A Professors Secret Weapon

[Music]

three years ago i made a major change in

my life

i was working for a fortune 500 company

i’d grown in that company over 13 years

a large sphere of influence a

professional network

a subject matter expert i traveled the

world i got to solve amazing

engineering and geoscience problems i

love that company i really enjoyed it

and i walked away i left it all i took

only my guitar off my office wall

and a fair amount of apprehension and

fear

and i became a professor at the

university of texas at austin

it was a crazy choice i had two children

who are about to go to university with

all the responsibilities of putting kids

through school

i had one who was about to go into

middle school was a major disruption

to understand why i made that choice you

need to know a little bit about me

i lived a different life before i did

not see

the accessibility of education i did not

see the opportunities in high school i

was working full time at a pizza

restaurant

one night coming home late in the

evening

there’s a school night it was dark and

cold and canadian winter evening

i stopped at a gas station to fuel up my

car as i was filling up the car there

was another

person on the other side of the pump

fueling up too

canadians talked to strangers so we

started talking to each other

part way through the conversation and

looked at me pointed at my car and said

do you know how that works that was

weird

while i fumbled around with a response

something about four stroke

internal combustion i don’t know they

said no

how it really works i said well i guess

i don’t know

they came over to my side of the pump

and drew a diagram

in the frost of the windshield it was

the carnot theoretical cycle

the engineering principles behind an

engine and they started to explain it to

me

they told me that they were an

engineering student at the university of

alberta

and that they worked in a laboratory and

what they did

was they designed more efficient engines

i was hooked that was cool they were

cool this was all cool

and i understood it it was accessible

made sense to me

the idea of engineering and science to

improve a machine

and to improve society to impact society

and i could understand it was accessible

i wanted to be part of it

that night i decided that i was going to

be an engineer

or scientist i went shortly after that

met with my guidance counselor

at the high school took him about a

minute to review my marks and turn and

say

michael university not for everybody

that made me mad

that made me scared i knew i had to make

changes

i called up the pizza restaurant i said

that full-time thing isn’t gonna happen

anymore i let the car fall into

disrepair

let the clothes get some holes in them

and i focused on marks i got the grades

i needed to get into the university of

alberta

an engineering program and when i

arrived i was at home

i was surrounded by amazing faculty

students

ideas it was profound i enjoyed so much

i worked so hard

i graduated ranked number one in my

discipline in engineering i went on to a

phd in the rest

that’s the path i took now we get back

to the question of why did i leave and

become a professor at the university of

texas

well the idea the opportunity to give

back to the system that had given me so

much

to be a voice

like that young engineering student to

be able to speak to many

and tell them in an accessible manner of

their opportunity

their opportunity to participate to be

part of that

i was so excited i arrived on campus i

jumped in both feet i learned about the

role

engineering i learned about the idea of

the research

mission the educational mission a

professor

to serve the state of texas and beyond i

was i was in

full full on board excited to do it

i had to make a plan though when i left

the corporation i left everything behind

remember

so i had to build a network i didn’t

have a network outside the company

i had to support my students i had to

add my voice

to the chorus supporting stem and so i

started to devise a plan and i started

to look at all of the synergies all of

the opportunities

how everything would work together my

grand plan to be able to truly give back

and have an impact on many people

and i start to work on that i thought

i’m a professor now so i have a platform

i have a voice now i can speak

i went on twitter i opened up an account

i start to make statements

spatial data is biased we got to do

something about that

no one cared well ricardo elea had a

great

primer on geostatistics and data

analytics my discipline

nobody cared when i shared other

people’s resources and work well i knew

health and safety and environment were

important so i talked about that

and still no one cared i remembered that

social media

often is about rage so i thought i can

do that i put my beret on and i started

to rage a little bit

i said repeatable research now

and of course nobody cared

what was going on i took a step back and

i thought about what was happening

and what i realized was i had nothing to

share

and nobody was listening i had started

all strong and enthusiastic

excited about my role and over what

seemed to me to be a string of

disappointments and perhaps

failures i start to become a little bit

worn down

i was on the road every week knocking on

every possible door talking to every

possible stakeholder

trying to make any deals i could to

support my program to get my students

start getting discouraged i start to

wonder if maybe i was capable

maybe a bit of imposter syndrome sunk in

i thought critically about what was

going on and what i realized was it was

like i had this

tank and the tank was mostly empty

all i had was maybe some of my musings

my ideas

and other people’s resources and it was

like i had a tap

and the tap was just dripping and making

a little puddle but on the other side

was this wall

and the wall was blocking me from that

goal of truly having impact

my voice network insisting and

supporting my students to truly give

back

and that puddle was not going to rode

that wall away

i was stuck about that time i took a

step back and i thought

well i’m an educator i’m here to teach

i’ll focus on that focus on supporting

my students

what i did was i looked at all of the

intellectual hurdles along that path

from where i started to where i was now

and i looked at each one of them each

one of the complexities and i tore them

apart and i designed

tools resources bridges

to help students to be able to get past

each one of those intellectual hurdles

