Day 122: Please Sir May I Have Some More

May 16, 2023

After my first solo class, my stressful week continued the next day with a meeting with the head of my department to talk about my reappointment.

As some of you may remember, when I got this professor job back in December, the terms of my contract were for one year. So I basically uprooted my life and moved across the country in the hope it would all work out within a year. On that front: So far so good. I’m on track to be reappointed.

You might also remember my role is a little strange: Professor of The Practice. I’m not exactly research faculty and I’m not exactly teaching faculty either (although certainly closer to teaching faculty than research by my course load). I wrote about this a few months back. But because I’m kind of neither, how I’m evaluated—am I doing a good job?—is a little different too.

The short of the meeting was: because the role is ill-defined, I get to define it. Which suits me great. I see my role as a bridge between academia and industry, where I try to connect our students and faculty to the professional world, using my 20+ years of professional experience.

Now certainly, there are things my department wants me to do, namely (in order of priority): increase the reputation of the department (both internally and externally), and successfully teach classes (both to students and also to corporations and practitioners). Unsurprisingly, these are two things that help bring in money to the department. But anything that isn’t these two things (e.g. committee work), I should limit.

It might surprise some of you that teaching wasn’t my given top priority. CMU is a research university and ergo, research is the highest value because it is the creation and accumulation of new knowledge. My role, as I’m envisioning it, is to help disseminate that knowledge internally (to students) and externally (to practitioners, organizations, and the general public). Since CMU is one of the birthplaces of artificial intelligence, right now my big priority is to help designers, experienced and new, work with AI. Not only because I’m co-teaching that class, but because I feel like it’s the next big paradigm shift for technology and the world. And because of a secret project I’ll talk about in another post…

One of the initial things I’m doing as part of this role is giving talks and workshops on AI and Design at professional conferences. The first of both I’m giving is at CanUX 2023. The talk is called “AI? Oy Vey” and looks at where designers can incorporate AI into their processes and products. The workshop is called “New Techniques for Designing with AI” and it introduces practitioners to some of the new methods my colleagues at CMU have been developing and using. If you’re interested in having one or both of these at your conference or organization, get in touch.

One other thing I found out from this meeting: Unlike other places, CMU faculty generally spend six years at Assistant Professor level. Then three years at Associate level, then can be considered for academic tenure and full professorship after another three years. Promotions typically happen on three-year cycles. So if I work my ass off for the next 12 years, I could be a full faculty with tenure by the time I’m 65.