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