Page 5 - CEMS News Winter 2023

CEMS NEWS
Quality and Community continued from page 4
kinds of places, procedures, and support structures are available to deal with the problems. Again generally,
the “consumers”—faculty, students, industrial leaders, legislators, activists—know the problems, live with them every day, can define them—but they’re less effective
at coming up with solutions that are practical within the constraints and expectations of the university as a public asset. That, one would hope, is the focus and role of the administration. Both roles are important. I’ve had both of them at different times—sometimes at the same time—and I’ve tried to reflect on both perspectives in the book. The result is two intersecting themes: the university character and obligations as a public, land-grant, research university (the administrator’s voice); and the department as a unit that emphasizes quality, community, and commitment at all levels.
CEMS Stories
Are there stories or other anecdotes that didn’t make it into the book, that you can share now? What did you edit out of the book?
Story-telling is an important part of the book. In that respect, it differs from a typical academic department history. The department and its faculty have been national leaders at
the forefront of chemical engineering’s evolution from an empirical industrial support field to an engineering science with broad opportunities for connection to materials science, biomedical research, and information technologies. Its reputation, and the accomplishments of its faculty and alumni, are undisputed and I didn’t want to review that record, as much as I am proud of it. It’s the how that matters in the book. How did it do its thing? How did it emerge
as a high quality, mutually supportive, multi-disciplinary community committed to the enterprise and its future as well as its present? What accounts for the “affect” as well as the “effect?” The answers have to do with people and their personalities and interactions. The anecdotes, the “boxes”, are meant to capture that color.
Frankly, I had the most fun with the boxes and the footnotes because they stirred memories of the events and the people.
I have slightly censored some of the stories, but only in
very few cases. There are a couple of entries that are really peripheral to CEMS, but too good to have left out—so I didn’t. I didn’t mention Arnie Fredrickson’s love affair with his red Porsche and how one Minnesota winter, a cycle of freezing and thawing flooded his garage and consequently encased his car in ice up to the hub caps—for the rest of the winter. I also didn’t describe how you could pull his chain
by suggesting that the Kensington runestone (claimed to be evidence of the early appearance of Vikings in Minnesota) was authentic. I regret that space didn’t allow me to include more examples of the hundreds of Aris’s Dithyrambs and Dodecils, which celebrated people and occasions not only at Minnesota, but at our sister institutions throughout the country.
Perhaps some of these other “potential boxes” will be
the subject of future efforts. Which reminds me of Neal Amundson’s advice on gamesmanship and technical papers: “When you write a paper on a new and potentially rich subject, always end the paper’s title with a Roman numeral. You may not have a future .II or .III in mind, but it clears out the competition for a while.”
Takeaways for the Reader
What do you hope people learn from the book or take away after reading it? What did you learn from writing it?
I hope it convinces people of the importance of a department’s culture on its effectiveness. I hope it conveys the idea that quality, community and commitment are
not competing characteristics, but synergistic concepts. Similarly, that teaching and research—and their interaction— are not only obligations, but opportunities. That all of these ideas lead to a dynamism that guides an institution not only to recognize and preserve its values, but to do so in a way that balances continuity and change. That seems to me to be particularly important at a time when we confront and need to respond to social failures that demand change,
and technical developments that offer enormous creative opportunities.
continued on page 6
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