An Afternoon With Michael Crow and Rick Shangraw
Wednesday, December 2, 2009 at 1:52PM Today I had the privilege of attending the Arizona Technology Council's quarterly Keynote Speaker event, with Dr. Michael Crow (President of ASU) as the primary speaker. Dr. Crow spoke mainly about how ASU and his "New American University" concept are providing new resources to and working well with local, national, and international technology companies. He spoke about removing the traditional "silos" of higher-education by integrating disciplines while keeping them separate enough to properly teach and convey their principles. He mentioned briefly something about tenure, and how tenure at ASU is looked at as a political safety net, ensuring that professors with old ideas and professors with new ideas can only revamp a program or way of teaching by showing that their way is adequate or better, rather than through political means. He also mentioned that through this, tenure is not a safety net for your job - if you're not doing your job and achieving proper results, "we're going to fire you." I liked this. I didn't like how Dr. Crow was in front of a group full of business people in the IT sector and he didn't once mention the business school. Not when he was talking about interdisciplinary items, nor when he was speaking about integrating with research, nor when he was speaking about ASU becoming the New American University more and more. But maybe it just didn't fit in or wasn't appropriate.
Dr. Crow had to leave a bit early in order to go meet with the Governor and the presidents of the other universities; we applauded and he stepped out. Then, Dr. Rick Shangraw (Vice President of Research & Economic Affairs) stepped up to answer some more questions. He (kind of) answered a question about how ASU is providing resources to local IT companies. In his response, he mentioned that often times, when ASU is working on large projects both internally and in relation to research and grants, they will go to an outside firm to handle the IT. He said that they did this because unfortunately universities can't handle the consistency and protocol required to properly integrate and manage production IT in many situations. He then mentioned how most IT at ASU is put together by graduate students, and that it's stored in a closet and when "stuff is turned on it never works." This slightly upset me, as he was essentially telling a group of people who are looking to hire ASU graduates in the technology sectors that ASU was unable to prepare them to deploy real-life, effective technologies.
Dr. Shangraw then spoke about how, were he still a manager of a company with an IT component, he would rather find someone who he had to teach IT rather than teach the "entrepreneurial" drive because apparently we can teach a person IT, but we can't teach them to be an entrepreneur. This upset me greatly, especially after my last blog post and considering the fact that there were 3-4 people in the room from the ASU Entrepreneurship Initiative office (which exists to help ASU to teach entrepreneurship). I see this as a disconnect - he was almost arguing that entrepreneurship is not a learned behavior; you either have it or you don't. Is this the message he was trying to convey? I don't know, but this is what I heard and, to be honest, I don't really look at this as something you can misspeak about.
My point? Dr. Crow, you said you'd fire people who aren't doing their jobs. In the 18 months the entrepreneurship program has been in full force at ASU, it seems that we've seen very little increase in students seeking out the resources that are in place, very few additional ventures started in conjunction with the university and the W.P. Carey School of Business beyond the usual fare that stem out of Edson, and senior staff members in your own office that aren't fully aware of the program's goals. Has it occurred to you that maybe it's time to do a purging in your own building?
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Reader Comments (3)
I had a chance to read your blog this afternoon. I also noticed you in the audience at the Tech Council event and I was hoping we could have talked after the presentation since I could see you were visibly upset with my comments. I think you missed my point on a couple of my comments (or perhaps I didn’t do a good job communicating them). I will try to clarify my remarks below. I also want to make you an offer.
I see that you run a company and I took time to look around your site. I have spent time running an IT company (built out of my basement) and I have spent a lot of time in universities. One area that often gets shortchanged in university research projects is IT. Often, there is not enough time or funding to fully verify or validate code, to fully test systems, or to maintain staging and production environments. As a result, many of our students in the physical and life sciences, the social sciences, and some engineering disciplines, who are not formally trained in computer science or computer engineering, are asked to develop and design these systems. These systems do what is necessary to complete the research. However, they are not designed for a 24/7 production environment. The code works on some machines and not others, applications often are not fully packaged for distribution, and the user interface is rough. In cases where a research project needs to deliver a production system (or a more widely distributed application), we often will partner with professional IT firms. Your comment that I “was essentially telling a group of people who are looking to hire ASU graduates in the technology sectors that ASU was unable to prepare them to deploy real-life, effective technologies” was not at all the point of my comments. In response to a CEO of an IT company, I was suggesting that universities could be teaming partners on certain types of large research projects.
You also note that I “would rather find someone who he had to teach IT rather than teach the "entrepreneurial" drive because apparently we can teach a person IT, but we can't teach them to be an entrepreneur.” Again, that was not my point. In responding to the same CEO, I was suggesting that students who are more entrepreneurial are great hires. I have probably hired well over 1000 people over my career. I am a strong believer in hiring people with the right culture and attitude. We have a lot of students at ASU who are entrepreneurial and would make great hires. For specific IT jobs, I was suggesting that you could teach some of the technical skills if you had a smart, entrepreneurial student. I was not making a “nature / nurture” argument. And, since many of the entrepreneurship programs report to me, I am a strong believer in teaching these skills.
So one area where we do agree is the need to better “scale” our entrepreneurial programs to engage more students at ASU. I have a team working on this issue. I am wondering if you would be interested in providing some feedback on the ideas we are developing? I could send you a very rough draft of some initial thoughts or maybe you would be interested in working with some of our folks on this issue. I’d be interested in your feedback.
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I have also spent time running an IT Outsourcing company and I have spent a lot of time in universities, but I also got a lot of new ideas during that.