Spring Reflections: The Importance of Research

(Click here to read our entire Faculty Spring 2018 newsletter) 

On the occasion of the release of our Spring newsletter, I would like to share some reflections by travelling back to our first newsletter in Fall 2016 in which I referred to one of my favorite quotes from Kurt Lewin (paraphrased): it takes a lot of theory to make a good practice. And travel back we must since I want to share with you, students, alumni, faculty, and friends, our most recent journey towards increasing relevance and rigor in our academic programs.

When I joined the College I was confronted with an interesting challenge, one that involved what I would call a “false dichotomy”: is CPS focused on teaching professional and applied skills or is focused on developing a new body of knowledge through theoretical and abstract reflection? What is more important? Relevance or rigor?

I call this a “false dichotomy’ because I have come to believe that there is no such a thing as rigor versus relevance, theoretical versus applied, research vs non-research. As academics, we cannot do anything else but use research and theory-based knowledge to inform our teaching. And even when we use our professional experiences (the relevance) in our teaching, we cannot do so without also embedding our research and grounded reflection into our classes (the rigor).

This type of research is not easily visible, as it immediately entrenches itself into sound pedagogy and focuses on benefitting the classroom more than the larger academic community of scholars. It is an intimate experience between a teacher and the students. Yet, it is the biggest and best contribution that we, as professors, are called to make: trade off notoriety and participation in the activities of the external community to fully immerse ourselves in planting the seeds of the future. This relentless commitment enables our students to grow, learn and, in return, they become architects of their own world. This is the CPS I was blessed to find when I started my journey.

Nevertheless, although I have a realistic expectation of what it means to be an excellent instructor and teach three or four courses each semester, to be present for the students and to respond to the many advising and mentoring demands that are placed upon our full-time and part-time faculty, I have asked our faculty to step up and take yet another challenge. To seek and build a credible academic scholarship, to involve students in research, to start signaling our excellence and dedication not only by teaching strong professional skills but also by crafting innovative frameworks either in one own’s discipline or through pedagogical and applied innovations.

I cannot be prouder of the CPS faculty and the support that we received from many members of our larger St. John’s community. They embraced the challenges, they understood our new needs and they have embarked in a journey of reflection and discovery that I believe is foundational to the continued relevance and rigor of our College.

With the help of a newly created position of Associate Dean of Graduate Programs and Research, CPS launched an ambitious series of research seminars in the 2016-2017 academic year, pairing forces with the Center for Teaching and Learning in 2017-2018 and inviting other University colleagues to discuss research methods across disciplines and present the exciting work that is happening throughout our Institution. Junior faculty and their senior mentors have been encouraged to pair up in joint research projects; travel funding and conference attendance have been incentivized and recognized by the Dean’s office, with strong support from the Provost’s office that enabled us to expand our scholarly conference participation budget. With the recent addition of an Associate Dean for Global and Online Programs, we intend to magnify our outreach globally.

Our recruiting efforts have focused on scholarship, with plenty of opportunities for active research faculty to prepare grant-fundable proposals that can yield scholarly publications in a reasonable timeframe.  Our faculty welcomed the challenge and this journey has already produced excellent outcomes. Just to name a few, several grants have been submitted, selected faculty have been awarded research fellowship at the London School of Economics and at Harvard University. We have sent Fulbright faculty abroad and received Fulbright visitors. We have significantly increased the number of publications in peer-reviewed journals and the number of academic and professional books. We are defining our key research areas around computational communication, computing sciences, homeland security, sport and hospitality management, healthcare analytics, and we are studying the digital evolution of social and mass media. This past January, we have been fortunate to launch our first doctoral program, a program that will shape both the theory and the practice of the emerging field of homeland security.

I am extremely pleased about how far we have gone and how much energy our faculty put in the past two years in creating new and exciting applied and theoretical graduate programs while, at the same time, developing a strong and consistent research agenda.

It would be too hypocritical of a new Dean to ask so much from its stakeholder community and not engage in the same level of effort requested of the faculty. So, I have worked on research on technology-supported teaching, knowledge management, innovation and entrepreneurship, research that I will integrate in the way I plan to teach a digital entrepreneurship course next semester at the Staten Island campus on Friday mornings (dear students, please consider registering…). I have worked with faculty and graduate students on innovation research last year. This year, I have started working with undergraduate students on additional research projects, side to side with the many faculty working on similar projects with their students. I was fortunate to publish several peer-reviewed journal articles and conference proceedings since I joined the University. My research pipeline has a few more conditional acceptances and I am contemplating writing another book on my favorite topic: technological and disruptive innovation for startups.

I would like to encourage our students to reach out to every one of us (the CPS full-time and part-time faculty) to discuss research opportunities. I would welcome continuing to pair with our University colleagues to develop joint grant-funding proposals or innovative curricula. I like to frame CPS’ role in our University as one of agility, adaptability and anticipation (the triple “A”) that leads to continuous innovation. Conducting original pedagogical, theoretical or applied research and transforming our teaching is not only important, but extremely urgent as it will enable us to help our students become the next generation of knowledge-workers who will command the professions of the future.

Thank you for joining our journey,

Katia