September 17, 2025 • 60 mins
Professor Emeritus Deborah Boehm Davis, George Mason University in the US, is one of the pioneers of the CHI conference. Deborah discusses her varied career building from her psychology background and spanning roles in human factors at Bell Labs, NASA, and General Electric. She then talks about her extensive tenure at George Mason University in both faculty and administrative/leadership roles, eventually becoming the dean of a college. Deborah shares reflections on career transitions, the importance of making a difference, effective leadership, the significance of collaborative work, and the challenges and strategies for navigating academic leadership, as well as managing academic responsibilities alongside family life. She also talks about her last industry role at Oculus Research and offers insights into the skills and approaches necessary for effective academic and industry leadership. The conversation also touches on the importance of interdisciplinary work and mentorship in academia.
Overview:
00:00 Introduction
00:29 Deborah Boehm-Davis: Career Overview
03:24 Early Career and Human Factors
04:54 Transition to Academia, Balancing Faculty and Administration Roles
09:38 Reflections on Career and Impact
17:39 Navigating Academic Leadership
25:14 Collaborations, Interdisciplinary Work and Collegiality
28:18 Interdisciplinarity and Being Strategic
32:57 Transitioning to Leadership Roles, Developing Leadership Skills
33:53 Handling Difficult Conversations
36:39 Balancing Decisions and Stakeholder Concerns
40:29 Engaging Faculty and Effective Communication
44:51 Leadership in Industry vs. Academia
46:54 Mentorship and Support Systems
50:24 Proudest Achievements and Work Skills Course
56:28 Reflections on Women in Academia
59:37 Conclusion and Final Thoughts
01:00:46 End
Related links:
Video of a 2024 talk to the Uni of Virginia HFES Student Chapter: “A Career in Human Factors: A Lifetime of Change” [40:51 mins]
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/deborah-boehm-davis-05b50
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Geri Fitz (00:05):
Welcome to Changing Academic Life.
I'm Geraldine Fitzpatrick, and this isa podcast series where academics and
others share their stories, provideideas, and provoke discussions about what
we can do individually and collectivelyto change academic life for the better.
(00:29):
I am really delighted to bring thisconversation with Deborah Boehm-Davis.
Deborah is now Professor Emeritusfrom George Mason University.
But she's had a really interesting careerwhere she worked in various industry roles
in the very early days of human factorswork, and she was actually one of the
(00:51):
pioneers at the very first CHI Conferencewith CHI being the Computer Human
Interaction Conference back in the 1980s.
So she brings lots of experienceto reflect on from both industry
and research and her industry rolesspan Bell Labs and NASA and General
(01:14):
Electric so all very interesting.
And then she had a 33 year plus longtenure at George Mason University
at the psychology department.
And she ended up alternating betweenfaculty roles and moving into leadership
administration roles, eventuallybecoming the dean of a college.
(01:39):
And so I was really interested to talkto Deb because the interesting career
experiences reflect some of the themesfrom previous conversations, just to
show that flexibility that we can have.
And I was also aware that I've neverreally spoken to anyone who is involved
(02:03):
in more of the administration side,leadership side of universities, and I
don't know about you, but it's ofteneasy to get quite critical about people in
those roles and what they should be doingand what's wrong with a whole university.
So it was interesting, particularly Ithink talking to Deb about what it was
like being at that level and tryingto navigate all the different tensions
(02:28):
that they had to, to deal with in tryingto run a university or run a college.
So there's lots that she reflects on here.
Lots of great insights, lots ofsuggestions for those of us who
are part of faculty and how we canalso better support our leaders.
So I really hope you enjoythis conversation with Deb.
(02:51):
Welcome, Deb.
I'm really happy to be able totalk with you because you have had
such an interesting career journey.
And also you've held some really seniorleadership positions in universities,
and I haven't often got the chanceto talk to people more from that
leadership perspective as well, so.
(03:12):
They will probably be the two main areas.
Would you like to just introduceyourself a little bit in terms of
where you're coming from, backgroundand a flavor of the journey?
Deb (03:24):
Absolutely.
So I'm Deb Boehm Davis and, I was anundergraduate psychology major and in
my junior year, uh, my advisor toldme about a position at Bell Labs.
Neither of us really knew what BellLabs wanted was psychologists, but it
turned out they had a human factors groupand that's how I discovered the field.
(03:45):
Went on graduate school school
Geri Fitz (03:46):
The field being human.
Oh, human factors.
Human factors, yeah.
Deb (03:49):
Very broadly.
Yeah.
So I went to graduate school, hadplanned on cognitive psychology.
As, uh, a field.
So I studied that, but as I got closerto graduation, started remembering that
thing that I did as an undergraduatethat was really interesting.
Uh, that led me to my first job atNASA doing aviation applications.
(04:12):
I was at NASA a fairly shorttime when my husband got offered
a position on the East Coast.
So, uh, and it was a dream job for him.
So there was very littlequestion that we should move.
We moved to the East coast andI ended up at General Electric,
which is how I got involved in HCI.
Uh, they were doing work onhow programmers understand
(04:33):
software, and that was.
In the very beginnings, that was 1980.
So before even the first CHI conference.
Yeah.
Uh, GE did support that firstCHI conference, so I got
involved in that very early on.
I was there several years.
GE made some business decisionsthat, uh, didn't bode well
for continuing to work there.
(04:54):
So I moved to George Mason Universityand was there for over 30 years.
Geri Fitz (05:00):
As a psychologist?
Deb (05:02):
Yes, in a psychology department.
Yeah, they did have ahuman factors program.
Um, interestingly, the universityhad positioned itself to respond to
the needs of the local community,and therefore it had programs that
many psych departments don't have.
It had a human factors program, ithad industrial organizational program.
So it really was, uh, some ofthe more practical aspects,
(05:26):
if you will, of psychology.
Yeah.
Geri Fitz (05:28):
Yeah.
Deb (05:29):
And then to finish off.
So I stayed there fora very, very long time.
I went back and forth between being afaculty member and being an administrator.
We can talk more about that ifyou'd like, um, at some point.
And then, um, towards the end of.
What turned out to be the end of mycareer, um, I ended up going to meta.
At the time it was Oculus Research, aresearch lab doing research on virtual
(05:53):
reality, and that was sparked by aconfluence of events, a difficult meeting
with the president and the provost,followed by seeing my grandson, who was
then 15 months old and realizing how muchwe missed being so far away from them.
And then my son-in-law recruiting me toOculus Research where he was working.
(06:14):
And then I was therefor almost five years.
Yeah.
And then decided it was time to, tostep away and do some other fun things.
Yeah.
Geri Fitz (06:21):
And you were 30 years at George Mason in the
Deb (06:25):
33, I think.
33.
Geri Fitz (06:27):
Wow.
Wow.
A couple of things justto pick up on there.
You said at the beginning like youstarted off working in NASA and
that was more in, was it cockpit oraerospace type work and you had been
at Bell Labs, which is more phones.
Yes.
And then you talked about workingwith software developers.
(06:48):
Was there a red thread through those?
Deb (06:51):
So for me, the thread was always what information do people
need to perform effectively?
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
So, um, when I went to NASA.
The place in NASA that I was working wasfocused on commercial aviation, and it
was just at the time that, um, automatedsystems were coming into the cockpit.
So instead of a flight engineerhaving a huge panel of analog
(07:13):
displays, there was now informationbeing displayed on the computer.
And it turned out that it wasn't alwayssufficient to bring the pilot back
into the loop to understand what washappening because they hadn't had the
preview of things starting to go off.
So my background in cognitionwas really what information do
(07:35):
people need to make decisions?
And that was kind of the foundation.
And the same thing was true in thesoftware psychology work that we did.
It turns out that a huge proportionof funds that go into creating
software is not creating new software.
It's modifying existing software.
Documentation tends to be very poor.
(07:58):
And so we were askingtwo kinds of questions.
One, were there better ways to documentthe code so that a new person could
understand what had gone before?
And the second thing we looked at dodifferent structures like functional
decomposition versus object oriented.
Do they lend themselvesto easier modification?
Mm-hmm.
So that thread through that was always,what information do people need?
Geri Fitz (08:22):
Were you aware of that as a thread at the time?
Because they're quite, it's shiftingto quite different domains, or is it
only when you're looking back thatyou go, ah, I was always interested
in information and decision making.
Deb (08:35):
I think, if I'm brutally honest, it was when I came up for tenure, right.
And I needed to explain the programmaticnature of the work that I had done.
And it took me a little whileto think about it because I
was intrigued by the problems.
Mm.
But as I looked at it, I was always focused on the
(08:56):
information needs of the user.
Mm-hmm.
So, uh.
I think I was aware of it relativelyearly in my career, but certainly it
wasn't something that I set out tosay, this is what I'm gonna focus on.
Geri Fitz (09:08):
Yeah.
That's interesting.
And it also points then tothe value you get from those.
Times when we can think, oh no, Ihave to write a, I have to write
a case for promotion, or I have towrite a tenure case or whatever.
And you can get a bit humpy about it.
Yeah.
But they're actually really useful pointsof reflection, aren't they, to do that
(09:30):
heads, heads above the detail and mm-hmm.
What was this about?
Deb (09:35):
Yeah, I would agree.
Geri Fitz (09:36):
Yeah.
Do you have other insights when you likefrom that sort of heads up looking when
you think back on that varied career?
Deb (09:46):
Um, I don't know.
I mean, I.
Didn't really have to do thatkind of introspection for other,
uh, job related things, exceptwhen I started to interview.
So when I started to interviewfor the dean's position, when I
interviewed for a provost position,those were situations where I had
(10:06):
to look back and look for threads.
So, for example, my managementstyle, how did I think about that?
But it wasn't from.
Any other documents I would say thatI had to produce for some reason.
Geri Fitz (10:22):
The other interesting thing I thought just in the, in the very
short potted history, and I will puta link in the, on the webpage, on
the episode notes to a great talk youdid that walks through that career
path in a little bit more detail ifpeople are interested in seeing that.
But the other thing that struckme is, it doesn't sound like
(10:44):
at any point you had this careerplan in mind and this was my path.
It sounds quite opportunistic in a waythat someone told you about a job at Bell
Labs or your husband happened to get amove that was really perfect for him.
Mm-hmm.
Stuff happened in the industrythat where you went, nah,
(11:05):
not the place for me anymore.
Can you talk a little bit about thosetransitions and again, I guess
looking back on that, it wasn'ta set career path that you had it
planned out, but stuff worked out.
Deb (11:20):
So I guess I would, what I would say is I think I've always
wanted to make a difference.
I wanted to know that somethingthat I did had some impact.
And when I was at Bell Labs therewas a problem that they came up with.
There was a company that went to sodiumvapor lamps, and this was back when
(11:40):
you had a big black telephone with,uh, crystal buttons on the bottom and
the light shone through the crystal.
Well, because the sodium vaporfrequency and the frequency of the
tungsten lights coming out, theycouldn't tell which phone was ringing.
So we did a spectral analysis.
My colleague did it, Iwill, full disclosure.
(12:01):
And we discovered that the right colorsto allow the maximum light coming
out and the minimum light going inwas actually the color of the nail
polish that one of the secretarieshad used to coat the buttons on her.
But the, the point was wemade a difference, right?
It, it helped people do something better.
(12:22):
And I remember thinking, wow, I, I helpedsomebody, you know, do something better.
Mm.
And that, I think, was the spark foreverything I wanted to do in my career.
Mm-hmm.
Uh, and so yes, opportunities changed.
Sometimes I changed areas of researchdue to funding changes, sometimes due to
personal issues, but always, I was lookingfor something where I felt I could make
(12:45):
a difference and if truth be told, thereason I retired from meta was I didn't
feel like I was having much of an impact.
And so I thought if I'm not doingsomething that feels like it's having
a real impact, then I should just stop.
Yeah.
So, I think that has been the thread.
I was less fussy perhaps, or, or I wasjust, I'm intrigued by a lot of things.
(13:10):
So the domain that I worked indidn't seem to matter to me as much
as the fact that the work that Iwas doing was making a difference.
Geri Fitz (13:18):
Mm.
And that sounds, was it more of agut thing then when you just had
that feeling or was it a head thing?
Deb (13:27):
I mean, I guess I looked to things that, to me were indicators
that something had been of value.
Mm-hmm.
So I would say throughout my entirecareer the piece of research that I did
with colleagues that I think was the mostimpactful was work we did in an airline
where we created procedures that embodiedgood crew resource management techniques.
