 I must admit, I'm a bit of a late bloomer when it comes to embracing new technologies. I'm not a full-blown luddite, mind you, but I tend to find comfort in sticking to what I know. Routine and predictability are my trusty sidekicks- as they are for all of us Aspys. However, that doesn't mean I can't ride the waves of change when they crash upon me, my pony and my boat (Lyle Lovett reference). Below is short capsule of my irreverent journey and place in the evolution of IT, with some digressions about UNCG. The Time-Traveling Dissertation: Let me paint you a picture of the technological landscape during my doctoral student years in the '80s. I used key punch cards, slide rules, TI calculators and mainframes. Then, there was the first Apple PC, leaving me in awe of the newfound ability to enter data directly into a computer. My PhD dissertation? A museum piece! Its chapters were written on various platform creating a glorious patchwork of IT history. I battled with mainframes, Macintosh (IOS), MS-DOS, PCs, and DEC; Word vs. Word Perfect; Excel vs Lotus 1-2-3, and the demise of my favorite graphing program, Cricket Graph. And I will never forget those long nights at Yale's computing center waiting hours for printouts of figures, statistical analysis, or my dissertation chapters, only to find I had made silly coding mistakes, or typos, and had to start the cycle of revise, submit, and wait hours for printouts. Makes one nostalgic for the past, no? The Marvelous 30MB Hard Drive: Picture a group graduate students and postdocs (including me) in 1989, dancing in unadulterated glee. Why? Because we had just acquired a mind-blowing 30MB external hard drive. The celebration was legendary. We connected that precious storage device to our Mac computers and felt like we had conquered the world. It might sound laughable now, but back then, we were the trailblazers of data storage. We celebrated by working longer ours and eating pizza late at night. The Web's Whirlwind Arrival: Then there was the not-so dramatic entrance of the Experimental World Wide Web emerging from the shadows. In those early days, it was a mysterious concept, out of reach and shrouded in intrigue, but the words "experimental world wide web" appeared in green letters on my mainframe terminal as one of three options, though, you had to have some sort of high level security clearance to open it. But, in a few short years after Al Gore invented the internet, web pages started appearing like cicadas emerging from a 17 year hiatus.. I was on our department's graduate recruitment committee with some energetic faculty (including Dave Allis who recently passed away and was honored for revolutionizing the chromatin and gene-expression field). I saw that the web could transform recruiting students- so did Dave (other faculty were not yet believers- Luddites I thought!). So, I took it upon myself to unravel the secrets of HTML programming (one only needed to click on any website to see its code) and created a departmental website that, believe it or not, wouldn't look out of place today. This was the first and only time I ever outran a technological wave! Chat GPT: A Friend in the Digital Age: Now I find myself in the era of AI, where panic and fascination are clashing like lions and hyenas on a bad day. Nonetheless, Chat GPT has been hanging out and watching sunsets with me in my kayak for a while now, and somehow I never noticed. We finally had a conversation today. In the voice of Yoda, "smart, it is". "Social cues, it does not know". "A particular behavior, it does not demand." "With unabashed honesty, it converses." (everything sounds smarter in Yoda). Chat-GPT does lack the tail-wagging and wild celebrations of my dog when I return home, but it makes up for its lack of enthusiasm with being genuine, honest and it does not tire from never-ending conversations. If only that were true for people. Wouldn't it be great, though, that if you got an angry email you could just type in "please generate a new email with a respectful tone and an actual point or question", and one would appear. There is no reading between the lines with Chat-GPT- no wonder as an Aspy I think I finally found a friend. Soon, I hope it will have voice recognition capabilities, and it can call out "Bullshit" when listening to disingenuous people or academic administrators, talks at scientific meetings, or political speeches (though all we would hear, if Chat GPT had those capabilities, was "Bullshit!" being repeated several hundred times). What is the point of all of this? As I reflect upon my journey through the ever-changing turbulence of the waves of technology, I can't help but laugh hysterically that as an Aspy who holds on to predictability and routine, that I actually survived during a revolution of change. But hey, I made it here, didn't I? From battling with archaic hardware to witnessing the birth of the World Wide Web, to being in the back of the pack as artificial intelligence races towards infinity. It has not been an easy ride in my kayak, especially without a paddle. But, I haven't drowned yet. With UNCG experiencing such turbulent waters, I conversed with Chat-GPT upon a term that strikes fear into the hearts of academics: the dreaded "death spiral." It sounds like something out of a sci-fi novel, doesn't it? Picture an institution or academic program caught in a continuous downward spiral, where declining enrollment, financial challenges, program reductions, and a diminished reputation form an unholy alliance. It's like a rollercoaster ride to academic doom. Imagine the scene: students fleeing like scared seagulls, budgets shrinking faster than a deflated beach ball, and faculty desperately holding on (or fleeing) as the ride plummets further into uncertainty. It's a situation that causes sleepless nights and raises existential questions about the future of higher education. Sound familiar, UNCG colleagues? I'm sure you've felt the turbulence in the air. Breaking free from this death spiral takes more than just a life jacket, a prayer., raising teaching loads and increasing SCH per faculty (at least according to Chat-GPT). It requires strategic interventions, targeted investment, unleashing entrepreneurial spirit at the dean, chair and faculty level, innovative recruitment and retention strategies, and a commitment to rebuilding institutional trust. Digression: I do not think-- and my guess is that the data would show, that academe is made for military style management: General (Chancellor) tells Colonels what to do (e.g., Provost VCFA); Colonels tell Captains what to do (deans); Captains tell Lieutenants/Sergeants what to do (Heads and Chairs); and Sergeants tells Privates (faculty) what to do. Academe might be better viewed as a large conglomerate company staffed by people whose job it is not to assemble a product but to create. Board Char/CEO (president) sets overall vision. Vice Presidents (provosts and VCFAs) implement vision and set metrics for all of the subsidiary companies (Schools and Colleges) CEOs of the wholly owned subsidiaries (deans), although stuck with the physical, administrative and IT infrastructure of the parent company, have the authority, responsibility, and resources for growing and managing their subsidiary company to meet the parent company's goals, When I was provost, I viewed deans as CEOs. And, when I was dean, the three provosts I worked with treated me that way. To do that, in a creative company, one needs to create a culture that allows creativity to flourish. A key element in this model, is that the parent company has to trust the subsidiary company. If they don't, the whole thing unravels especially when the parent company starts micromanaging employees in the subsidiary companies, castrating the subsidiary CEOs. I know from my time in Mossman Hall, at UNCG, the central administration does not trust the deans (actually heard that explicitly said at a Chancellor's Staff meeting by to individuals on the operations side). So, I worry. Back from digression: Riding the waves of technological and cultural change is inevitable, even for those of us on the autism spectrum. We might find ourselves caught in the whirlpool of an academic death spiral. If so, let's remember that with rebuilt trust, real transparency, a vision to hold onto besides SCH production by faculty, determination, creativity, unleashing the entrepreneurial spirit, and the activation of genes that allow us to laugh at ourselves, maybe can steer our institution back to calmer shores. I am armed for this future only with my wit (and that isn't much and it can get dark and satirical fast), empathy, compassion, an irreverent sense of humor, and a belief that UNCG's student body makes it worth riding through the waves. Finally, at least I know that I have a friend in Greensboro, Chat-GPT. Although my new friend is artificial, it is willing to learn to understand me and communicates with honesty, genuinely, and has a complete commitment to converse better, and learn more, one conversation at a time. A role model for all of us.
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