Many newly-recruited tenured faculty members in the engineering field are forced to distill years of research into a few sentences visiting federal agencies and private corporations to vie for research grant money. Research, as well as lecture, is part of a faculty member’s tenure contract at SMU. That faculty member has to find money to begin or continue his research.
Though experts in their respective fields, engineering faculty are often not equipped with the public relations skills that would give them an advantage for the competitive dollars in a slow economy. To combat this problem, the SMU School of Engineering created a program to help its new faculty members become more effective in their search for corporate and federal research funds.
“You have to sell yourself,” David Willis, a professor in the mechanical engineering department said. First impressions are important.
Dinesh Rajan, a professor in the electrical engineering department, agreed.
“It’s all about marketing,” he said.
An article published in the January issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education highlighted the program as the “brainchild of [Geoffrey] Orsak,” associate dean of the engineering school.
“We really hope all the folks we worked so hard to recruit will be successful and stay with us over the long term. We have to be involved in that process [of building their careers], not just as gatekeepers at the hiring and tenure stages,” Orsak told the Chronicle.
Willis, of the mechanical engineering department, was one of 11 new engineering faculty members to go through the program. They were the “guinea pigs,” Orsak said.
The 11 faculty members attended two workshops in October of 2002. One of the exercises was for each of them to make a one-minute oral statement explaining their research to an administrator posing as a Washington insider. The exercise was videotaped.
“If you don’t get them interested in that first minute, you won’t get them interested at all,” Willis, whose research deals with laser micro machines said.
Rajan, whose research is in wireless communication design, said that the video exercise gave him a lot of confidence. Everyone who participated was able to review the tapes as a group.
“The group dynamic was a big plus,” he said.
The group later put their learning to the test. They took a week-long trip to Washington, D.C. in November to introduce themselves and their research to agencies such as the National Science Foundation and the Naval Research Labs.
“The only drawback was that we all went on the same day,” Rajan said. He added that the NSF and other agencies were little surprised to get so many business cards from SMU at one time.
Paul Krueger, a professor in the mechanical engineering department whose research focuses on fluid mechanics, said that the October workshops helped prepare him for the Washington D.C. trip.
“It was pretty interesting,” he said about the video exercise. “The pressure made it interesting.”
Krueger said that the workshops helped him get organized and gave him a chance to meet and get feedback from the other faculty members.
Marc Christensen, a professor in the electrical engineering department whose research includes photonic architectures, said that the workshops and the group trip was a “good experience.”
“The simple process of planning and to have ‘canned’ responses to fall back on was useful,” he said.
After the Washington D.C. trip, the group met for one last workshop to discuss their experiences.
Christensen said that the program was a good bonding experience and gave a “healthy dose of peer pressure.”
“We did it together,” Rajan said. “We helped each other out. We inspired each other.”