(13:51):
And we had two fleets at this airline.
We trained one fleet.
We did not train the other fleet and.
We had pilots who got promoted frombeing first officer on the trained
fleet onto being captains on theuntrained fleet, and they started
teaching their no new co-pilots what wehad taught them on the trained fleet.
(14:12):
And that just felt like a win, right?
Mm-hmm.
It was, they recognized that the helpwe had given them, the information
they needed to convey to, to theirpilots, their co-pilots, was valuable.
And so we saw that didn't help ourresearch a whole lot, but it was
inspiring in a way that, you know,when you publish a paper and maybe
(14:35):
people read it, maybe people don't,it just has a different feeling to it.
Geri Fitz (14:38):
Yeah, yeah.
So you were looking for, you werelooking for those sorts of signs
of validation of difference.
So publications then.
But how did that sit?
Deb (14:52):
I published.
Mm-hmm.
I did not publish as much as someof my colleagues, but I published
a respectable number of papers.
And to be quite honest, I've, I'veheard things that say, you know, on
average any given published paperis only read by two or three people,
and I've occasionally met youngerresearchers who, um, I was explaining
(15:14):
something I had done years ago and theysaid, oh, yes, I've read that paper.
And I'm always surprised.
I mean, I, I, I'm truly shocked whenpeople say they've read my papers.
But it is important to codify.
I mean, as I tell graduate students,and undergraduates when they work with
me, if you don't publish what you findthen it goes into the bins of history.
(15:37):
You know it's lost.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Uh, and if it's published,at least there's a chance
that someone can build on it.
Geri Fitz (15:44):
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think I was also just thinkingof that tension of wanting to make
a real difference and the, theacademic paper, which feels so dry
Deb (15:57):
mm-hmm.
Geri Fitz (15:58):
In comparison.
But then it's also the currency isn't it,for staying in academia and being able
to continue to make those difference.
So,
Deb (16:06):
exactly.
Geri Fitz (16:06):
You know, cause I know that some people are much
more driven by the papers thatthey get out in the publications.
Deb (16:13):
I have to say, looking back on my life, writing is
not my favorite thing to do.
Mm-hmm..
I'm a great editor, but that firstdraft is always quite daunting.
Yeah.
Um.
So when I look at my colleagues whowould keep multiple papers open on
their laptop and just write every sparemoment they had, that just wasn't me.
(16:35):
Interestingly, as an administrator,people say, you know, what did
you get out of administration?
It was the same thing of makinga difference and looking at
what information people needed.
You find in many systems,you know, organizations, the
information's not flowing very well.
And so could I do positive things eitherto change the culture or to change the
(16:59):
information that people were getting.
And over the years we've had to kindof change the way that we deliver that.
I remember when I first went to theuniversity, we used to get a, a eight
by 11 or eight by 14 sheet of paper thatwould be delivered to our mailbox and it
would have kind of what's going on in theuniversity, just a front and the back.
Mm-hmm.
And so I'd pull it outta my box and Iwould read it as I was walking to my car.
(17:22):
Now I have to sit in front of the computerand be stationary and be intentional
about looking at that, whereas thatopportunity just came up in the past.
Mm-hmm.
So I do think there are things we've lostin terms of helpful modes of communication
just to keep people in the loop.
Geri Fitz (17:39):
Yeah.
So, going to your administration,sort of leadership roles, how did
that move happen and what did you likeabout it that you kept going back?
'cause you said you kept going in andout of faculty and leadership roles.
Deb (17:57):
After I got tenure, my department chair pulled me aside and said, you
need to do something administrativebecause we're trying to reduce the
load on untenured faculty members.
And so I chose to serve asthe undergraduate coordinator.
At that time, the university was stillchecking whether every student had met
(18:18):
the graduation requirements by hand.
Yes, I spent many, many hourslooking over graduation applications.
But the university was in theprocess of creating an electronic
mechanism for doing that.
And so I got a chance not only tocontribute to the way that looked, the
(18:38):
look and feel given then the technologyof the day, which wasn't all that useful.
Mm-hmm.
Um, but I also got to meet facultyfrom other parts of the university.
And so it expanded my view.
I think a lot of faculty members arereasonably so, very focused on their
department and their discipline, and theydon't necessarily have a reason to reach
(19:03):
out to colleagues in other departments.
And I found thatinteresting and intriguing.
And at the end of my firstyear as a coordinator, I.
Then we were doing evaluations of thefaculty, our own evaluations, and they
didn't look at the work that I haddone as the undergraduate coordinator.
They said, well, you got acourse released for that.
(19:24):
And so, you know, that's a wash.
And I was frustrated because I knew therewere others with administrative positions
who had not really done very much work.
Geri Fitz (19:33):
Yeah, yeah.
Deb (19:34):
And so I thought, well, if I'm going to do administration,
then maybe I'll do it.
At a higher level and getsome more credit for it.
And as it happened, they were searchingfor a part-time position as an assistant
dean of the graduate school, and it washalftime and only a two year position
because they were in the process ofdecentralizing the graduate school.
(19:57):
So I thought, well.
You know, I'm enjoyingmeeting other people.
I'm enjoying having this impact on theway that other people get to work in
the university by reducing their loadand, and having technology take over.
So maybe I'll see, I'll try itfor two years and see if it's
something I might like to do.
Geri Fitz (20:14):
Mm-hmm.
Deb (20:15):
So that was, it really was, again, not intentional, but.
It was in reaction to being frustrated.
Geri Fitz (20:21):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, I'm frustrated on your behalfthat the work isn't acknowledged and
it sounded like, you know, in linewith your wanting to make a difference,
it sounded like it really did make adifference, like you put in extra work
beyond the sort of the core definitionof the role and exactly where do you
think we've got any better as a sector
? Deb (20:43):
The department did change the way that they evaluate work.
Um, yeah.
In the department.
And they did eventually have separatesections for research, teaching,
uh, service and administration,if you were doing administration.
Mm-hmm.
So it did eventually, I thinkget to where it should have been.
(21:04):
Yeah.
But it was not there at the time.
' Geri Fitz (21:06):
cause it sounds like one course release isn't
equal to the work that you did.
Deb (21:10):
No, it was not
Geri Fitz (21:11):
in that role.
And so when you were doing yourpart-time assistant dean role, is that
above, is that still in the psychologydepartment or is that a higher level?
Deb (21:24):
No, it was across the university.
Geri Fitz (21:26):
Oh, okay.
Deb (21:26):
So some universities, um, have graduate programming that stays with
the college and some universities havea separate graduate school that controls
enrollment and that sort of thing.
And that was what the model that we had.
Mm-hmm.
They did eventually switch tothe other model, uh, which is
why it was a two year position.
They knew they were gonnaswitch to this other model.
(21:47):
Mm-hmm.
But we were responsible forstudents across the spectrum.
Geri Fitz (21:53):
Yeah.
And so that what, what additional skillsdid that draw on stepping up to that?
Deb (22:03):
So it required thinking in a different way.
Mm.
So I will give you one example.
We had a student, actuallyseveral students who applied
for extensions to, they had sixyears to complete their degree.
Uh, their graduate degree and peoplewould apply for an extension at some
(22:24):
point in time when they were desperatebecause they realized they had three
months left and they weren't gonna finish.
And so I had the bright idea that weshould just notify all the students when
they were coming up to, you know, somedeadline to avoid this last minute rush.
At which point the dean pointed outthat there were some departments who
were just happy to let things go.
(22:47):
That there were students whoprobably weren't gonna finish,
and that by notifying them, itmight actually make things worse.
And so you really had to startthinking about both my intended
consequence and the unintendedconsequences that come from a decision.
Geri Fitz (23:03):
Yeah.
Were you still able todo research in that role?
Because you said it was part-time,but we often know that part-time
roles are not part-time.
Deb (23:15):
Yeah, that's correct.
So, yes, I still had obligationsto the department to do research.
Obviously they were reduced in some,in terms of they wouldn't have expected
me to produce as much as if I hadbeen full-time in the department.
But a year into my position as assistantdean, they decided to accelerate the
(23:36):
process and they moved me into theprovost office and they wanted me to go
full-time, which had not been the plan.
And so I found myself in a full-timeposition, but I was still an
associate professor and I knew Iwanted to become a full professor.
So I did have a lot of tensiontrying to maintain research while
(24:01):
I was also an administrator.
Geri Fitz (24:04):
Because what were the criteria at George Mason for full Professor?
Deb (24:11):
It's really national or international recognition.
Um, so people recognize your work andit's, and it's being cited, well cited.
I think that was long beforethe H Index came along.
But, evidence that people would bewilling to say that you had achieved
stature in the field such that peoplewould recognize your work Yeah.
And, and excellence of that work.
(24:32):
Yeah.
So you, it, it, they're very.
Difficult to pin down.
Geri Fitz (24:37):
Yeah.
It sounds like the usual sort of,its the usual research is the driver
for the step into full professor.
So you were working fulltime as the vice Provost.
Deb (24:49):
Oh yeah, yeah.
I was assistant then associatethen vice provost for research
and graduate studies and
Geri Fitz (24:56):
family at this stage?
Deb (24:58):
Yes.
I have three daughters.
They were maybe 10 ish orso in that neighborhood.
Yeah.
Geri Fitz (25:05):
And trying to keep up a research profile.
Yes.
On the side.
On the side.
That now was not counted in the full time.
Deb (25:14):
I mean, luckily, most of my research I did in partnership with others.
Mm-hmm.
There was.
Very little that I did, just totallyon my own at that point in my career.
Mm-hmm.
So I also had, I had colleagues that Icould work with who would, in fact, for
a long time I had a great group of three.
One guy had these great ideas.
(25:36):
Another one I was really good atgetting people to sit down and execute.
And then, there was someone who'sreally good at writing things up.
So it was.
Geri Fitz (25:45):
Sounds like we had a good, good mix of skills.
Deb (25:47):
It was a wonderful mix of skills.
Yeah.
So I was quite lucky, I think,to have supportive colleagues.
I will say that George Mason inits history was not, it's now
a research one, but it was farfrom that when I joined them.
Mm-hmm.
And, people were very collegial.
There wasn't the backbiting.
It was just wonderful because peopledidn't care so much about credit as long
(26:11):
as you got on a paper because they hadstarted as a non-research university,
there wasn't that feeling of, youknow, I'll only succeed if you don't.
Mm-hmm.
So it was really helpful to me.
Yeah.
Because I was able to do thingsin partnership with people.
Yeah.
I didn't always have to bethe first author, so, yeah.
Geri Fitz (26:32):
And did you have explicit discussions about those roles or was it,
did it just emerge naturally that that'show you all complemented each other?
Deb (26:41):
I'm not even sure they were aware.
Yeah.
My, my colleagues, I, I justrecognized what people's skills were.
Mm.
And I do think I haven an organizationalbent and so, um, I was able to, to
see where things, you know, couldmove forward more, more smoothly.
Yeah.
Geri Fitz (27:00):
Because I, that's something I try to talk to people
about now, about having thesesorts of discussions proactively.
Mm-hmm.
About what do you think you're reallygood at and how can we fit together and
what am I not so good at that you might beable to complement and what is none of us?
What is it that none of us are good at?
That we have to find someone else?
Find someone else, orjust put in the effort.
(27:22):
Yeah, because that'sreally valuable, isn't it?
Mm-hmm.
And so do, is that a change thatyou are seeing, that you think
that it has become much morecompetitive and less collegial now?
Deb (27:34):
I there, there are.
Individuals who are very well published,who are very well published because
they're just heads down working on theirstuff and just doing, you know, grinding
away, which is a good thing, but itdoes make collegial work more difficult.
(27:55):
Now universities are attemptingto get people to do more of this,
especially across disciplinary lines.
And I suspect that the fact that I'min human factors, which in itself is a
mix between psychology and engineering,helped me have that perspective.
Because, you know, you can have anidea of how to build something, but
(28:17):
you may not be able to build it.
Yeah.
Um, if you don't have apartner who can do that,.
So.
It may be that I was helped by the factthat the university in, actually, the
other thing I would say about GeorgeMason, an early president was trying
to get more funding from the state ormore support from the state generally.
(28:39):
And the University of Virginia,the flagship school in Virginia
Tech would both, whenever we triedto get a doctoral program, would
say, oh, there, those upstarts,they don't have qualified faculty.
