuck in the Midwest without a plane ride home, and my graduate student…on his way back from Europe exactly at the moment this all happened.”

On that horrible day that will forever been known as 9/11, I wondered why I wasn’t a fire-fighter, an FBI agent, or even a school teacher who could explain to children what was happening to our world.  Instead, I wrote papers, submitted grant proposals, gave talks, and graded my class’s papers.  It took the words of a child in my lab to remind me research can make a difference.  At the time we were working on our first designs of the International Children’s Digital Library.  With books in languages from around the world, we were trying to tackle the question of why would kids care if there’s lots of languages of books online. Our 10-year old design partner said, “When there’s lots of languages there’s lots of people who understand (sic.).”

It dawned on me that if our research can help us understand one new thing in this world, then it can be more than just another academic paper.  Helping people to understand their world or other people’s lives might lead to better new tools, better new methods for learning, and better relationships between diverse people. Research can matter.

Since 9/11/01, it’s been 10 years of research for me and my colleagues at the iSchool. This type of research which can lead to a social impact in the real world is not only the norm, but is the central part of our college’s values mission for research. Today Associate Professor Ken Fleischmann collaborates with Ph.D. student Clay Templeton and Assistant Professor Jordan Boyd-Graber on computational social science research using crowd-sourcing and techniques from natural language processing to detect the relationship between people’s values and their attitudes toward the Park51 project (which has also been described as the “Ground Zero mosque”).

In addition, today Professor Doug Oard does research which helps us access information no matter what the language.  Then there’s Assistant Professors Paul Jaeger and Mega Subramaniam, and Professor John Bertot who (based on their center’s research) started a whole new concentration in our Masters of Library Science Program on“Diversity” so that we can truly support information users that are traditionally underserved and disadvantaged.  There’s also our Dean, Jenny Preece whose passion (besides the iSchool) is creating new technologies that can support awareness and learning on issues concerning biodiversity.

As you can see, I can go on endlessly about our faculty (and usually do), but I’ll stop here to say, I’ve learned over the last 10 years that research too can be important in changing our world.  I’m not so sure I would have made a great fire-fighter or FBI agent, but the lessons of 9/11 have taught me that it’s critical to do something that helps change our world for the better.  After a decade I still work on the International Children’s Digital Library with Professor Ben Bederson and Associate Dean, Anne Weeks.  Together, we have been creating an online library for the world’s children that we hope will promote tolerance and respect for diverse cultures through sharing the best of children’s literature. 

That horrible day of 9/11 a decade ago helped me to see it’s important to keep questioning, to keep exploring ideas, and to keep sharing what is possible. That horrible day of 9/11 helped me to see that research really does matter.

Retreat, Reflect, and Research

Allison Druin, Associate Dean for Research, iSchool

“I’m retreating.” So often when we hear these words it brings to mind someone giving up, leaving, or no longer pursuing their goals.  Yet after four “retreats” in 15 days (and 2 other meetings that could be called this), “I’m retreating” brings to my mind a very different experience.  It’s an important time for me to focus on some piece of my work.  It can be a time to reconnect with busy colleagues who like me normally don’t have the luxury of spending a few consecutive hours together, let alone a day.  I’ve found that it can be a time for me to re-energize and look forward to the academic year ahead.

I know for some, “retreating” may feel like valuable time spent that they don’t have.  It may feel like we could instead be writing papers, focusing on grant proposals, or preparing to teach in the semester ahead.  But for me, sitting in a room brainstorming in small groups, or doing a “group think” on a mission statement, or even spending some quiet time considering personal or team goals for the year, can be valuable time well spent.

With each successive retreat over the last few weeks, I found I’ve been more able to ignore the outside world of “To-Do lists” and endless emails.  Instead I’ve been able to start connecting ideas from one retreat to the next.  This was the case as I was listening to a discussion on building partnerships and leadership with my colleagues at the U.S. National Park Service.  As the ideas emerged on strategic thinking, opportunities, and risk, I found myself drawing diagrams that made sense of the mentorship training I just had the week before at a retreat with my colleagues from the ADVANCE Program.  I realized I’d been struggling with how to take the abstract good ideas we all have and make them real.  I wanted to make these ideas a call to action, not just one more To-Do list. And yet as I was reflecting on one back to the other, my random scribbling began to make sense not just for the ADVANCE Program, but for my work with the National Park Service.  It also began to fill gaps in my thinking about partnerships and leadership as I begin to brainstorm this coming week with our iSchool community at the University of Maryland.

So often we hear the words, “we need to build partnerships” but too often they seem like nice words for other people to do.  We can assume that people and partnerships will find us if we just do good research.  Or partners will come if I just write another grant proposal.  Or partnering is for someone else to do that knows the special “secret.” But what I got from my days of retreating and reflecting was a realization that it’s a path we all can take when we take a moment not to run as fast as we can, but to take a deep breath to become aware of our research work, both from inside the university, but externally in the wider research landscape of other universities, companies, and government agencies. 

Many times it’s easy to look at our research and assess what matters, what is valuable, and what needs to be moved forward.  But often we don’t take the time to consider who in our external research environment could be colleagues to collaborate with, who might be competing for the same resources, who might need what we do, and who could help us.  We need to ask ourselves what are the risks and opportunities in starting something new, in stopping what we’re doing, or in continuing what we have been doing.  The risks in starting something new can be as simple as, I might not receive the funding or as complex as this new research activity might compete too much with what I’m already doing.  The opportunities if I succeed may seem overly obvious—I’ve started a new partnership that can expand my research direction, can lead to new resources and/or publications.  In exploring these risks and opportunities more explicitly for starting, stopping, or continuing our activities, I’ve begun to see how I can take what I value as my goals, or my college’s goals and begin to plan my actions.  

As we walk into our new school year, our iSchool will soon be gathering as a faculty to talk about moving from our shared values to taking action.  Thanks to last year’s shared work, our iSchool has agreed that we value research:

1. that has a social impact on the real world which can benefit an individual or the larger society 
2. which is a foundation for future research that can shape our profession, organizations, public policy and more

This coming week our iSchool community will be asking ourselves: How do we communicate our research and how do we build resources?  We’ll attempt to answer those questions by asking ourselves what I learned in retreating--what are the risks and opportunities in starting something new, in stopping what we’re doing, or in continuing what we have been doing?  We’ll explore these questions both from what makes sense within the university but also in the wider external research community.

To some who do strategic planning or leadership training for a living, this may not sound so earth-shattering.  But for me, “retreating” was the only way I could find my way there.   So for all of you who are wrestling with the “what if’s” and the “will I ever’s…” let me suggest- try retreating!  It’s a great first step to reflecting and researching in the days to come.