We Fly Together: Tools for folks in academia to move collectively and share the load

Introduction

The naming of We Fly Together comes from the collectivism of geese. Geese can fly farther in a group than they can alone. Additionally the goose at the top of the V-formation has the hardest job and the geese trade off taking on this position.

We are introducing a new series that includes written resources and accompanying YouTube videos. We will explore how project management and strategic planning can be used to support a more just world and build communities that allow humans to be human. You will be introduced to the idea of “baseline goal-setting,” the practice of setting a meetable and concrete set of goals that take into account all of your commitments. The idea is to be realistic about what is possible, find ways to share the load, and make space to dream, grow, and heal. In particular, we plan for the inevitable ways that the world and our individual lives are too much sometimes. 

In the past few years I have gotten much clearer about my own vocational calling. I enjoy creating project management and strategic planning tools that help groups move collectively. I’ll share a recent moment that exemplifies what I mean. I work with a small group of faculty who are experimenting with collectivism. One of the faculty had something come up unexpectedly that impacted her work hours. We had done the creative and sometimes tedious work to get clear on everyone’s roles and responsibilities. We built flex time into my position. I know exactly my faculty colleague’s responsibilities. Within a few minutes I could make an offer to her: “I can take over that one grad student meeting next week, and that would get you back an hour and a half of your time!” Another faculty member quickly offered, “I can take over this other meeting for you.” These are the kinds of communities I want to build. Where we don’t take on too much. Where we can share the load. Where we can step in and help each other. 

When I talk to friends and colleagues at tech companies outside of academia, I hear about a much greater emphasis placed on project management. I don’t think that I am necessarily showing you super novel tools in this series–things like spreadsheets of goals and time estimation strategies. However, what we have been able to achieve within a large research university context is more novel than I would like it to be. If we want to move collectively, we often need to build our own structures within an environment that tends toward individualism.

Some of my background

I am a small business owner. I have been a small business owner for a little over a decade. Much of my work involves consulting projects. In these projects, if you estimate your time wrong, this has direct repercussions for how much you get paid. If a 10-hour project suddenly becomes 20 hours, then your $150 per hour becomes $75 per hour. Over the years this constraint has propelled me to get pretty good at estimating how long tasks will take me. 

I also work in university employment positions part-time. I have a PhD that focused on university physics education. This mix of small business and employee work has given me a lot of insight. Academics who go straight from PhD to postdoc to professor are often less experienced in project management and time estimating. This is understandable because project management is not emphasized in PhD programs. Many professors take an approach to their jobs as “I’ll handle the overload.” However, this doesn’t work for me when I’m paid part-time by universities and part-time through my small business. Additionally, I realized that “I’ll handle the overload” as a model isn’t working well for faculty, either. Faculty are often stressed and feeling bad that they are dropping balls. The individualistic culture at large research universities in particular works against people thinking creatively and sharing the load with each other. 

I have been the lead of project management and strategic planning for a physics education research group at Michigan State University for a number of years. Most recently, our research group worked on four grants with a combined total budget of nearly 8 million dollars. I also was a Co-PI* on a large multi-university National Science Foundation grant through my small business, playing a similar role. I’ve managed projects that had budgets of $10K and others with millions of dollars. I say this because I want to give you hope that a human approach to project management can work at the level of multi-million dollar NSF grants.

One other key aspect of my background is that I’ve been part of founding a number of organizations and national networks, most recently the Society of Indigenous Physicists. Around twenty years ago, as a graduate student, I co-founded The Compass Project, a unique organization that won the American Physical Society's Award for Improving Undergraduate Physics Education. In this work I have gotten to dream with people about what is possible. We have imagined new structures that work for us and built them from the ground up. This background is with me, and the more I get to think creatively with people the more I’m amazed at what is possible.

I look forward to sharing with you tools and lessons learned. The last two years at Michigan State, our research group has gotten into a groove with our collective practices in a way that is really beautiful. I plan to share new resources every few months. Our first resource is a tool that helps us bound the often amorphous nature of research, helping us feel that we have done enough. Coming soon you can expect a conversation with an undergraduate researcher about a resource that made her feel really good about her work. In addition, we will share a goal-setting tool for planning across an entire grant. My social media and website will be linked in the description of the YouTube video and here. 

Acknowledgements: Dr. Little honors the communities that she has been able to dream and grow within: The Compass Project and Access Network communities, the NSF Transfer Advocacy Groups grant team, the Michigan State University research groups in Physics Education Research that she has been a part of (ANSER, S-STEM, and PSST!), and the Society of Indigenous Physicists community. She also honors the personal work that she has engaged in as a small business owner to understand her own time and support others to do the same. And a special shout-out to Dr. Vashti Sawtelle. We dreamed a Research Lab Steward position for me into the world, and it has been a beautiful thing.

Intention setting: I will close here with setting an intention, sitting near Lake Michigan in Chicago. May these tools and stories help people. May they help Indigenous people. May they help Chinook people.

---

*Academic jargon: A Principle Investigator (PI) or Co-Principle Investigator (Co-PI) is a member of a grant leadership team. Typically this role means that the person is involved in co-envisioning and co-writing the grant itself. If the grant is funded it means taking responsibility for some part of the project. The details may vary depending on the granting agency but typically PIs and Co-PIs enter into some kind of contractual agreement when they are awarded a grant.