They don't have the means to do this.
And so this presidentpositioned us as being more
(29:00):
interdisciplinary and respondingto the needs of Northern Virginia.
That meant that I think eight of thefirst 10 doctoral programs that were
approved were interdisciplinary.
And so they had information technology.
They didn't have computerscience and engineering, they
just had this generic degree.
Psychology first started with aPsyD and the PsyD was not only for
(29:23):
clinical, but also in human factorsio, um, which is really quite unusual.
And I remember faculty meetings wherewe railed against the president.
He cares more about originality thanhe does about, you know, quality.
But we had our PsyD,I would say six years.
Geri Fitz (29:43):
What's this psyD?
Deb (29:44):
It's a PsyD, a doctorate in psychology, and it is targeted at.
Individuals who want to practiceclinical psychology mm-hmm.
With the notion that instead of doinga dissertation, they do a project, but
then they do supervised clinical hoursso that they're getting more exposure and
experience with the clinical practice.
(30:07):
So it was started in part,I think, because there was a
dearth of qualified clinicians.
And PhD programs had people whoreally didn't see themselves ever
doing research in the long term.
Yeah.
Doing this.
Um, so this was an alternative pathto become licensed as a clinician.
Geri Fitz (30:26):
But the, some of the faculty were against it, did you say?
Deb (30:31):
Well, there is a belief in some quarters that the, you know,
PhD is a higher quality, it'scertainly a more research degree.
Mm.
So if you are a researcher and you believestrongly in research, you will see the
PsyD as a lighter, if you will, degree.
Right.
(30:52):
Um, but it was, it was developed andtargeted specifically for clinical psych.
It was never designed to be usedin any other field of psychology.
Yeah.
So that was what made it unusual.
I think we, in maybe one otheruniversity in the whole United
States, were using it for somethingother than a clinical psych program.
(31:12):
And after we'd had this degree aboutsix years, the president went to our
state council and said, you know, we'reoffering this PsyD, but it's really a PhD.
Can we just change the name?
And they went, oh yeah, sure.
So it was one of those noseunder the tent and then blow the
tent wide open kinds of things.
And we went, oh my God.
(31:33):
He was so politically astute.
Geri Fitz (31:35):
Just gonna say like, you.
Even like you, you saying beforeabout sending out the reminders
and then someone saying there areunintended consequences, right.
As you're moving into these moreleadership positions, this is
different, you said, talked aboutorganizational thinking and or
you know that, but it requiresdifferent sensitivities, doesn't it?
Deb (31:59):
It does.
I mean, in.
As a faculty member, youmostly care about yourself.
Mm-hmm.
And about your department.
Once you get, I mean, I was amazedwhen I got to into the deanship
about how much research topicsoverlap across disciplines.
My college was humanitiesand social sciences.
(32:22):
And there were people inEnglish doing website design.
And I went, what?
And it, it was just amazing to meto see how many topics actually
overlapped across all of those areas.
And of course, that's not quite asdiverse as engineering and social
sciences, but still lots and lots ofthreads and things that really could be
(32:46):
more developed as an interdisciplinaryfunction than what they are.
We are still fairly stovepiped,I think, in universities.
Geri Fitz (32:55):
Yeah.
Moving into sort of provost typeroles and, and also then taking
on the dean of the college.
I'm curious about what werethose key skills that you
think you naturally brought?
What were the skills thatyou had to learn to develop?
Deb (33:18):
So I think I naturally brought budgeting and organizing
or reorganizing skills to that.
I still have to workon my listening skills.
Someone would come and bring acomplaint and they were so passionate
(33:40):
and you just kind of go all in untilyou hear the other side of the story
from the other individual involved.
So it took a while forme to learn to balance.
The other thing I had to learn to do.
It didn't come naturally is learning howto talk to people about difficult issues.
Mm-hmm.
Um, I had had.
(34:02):
Worked with people who justignored difficult issues,
which then creates problems.
So if there's a problem in yourdepartment and a faculty member is out
of line, if you're afraid to confrontthem, it just continues and it affects
the culture of the whole department.
Yeah.
And so I learned that youreally need to address that.
(34:23):
And I did work with some people tolearn some skills about how to say,
okay, here's the issue I'm dealing with.
Here's what I see as your partof it, but I could be mistaken
about what that part is.
You know, how do you feelabout this situation?
Mm-hmm.
And working to solve the problemrather than blaming the individual.
Uh, and.
(34:44):
I will say after learning someof those skills, I was surprised.
There were days I would go in dreadingthat I had to meet with someone about
a difficult issue and then comingout saying, gosh, that wasn't so bad.
Geri Fitz (34:56):
Yeah.
So I think that's worth just repeating.
'cause many people, even if they'renot in more senior leadership roles,
even if you're supervising a studentat, at whatever level, may well
have to have difficult conversations.
So you talked about, a framework thattalked about, you know, like naming
(35:17):
the issues as an objective thing.
Yes.
What you see.
Owning your I don't know, interpretationor possible interpretation, but then
inviting the other person to providetheir perspective so that Yes.
Listening and givingthem a chance to talk.
And that then I liked the bit aboutfocusing on solving rather than blaming.
(35:40):
Yes.
Deb (35:40):
Right.
My goal as a.
Leader is not to get someone upsetbecause they're doing the wrong thing.
Mm.
I wanna solve the problem.
And if I can engage them in workingwith me to solve the problem.
Now there were some situations wherethey weren't willing to work with me
(36:01):
and I needed to take more drastic steps.
And really to do that, you haveto be willing to be disliked.
So, mm-hmm.
There's another piece of that is that, Imean, inherently I am a people pleaser.
But in that role, you sometimeshave to make decisions that not
everyone will like, and you haveto be willing to accept that.
(36:24):
Some people will not likethe choices you make.
You do the best you can with theinformation you have at the time, and
you hope that, you know, things goas you would like, but you have to be
willing to accept those consequences,and that's sometimes difficult.
Geri Fitz (36:39):
Yeah, I would imagine that that would be often because if you
are the one holding the responsibilityfor the decision making, ultimately
Deb (36:47):
mm-hmm.
Geri Fitz (36:48):
Part of your role, and I think what you've also sort of
alluded to is, you've got multiplepriorities, values, mm-hmm.
Stakeholder concerns.
I, I don't like that language, butyou're not gonna be ever able to
find a perfect answer for everyone.
That's right.
So I'm thinking about being a facultymember and reflecting, how I often
(37:15):
wouldn't have that perspective onthe difficulties that the person who
was in the leadership position had.
Deb (37:22):
Mm-hmm.
Geri Fitz (37:23):
How they were trying to provide the, a best solution, recognizing that
they're not going to keep all of us happy.
And it's really easy to getselfish and think that I should
be happy with your decision.
If you were talking to faculty membersor what would you want us to do, how,
how would you want us to respond or howcould we help someone in leadership in,
(37:49):
in supporting those sorts of decisions?
Deb (37:52):
Well, but just asking what went into this decision, right?
Why did you make the call that you did?
Geri Fitz (37:58):
Mm-hmm.
Deb (37:58):
And being open to understanding mm-hmm.
That I was faced with trade-offs.
Mm-hmm.
That if I did X, thiswould be the outcome.
If I did Y, this would be the outcome.
And.
Given the choices that I had and theconstraints in, in decision making, you
know, this was what I thought was best.
(38:19):
If we're coming to a conclusion, Iwould certainly take input on what
they felt was the better alternative.
Ultimately I had to make a call.
I don't know if it's universal.
In our university, people loved consensus.
They always wanted to be able tocome to consensus, and I had to
learn that it's not always possible.
And if you wait toolong, then things fester.
(38:41):
So you do at some point justhave to make a decision and.
You know, there's that other, that's thatother piece of this working together.
I'm listening and I'm trying tobring us all to the same conclusion,
but I also recognize that that'snot always gonna be possible.
That, yeah, what's good for thisis not good for this and there're
gonna be people on both sides.
So I need to look at the situationfrom both the faculty member up
(39:08):
and the university down and say,okay, what is the best solution?
I think under the circumstances,and you're not always right.
Uh, you know, sometimes afterwardsyou think, oh, that wasn't
the best thing to have done.
Yeah.
But.
You know, we're not perfect.
Geri Fitz (39:22):
As you said best, that you could make best decision at the time.
Deb (39:26):
At the time, and with the information I had.
Mm-hmm.
Geri Fitz (39:28):
Which is interesting when you said that your, uh, red thread
across some of the early career stuffand the research stuff in different
industries was what information dopeople need to make good decisions?
Deb (39:38):
Yes, that's right.
Yep.
Geri Fitz (39:40):
And, what information did you need as a leader to make good decisions?
Deb (39:47):
It depended on the the issue.
Um.
Oftentimes it was finances.
You know, we had a collegethat was woefully underfunded.
And both as a chair and as adean, I had to make decisions.
Do I make this faculty memberhappy by giving them a raise?
But then, disadvantage thisother department because
(40:08):
they now can't hire someone?
Or, you know, things like, do I ask myfaculty to take on larger class sizes?
Because if we have higher enrollments,the university will give us
more funding for the department.
So there are lots ofdifferent kinds of trade-offs.
You need different informationfor those different situations.
Geri Fitz (40:29):
Did you develop any particular mechanisms or platforms
or whatever for engaging with peopleand getting their views or inputs?
I mean, I know I, again, it probablydepends on what the issue is and, uh.
Deb (40:46):
So, as a chair and as a dean, I had meetings with relevant groups.
So as department chair, I hada faculty meeting every month.
As a dean, I had meetings withmy, um, department chairs.
And when I started, a lot of what I,I would go to the dean, the meeting
with the dean as a chair, and the deanwould give us all this information.
(41:06):
I would come back and I would spenda large portion of my meeting kind
of regurgitating what I had heard.
Geri Fitz (41:13):
Yeah.
Deb (41:14):
I eventually realized that was not the most effective
way to work with people.
So what I did was I sent very longagendas, sometimes as many as 50 pages.
If someone had given us a, aPowerPoint briefing, I just
attached the PowerPoint briefing.
Mm.
So instead of me summarizingit, I let them look through it.
(41:34):
And then in my meeting wewere able to have discussions.
So, you know, what concernsdid you have about this issue?
And so I asked people to be preparedcoming into the meeting in the dean's
meetings, I did the same thing andI listed each item on my agenda.
But at the start of the meeting Isaid, by raise of hands, how many
people want to talk about this issue?
(41:56):
And we would do a count, and Iwould just take them from the most
pressing issue or the one that.
People wanted to chat about so thatwe were using that time for discussion
and communication and sharing ofinformation rather than me just dumping
stuff, them not knowing anything aboutit, having to process it, think it
through, and then coming back later.
Now I had hoped as Dean thatmy chairs would then take that
(42:20):
packet that I sent them and sendit to their whole department.
Many of them did not.
And I would hear from faculty members,well, I didn't know about that.
Yeah.
And I think, oh, yeah, yeah.
Geri Fitz (42:32):
Yes.
I think, I'm just reflecting on somediscussions I've heard just recently
from a few different people, people atdifferent universities, and that has often
been a component, especially when they'rein situations of change, high change.
Um, so is that not getting through.
But that model of giving peoplethe information beforehand
Deb (42:55):
mm-hmm.
Geri Fitz (42:56):
With the expectation that they at least familiarize
themselves enough to be able tosay, yes, I want to talk about it.
Right.
Both has the advantage of enablingdifferent people with different thinking
styles, you know, who may need more timeto consider stuff compared to others of
us who might just be able to go blah,blah, blah, blah, blah, straight away.
(43:16):
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
It gives, it gives everyone time toprocess information and I love that it
then creates the space for the discussionrather than the one way throw it out.
Mm-hmm.
Deb (43:27):
Yeah.
Yeah.
It was so much better afterwe switched to, to that model.
Geri Fitz (43:34):
And do have any other hard earned tips and tricks for anyone
in leadership positions around theaspects particular to being in leadership
roles, whether it's dean level or just,running a research project or whatever.
Deb (43:50):
I don't know that there are any special tips that I have.
I mean, I just like to have listsand so the agendas when I would
send the agenda to the departmentwhen we had issues to discuss.
And so for example, a tenure case, Iwould estimate how much time was needed.
And there were times when wedidn't have much to discuss.
(44:13):
There was a lot of just,you know, getting together.
And every now and then someone wouldemail me and say, just want to let
you know I'm going to be out of town.
