The Ben & Jerry’s Human Development Index

When I travel I love to visit grocery stores.  I think this is an excellent way of determining the cost of living, the local tastes and it’s an interesting opportunity for people watching and seeing how people interact with one another and the level of customer service.

In Africa, the grocery stores were a bit unusual.  If you found something you liked you bought it immediately because you never knew if you would see it again.  I saw lots of unusual products, like eland, kudu and warthog.  And it was always fun to try and explain a product you desired and have the salesperson give up and offer you a condom.

In Italy I remember seeing baby food made from horsemeat.  In India, we drank Thumbs Up! soda.  And in China I tried durian, which kind of looks like a spiky watermelon and smells like feet.  But in the end, after trying whatever exotic and strange food (zebra testicles anyone?) is available I navigate myself towards the ice cream selection.

Each year the United Nations publishes the Human Development Index.  Using three statistical indices: life expectancy at birth, mean years of schooling, and per capita income, the UN rates each country in terms of “development.”  Some countries, such as North Korea and Somalia are not rated due to the lack of information.  All other countries are rated from low to medium to high to very high development.  Most western countries (Australia, the US, Germany, etc.) are considered very high, while most of Africa is low.  Botswana, South Africa and Namibia are medium.

While the UN Human Development Index is all well and good, I prefer my method of measuring human development: Ben & Jerry’s ice cream.  Obviously, in countries where Ben & Jerry’s is absent, there is low (or maybe medium) development.  Countries which sell Ben & Jerry’s are naturally high or very highly developed.

However, I take my analysis one step further.  I like to examine the price point of Ben & Jerry’s to determine the cost of living.  In the U.S. the price of a pint of Ben & Jerry’s is roughly $4.  Four years ago, when I took my students to Switzerland, a pint was €11.90, which is about US$13.

Here in Australia, we are looking at AUD$12.50, which is equivalent to US$9.15:

In conclusion, according to the Ben & Jerry’s Human Development Index, the U.S., Australia and Switzerland are all very highly developed since they all sell Ben & Jerry’s.  However, it is evident that the cost of living is higher in Australia, and still higher in Switzerland, than the U.S. as demonstrated by Ben & Jerry’s being more than twice as expensive in Australia and more than three times as expensive in Switzerland than in the U.S.

My academic superhero is Hans Rosling, a Swedish academic who conducts research on human development statistics.  I am going to tell him about my Ben & Jerry’s Human Development Index and see what he thinks.  Maybe my 1,000 citations are right around the corner!

Citation Nation

As an undergrad, I didn’t fully understand what professors did.  I would like to say that now that I am a professor I comprehend this better, but I still can’t be sure.

At Hopkins, where I did my undergrad, to a certain extent the professors had a poor reputation amongst the undergrads.  That’s not entirely true.  We loved them.  But at times we also loved to hate them.  I remember having a conversation with some peers which equated to, “What does that guy do anyway?  He teaches one class a semester.  He lectures two hours a week, his TAs do all his grading, and he’s never on campus.  How do they justify paying him six figures?”

You know what obnoxious undergrads who say those nasty things become when they grow up?  That’s right.  They become THAT GUY!  And so, almost twenty years later I am THAT GUY.

If you aren’t an academic, or closely related to one, chances are you don’t fully understand what professors do. Let me give you a quick overview.  In theory we teach, but not really.  If a professor works at a community college, liberal arts college or “teaching” university, chances are they teach four classes a semester and don’t get paid particularly well for the massive amount of work they do.  When a professor is employed by a research-focused university, they teach less (perhaps only one or two classes a semester) and are expected to publish.  The more research intensive a university is, such as Johns Hopkins, the less they teach and the more they research.

The University of Queensland, where I recently began working, is one of Australia’s “Group of 8” universities.  Basically, it’s an Australian Ivy League school.  It is also ranked among the top 50 universities in the world. Suffice to say, they expect us to do a lot of research here.  I’m excited for the challenge of being a faculty member in a very research intensive university.  However, with that challenge comes a new set of expectations.

Those higher expectations affect our long-term careers in terms of promotions and tenure. Tenure is when an institution grants a faculty member job security for life for attaining a certain level of achievement.  Tenure at each university is a little different.  For instance, at a teaching institution, tenure is based primarily upon teaching scores.  At research institutions, your publication record is more heavily weighted.

