Collaborations cited: Report backs cluster-hiring initiative

Lisa Nakamura says “new media” such as the Internet and video games are filled with endless examples of racial and cultural stereotyping, particularly in their depiction of how people of different races interact with technology.

“Racial stereotyping is common online,” says the UW–Madison assistant professor of communication arts who has written two books and is working on a third dealing with how media portray race. “Black people are often depicted as non-technological, whereas Asian people are depicted as being quite technological.”

She even suggests that this stereotype has permeated the big screen in films such as “The Matrix,” which she says makes white and Asian characters appear more connected than their African-American counterparts with the computer-generated world in which the film is set.

Nakamura’s work is a component of visual culture studies, an interdisciplinary program created through the cluster-hiring initiative that, since it began in 1998, has authorized 49 groupings of 143 faculty in areas that include visual culture, bioethics, Middle Eastern and Islamic studies, and energy source and policy.

Visual culture studies, Nakamura says, is a collaborative area of teaching and research that is becoming more important as new media increasingly saturate everyday life. Nakamura is one of three visual culture studies faculty hired as part of the cluster-hiring initiative. The others are Jill Casid, art history, and Preeti Chopra, languages and cultures of Asia.

The initiative’s ability to set hiring priorities in a way that fosters interdisciplinary research, teaching and outreach in emerging areas is one reason why a committee formed to evaluate the program recommends its continuation.

A strength of the initiative is that it crosses departments and colleges to create interdisciplinary collaborations. The three faculty in the visual culture studies cluster, for example, provide the catalyst for more than 80 faculty and 45 units across campus that are involved in visual culture studies in their teaching, research and outreach, says Laurie Beth Clark, a professor of art who led the design of the cluster.

Nakamura says the initiative has positioned the university at the forefront of the emerging discipline of visual studies.

“There is a rapid change in new media, and the academy is trying to catch up,” Nakamura says, pointing out that many students spend more time on the Internet than watching television. “The visual culture studies cluster makes the university more innovative in new media.”

This interdisciplinary approach fills a gap that has existed in research and teaching at most American universities, Clark says. Too often students master technical skills or critical thinking skills, but not both.

“Apple can’t hire people who can’t look critically at a problem,” she says, referring to graduates seeking jobs in the computer industry. “They want people who can work the tools and think critically about them.”

In September 2002, Provost Peter Spear convened the eight-member faculty committee coordinated by Linda Greene, associate vice chancellor for faculty and staff programs, to review the cluster-hiring program and make recommendations.

“I wanted to find out whether the program was accomplishing its goals,” Spear says. “In doing so, the committee identified the initiative’s strengths and how to build upon them, as well as its weaknesses and how to correct them.”

In a report to the campus, the committee says the number of clusters is too small and the length of time they’ve existed is too brief to allow a thorough quantitative analysis of their success. The committee recommends another review in three to five years so more complete data are available.

The report says there is widespread support among deans, department chairs and faculty to continue the program. When new funds become available, the university should proceed with authorizing new clusters, the committee says.

“The cluster-hiring initiative continues UW–Madison’s strong tradition of cross-disciplinary collaboration. After all, existing faculty proposed these clusters,” Greene says. “Universities around the country are fascinated by the cluster-hiring initiative. They want to know how it works and whether they can replicate it on their campuses.”

“The committee recommended that the campus continue to support and expand on the cluster-hiring initiative as one way to encourage cross-department and cross-college collaboration,” Greene adds.

The report does, however, raise concerns about the complexity of the hiring process, and what are sometimes limited candidate pools, for cluster positions. It also points out that some members of the campus community feel that cluster faculty receive preferential treatment when it comes to salaries, benefits and teaching loads.

The report also questions whether some cluster faculty are at a disadvantage because they don’t belong to a single unit, which can keep them disconnected from the departments they work with and exclude them from the normal mentoring process. The report says it may also be difficult to judge interdisciplinary scholarship during tenure.

“The report makes some very good recommendations on how to address these issues,” Spear says. “Some of the suggestions the committee makes will continue to improve an already highly successful program.”

The cluster-hiring report recommends that the Office of the Provost should:

• develop workshops to improve the administration of clusters and the hiring of cluster faculty,
• develop ways to improve communication between cluster faculty and their departments,
• establish guidelines for providing salary and benefits, mentoring and tenure for cluster faculty, as well as replacing cluster faculty who leave the university, and
• keep data that track the success of each cluster.

Enhancing the initiative will position UW–Madison to create new clusters and enhance existing clusters, such as visual culture studies, which in 2005 will host the first international visual culture conference to take place in the United States and is conducting campus forums that invite faculty from a variety of disciplines to discuss visual culture.

“In the past, visual cultural studies tended to be more departmental, not interdisciplinary,” Clark says. “Until now, we haven’t seen a broad putting together of these resources.”