But I read through the agenda andit looks like it's light, so I
don't think I'm gonna miss much.
And it was great that even peoplewho had to miss a meeting were
informed, were in the loop.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Geri Fitz (44:32):
Yeah, and I know that there's research that talks about, as academics,
that's one of the things that we justwant to, we want to be informed and
at least feel like we've had a say.
I'm sure if that research was repeatednow there'd be other challenges.
But yeah.
Any particular differences betweenleadership within an industry setting?
Because you then went to Oculus andthat and leadership in universities
(44:55):
that you would reflect on.
Deb (44:57):
So, I would say my, the scope of leadership that I had
in, uh, industry was smaller.
But I did try to use the same mechanisms,having an agenda for a meeting, trying
to make sure everyone speaks andis heard, giving space for people
who tend not to speak up as much.
And.
(45:18):
In industry, they also, or at leastat meta, I won't say necessarily,
they have like one-on-ones.
So anyone who reports directly to youhas a regular standing meeting with you.
Now at the university, I didencourage that with my chairs.
I wanted them to come in and meetwith me on a regular basis and do
that, but it wasn't as structured,I think, as it was in industry.
(45:41):
And really the goal was to say.
How are things going?
Where are you stuck?
What's my role in helping you get unstuck?
And that's, I think, a very usefulthing because sometimes one level up
you can do things and move things alongin a way that an individual can't.
Yeah.
And that's something that I don'tsee happening much in a university.
(46:06):
I mean, I think you're much moreleft to your own devices Yes.
To make things happen.
Geri Fitz (46:11):
Yes, you are.
Even though people above couldprovide insights or direction.
What I liked about what you saidthere was you didn't take on the
problem and turn into problem solver.
Mm-hmm.
You said basically, what doyou need from me, or what's my
role in helping you with that?
(46:31):
Mm-hmm.
Which is a lovely message back tothe person that I trust you to, you
know, to find a way through, andI'm here to absolutely support you.
Deb (46:41):
And if you need help and you're not sure what to do,
let's problem solve together.
Mm.
Geri Fitz (46:46):
We don't have that culture, as you say in universities and no, well,
it's not been my experience either.
Deb (46:54):
Yeah.
There's a lot of discussion aboutmentors and, and mentorship.
And there seems to be thisnotion that you have one person.
And there's a group in theUS it's a group that supports
faculty development and they talkabout having a mentoring map.
So the person who can be yoursafe space that you can complain
(47:16):
to when things aren't going well.
Yeah.
And the person who'sgonna critique your work.
And the person who's gonna help youunderstand the politics at the university
or your current job or whatever it is.
And understanding that no one personprobably can fill all those roles.
Your role as a woman versus a manversus a minority in a majority culture.
(47:37):
Mm-hmm.
All of those things, you know,no one person has them all, and.
It's also easier for the mentor whohas a particular expertise to be
able to say, yes, let's meet whenyou have an issue on this topic.
Yes, and I'm happy to help you, but itdoesn't have to be a month, you know, once
a week, once a month, kind of a situation.
(47:58):
And somehow I think in universities,that mentorship model doesn't
seem to happen naturally.
Geri Fitz (48:07):
Mm, yes.
And I think it could also be tied upwith what you said before about it
becoming increasingly competitive aswell, the, the competition where, mm-hmm.
The time to be available and to shareand to reach out and to connect.
So identifying what your needs areand who's your board of mentors
(48:29):
as I've heard people mm-hmm.
Talk about.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Deb (48:32):
And I was lucky.
I did have a few people who reachedout and supported me early on.
Uh, when I was at GE, a groupof managers led by something I
suggested, made a decision while our.
the next level manager was away andhe came back and was very unhappy and
he said, well, who made this call?
And a more senior person said it was me.
(48:53):
And I looked at him becauseI thought it was me.
And I asked him afterwards, I said,why did you take credit for that?
'cause I did it.
And he said, I'm in a better positionto handle the blowback than you are.
And he said it wasn't going to hurt me.
And I went, oh my God, how lovely.
You know?
But I hadn't realized it.
(49:14):
And then when I got to the university,there was a more senior faculty member
who pulled me aside and said, if you'regonna get tenure, you need to do service.
Let me tell you the service opportunitiesthat aren't that overbearing.
Geri Fitz (49:27):
Nice.
Deb (49:28):
And so she, she helped me a lot.
Yeah.
Now I have to tell you a funny story.
I found out many, many years later thatat the time I interviewed, I was about
seven months pregnant and this personwho eventually mentored me without my
asking, had said to the department chair,great candidate, two bad she's pregnant.
(49:48):
I know.
Geri Fitz (49:49):
Sorry, my mouth was just open.
Deb (49:52):
Yep.
So.
You never know.
She was, she was wonderfulto me once I got there.
Yeah.
Geri Fitz (50:00):
Yeah.
Just conscious of time marching on.
Mm-hmm.
When you look back over this careerand I, you've already given us so many
really lovely insights that I thinkwe can all apply in regardless of
our roles, what are you proudest of?
Deb (50:24):
Gosh, so.
I'm reminded of, there was alistserv early in my career of
women in computer science, facultymembers in computer science.
Not sure how I got on the list.
I mean, I was doing HCI work,but, and they said they didn't
feel really good at anything.
But what they were good at wasjuggling that, you know, they would
(50:47):
do work, work, work, work, work.
And then, you know, they'd realize,well, family's dropping and they'd
throw it up in the other air.
I think I'm most proud of the fact that.
My children still love me and feellike I gave them an okay life, even
though I was balancing all these crazythings, um, with both parents working.
I don't know that there's any one thingI would pick out from my career per se.
(51:10):
it's really more.
Having my girls wanting tobe around me now that mm-hmm.
They're adults and they have childrenof their own and they want me to help.
Yeah.
Geri Fitz (51:21):
So you, one of the things you mentioned before we started as
well was a course that you createdabout lots of how tos, mm-hmm.
What was that?
That's because it soundsreally innovative.
Deb (51:32):
So I would say of the courses I've taught in the work that I did as a faculty
member, I was most proud of this course.
It was a course on work skills.
So how to identifyopportunities for grants.
How to write a grant proposal.
In fact, the very first time we didit, someone who was a granting agent
read all of the proposals that mystudents wrote and gave them feedback.
It was just lovely.
(51:53):
How to give.
Good presentation.
How to budget, differentcareer opportunities, industry,
government, uh, academia.
And within academia.
People often think because they're.
By definition, if you were in a doctoralprogram, you're in a doctoral institution.
So they forget that there arecommunity colleges and tribal
colleges and four year colleges thatare focused on the undergraduates.
(52:17):
So given different careers, howto write their resume, and how
to track what they're doing.
Um, and in light of that, we talk abouta CAGE, career accomplishments, um, and.
I, it's, I've said to you and toothers, I look at my resume now
and there are things I see on, onthere that I don't remember doing.
(52:39):
And it's important, especially asyou think to the future, if you're,
you know, people change jobs quitea bit more now than they used to.
Can you capture what you were tryingto achieve in a project, what you did
achieve, and what skills it demonstrates?
Is it a leadership skill?
Is it an organizational skill?
Is it a publishing skill?
(52:59):
What are the things you learned from that?
And then just keep that.
It's just for you, but it letsyou look back on your career and
see the things that you've done.
Geri Fitz (53:07):
Mm-hmm.
Deb (53:08):
Yep.
Geri Fitz (53:08):
So CAGE stands for, do you remember?
Deb (53:12):
Career accomplishments, goals and experiences, I think.
Geri Fitz (53:18):
Yeah.
Yes.
Career accomplishments,goals and experiences.
Right.
Yeah.
And those things that you've justtalked about in terms of the how to's
they're transferable skills generally.
Okay.
Deb (53:36):
Absolutely.
And, and they work no matter whatthe setting, even personally, just
keeping track of what you've done,and what you've accomplished.
And, and there's so many of us, soas an academic, if you leave graduate
school and you go to a university.
You likely have had notraining in teaching?
(53:57):
Yeah, no training in how to preparea course, how to build a syllabus,
how to do all those things.
You may never havewritten a grant proposal.
You know, you may have written somethingfor a small scholarship or something,
but writing a grant proposal withbudgets and such, and yet you're
expected to do that when you get there.
Now some universities are starting tohave support systems for faculty so
(54:19):
that they can get experience or theycan learn about it when they get there.
But I just think it prepares studentsbetter regardless of the industry
they go into when they leave toknow how to do some of these things.
I mean, I learned budgeting atGE where I had a grant and I
had to account for the money.
Luckily I figured it out and mymanager helped me with that, but I've
(54:44):
never been trained on how to do that.
And so it just helps you succeedwhen you walk out the door.
Geri Fitz (54:50):
And even your statement as well about talking to people about
different types of university roles.
People would think of academia andjust think of research intensive.
But your career also points to thefact that thinking about university
roles can also be thinking aboutthe diverse range of roles you can
play within an academic institution.
So it's not just a research intensivefaculty member or a teaching
(55:14):
intensive faculty member that mm-hmm.
You can move into moreof these leadership.
And Absolutely.
Management roles.
Deb (55:22):
Mm-hmm.
Geri Fitz (55:23):
What would be the trainings that you'd love to see in an ideal world
for people to be set up for those roles?
Deb (55:32):
So, our university did eventually develop a training program for
people who are interested in that.
And it looked at, lookingat yourself first.
They did mm-hmm some various, you know,little tests of where your skills lie.
So, and then looking at the groupthat was there, which they pulled
together from across the university.
If you were gonna staff a project,which skills would you need to have?
(55:56):
And we did kind of a grid of theskills, people's top skills, and
what the team had as a whole.
So learning to think abouthow you create teams mm-hmm.
Partnerships.
There was information on how theuniversity's budget ran, so there
were a lot of things like that,that were in that training program.
Geri Fitz (56:15):
Yeah.
They sound really importantskills for everyone to have
as well at whatever level.
And anything to reflect aboutbeing a woman in academia?
Deb (56:28):
So when George Mason was established, it was actually a
college of the University of Virginia.
It was a Northern VirginiaBranch campus and as a result
it was not research intensive.
And it also drew a lot ofwomen as faculty members.
So when I started at George Masonin 1984, I would say of the 10 or 12
(56:54):
departments in our college, probablyseven or eight of them were women.
The year I came up for tenure,my department chair was a woman.
My dean was a woman.
The provost was a woman.
Geri Fitz (57:06):
Very unusual.
Deb (57:07):
It's never happened since.
So it was very unusual.
And I will say that I had a blessedlyfree time, by and large, in terms
of feeling left out as a woman orfeeling like the only one in the room,
because we did have a large numberof female faculty members around.
(57:29):
Now I will say when I was on campusone day, pregnant with my second, a man
walking past me said, oh, in my day, womenin your condition weren't seen in public.
Yes.
Geri Fitz (57:40):
It's a bit outrageous.
Deb (57:43):
It was more than, yes.
It was outrageous.
Um.
But that was unusual.
And I would say I felt being a womanmore in some of the administrative
roles I played outside the university.
Okay.
So, I was the second woman president ofthe Human Factors and Ergonomics Society.
The first one had been in theseventies, and I was then in the
(58:04):
nineties and I thought, okay, now wecertainly have broken the barrier.
It was almost another 10 years beforeanother woman was elected president.
I do remember talking with thegentleman on the executive council,
you they often talk about whoshould we elect for the next round?
And they said, well, you know, weshould have more women presidents.
And I said, well, that's easy.
And they said, what?
I said, we just nominate three women.
(58:26):
And they went, oh, you can't do that.
I said, why not?
Three guys have run lots of times.
But there was still that resistance there.
I was, I think, the first femalechair of the FAA advisory board.
For human factors research.
So there were places where I wouldlook out and see a sea of black suits.
(58:46):
Mm-hmm.
Um, but I will say I rarely feltlike I was discriminated against.
I didn't feel like I was necessarily,being demeaned in any way, shape or form.
Yeah.
So, from that perspective,it was not an issue for me.
Geri Fitz (59:03):
That's good.
That's great.
Well, thank you for sharing that.
That was just mm-hmm.
Interesting to hear andsounds, it does sound unusual.
Deb (59:12):
It was.
Um, as I say, we were blessed tohave so many women in leadership
positions when I was untenured.
Uh, and which continuedfor quite some time.
Geri Fitz (59:22):
Yeah.
That's brilliant.
Well, thank you.