I received tenure at my previous (U.S.) institution a few years ago.  When I chose to leave and come to Australia my tenure was not honoured (which is pretty typical), particularly because I was moving up to a more highly ranked and competitive university.  I don’t start from scratch, but I have a few more boxes to tick before I get tenure here.

At my previous institution (1^st U), tenure was straightforward.  We had to have about 10 journal articles published within five years of our start date.  We could publish in any good journal we wanted related to hospitality and tourism.  There are roughly 100 decent hospitality and tourism journals.

Last year when I was doing interviews, I was at university X (a research university) where I was told to publish in their list of required journals.  If I published outside university X’s list (which consisted of about 18 journals) then my articles wouldn’t count toward tenure.  I was also told half of my publications needed to be in SSCI rated journals.  There are 11 SSCI journals in my field.  In case you are curious, I was offered the job at university X but elected to come to UQ instead.

Now that I’m in Australia, I’m expected to publish in journals ranked by the Australian Business Dean’s College (ABDC).  Ideally, I should be publishing in A and A* ranked ABDC journals.  Incidentally, there are about eight ABDC A and A* journals (which are also SSCI journals).  Do you see how this field has shrunk from 100 journals to fewer than a dozen?

However, now there is an additional hoop to jump through: citations.

A few years ago a grad student asked me how important I thought citations were.  I told him I had never heard anyone mention them as being important.  1^st U didn’t care about citations.  University X never said anything about citations; they were focused on their own list and SSCI journals.  It now appears that citations are what separates the men from the boys.

Citations are when someone writes a journal article and they refer (cite, reference) to an article which I wrote earlier.  The point is, you can’t just do research and publish it anywhere.  You have to publish in good journals.  And now, you can’t just publish in good journals.  Now you have to publish in good journals AND get people to talk about your work in their articles.

And now for the burning question:

How many citations do you need for tenure Kelly?

Excellent question.  Drum roll please…. ONE THOUSAND!

Oh wow.  Kelly, that’s a lot.  How many do you have?

Not that many!

I basically have to increase my current number of citations five-fold.

So, to all those aspiring future professors out there, may I offer you a piece of advice?  Pay attention to your citations.  Every year the job market becomes more competitive and the requirements for tenure become more rigorous.  I can’t possibly imagine what the next benchmark will be for tenure and promotion, but chances are they will be even greater.  Since Ron Burgandy (Anchorman) makes everything better:

How to Write a Successful Fulbright Proposal

So you want to be a Fulbrighter? If you have the aptitude, skill set and academic background that’s one thing.  But the art of the application is an entirely different beast.  Over the past year, and especially within the last month, I’ve had tons of people contact me asking me for advice regarding how to write a successful Fulbright Grant Proposal.  Since I’ve received two Fulbrights and as a Fulbright Alumna I’m now a proposal evaluator I figured I might as well share my knowledge with the world, and put that information online in hopes of helping aspiring applicants.  Let’s get started.

You may have heard of Fulbright before, or have been totally unfamiliar with it until you ran across my blog.  In a nutshell, the Fulbright Commission is part of the U.S. State Department which provides funding to students and faculty members to conduct research and teach (for professors).  If you would like to learn more about Fulbright please visit this website: www.iie.org/fulbright.

If you would like to consider applying to Fulbright here are a few easy steps to help you along with the process:

