Bertrand Meyer's technology+ blog

Academic life includes self-governance and require people to sit in committees, take on various duties, serve as director of studies, graduate program director, chair of PhD chair of external relations, department vice chair or chair, dean…

Not everyone wants to play. It is not rare to encounter faculty members who tell you bluntly that as researchers they are too good to waste their time on boring organizational tasks that any mere mortal, or at least any mere academic, can fulfill.

This common situation came to my mind, as I was reading an outstanding new (2022) biography of Louis Pasteur by Michel Morange [1], when I came across the chapter on Pasteur’s return to the École Normale Supérieure in 1857. Excerpting and translating:

He was given two titles: administrator, and director of studies. The function of administrator consisted of supervising the life of students living on campus and to oversee the canteen as well as the dormitory rooms. It was part of his duties to check the correct operation of doors and windows, and to commission any necessary paintwork. He was more generally responsible for maintaining order inside the school and to monitor the student’s attire as well as their behavior.

Impressive! That was a time of highest scientific productivity for Pasteur (in spite of major personal tragedies), with one major discovery after the other, including anaerobiosis (life without air), pioneering studies of fermentation, preparing and performing numerous experiments, carefully refuting spontaneous generation… He was also a dedicated teacher, giving numerous lectures and exposing students to his research.

Remember Pasteur the next time a colleague tells you that his research is too indispensable to the progress of humankind to allow him to take on organizational tasks. If Pasteur could do his evening round of checking the dorm doors, tell the students to dress better and order new paint jobs, maybe you can be director of studies for the department for a couple of years.

Such willingness to take on management duties is part of the price academics pay for the many benefits of academic self-governance. The alternative is to be managed by bean-counter manager types who do not understand academia. Or, perhaps a more immediate risk, to let bad scientists take on these tasks. A look at thriving top universities usually reveals that, at the helm, there is a top scientist. Someone who succeeded in education and research and is devoting a few years to moving the institution forward. Lesser universities are managed by lesser academics. If the good people shirk their responsibilities, the bad ones will take over. Or is your research more important than Louis Pasteur’s?

References

[1] Michel Morange, Pasteur, Payot, 2022. In French. (Other books by Morange have been translated into English, particularly his History of Biology by Princeton University Press, but I do not know about this one.)