Is there anything we haven't talkedabout that you wanted to share?
Deb (59:35):
No, I can't think of anything.
I think it's been a lovelyconversation and I'm delighted
with the directions it took.
Geri Fitz (59:42):
And yeah.
So thank you Deb.
Really appreciate you taking the time.
And, enjoy this next phase of life.
Deb (59:51):
Thank you.
Geri Fitz (59:52):
And the opportunity to make a difference in different ways.
Deb (59:56):
Well, thank you for having me on.
It's been delightful.
Geri Fitz (01:00:02):
You can find the summary notes, a transcript and related links for this
podcast on www.changingacademiclife.com.
You can also subscribe to ChangingAcademic Life on iTunes, Spotify.
And I'm really hoping that we canwiden the conversation about how
we can do academia differently.
(01:00:22):
And you can contribute to this by ratingthe podcast and also giving feedback.
And if something connected withyou, please consider sharing this
podcast with your colleagues.
Together we can make change happen.
Welcome to Changing Academic Life.
I'm Geraldine Fitzpatrick, and this isa podcast series where academics and
others share their stories, provideideas, and provoke discussions about what
we can do individually and collectivelyto change academic life for the better.
(00:29):
I am really delighted to bring thisconversation with Deborah Boehm-Davis.
Deborah is now Professor Emeritusfrom George Mason University.
But she's had a really interesting careerwhere she worked in various industry roles
in the very early days of human factorswork, and she was actually one of the
(00:51):
pioneers at the very first CHI Conferencewith CHI being the Computer Human
Interaction Conference back in the 1980s.
So she brings lots of experienceto reflect on from both industry
and research and her industry rolesspan Bell Labs and NASA and General
(01:14):
Electric so all very interesting.
And then she had a 33 year plus longtenure at George Mason University
at the psychology department.
And she ended up alternating betweenfaculty roles and moving into leadership
administration roles, eventuallybecoming the dean of a college.
(01:39):
And so I was really interested to talkto Deb because the interesting career
experiences reflect some of the themesfrom previous conversations, just to
show that flexibility that we can have.
And I was also aware that I've neverreally spoken to anyone who is involved
(02:03):
in more of the administration side,leadership side of universities, and I
don't know about you, but it's ofteneasy to get quite critical about people in
those roles and what they should be doingand what's wrong with a whole university.
So it was interesting, particularly Ithink talking to Deb about what it was
like being at that level and tryingto navigate all the different tensions
(02:28):
that they had to, to deal with in tryingto run a university or run a college.
So there's lots that she reflects on here.
Lots of great insights, lots ofsuggestions for those of us who
are part of faculty and how we canalso better support our leaders.
So I really hope you enjoythis conversation with Deb.
(02:51):
Welcome, Deb.
I'm really happy to be able totalk with you because you have had
such an interesting career journey.
And also you've held some really seniorleadership positions in universities,
and I haven't often got the chanceto talk to people more from that
leadership perspective as well, so.
(03:12):
They will probably be the two main areas.
Would you like to just introduceyourself a little bit in terms of
where you're coming from, backgroundand a flavor of the journey?
Deb (03:24):
Absolutely.
So I'm Deb Boehm Davis and, I was anundergraduate psychology major and in
my junior year, uh, my advisor toldme about a position at Bell Labs.
Neither of us really knew what BellLabs wanted was psychologists, but it
turned out they had a human factors groupand that's how I discovered the field.
(03:45):
Went on graduate school school
Geri Fitz (03:46):
The field being human.
Oh, human factors.
Human factors, yeah.
Deb (03:49):
Very broadly.
Yeah.
So I went to graduate school, hadplanned on cognitive psychology.
As, uh, a field.
So I studied that, but as I got closerto graduation, started remembering that
thing that I did as an undergraduatethat was really interesting.
Uh, that led me to my first job atNASA doing aviation applications.
(04:12):
I was at NASA a fairly shorttime when my husband got offered
a position on the East Coast.
So, uh, and it was a dream job for him.
So there was very littlequestion that we should move.
We moved to the East coast andI ended up at General Electric,
which is how I got involved in HCI.
Uh, they were doing work onhow programmers understand
(04:33):
software, and that was.
In the very beginnings, that was 1980.
So before even the first CHI conference.
Yeah.
Uh, GE did support that firstCHI conference, so I got
involved in that very early on.
I was there several years.
GE made some business decisionsthat, uh, didn't bode well
for continuing to work there.
(04:54):
So I moved to George Mason Universityand was there for over 30 years.
Geri Fitz (05:00):
As a psychologist?
Deb (05:02):
Yes, in a psychology department.
Yeah, they did have ahuman factors program.
Um, interestingly, the universityhad positioned itself to respond to
the needs of the local community,and therefore it had programs that
many psych departments don't have.
It had a human factors program, ithad industrial organizational program.
So it really was, uh, some ofthe more practical aspects,
(05:26):
if you will, of psychology.
Yeah.
Geri Fitz (05:28):
Yeah.
Deb (05:29):
And then to finish off.
So I stayed there fora very, very long time.
I went back and forth between being afaculty member and being an administrator.
We can talk more about that ifyou'd like, um, at some point.
And then, um, towards the end of.
What turned out to be the end of mycareer, um, I ended up going to meta.
At the time it was Oculus Research, aresearch lab doing research on virtual
(05:53):
reality, and that was sparked by aconfluence of events, a difficult meeting
with the president and the provost,followed by seeing my grandson, who was
then 15 months old and realizing how muchwe missed being so far away from them.
And then my son-in-law recruiting me toOculus Research where he was working.
(06:14):
And then I was therefor almost five years.
Yeah.
And then decided it was time to, tostep away and do some other fun things.
Yeah.
Geri Fitz (06:21):
And you were 30 years at George Mason in the
Deb (06:25):
33, I think.
33.
Geri Fitz (06:27):
Wow.
Wow.
A couple of things justto pick up on there.
You said at the beginning like youstarted off working in NASA and
that was more in, was it cockpit oraerospace type work and you had been
at Bell Labs, which is more phones.
Yes.
And then you talked about workingwith software developers.
(06:48):
Was there a red thread through those?
Deb (06:51):
So for me, the thread was always what information do people
need to perform effectively?
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
So, um, when I went to NASA.
The place in NASA that I was working wasfocused on commercial aviation, and it
was just at the time that, um, automatedsystems were coming into the cockpit.
So instead of a flight engineerhaving a huge panel of analog
(07:13):
displays, there was now informationbeing displayed on the computer.
And it turned out that it wasn't alwayssufficient to bring the pilot back
into the loop to understand what washappening because they hadn't had the
preview of things starting to go off.
So my background in cognitionwas really what information do
(07:35):
people need to make decisions?
And that was kind of the foundation.
And the same thing was true in thesoftware psychology work that we did.
It turns out that a huge proportionof funds that go into creating
software is not creating new software.
It's modifying existing software.
Documentation tends to be very poor.
(07:58):
And so we were askingtwo kinds of questions.
One, were there better ways to documentthe code so that a new person could
understand what had gone before?
And the second thing we looked at dodifferent structures like functional
decomposition versus object oriented.
Do they lend themselvesto easier modification?
Mm-hmm.
So that thread through that was always,what information do people need?
Geri Fitz (08:22):
Were you aware of that as a thread at the time?
Because they're quite, it's shiftingto quite different domains, or is it
only when you're looking back thatyou go, ah, I was always interested
in information and decision making.
Deb (08:35):
I think, if I'm brutally honest, it was when I came up for tenure, right.
And I needed to explain the programmaticnature of the work that I had done.
And it took me a little whileto think about it because I
was intrigued by the problems.
Mm.
But as I looked at it, I was always focused on the
(08:56):
information needs of the user.
Mm-hmm.
So, uh.
I think I was aware of it relativelyearly in my career, but certainly it
wasn't something that I set out tosay, this is what I'm gonna focus on.
Geri Fitz (09:08):
Yeah.
That's interesting.
And it also points then tothe value you get from those.
Times when we can think, oh no, Ihave to write a, I have to write
a case for promotion, or I have towrite a tenure case or whatever.
And you can get a bit humpy about it.
Yeah.
But they're actually really useful pointsof reflection, aren't they, to do that
(09:30):
heads, heads above the detail and mm-hmm.
What was this about?
Deb (09:35):
Yeah, I would agree.
Geri Fitz (09:36):
Yeah.
Do you have other insights when you likefrom that sort of heads up looking when
you think back on that varied career?
Deb (09:46):
Um, I don't know.
I mean, I.
Didn't really have to do thatkind of introspection for other,
uh, job related things, exceptwhen I started to interview.
So when I started to interviewfor the dean's position, when I
interviewed for a provost position,those were situations where I had
(10:06):
to look back and look for threads.
So, for example, my managementstyle, how did I think about that?
But it wasn't from.
Any other documents I would say thatI had to produce for some reason.
Geri Fitz (10:22):
The other interesting thing I thought just in the, in the very
short potted history, and I will puta link in the, on the webpage, on
the episode notes to a great talk youdid that walks through that career
path in a little bit more detail ifpeople are interested in seeing that.
But the other thing that struckme is, it doesn't sound like
(10:44):
at any point you had this careerplan in mind and this was my path.
It sounds quite opportunistic in a waythat someone told you about a job at Bell
Labs or your husband happened to get amove that was really perfect for him.
Mm-hmm.
Stuff happened in the industrythat where you went, nah,
(11:05):
not the place for me anymore.
Can you talk a little bit about thosetransitions and again, I guess
looking back on that, it wasn'ta set career path that you had it
planned out, but stuff worked out.
Deb (11:20):
So I guess I would, what I would say is I think I've always
wanted to make a difference.
I wanted to know that somethingthat I did had some impact.
And when I was at Bell Labs therewas a problem that they came up with.
There was a company that went to sodiumvapor lamps, and this was back when
(11:40):
you had a big black telephone with,uh, crystal buttons on the bottom and
the light shone through the crystal.
Well, because the sodium vaporfrequency and the frequency of the
tungsten lights coming out, theycouldn't tell which phone was ringing.
So we did a spectral analysis.
My colleague did it, Iwill, full disclosure.
(12:01):
And we discovered that the right colorsto allow the maximum light coming
out and the minimum light going inwas actually the color of the nail
polish that one of the secretarieshad used to coat the buttons on her.
But the, the point was wemade a difference, right?
It, it helped people do something better.
(12:22):
And I remember thinking, wow, I, I helpedsomebody, you know, do something better.
Mm.
And that, I think, was the spark foreverything I wanted to do in my career.
Mm-hmm.
Uh, and so yes, opportunities changed.
Sometimes I changed areas of researchdue to funding changes, sometimes due to
personal issues, but always, I was lookingfor something where I felt I could make
(12:45):
a difference and if truth be told, thereason I retired from meta was I didn't
feel like I was having much of an impact.
And so I thought if I'm not doingsomething that feels like it's having
a real impact, then I should just stop.
Yeah.
So, I think that has been the thread.
I was less fussy perhaps, or, or I wasjust, I'm intrigued by a lot of things.
(13:10):
So the domain that I worked indidn't seem to matter to me as much
as the fact that the work that Iwas doing was making a difference.
Geri Fitz (13:18):
Mm.
And that sounds, was it more of agut thing then when you just had
that feeling or was it a head thing?
Deb (13:27):
I mean, I guess I looked to things that, to me were indicators
that something had been of value.
Mm-hmm.
So I would say throughout my entirecareer the piece of research that I did
with colleagues that I think was the mostimpactful was work we did in an airline
where we created procedures that embodiedgood crew resource management techniques.
(13:51):
And we had two fleets at this airline.
We trained one fleet.
We did not train the other fleet and.
We had pilots who got promoted frombeing first officer on the trained
fleet onto being captains on theuntrained fleet, and they started
teaching their no new co-pilots what wehad taught them on the trained fleet.
(14:12):
And that just felt like a win, right?
Mm-hmm.
It was, they recognized that the helpwe had given them, the information
they needed to convey to, to theirpilots, their co-pilots, was valuable.
And so we saw that didn't help ourresearch a whole lot, but it was
inspiring in a way that, you know,when you publish a paper and maybe
(14:35):
people read it, maybe people don't,it just has a different feeling to it.
Geri Fitz (14:38):
Yeah, yeah.
So you were looking for, you werelooking for those sorts of signs
of validation of difference.
So publications then.
But how did that sit?
Deb (14:52):
I published.
