"Cases & Questions" Development
Content — Annotated (Color-Coded) Career Account
This is a case summary, or unofficial accounts, of candidate's career. This account is annotated, or color-coded; non-coded accounts are written without biases and procedural issues highlighted, and are used in all ADEPT activities. Consistent formatting was done using a template.
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Sophia Richards (annotated)
Science and Technology Studies
ISSUES: how technology gets evaluated in social sciences, promotion to full professor, age
Sophia Richards, having earned her Ph.D. in Science and Technology
Studies from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, joined a prestigious
research university after spending six years doing development work
with the Carnegie Foundation. Her research described how changing
electronic technologies affected the formation of world markets; her
particular specialization concerned electronic bank interfaces in
southeastern Asian economies. By the time she joined the university,
she had established a body of research (in terms of quantity and
quality) equivalent to that of an associate professor, so her initial
university appointment was made at that level, but she was a decade
older than the typical beginning associate professor.
Richards earned tenure in her second year at the university, as she
continued her previous high rate of productivity measured by cited
papers and funding. In her first four years, the number of her papers,
their citations, and the amount of funding she received were among the
highest in her college. She typically taught the introductory course in
Asian area studies, an upper division undergraduate course in Asian
microeconomics, and a graduate course on science, technology, and
developing nations. Students flocked to her courses and provided her
universally excellent teaching scores.
In her fifth year, Richards was awarded funding from the Rockefeller
Foundation to establish a lecture series and to support some
fellowships in southeast Asian economics for graduate students to
collaborate with her on research. She also designated some funds to buy
her out from some undergraduate teaching.
Connected with the Rockefeller project, Richards established a website
to publish research on technological breakthroughs in international
economies, and proceeded to develop it into the only electronic journal
in the field. Although
all of her previous work appeared in print journals, she began to
publish about 30-40% of her papers through the website as of her fifth
year at the university (bias report on forums for publishing).
In her sixth year, Richards built on her development success with
Rockefeller by securing a substantial endowment from alumnus Gregory
Chan, who had never before donated to the institution. Chan was
impressed with her scholarship, her coordination of the Rockefeller
lecture series, and her energy and diligence in expanding the
curriculum in international studies of science and technology. He
designated the endowment for a distinguished chair for a scholar in
technologies of markets to be named at some near future date.
During that same year, Richards became more involved with the web
journal, publishing two-thirds of her papers electronically on her own
web journal. Richards came up for promotion to full professor based on
her new work — 20 articles on the website and 10 additional papers in
scholarly print journals, the Rockefeller grant, and having fostered
the endowment. It is widely understood that such a promotion is
necessary for her to be eligible for the Chan chair. There
are rumors among faculty in her college that some sort of deal has been
made with Chan that Richards should be awarded the Chan chair (best practices on dealing with rumors).
Although Richards’ record was generally regarded as within the
acceptable range for a promotion to full professor, several concerns
were raised by members of the promotion committee regarding whether she
has relied too closely on her Carnegie contacts in receiving the
Rockefeller funds, whether her scholarship has recently slipped in that
much of it appeared on the website the Rockefeller project sponsors. Some faculty express concerns whether those papers are properly reviewed in the context of an electronic journal that she edits (bias report on forums for publishing), and whether she has tried to leverage the system in recruiting a large donation for a chair that seems designed for her (gender bias report). How would you consider such concerns in the context of evaluating whether Richards ought to be promoted to full professor?
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