1. Identify the country and a specific university to be your host institution.  If the country/university doesn’t have a need for someone in your field then find another option.  For instance, since I am a Tourism professor I searched for universities interested in having a Tourism person.  There were three options: Thailand, Ethiopia and Botswana.  I decided I wanted to go to Botswana, but I did list other alternatives in case Botswana didn’t work out.  Many other Fulbrighters I have known did NOT get their first choice location, so it was a good thing they listed other alternatives. (P.S.- Every time I pass through Ethiopia I am SO THANKFUL I chose Botswana!) 
2. Write your project proposal and tailor it to the needs of the country/university.  This is where you have to revert back to thinking like a high schooler who wants to get into their first choice college.  You have to set yourself apart from the competition and demonstrate why you are the best person to be a Fulbrighter for that institution/location.  For me this was easy.  Botswana has the most wildlife in all of Africa.  The country is trying to take advantage of this resource by promoting tourism, but thus far tourism numbers in Botswana pale in comparison to most other more established African tourism destinations (Kenya, South Africa, etc).  I created a project centered around how to increase tourism revenue while protecting the natural resources of the area. 
3. Once you have formulated your proposal get your hopeful host institution to support it.  I will explain the Fulbright evaluation process and timeline a little later, but for now it is important to note that it is a MAJOR advantage to have the institution behind you.  Fulbright generally requests a letter of support/letter of invitation from someone at the university which says something along the lines of, “We’ve read Dr. Phelan’s proposal and believe her expertise is in line with what our department is trying to accomplish.  We believe she will make a significant contribution if granted a Fulbright and SHE IS AWESOME! WE WANT HER!”  (This is my interpretation, not what was actually written; but you get the drift.)  For students it is IMPERATIVE to have a letter from a faculty member at the host institution write a letter committing to mentor you in your studies.  Fulbright does not like lost children wandering around without someone to mother them (academically). 
4. Start your application early.  Keep in mind the majority of Fulbright host institutions are in Third World countries.  It may take weeks to get a response from someone at the host institution to respond to your email and say they want to host you.  Then you have to get a letter of support.  This is not the U.S. and hey, if you want somewhere as efficient as the U.S. then don’t bother going abroad.  Many of these countries have electricity problems, or the campus has ZERO technology, so a professor may only check his email once a month (true story).  You need to give yourself 2-3 months to communicate with the host institution to get their commitment and the necessary documentation. 
5. Get recommendation letters.  I wouldn’t say that recommendation letters make or break you, but they do count.  Fulbright wants to know you can hack it, so this is where your referees can really help.  You need three letters and I suggest asking each person to focus on something a little different.  My department chair talked about me working with lots of international students and the research I had conducted in Africa previously.  My dissertation chair (who is also a mentor and friend) talked about me from a more personal standpoint and the fact that I am flexible, can adjust to uncertain and uncomfortable situations well, and am good at understanding people regardless of their background.  I don’t know what my Associate Dean said, but I knew she would say something positive because she’s always been a huge supporter of me.  She is also one of my most dedicated blog readers- Hi Dr. H! Can’t wait to see you again in a few weeks! :) 
6. Submit your application on time- or better yet- early.  In fact, make sure you start the online application itself at least a week or two early because there is so much information you need to provide and you may have to hunt for it.  If you have dependents you have to provide all their info as well (birthdates, passport numbers, SS#s) and you may not have that memorized.  In order to make sure you aren’t waking up your spouse in the middle of the night because the application is DUE IN TWO HOURS!!!, start early. 
7. Once you hit submit try to forget about it.  If you succeed in doing this tell me how.  My thoughts were consumed with “I wonder if I got the Fulbright?” every day for 9 months.

I realize this blog post is already incredibly long, but I also remember how desperate I was to find any candid information when I was preparing my Fulbright app, so I am going to go on a little longer and explain how the evaluation of a Fulbright proposal occurs.  You will submit your Fulbright application in July.  (This date may be different for students.) The Fulbright staffers ensure your application has everything necessary before they send it to the first round of reviews.

1. September: First your application is reviewed by former Fulbrighters.  These Fulbrighters aren’t necessarily 100% in your field.  For instance, I’ve reviewed applications for History, Political Science and a couple other areas.  This review is basically to make sure your application is realistic and feasible.  For instance, I received a student proposal and the student listed several different schools (which were all over the board- the equivalent of Yale and Prince George’s Community College) he wanted to consider going to, he never mentioned who he would work with, and there was no letter of invitation from any host institution.  This told me he hadn’t put in enough effort and was very unfocused.  I did not recommend advancing him to the next round. 
2. November: Your application is reviewed by people in your field.  Now, if your field is new to Fulbright these people may not even necessarily be from Fulbright.  For instance, my field of Tourism has only been hosted by Fulbright a short while, so some of my second round reviewers may not have completed a Fulbright before.  Your subject area experts are evaluating your project to determine whether your data collection methods make sense, if you can complete what you want to accomplish in the timeframe proposed and whether you actually contribute anything meaningful to academic literature.  My graduate students constantly hear me ask them, “So what?” when they want to conduct a new research project.  If you haven’t explained in your application why anyone would care about what you are studying it is unlikely you will get selected. 
3. January: Your host institution evaluates the applications and ranks their selections.  UB had 8 subject areas (Tourism, Medicine, Education, Natural Resources, etc) for Fulbrighters.  This means if you are Theater Arts and the host institution doesn’t list Theater Arts as a desired subject area you might as well look elsewhere.  Even though UB had 8 subject areas listed, they knew they would only get 2, maybe 3 Fulbrighters at most.  The host institution reads the applications sent to them, decides which they do not want, and then ranks the individuals they do want.  UB ranked 10 people this year.  They only got 2.  When I turned down my second Fulbright that meant person number 3 was given an award. 
4. March-May: Fulbright sends out notifications.  I found out on March 18^th of last year that I got the Fulbright.  This year I did not receive notification until May.  (For the record, I was ranked number 1 this year, so it wasn’t like they didn’t want me. There was some turnover in the Africa Regional Office and they were simply operating on a slower timeline this year.)