Mm-hmm.
I did not publish as much as someof my colleagues, but I published
a respectable number of papers.
And to be quite honest, I've, I'veheard things that say, you know, on
average any given published paperis only read by two or three people,
and I've occasionally met youngerresearchers who, um, I was explaining
(15:14):
something I had done years ago and theysaid, oh, yes, I've read that paper.
And I'm always surprised.
I mean, I, I, I'm truly shocked whenpeople say they've read my papers.
But it is important to codify.
I mean, as I tell graduate students,and undergraduates when they work with
me, if you don't publish what you findthen it goes into the bins of history.
(15:37):
You know it's lost.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Uh, and if it's published,at least there's a chance
that someone can build on it.
Geri Fitz (15:44):
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think I was also just thinkingof that tension of wanting to make
a real difference and the, theacademic paper, which feels so dry
Deb (15:57):
mm-hmm.
Geri Fitz (15:58):
In comparison.
But then it's also the currency isn't it,for staying in academia and being able
to continue to make those difference.
So,
Deb (16:06):
exactly.
Geri Fitz (16:06):
You know, cause I know that some people are much
more driven by the papers thatthey get out in the publications.
Deb (16:13):
I have to say, looking back on my life, writing is
not my favorite thing to do.
Mm-hmm..
I'm a great editor, but that firstdraft is always quite daunting.
Yeah.
Um.
So when I look at my colleagues whowould keep multiple papers open on
their laptop and just write every sparemoment they had, that just wasn't me.
(16:35):
Interestingly, as an administrator,people say, you know, what did
you get out of administration?
It was the same thing of makinga difference and looking at
what information people needed.
You find in many systems,you know, organizations, the
information's not flowing very well.
And so could I do positive things eitherto change the culture or to change the
(16:59):
information that people were getting.
And over the years we've had to kindof change the way that we deliver that.
I remember when I first went to theuniversity, we used to get a, a eight
by 11 or eight by 14 sheet of paper thatwould be delivered to our mailbox and it
would have kind of what's going on in theuniversity, just a front and the back.
Mm-hmm.
And so I'd pull it outta my box and Iwould read it as I was walking to my car.
(17:22):
Now I have to sit in front of the computerand be stationary and be intentional
about looking at that, whereas thatopportunity just came up in the past.
Mm-hmm.
So I do think there are things we've lostin terms of helpful modes of communication
just to keep people in the loop.
Geri Fitz (17:39):
Yeah.
So, going to your administration,sort of leadership roles, how did
that move happen and what did you likeabout it that you kept going back?
'cause you said you kept going in andout of faculty and leadership roles.
Deb (17:57):
After I got tenure, my department chair pulled me aside and said, you
need to do something administrativebecause we're trying to reduce the
load on untenured faculty members.
And so I chose to serve asthe undergraduate coordinator.
At that time, the university was stillchecking whether every student had met
(18:18):
the graduation requirements by hand.
Yes, I spent many, many hourslooking over graduation applications.
But the university was in theprocess of creating an electronic
mechanism for doing that.
And so I got a chance not only tocontribute to the way that looked, the
(18:38):
look and feel given then the technologyof the day, which wasn't all that useful.
Mm-hmm.
Um, but I also got to meet facultyfrom other parts of the university.
And so it expanded my view.
I think a lot of faculty members arereasonably so, very focused on their
department and their discipline, and theydon't necessarily have a reason to reach
(19:03):
out to colleagues in other departments.
And I found thatinteresting and intriguing.
And at the end of my firstyear as a coordinator, I.
Then we were doing evaluations of thefaculty, our own evaluations, and they
didn't look at the work that I haddone as the undergraduate coordinator.
They said, well, you got acourse released for that.
(19:24):
And so, you know, that's a wash.
And I was frustrated because I knew therewere others with administrative positions
who had not really done very much work.
Geri Fitz (19:33):
Yeah, yeah.
Deb (19:34):
And so I thought, well, if I'm going to do administration,
then maybe I'll do it.
At a higher level and getsome more credit for it.
And as it happened, they were searchingfor a part-time position as an assistant
dean of the graduate school, and it washalftime and only a two year position
because they were in the process ofdecentralizing the graduate school.
(19:57):
So I thought, well.
You know, I'm enjoyingmeeting other people.
I'm enjoying having this impact on theway that other people get to work in
the university by reducing their loadand, and having technology take over.
So maybe I'll see, I'll try itfor two years and see if it's
something I might like to do.
Geri Fitz (20:14):
Mm-hmm.
Deb (20:15):
So that was, it really was, again, not intentional, but.
It was in reaction to being frustrated.
Geri Fitz (20:21):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, I'm frustrated on your behalfthat the work isn't acknowledged and
it sounded like, you know, in linewith your wanting to make a difference,
it sounded like it really did make adifference, like you put in extra work
beyond the sort of the core definitionof the role and exactly where do you
think we've got any better as a sector
? Deb (20:43):
The department did change the way that they evaluate work.
Um, yeah.
In the department.
And they did eventually have separatesections for research, teaching,
uh, service and administration,if you were doing administration.
Mm-hmm.
So it did eventually, I thinkget to where it should have been.
(21:04):
Yeah.
But it was not there at the time.
' Geri Fitz (21:06):
cause it sounds like one course release isn't
equal to the work that you did.
Deb (21:10):
No, it was not
Geri Fitz (21:11):
in that role.
And so when you were doing yourpart-time assistant dean role, is that
above, is that still in the psychologydepartment or is that a higher level?
Deb (21:24):
No, it was across the university.
Geri Fitz (21:26):
Oh, okay.
Deb (21:26):
So some universities, um, have graduate programming that stays with
the college and some universities havea separate graduate school that controls
enrollment and that sort of thing.
And that was what the model that we had.
Mm-hmm.
They did eventually switch tothe other model, uh, which is
why it was a two year position.
They knew they were gonnaswitch to this other model.
(21:47):
Mm-hmm.
But we were responsible forstudents across the spectrum.
Geri Fitz (21:53):
Yeah.
And so that what, what additional skillsdid that draw on stepping up to that?
Deb (22:03):
So it required thinking in a different way.
Mm.
So I will give you one example.
We had a student, actuallyseveral students who applied
for extensions to, they had sixyears to complete their degree.
Uh, their graduate degree and peoplewould apply for an extension at some
(22:24):
point in time when they were desperatebecause they realized they had three
months left and they weren't gonna finish.
And so I had the bright idea that weshould just notify all the students when
they were coming up to, you know, somedeadline to avoid this last minute rush.
At which point the dean pointed outthat there were some departments who
were just happy to let things go.
(22:47):
That there were students whoprobably weren't gonna finish,
and that by notifying them, itmight actually make things worse.
And so you really had to startthinking about both my intended
consequence and the unintendedconsequences that come from a decision.
Geri Fitz (23:03):
Yeah.
Were you still able todo research in that role?
Because you said it was part-time,but we often know that part-time
roles are not part-time.
Deb (23:15):
Yeah, that's correct.
So, yes, I still had obligationsto the department to do research.
Obviously they were reduced in some,in terms of they wouldn't have expected
me to produce as much as if I hadbeen full-time in the department.
But a year into my position as assistantdean, they decided to accelerate the
(23:36):
process and they moved me into theprovost office and they wanted me to go
full-time, which had not been the plan.
And so I found myself in a full-timeposition, but I was still an
associate professor and I knew Iwanted to become a full professor.
So I did have a lot of tensiontrying to maintain research while
(24:01):
I was also an administrator.
Geri Fitz (24:04):
Because what were the criteria at George Mason for full Professor?
Deb (24:11):
It's really national or international recognition.
Um, so people recognize your work andit's, and it's being cited, well cited.
I think that was long beforethe H Index came along.
But, evidence that people would bewilling to say that you had achieved
stature in the field such that peoplewould recognize your work Yeah.
And, and excellence of that work.
(24:32):
Yeah.
So you, it, it, they're very.
Difficult to pin down.
Geri Fitz (24:37):
Yeah.
It sounds like the usual sort of,its the usual research is the driver
for the step into full professor.
So you were working fulltime as the vice Provost.
Deb (24:49):
Oh yeah, yeah.
I was assistant then associatethen vice provost for research
and graduate studies and
Geri Fitz (24:56):
family at this stage?
Deb (24:58):
Yes.
I have three daughters.
They were maybe 10 ish orso in that neighborhood.
Yeah.
Geri Fitz (25:05):
And trying to keep up a research profile.
Yes.
On the side.
On the side.
That now was not counted in the full time.
Deb (25:14):
I mean, luckily, most of my research I did in partnership with others.
Mm-hmm.
There was.
Very little that I did, just totallyon my own at that point in my career.
Mm-hmm.
So I also had, I had colleagues that Icould work with who would, in fact, for
a long time I had a great group of three.
One guy had these great ideas.
(25:36):
Another one I was really good atgetting people to sit down and execute.
And then, there was someone who'sreally good at writing things up.
So it was.
Geri Fitz (25:45):
Sounds like we had a good, good mix of skills.
Deb (25:47):
It was a wonderful mix of skills.
Yeah.
So I was quite lucky, I think,to have supportive colleagues.
I will say that George Mason inits history was not, it's now
a research one, but it was farfrom that when I joined them.
Mm-hmm.
And, people were very collegial.
There wasn't the backbiting.
It was just wonderful because peopledidn't care so much about credit as long
(26:11):
as you got on a paper because they hadstarted as a non-research university,
there wasn't that feeling of, youknow, I'll only succeed if you don't.
Mm-hmm.
So it was really helpful to me.
Yeah.
Because I was able to do thingsin partnership with people.
Yeah.
I didn't always have to bethe first author, so, yeah.
Geri Fitz (26:32):
And did you have explicit discussions about those roles or was it,
did it just emerge naturally that that'show you all complemented each other?
Deb (26:41):
I'm not even sure they were aware.
Yeah.
My, my colleagues, I, I justrecognized what people's skills were.
Mm.
And I do think I haven an organizationalbent and so, um, I was able to, to
see where things, you know, couldmove forward more, more smoothly.
Yeah.
Geri Fitz (27:00):
Because I, that's something I try to talk to people
about now, about having thesesorts of discussions proactively.
Mm-hmm.
About what do you think you're reallygood at and how can we fit together and
what am I not so good at that you might beable to complement and what is none of us?
What is it that none of us are good at?
That we have to find someone else?
Find someone else, orjust put in the effort.
(27:22):
Yeah, because that'sreally valuable, isn't it?
Mm-hmm.
And so do, is that a change thatyou are seeing, that you think
that it has become much morecompetitive and less collegial now?
Deb (27:34):
I there, there are.
Individuals who are very well published,who are very well published because
they're just heads down working on theirstuff and just doing, you know, grinding
away, which is a good thing, but itdoes make collegial work more difficult.
(27:55):
Now universities are attemptingto get people to do more of this,
especially across disciplinary lines.
And I suspect that the fact that I'min human factors, which in itself is a
mix between psychology and engineering,helped me have that perspective.
Because, you know, you can have anidea of how to build something, but
(28:17):
you may not be able to build it.
Yeah.
Um, if you don't have apartner who can do that,.
So.
It may be that I was helped by the factthat the university in, actually, the
other thing I would say about GeorgeMason, an early president was trying
to get more funding from the state ormore support from the state generally.
(28:39):
And the University of Virginia,the flagship school in Virginia
Tech would both, whenever we triedto get a doctoral program, would
say, oh, there, those upstarts,they don't have qualified faculty.
They don't have the means to do this.
And so this presidentpositioned us as being more
(29:00):
interdisciplinary and respondingto the needs of Northern Virginia.
That meant that I think eight of thefirst 10 doctoral programs that were
approved were interdisciplinary.
And so they had information technology.
They didn't have computerscience and engineering, they
just had this generic degree.
Psychology first started with aPsyD and the PsyD was not only for
(29:23):
clinical, but also in human factorsio, um, which is really quite unusual.
And I remember faculty meetings wherewe railed against the president.
He cares more about originality thanhe does about, you know, quality.
But we had our PsyD,I would say six years.
Geri Fitz (29:43):
What's this psyD?
Deb (29:44):
It's a PsyD, a doctorate in psychology, and it is targeted at.
Individuals who want to practiceclinical psychology mm-hmm.
With the notion that instead of doinga dissertation, they do a project, but
then they do supervised clinical hoursso that they're getting more exposure and
experience with the clinical practice.
