Sylvia's Journal

It rained cats and dogs the entire day – a record rain day according to the weather man, the kind of rain that gets you soaked in no time. I felt right at home. Not only because of the rain but also because this place is called the low country. As a result of the rain we stayed inside the entire day. It is a nice inside – we sit around two large tables in the front parlor of an old mansion that belongs to the College of Charleston. We deliberated for the entire day, fed well at mealtimes with southern fare (always pecan pie) and in between meals with large bags of Halloween candy, which we ate simply because it was there. All of us will return home a little heavier and rounder.

I got my marching orders for my last board task, the 2009 elections, which will keep me busy until March. We discussed many matters which I don’t understand much about as they have to do with dynamics in the academic world around research and teaching, with the former of higher status than the latter. This is exactly why we exist (and were founded some 30 years ago). Although there is now more appreciation of the role of good teaching, and some well known management and leadership gurus have been associated with our organization, research still carries the real prestige and the academic rewards. Sadly, for many business schools, good teaching does not count.

In my work, we haven’t quite gotten to the quality of the teaching yet since we are still trying to get the topics of management and leadership into the medical, public health and nursing curriculum. Ideally we get the good teaching in at the same time as the topics, but what exactly is good teaching is not always well understood.

All through our discussions we struggled with strategy versus tactics, policy versus nit-picky stuff. A group of 19 organizational behavior academics is not easy to manage – opinionated, and with a variety of thinking styles, we managed nevertheless to stay on task. With staggered three year terms, each meeting the cast of characters changes; as a result we have to relearn how to work together after each election.

Back in our hotel I watched a debate between southern political scientists around the question whether the road to the White House runs through the South. From one of the debaters I learned that the answer is yes for republicans and no for democrats. It was a fascinating glimpse behind the scenes of campaign strategies in these last few weeks before the elections. By the time the other debater came on (answer “no”) I was too tired to follow the argument and took a bath instead and turned in early.