For anyone applying for the Fulbright I understand how difficult it is to be patient- been there, done that! But once you get awarded a Fulbright time starts to move at the speed of light.  I had roughly 100 days last year to pack up my office, my house, put things in storage, arrange for people to cover my classes, decide what to do with my graduate students, pack for Africa, get all my vaccinations, shots and other medications, make the rounds visiting family and friends, update my will, and mostly importantly promise my mother I would take her to Walt Disney World when I returned.  Thank goodness I didn’t stay a second year, I can’t even imagine what I would have promised her for another year away from home.

If you have stayed with me this long today, thank you!  If you are an aspiring Fulbrighter, good luck!  And if you make the cut and get to spend some time overseas, congratulations!  I hope you take full advantage of your good fortune and have the time of your life.  I certainly did.

The Poverty-Weather-Suicide Correlation

I’m enjoying the conference I’m currently attending because there are people here from all over.  Aside from me there are only two Americans, but there is a large contingent from Europe and Africa.  Since I am a bit unusual as I haven’t left Africa for the past year a number of people have approached me and asked a variety of questions about my time here on the continent.  Today I had a conversation with someone about poverty in Africa.  I told her that most government officials in Africa regard poverty as being out of their control, something they simply can’t change.  Just like they can’t predict or influence the weather, they can’t influence or change the occurrence of poverty.

Botswana is considered an upper middle income economy, but according to the World Bank 32.9% of the population still lives below the national poverty level.  Of course, Botswana is the wealthiest country in sub-Saharan Africa.  I know I’ve mentioned some of the unemployment issues in countries like Nigeria (54.7% of the population lives in poverty) and Zimbabwe (72% poverty), that Lesotho (56.6% poverty) used to be so poor that one of their primary exports was human blood, and that Congo (71.3% poverty) is so unfortunate they can’t afford to eat the cassava and instead they eat the leaves from the plant.  Poverty alleviation is a huge key term which you hear all over the place.  But the truth is most African leaders don’t think poverty can be cured, so they don’t really sweat it.

It should be noted that poverty alleviation is different from economic growth.  I have a friend who works for the World Bank.  His job is to identify aspiring entrepreneurs, give them micro loans- typically $1,000 or less- in an effort to get them to improve their socioeconomic status.  He can’t GIVE this money away!  He told me about a conversation he had with a fisherman.  The fisherman said he caught three fish each day and then sold them; that would meet his needs.  Mr. World Bank explained he would loan him money to buy a new boat, or new nets, or whatever he needed to improve his business so he could catch more fish.  The fisherman’s response: “I don’t need to catch more fish.” Mr. WB explained if the fisherman caught more fish he could send his son to university, or have the money if his wife got sick, or maybe just buy some milk for his family.  The fisherman said he didn’t need money in case those things happened.  He said when his wife got sick he would just catch five or six fish that day to buy her medicine or pay the doctor.

The reason the fisherman in the story didn’t want to earn extra money is because he would never get to save that money, so it was pointless.  The challenge with elevating Africa out of poverty and improving standards of living is because the culture here does not encourage future planning.  Family ties are important and everything is communal.  This means if the fisherman catches 10 fish and suddenly has more money his aunt in the village will show up and ask for the money to pay her medical bills.  If he catches 20 fish he won’t see any profit from that either because his distant cousin in the next village will ask for the money to pay the bride price for her son’s upcoming marriage.  If he catches 50 fish then the niece of his neighbor’s granddaughter in the country next door will show up on his doorstep asking for a loan to pay for her father’s funeral announcement.  And the cycle continues and never ends.