(30:07):
So it was started in part,I think, because there was a
dearth of qualified clinicians.
And PhD programs had people whoreally didn't see themselves ever
doing research in the long term.
Yeah.
Doing this.
Um, so this was an alternative pathto become licensed as a clinician.
Geri Fitz (30:26):
But the, some of the faculty were against it, did you say?
Deb (30:31):
Well, there is a belief in some quarters that the, you know,
PhD is a higher quality, it'scertainly a more research degree.
Mm.
So if you are a researcher and you believestrongly in research, you will see the
PsyD as a lighter, if you will, degree.
Right.
(30:52):
Um, but it was, it was developed andtargeted specifically for clinical psych.
It was never designed to be usedin any other field of psychology.
Yeah.
So that was what made it unusual.
I think we, in maybe one otheruniversity in the whole United
States, were using it for somethingother than a clinical psych program.
(31:12):
And after we'd had this degree aboutsix years, the president went to our
state council and said, you know, we'reoffering this PsyD, but it's really a PhD.
Can we just change the name?
And they went, oh yeah, sure.
So it was one of those noseunder the tent and then blow the
tent wide open kinds of things.
And we went, oh my God.
(31:33):
He was so politically astute.
Geri Fitz (31:35):
Just gonna say like, you.
Even like you, you saying beforeabout sending out the reminders
and then someone saying there areunintended consequences, right.
As you're moving into these moreleadership positions, this is
different, you said, talked aboutorganizational thinking and or
you know that, but it requiresdifferent sensitivities, doesn't it?
Deb (31:59):
It does.
I mean, in.
As a faculty member, youmostly care about yourself.
Mm-hmm.
And about your department.
Once you get, I mean, I was amazedwhen I got to into the deanship
about how much research topicsoverlap across disciplines.
My college was humanitiesand social sciences.
(32:22):
And there were people inEnglish doing website design.
And I went, what?
And it, it was just amazing to meto see how many topics actually
overlapped across all of those areas.
And of course, that's not quite asdiverse as engineering and social
sciences, but still lots and lots ofthreads and things that really could be
(32:46):
more developed as an interdisciplinaryfunction than what they are.
We are still fairly stovepiped,I think, in universities.
Geri Fitz (32:55):
Yeah.
Moving into sort of provost typeroles and, and also then taking
on the dean of the college.
I'm curious about what werethose key skills that you
think you naturally brought?
What were the skills thatyou had to learn to develop?
Deb (33:18):
So I think I naturally brought budgeting and organizing
or reorganizing skills to that.
I still have to workon my listening skills.
Someone would come and bring acomplaint and they were so passionate
(33:40):
and you just kind of go all in untilyou hear the other side of the story
from the other individual involved.
So it took a while forme to learn to balance.
The other thing I had to learn to do.
It didn't come naturally is learning howto talk to people about difficult issues.
Mm-hmm.
Um, I had had.
(34:02):
Worked with people who justignored difficult issues,
which then creates problems.
So if there's a problem in yourdepartment and a faculty member is out
of line, if you're afraid to confrontthem, it just continues and it affects
the culture of the whole department.
Yeah.
And so I learned that youreally need to address that.
(34:23):
And I did work with some people tolearn some skills about how to say,
okay, here's the issue I'm dealing with.
Here's what I see as your partof it, but I could be mistaken
about what that part is.
You know, how do you feelabout this situation?
Mm-hmm.
And working to solve the problemrather than blaming the individual.
Uh, and.
(34:44):
I will say after learning someof those skills, I was surprised.
There were days I would go in dreadingthat I had to meet with someone about
a difficult issue and then comingout saying, gosh, that wasn't so bad.
Geri Fitz (34:56):
Yeah.
So I think that's worth just repeating.
'cause many people, even if they'renot in more senior leadership roles,
even if you're supervising a studentat, at whatever level, may well
have to have difficult conversations.
So you talked about, a framework thattalked about, you know, like naming
(35:17):
the issues as an objective thing.
Yes.
What you see.
Owning your I don't know, interpretationor possible interpretation, but then
inviting the other person to providetheir perspective so that Yes.
Listening and givingthem a chance to talk.
And that then I liked the bit aboutfocusing on solving rather than blaming.
(35:40):
Yes.
Deb (35:40):
Right.
My goal as a.
Leader is not to get someone upsetbecause they're doing the wrong thing.
Mm.
I wanna solve the problem.
And if I can engage them in workingwith me to solve the problem.
Now there were some situations wherethey weren't willing to work with me
(36:01):
and I needed to take more drastic steps.
And really to do that, you haveto be willing to be disliked.
So, mm-hmm.
There's another piece of that is that, Imean, inherently I am a people pleaser.
But in that role, you sometimeshave to make decisions that not
everyone will like, and you haveto be willing to accept that.
(36:24):
Some people will not likethe choices you make.
You do the best you can with theinformation you have at the time, and
you hope that, you know, things goas you would like, but you have to be
willing to accept those consequences,and that's sometimes difficult.
Geri Fitz (36:39):
Yeah, I would imagine that that would be often because if you
are the one holding the responsibilityfor the decision making, ultimately
Deb (36:47):
mm-hmm.
Geri Fitz (36:48):
Part of your role, and I think what you've also sort of
alluded to is, you've got multiplepriorities, values, mm-hmm.
Stakeholder concerns.
I, I don't like that language, butyou're not gonna be ever able to
find a perfect answer for everyone.
That's right.
So I'm thinking about being a facultymember and reflecting, how I often
(37:15):
wouldn't have that perspective onthe difficulties that the person who
was in the leadership position had.
Deb (37:22):
Mm-hmm.
Geri Fitz (37:23):
How they were trying to provide the, a best solution, recognizing that
they're not going to keep all of us happy.
And it's really easy to getselfish and think that I should
be happy with your decision.
If you were talking to faculty membersor what would you want us to do, how,
how would you want us to respond or howcould we help someone in leadership in,
(37:49):
in supporting those sorts of decisions?
Deb (37:52):
Well, but just asking what went into this decision, right?
Why did you make the call that you did?
Geri Fitz (37:58):
Mm-hmm.
Deb (37:58):
And being open to understanding mm-hmm.
That I was faced with trade-offs.
Mm-hmm.
That if I did X, thiswould be the outcome.
If I did Y, this would be the outcome.
And.
Given the choices that I had and theconstraints in, in decision making, you
know, this was what I thought was best.
(38:19):
If we're coming to a conclusion, Iwould certainly take input on what
they felt was the better alternative.
Ultimately I had to make a call.
I don't know if it's universal.
In our university, people loved consensus.
They always wanted to be able tocome to consensus, and I had to
learn that it's not always possible.
And if you wait toolong, then things fester.
(38:41):
So you do at some point justhave to make a decision and.
You know, there's that other, that's thatother piece of this working together.
I'm listening and I'm trying tobring us all to the same conclusion,
but I also recognize that that'snot always gonna be possible.
That, yeah, what's good for thisis not good for this and there're
gonna be people on both sides.
So I need to look at the situationfrom both the faculty member up
(39:08):
and the university down and say,okay, what is the best solution?
I think under the circumstances,and you're not always right.
Uh, you know, sometimes afterwardsyou think, oh, that wasn't
the best thing to have done.
Yeah.
But.
You know, we're not perfect.
Geri Fitz (39:22):
As you said best, that you could make best decision at the time.
Deb (39:26):
At the time, and with the information I had.
Mm-hmm.
Geri Fitz (39:28):
Which is interesting when you said that your, uh, red thread
across some of the early career stuffand the research stuff in different
industries was what information dopeople need to make good decisions?
Deb (39:38):
Yes, that's right.
Yep.
Geri Fitz (39:40):
And, what information did you need as a leader to make good decisions?
Deb (39:47):
It depended on the the issue.
Um.
Oftentimes it was finances.
You know, we had a collegethat was woefully underfunded.
And both as a chair and as adean, I had to make decisions.
Do I make this faculty memberhappy by giving them a raise?
But then, disadvantage thisother department because
(40:08):
they now can't hire someone?
Or, you know, things like, do I ask myfaculty to take on larger class sizes?
Because if we have higher enrollments,the university will give us
more funding for the department.
So there are lots ofdifferent kinds of trade-offs.
You need different informationfor those different situations.
Geri Fitz (40:29):
Did you develop any particular mechanisms or platforms
or whatever for engaging with peopleand getting their views or inputs?
I mean, I know I, again, it probablydepends on what the issue is and, uh.
Deb (40:46):
So, as a chair and as a dean, I had meetings with relevant groups.
So as department chair, I hada faculty meeting every month.
As a dean, I had meetings withmy, um, department chairs.
And when I started, a lot of what I,I would go to the dean, the meeting
with the dean as a chair, and the deanwould give us all this information.
(41:06):
I would come back and I would spenda large portion of my meeting kind
of regurgitating what I had heard.
Geri Fitz (41:13):
Yeah.
Deb (41:14):
I eventually realized that was not the most effective
way to work with people.
So what I did was I sent very longagendas, sometimes as many as 50 pages.
If someone had given us a, aPowerPoint briefing, I just
attached the PowerPoint briefing.
Mm.
So instead of me summarizingit, I let them look through it.
(41:34):
And then in my meeting wewere able to have discussions.
So, you know, what concernsdid you have about this issue?
And so I asked people to be preparedcoming into the meeting in the dean's
meetings, I did the same thing andI listed each item on my agenda.
But at the start of the meeting Isaid, by raise of hands, how many
people want to talk about this issue?
(41:56):
And we would do a count, and Iwould just take them from the most
pressing issue or the one that.
People wanted to chat about so thatwe were using that time for discussion
and communication and sharing ofinformation rather than me just dumping
stuff, them not knowing anything aboutit, having to process it, think it
through, and then coming back later.
Now I had hoped as Dean thatmy chairs would then take that
(42:20):
packet that I sent them and sendit to their whole department.
Many of them did not.
And I would hear from faculty members,well, I didn't know about that.
Yeah.
And I think, oh, yeah, yeah.
Geri Fitz (42:32):
Yes.
I think, I'm just reflecting on somediscussions I've heard just recently
from a few different people, people atdifferent universities, and that has often
been a component, especially when they'rein situations of change, high change.
Um, so is that not getting through.
But that model of giving peoplethe information beforehand
Deb (42:55):
mm-hmm.
Geri Fitz (42:56):
With the expectation that they at least familiarize
themselves enough to be able tosay, yes, I want to talk about it.
Right.
Both has the advantage of enablingdifferent people with different thinking
styles, you know, who may need more timeto consider stuff compared to others of
us who might just be able to go blah,blah, blah, blah, blah, straight away.
(43:16):
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
It gives, it gives everyone time toprocess information and I love that it
then creates the space for the discussionrather than the one way throw it out.
Mm-hmm.
Deb (43:27):
Yeah.
Yeah.
It was so much better afterwe switched to, to that model.
Geri Fitz (43:34):
And do have any other hard earned tips and tricks for anyone
in leadership positions around theaspects particular to being in leadership
roles, whether it's dean level or just,running a research project or whatever.
Deb (43:50):
I don't know that there are any special tips that I have.
I mean, I just like to have listsand so the agendas when I would
send the agenda to the departmentwhen we had issues to discuss.
And so for example, a tenure case, Iwould estimate how much time was needed.
And there were times when wedidn't have much to discuss.
(44:13):
There was a lot of just,you know, getting together.
And every now and then someone wouldemail me and say, just want to let
you know I'm going to be out of town.
But I read through the agenda andit looks like it's light, so I
don't think I'm gonna miss much.
And it was great that even peoplewho had to miss a meeting were
informed, were in the loop.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Geri Fitz (44:32):
Yeah, and I know that there's research that talks about, as academics,
that's one of the things that we justwant to, we want to be informed and
at least feel like we've had a say.
I'm sure if that research was repeatednow there'd be other challenges.
But yeah.
Any particular differences betweenleadership within an industry setting?
Because you then went to Oculus andthat and leadership in universities
(44:55):
that you would reflect on.
Deb (44:57):
So, I would say my, the scope of leadership that I had
in, uh, industry was smaller.
But I did try to use the same mechanisms,having an agenda for a meeting, trying
to make sure everyone speaks andis heard, giving space for people
who tend not to speak up as much.
And.
(45:18):
In industry, they also, or at leastat meta, I won't say necessarily,
they have like one-on-ones.
So anyone who reports directly to youhas a regular standing meeting with you.