the resources expanded well-documented

workflows

codes interactive workflows where people

can play with the machines the best way

to learn is to play

with the machines even on the weekends

i was coding a python package in spatial

data analytics just days before my

students

would use the code to gain experiential

learning fingers

to keys

now i took a step back and i looked and

i

realized that i had all of these great

resources it was like that tank was

full of good resources and i was

starting to do a better job supporting

my students

but it was like it was all just leaking

up like water from a sieve

and making a puddle it’s a bigger puddle

now than before but it was not going to

erode away or destroy that wall and get

me to where i really wanted to be

once again i reflected on what was going

on

i thought now with all of these great

resources maybe this is the time

for me to think about my voice again and

i did that

i started to work with my voice

i start to look carefully at the

inventory of resources that i had built

and i realized that these are not just

resources

these are products valuable products

products that can help a student

gain new skills and knowledge products

that can help a working professional

gain new skills and add more value

products that can help

a person who’s not considering stem to

maybe think

about stem because something was

accessible and they saw it was powerful

like i did so many years ago

i realized i needed to find a way to

take those

products and project them at the wall

focus

them so they don’t just dribble away

to me i needed a jet nozzle to

put some force behind that potential

energy and to me

that that jet nozzle was social media

all of those products could be focused

at the wall and allow me to bust through

that wall and get to my goal of truly

having

impact building that network supporting

my students

and also adding my voice to the course

of stem

it was perfect and youtube each one of

my

carefully recorded lectures could fit

within playlists

well presented for anyone in the world

to be able to watch

and understand they were all linked to

github where all of the well-documented

workflows

interactive demonstrations were

available for experiential learning

and all of the python package

and other codes and algorithms to

support people and then on

twitter i could take on a new voice

and that voice i called the geostat sky

and i was able to communicate positivity

encouragement

accessible science and engineering to

anyone in the world interested

and people started to listen because i

could point to these valuable products

and people could see value find value by

tuning in

it was incredible and the response was

great

people all over the world start to

listen to

and use this content tens of thousands

of people per month

checking out and using this content to

make impact

the thing that was amazing for me was

getting feedback like

a set of professors from around the

world telling me about how

my online content those products

allowed them to switch rapidly to online

learning with the advent of covet

and to be able to continue their

educational mission while protecting the

safety

of their students i’ve been contacted by

high school teachers

who take my content and share it with

their students

so that they’ll be encouraged to work in

engineering and science

and they can see a professor who’s

accessible and speaking in a way

that they can understand while i was

giving everything away

and it seemed like a great idea to me

but i wasn’t sure

and at one point the cockrell school of

engineering they called me up and said

we’d like to talk to you we’ve heard

you’ve been doing something a little bit

different

i was a little bit worried to be honest

but when i sat down with them what i

found out was that they thought it was

really cool they want to promote it they

gave me a platform through the interview

to promote this idea of just sharing all

of the content

what is a professor’s secret weapon

it’s to make and share valuable products

on social media as simple as that

what’s the benefits there’s so many of

them

first and foremost imagine all of my

lectures are

openly reviewed by anyone in the world

i mean literally i’ve been in arguments

or debates but prior to a lecture

to discuss issues or opportunities to

improve

to the german professor who corrected me

you’re right i made

a mistake in my assumption of

homoscedasticity

but we got it right in the end to my

students

many students will contact me interested

in my courses

i get to point to all of the content and

say

go ahead look see what i teach and now

you decide whether or not you want to

invest

your time your resources to join me on

this journey

and guess what the demand for my courses

does not wane

in fact it’s the opposite i have to keep

adding seats

in addition i can offer my students

something beyond the semester

ever bring content that will continue on

perpetually and it does i tell the

students on the last day of class the

door remains open

we’re family now come back check out the

content

keep working with us and it happens

students who are in full-time hires

students who are in internships students

who’ve moved on to the next year are

contacting me

and using these resources in order to

continue

building new skills and adding value now

what this results in

is a lot of working professionals

i go to companies all the time and

working professionals tell me that

they’re using my content in order to

gain new skills

people are afraid in this digital

transformation

they’re concerned about job security and

we can provide them brand new tools

powerful skills to be able to keep

adding value

in addition new collaborations open up

all kinds of potential stakeholders and

collaborators want to work together with

myself and my students it’s been

wonderful it’s a great thing indeed

finally if you are in touch with the

practice you’re in touch with the

community

it’s a pipeline of research ideas that

supports my team

but besides all of this the most

important thing to me

i go back to that gas station that cold

winter night in alberta and i imagine

tens of thousands of individuals are

using my content every month

how many of them might have might be

just like

i was and will realize by accessible

products in technology that they

themselves could also participate and

join us

we can remove the barriers and we can

make our campus

a more welcoming place by going beyond

our campus

thank you