As I continued my conversation with the woman at the conference today she asked me how Africans are able to withstand so much poverty, violence, government instability, persecution, disease and everything else they put up with.  Just last night I finished the book David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell.  In his book, Gladwell states that happiness is measured on a sliding scale in relation to one’s peers.  He states that Switzerland has the happiest people in the world.  However, Switzerland also has one of the highest suicide rates.  By contrast, Africans are significantly less happy because of all the challenges associated with living here, but since everyone else here is miserable (at least in terms of material possessions, wealth, etc.) the suicide rate is very low because they can’t look at others and be envious since everyone is in the same (sad) boat.

Concessions

No, not the concessions you have at a baseball game.  Though a hot dog sounds really good right about now.  Concessions as in, “What is your list of demands that will convince you to accept another Fulbright and remain in Africa for another year?”

In case you missed yesterday’s post, I received another Fulbright award which is a huge honor.  However, if you have been following my blog for any amount of time you know that living in Africa is a bit more challenging than home, or any western country for that matter.  But Fulbright, and the U.S. Embassy here, really want me to stay, so much so that I was told, “Tell us what we can do to make this deal happen.”

Today I gave that proposal a little bit of thought.  I’ve spoken to a few friends and gotten lots of email messages from people trying to convince me why I should return to the U.S., why I should stay another year, or what concessions I should ask for.  Here is the ultimate list, compiled in conjunction with one of the (many) co-Presidents of my Fan Club:

Dear Ambassador:

Thank you for your support for my Fulbright award.  As requested, I have compiled a list of concessions I would require to remain in Botswana for the next 14 months.  Please find the list below: 

1. Embassy-sanctioned housing.  I am aware from my friends who work in your office that all embassy homes have their own power generators, water tanks and fuel which are maintained by U.S. government resources.  In an effort to provide a more comfortable standard of living and professional existence, the avoidance of power cuts, water rationing and Internet inconsistency would be ideal. 
2. Diplomatic mail privileges. During that past year I have had a particular challenge attempting to receive any mail from loved ones.  There was the time my package was impounded because I needed to obtain a beef permit from the Ministry of Agriculture for a box which contained a package of beef jerky.  Another time it took nearly two months for a postcard to arrive from Namibia.  I could have walked to Namibia and back in a shorter amount of time.  I still haven’t received my Christmas cards and I know my Dad sent me one that sings- he always does. 
3. PX shopping pass.  I would like to shop at the PX with all the other embassy workers.  There is no such thing as toilet paper shortages or lack of fresh fruit at the PX.  And you don’t have to buy dead people’s clothes either. You guys get your stuff shipped in from the U.S. every week!  I also know there is a Subway franchise.  I got that information from a very reliable source.  Given the lack of restaurants or real fast food in Botswana, this would be a big plus for staying here another year. 
4. A seat at the table.  I think the U.S. needs a Secretary of Tourism.  I’m your girl! I went to the UNWTO Conference.  No one represented the U.S.  I already made lots of connections and have buddies in all the tourism ministries all over Africa.  I could work on your visa facilitation programs, development initiatives and spearhead homeland security and safety training in the tourism sector. 
5. Naming rights.  I realize Phelantown may be too large a request.  But how about a lake or a river?  Queen Victoria is long gone; she won’t know if we rename her lake.  Actually, on second thought, you really don’t need to make me happy.  My mom’s the important one.  Let’s say we just name a shopping mall after her.  Now, that’s definitely doable

Looking forward to your response,

Kelly

The 10,000-Hour Rule

I am a huge fan of the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. If you haven’t read it I highly recommend it because it explains why certain individuals and types of people realize an exceptionally high level of success. Throughout the book Gladwell refers to the 10 year or 10,000 hour rule. Gladwell did not invent the idea; it was actually proposed forty years ago by Herbert Simon and William Chase, two psychologists. Simon and Chase examined chess players and found there were no naturally born chess talents, not even Bobby Fischer. They concluded chess players had to spend on average 10 years or 10,000 hours dedicated to studying the game and perfecting their skills in order to become a grandmaster.

In today’s society people change professions quite regularly. A 2010 article in the Wall Street Journal claimed most Americans average seven careers during their lifetime. If you work 8 hours a day during the approximately 250 business days each year that is 2,000 hours a year at your job. That means you would have to spend five years in each position to become an expert. That sounds feasible. Twenty two years of schooling, 35 years working, that puts you at 57 or so for retirement if you go straight through. Not too bad. But that also means that the second you become an “expert” you start over again from scratch which isn’t ideal.