Now at the university, I didencourage that with my chairs.
I wanted them to come in and meetwith me on a regular basis and do
that, but it wasn't as structured,I think, as it was in industry.
(45:41):
And really the goal was to say.
How are things going?
Where are you stuck?
What's my role in helping you get unstuck?
And that's, I think, a very usefulthing because sometimes one level up
you can do things and move things alongin a way that an individual can't.
Yeah.
And that's something that I don'tsee happening much in a university.
(46:06):
I mean, I think you're much moreleft to your own devices Yes.
To make things happen.
Geri Fitz (46:11):
Yes, you are.
Even though people above couldprovide insights or direction.
What I liked about what you saidthere was you didn't take on the
problem and turn into problem solver.
Mm-hmm.
You said basically, what doyou need from me, or what's my
role in helping you with that?
(46:31):
Mm-hmm.
Which is a lovely message back tothe person that I trust you to, you
know, to find a way through, andI'm here to absolutely support you.
Deb (46:41):
And if you need help and you're not sure what to do,
let's problem solve together.
Mm.
Geri Fitz (46:46):
We don't have that culture, as you say in universities and no, well,
it's not been my experience either.
Deb (46:54):
Yeah.
There's a lot of discussion aboutmentors and, and mentorship.
And there seems to be thisnotion that you have one person.
And there's a group in theUS it's a group that supports
faculty development and they talkabout having a mentoring map.
So the person who can be yoursafe space that you can complain
(47:16):
to when things aren't going well.
Yeah.
And the person who'sgonna critique your work.
And the person who's gonna help youunderstand the politics at the university
or your current job or whatever it is.
And understanding that no one personprobably can fill all those roles.
Your role as a woman versus a manversus a minority in a majority culture.
(47:37):
Mm-hmm.
All of those things, you know,no one person has them all, and.
It's also easier for the mentor whohas a particular expertise to be
able to say, yes, let's meet whenyou have an issue on this topic.
Yes, and I'm happy to help you, but itdoesn't have to be a month, you know, once
a week, once a month, kind of a situation.
(47:58):
And somehow I think in universities,that mentorship model doesn't
seem to happen naturally.
Geri Fitz (48:07):
Mm, yes.
And I think it could also be tied upwith what you said before about it
becoming increasingly competitive aswell, the, the competition where, mm-hmm.
The time to be available and to shareand to reach out and to connect.
So identifying what your needs areand who's your board of mentors
(48:29):
as I've heard people mm-hmm.
Talk about.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Deb (48:32):
And I was lucky.
I did have a few people who reachedout and supported me early on.
Uh, when I was at GE, a groupof managers led by something I
suggested, made a decision while our.
the next level manager was away andhe came back and was very unhappy and
he said, well, who made this call?
And a more senior person said it was me.
(48:53):
And I looked at him becauseI thought it was me.
And I asked him afterwards, I said,why did you take credit for that?
'cause I did it.
And he said, I'm in a better positionto handle the blowback than you are.
And he said it wasn't going to hurt me.
And I went, oh my God, how lovely.
You know?
But I hadn't realized it.
(49:14):
And then when I got to the university,there was a more senior faculty member
who pulled me aside and said, if you'regonna get tenure, you need to do service.
Let me tell you the service opportunitiesthat aren't that overbearing.
Geri Fitz (49:27):
Nice.
Deb (49:28):
And so she, she helped me a lot.
Yeah.
Now I have to tell you a funny story.
I found out many, many years later thatat the time I interviewed, I was about
seven months pregnant and this personwho eventually mentored me without my
asking, had said to the department chair,great candidate, two bad she's pregnant.
(49:48):
I know.
Geri Fitz (49:49):
Sorry, my mouth was just open.
Deb (49:52):
Yep.
So.
You never know.
She was, she was wonderfulto me once I got there.
Yeah.
Geri Fitz (50:00):
Yeah.
Just conscious of time marching on.
Mm-hmm.
When you look back over this careerand I, you've already given us so many
really lovely insights that I thinkwe can all apply in regardless of
our roles, what are you proudest of?
Deb (50:24):
Gosh, so.
I'm reminded of, there was alistserv early in my career of
women in computer science, facultymembers in computer science.
Not sure how I got on the list.
I mean, I was doing HCI work,but, and they said they didn't
feel really good at anything.
But what they were good at wasjuggling that, you know, they would
(50:47):
do work, work, work, work, work.
And then, you know, they'd realize,well, family's dropping and they'd
throw it up in the other air.
I think I'm most proud of the fact that.
My children still love me and feellike I gave them an okay life, even
though I was balancing all these crazythings, um, with both parents working.
I don't know that there's any one thingI would pick out from my career per se.
(51:10):
it's really more.
Having my girls wanting tobe around me now that mm-hmm.
They're adults and they have childrenof their own and they want me to help.
Yeah.
Geri Fitz (51:21):
So you, one of the things you mentioned before we started as
well was a course that you createdabout lots of how tos, mm-hmm.
What was that?
That's because it soundsreally innovative.
Deb (51:32):
So I would say of the courses I've taught in the work that I did as a faculty
member, I was most proud of this course.
It was a course on work skills.
So how to identifyopportunities for grants.
How to write a grant proposal.
In fact, the very first time we didit, someone who was a granting agent
read all of the proposals that mystudents wrote and gave them feedback.
It was just lovely.
(51:53):
How to give.
Good presentation.
How to budget, differentcareer opportunities, industry,
government, uh, academia.
And within academia.
People often think because they're.
By definition, if you were in a doctoralprogram, you're in a doctoral institution.
So they forget that there arecommunity colleges and tribal
colleges and four year colleges thatare focused on the undergraduates.
(52:17):
So given different careers, howto write their resume, and how
to track what they're doing.
Um, and in light of that, we talk abouta CAGE, career accomplishments, um, and.
I, it's, I've said to you and toothers, I look at my resume now
and there are things I see on, onthere that I don't remember doing.
(52:39):
And it's important, especially asyou think to the future, if you're,
you know, people change jobs quitea bit more now than they used to.
Can you capture what you were tryingto achieve in a project, what you did
achieve, and what skills it demonstrates?
Is it a leadership skill?
Is it an organizational skill?
Is it a publishing skill?
(52:59):
What are the things you learned from that?
And then just keep that.
It's just for you, but it letsyou look back on your career and
see the things that you've done.
Geri Fitz (53:07):
Mm-hmm.
Deb (53:08):
Yep.
Geri Fitz (53:08):
So CAGE stands for, do you remember?
Deb (53:12):
Career accomplishments, goals and experiences, I think.
Geri Fitz (53:18):
Yeah.
Yes.
Career accomplishments,goals and experiences.
Right.
Yeah.
And those things that you've justtalked about in terms of the how to's
they're transferable skills generally.
Okay.
Deb (53:36):
Absolutely.
And, and they work no matter whatthe setting, even personally, just
keeping track of what you've done,and what you've accomplished.
And, and there's so many of us, soas an academic, if you leave graduate
school and you go to a university.
You likely have had notraining in teaching?
(53:57):
Yeah, no training in how to preparea course, how to build a syllabus,
how to do all those things.
You may never havewritten a grant proposal.
You know, you may have written somethingfor a small scholarship or something,
but writing a grant proposal withbudgets and such, and yet you're
expected to do that when you get there.
Now some universities are starting tohave support systems for faculty so
(54:19):
that they can get experience or theycan learn about it when they get there.
But I just think it prepares studentsbetter regardless of the industry
they go into when they leave toknow how to do some of these things.
I mean, I learned budgeting atGE where I had a grant and I
had to account for the money.
Luckily I figured it out and mymanager helped me with that, but I've
(54:44):
never been trained on how to do that.
And so it just helps you succeedwhen you walk out the door.
Geri Fitz (54:50):
And even your statement as well about talking to people about
different types of university roles.
People would think of academia andjust think of research intensive.
But your career also points to thefact that thinking about university
roles can also be thinking aboutthe diverse range of roles you can
play within an academic institution.
So it's not just a research intensivefaculty member or a teaching
(55:14):
intensive faculty member that mm-hmm.
You can move into moreof these leadership.
And Absolutely.
Management roles.
Deb (55:22):
Mm-hmm.
Geri Fitz (55:23):
What would be the trainings that you'd love to see in an ideal world
for people to be set up for those roles?
Deb (55:32):
So, our university did eventually develop a training program for
people who are interested in that.
And it looked at, lookingat yourself first.
They did mm-hmm some various, you know,little tests of where your skills lie.
So, and then looking at the groupthat was there, which they pulled
together from across the university.
If you were gonna staff a project,which skills would you need to have?
(55:56):
And we did kind of a grid of theskills, people's top skills, and
what the team had as a whole.
So learning to think abouthow you create teams mm-hmm.
Partnerships.
There was information on how theuniversity's budget ran, so there
were a lot of things like that,that were in that training program.
Geri Fitz (56:15):
Yeah.
They sound really importantskills for everyone to have
as well at whatever level.
And anything to reflect aboutbeing a woman in academia?
Deb (56:28):
So when George Mason was established, it was actually a
college of the University of Virginia.
It was a Northern VirginiaBranch campus and as a result
it was not research intensive.
And it also drew a lot ofwomen as faculty members.
So when I started at George Masonin 1984, I would say of the 10 or 12
(56:54):
departments in our college, probablyseven or eight of them were women.
The year I came up for tenure,my department chair was a woman.
My dean was a woman.
The provost was a woman.
Geri Fitz (57:06):
Very unusual.
Deb (57:07):
It's never happened since.
So it was very unusual.
And I will say that I had a blessedlyfree time, by and large, in terms
of feeling left out as a woman orfeeling like the only one in the room,
because we did have a large numberof female faculty members around.
(57:29):
Now I will say when I was on campusone day, pregnant with my second, a man
walking past me said, oh, in my day, womenin your condition weren't seen in public.
Yes.
Geri Fitz (57:40):
It's a bit outrageous.
Deb (57:43):
It was more than, yes.
It was outrageous.
Um.
But that was unusual.
And I would say I felt being a womanmore in some of the administrative
roles I played outside the university.
Okay.
So, I was the second woman president ofthe Human Factors and Ergonomics Society.
The first one had been in theseventies, and I was then in the
(58:04):
nineties and I thought, okay, now wecertainly have broken the barrier.
It was almost another 10 years beforeanother woman was elected president.
I do remember talking with thegentleman on the executive council,
you they often talk about whoshould we elect for the next round?
And they said, well, you know, weshould have more women presidents.
And I said, well, that's easy.
And they said, what?
I said, we just nominate three women.
(58:26):
And they went, oh, you can't do that.
I said, why not?
Three guys have run lots of times.
But there was still that resistance there.
I was, I think, the first femalechair of the FAA advisory board.
For human factors research.
So there were places where I wouldlook out and see a sea of black suits.
(58:46):
Mm-hmm.
Um, but I will say I rarely feltlike I was discriminated against.
I didn't feel like I was necessarily,being demeaned in any way, shape or form.
Yeah.
So, from that perspective,it was not an issue for me.
Geri Fitz (59:03):
That's good.
That's great.
Well, thank you for sharing that.
That was just mm-hmm.
Interesting to hear andsounds, it does sound unusual.
Deb (59:12):
It was.
Um, as I say, we were blessed tohave so many women in leadership
positions when I was untenured.
Uh, and which continuedfor quite some time.
Geri Fitz (59:22):
Yeah.
That's brilliant.
Well, thank you.
Is there anything we haven't talkedabout that you wanted to share?
Deb (59:35):
No, I can't think of anything.
I think it's been a lovelyconversation and I'm delighted
with the directions it took.
Geri Fitz (59:42):
And yeah.
So thank you Deb.
Really appreciate you taking the time.
And, enjoy this next phase of life.
Deb (59:51):
Thank you.
Geri Fitz (59:52):
And the opportunity to make a difference in different ways.
Deb (59:56):
Well, thank you for having me on.
It's been delightful.
Geri Fitz (01:00:02):
You can find the summary notes, a transcript and related links for this
podcast on www.changingacademiclife.com.
You can also subscribe to ChangingAcademic Life on iTunes, Spotify.
And I'm really hoping that we canwiden the conversation about how
we can do academia differently.
(01:00:22):
And you can contribute to this by ratingthe podcast and also giving feedback.
And if something connected withyou, please consider sharing this
podcast with your colleagues.
Together we can make change happen.
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