In my current career (I had two previously) I do not consider myself an expert, yet. But I’m working on it. November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). The project started in 1999 and is aimed at encouraging amateur writers to write a novel during the 30 days of November. I have never written a novel as part of NaNoWriMo, but I’ve taken part in it the last three years with an academic goal in mind. Instead of working on a novel I aim to write a couple of research articles, or work on other writing projects I’m pursuing.

This year as I was gearing up for NaNoWriMo I found AcWriMo. AcWriMo is a spin off designed specifically for academics. Even better. This time around I am trying to get my current and former graduate students to join the challenge. And I have my own goals as well. I plan to write two journal articles, one book chapter outline and an IRB proposal. The goals are supposed to be overly ambitious during AcWriMo, and normally I wouldn’t consider these goals particularly challenging for me, but this month I will be out of the country for 12 days and am unsure how much writing I will actually manage to accomplish while travelling.

For graduate students and professors out there reading this I encourage you to participate in AcWriMo. If nothing else I think adopting a daily writing habit, even if for a short while is healthy. I always encourage my graduate students to write for two hours a day. But I don’t think they listen to me. I think they, like most people, tend to use a feast or famine approach with writing; they don’t write for days or weeks and then when a deadline is approaching, or they see me coming, they write for hours on end several days in a row, often feeling burnt out at the end.

I always try to write two hours each day. And having a blog has been a great encouragement to make sure I do write daily (every week day at least). I normally spend about 30 minutes on my blog and then another 90 minutes to 2 hours on academic writing projects. To put this in perspective, today marks my 82nd blog post. I took my last 20 blog posts and did an average word count. I average 599 words per post. With 82 blogs written to date that equals 49,200 words. 49,200 words at 250 words per page equals 197 pages of writing. Hmmm….. sounds like the length of your average dissertation.

The moral of the story is that slow and steady wins the race. Dissertations, or research articles, or whatever you may be writing, will probably be much more enjoyable if you pace yourself. And, if you make it a regular habit, you can probably get it done in a reasonable amount of time with minimal stress.

So, if you are an academic out there reading this, I realize it is already November 4th, but it’s not too late to join AcWriMo. Plus, it will help you to join now because you need to get your 10,000 hours (or 10 years) in. I was a Ph.D. student for 2 years, and this is my 6th year as a professor. Thus, I haven’t hit the 10 year mark. Two hours of writing a day, 250 days a year for 8 years… that’s still only 4,000 hours. Like I said, I’m working towards becoming an expert, but I’m not there quite yet.

Malcolm Gladwell wrote, “achievement is talent plus preparation.” For everyone reading this, regardless of your profession, I think we can always use a little more preparation, or practice. The other saying with which I believe we are all familiar is, “practice makes perfect.” I’m not convinced about that one, but hey, why not strive to be perfect?

Preaching to the Converted

As I mentioned in some of my past postings, I am here in Nairobi to attend a conference, the Ecotourism and Sustainable Tourism Conference.  (Yes, I agree, the Department of Redundancy Department must have been responsible for the naming.) For the last several days I’ve been attending workshops, presentations and other networking events with both industry practitioners and academics.  Today as I was sitting in one of the sessions I began reflecting on the conference and feeling very Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

On the one hand I am definitely enjoying the conference.  I’ve certainly learned a lot, particularly about ecotourism efforts here in Africa.  If nothing else I have plenty of examples now which I can use in my teaching.  I always feel as if I don’t know enough about tourism here in Africa, and since I teach here I consider that a bit of a personal weakness.  But being here has exposed me to a lot of different industry approaches and ideas I haven’t seen before in the U.S. 

However, on the other end of the spectrum I have been looking at the research discussed here and think it leaves a lot to be desired.  If all the academic researchers were from Africa I would be a little more understanding, but most of them are from the U.S. Now, I should note there is only one conference attendee from the Hospitality and Tourism Management field. But he’s not presenting.  All the academic presenters are from Parks and Recreation departments.  Apparently the expectations are quite different between HTM and PR research, because nothing that I’ve seen thus far would ever get published in an HTM journal.  The research I’ve seen here has been a lot of participant observations and interviews, which is practically impossible to get published in top tier tourism journals. And many of these presentations don’t even address data collection or methodology, they are conceptual, or opinion pieces.  So, from where I stand the rigor seems to really be missing.

The other thing about the research is that many of these “studies” fail to provide managerial implications.  That is something we always emphasize with empirical research.  I guess after ten years of doing research if I don’t hear, “I found ABC which means hotel managers/ tour operators/ restaurants/ etc. should do XYZ” then I can’t quite comprehend the point of the study.  Yesterday I listened to an Associate Professor give a presentation on how nature is amazing and the chameleon’s ability to adapt and hide from predators is a miracle.  The entire time I was sitting there thinking, “So what? How does this help my bottom line if I am the Director of Tourism for a destination?”  Then again, maybe I have tunnel-vision.  But I frequently find myself listening to these presentations, and thinking that the speaker is preaching to the converted.  If the speaker really wanted to be helpful he would give people suggestions on how to help other properties become more ecofriendly and sustainable.  Sadly this topic has never been broached.

As I mentioned, there is one other HTM professor and he is from Hong Kong Polytechnic University.  I visited HKPU when I was in China in April.  That is the most amazing program I have ever seen.  The resources and faculty they have are top notch and the research they do can’t be duplicated.  I would consider them the absolute benchmark in Hospitality and Tourism programs worldwide.  The reason I mention this is because the HKPU professor is here as an observer, not a presenter.  This leads me to believe that perhaps HKPU is going to add an Ecotourism track, or at the very least, some Ecotourism classes to their curriculum.  I know for a fact this professor doesn’t do Ecotourism research and he is an administrator, which is why I suspect this.  HKPU tends to come up with good ideas and then other programs follow its lead, so I wonder if other hospitality programs may start offering Ecotourism courses soon.  I think doing so would certainly be beneficial, but at the same time more HTM academics will need to start doing rigorous Ecotourism research.  Perhaps the tides will start turning in that direction.  But either way, it will need to be approached from a different direction instead of attempting to preach to the converted.

Meetings, Conferences and Research in Sub-Saharan Africa

For the last three days the Faculty of Business here at the University of Botswana has been hosting a research conference.  To say the least, this was a very interesting learning experience.  At first glance, by looking at the program, I expected the conference to be very similar to other international conferences I’ve attended.  But this was quite different from any other I’ve attended in the U.S. or abroad. First of all, here in Africa time is no object.  Meetings typically don’t start on time, and despite this being a conference with a schedule, time still did not provide any barrier.  I foolishly showed up promptly at 8:45am this morning for the first session which was scheduled to begin… at 8:45am.  I was the ONLY person in the entire building!  Fortunately, I brought a book which I proceeded to read until others wandered in close to 10am.

The research was also quite different.  All the attendees were from southern Africa; primarily South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Zambia, and a few other surrounding countries.  Since all the attendees were from Sub-Saharan Africa their research naturally examined hospitality and tourism issues in these countries.  So, from that standpoint I learned a lot about the industry in this region.

However, the research was not what I expected at all.  Most of the research did not actually involve data collection.  Instead, it was more of a compilation of literature review, and findings from other authors, not the people who were actually presenting.  Some of the presenters did interviews or collected surveys, but were not particularly scientific in how they analyzed their data.  I was very surprised because we put such a high priority on statistical significance, large sample sizes and being able to demonstrate the value of our findings.  If a researcher in the U.S. wanted to publish a paper using qualitative data (i.e. interviews) there would have to be some serious explanation as to why the method was appropriate, that the measurement was valid and reliable, and that some real, tangible results were generated.  Here that is not the case.

The other thing I found interesting was that every paper included multiple authors.  And when I say multiple, I mean a lot. As in six or seven people!  That is practically unheard of in the U.S. unless it is a $5 million grant funded by NSF trying to find a cure for cancer, necessitating half a dozen scientists to run lab experiments.  Generally, any publication in a U.S. or U.K. journal with more than three or four authors is considered highly irregular and frowned upon unless it is truly groundbreaking.

While I have some mixed feelings about the conference, as a whole I’m happy I attended.  I definitely learned a lot about hospitality and tourism in Botswana and the surrounding countries. I’m also thankful I had this experience at the very beginning of my stay here so that I have a slightly better idea of what to expect in terms of research productivity and collaboration while I’m here.

My favorite reason for attending conferences, aside from the social aspect of course, is that they always give me new ideas about what I want to work on next and gets me excited about my new projects.  I will say this conference has given me a lot to think about and I am definitely looking forward to starting some new assignments right away.