In my June 5, 2004 entry (June 2004 archives), I presented a list of all known social psychologists (and individuals in related fields) having ties to both the University of Michigan and UCLA (I thank many colleagues for helping augment my list).
I now present the second installment of the series, this time focusing on overlap between Michigan and Stanford. And, as you'll see in the list below, there's a lot of it. Virtually all of the connections with which I've come up are at the graduate-student level and higher (e.g., post-doctoral fellowship, faculty). I'd have to think there are additional people, beyond the few I have, who went to Michigan or Stanford as an undergraduate, then went to the other school in some later capacity. Please let me know of such individuals (or any other people I'm missing at any level).
Here, now, is the list (updated as of February 10, 2006):
Stanford undergraduate-UM graduate student
Geoff Fong
Stanford undergraduate-UM faculty member
Donald Kinder (trained as a social psychologist, on the political science faculty)
Laura Klem (Senior Research Associate, Center for Statistical Consultation and Research)
Lorraine Gutierrez (joint social work/psychology; also attended grad school at Michigan)
UM undergraduate-Stanford post doc
John (Jack) Mayer
UM undergraduate-Stanford faculty member
Barbara Gans Tversky (cognitive psych; also attended grad school at Michigan)
Stanford graduate student-UM faculty member
Angus Campbell
Nancy Cantor (now Chancellor at Syracuse University)
Barbara Fredrickson
Susan Gelman (developmental psych)
Rich Gonzalez
John Hagen (developmental psych)
Barbara Smuts (biopsychology)
Harold Stevenson (developmental psych, emeritus)
UM graduate student-Stanford post doc
Christy Miller Buchanan (developmental psych)
Julie Garcia (post doc upcoming)
Joseph Mikels
Daryl Wout
Elissa Wurf
UM graduate student-Stanford faculty member
Daryl Bem (now at Cornell)
Sandra Bem (now at Cornell)
Jon Krosnick (social psych Ph.D., faculty appointments in communication, political science, and psychology)
Eleanor Maccoby (developmental psych)
Michael Morris (business, now at Columbia University)
Robert Roeser (ed psych, currently W.T. Grant scholar)
Larissa Tiedens (business)
Amos Tversky (deceased)
Faculty at both Stanford and UM
Phoebe Ellsworth (also received Ph.D. from Stanford)
Leon Festinger (deceased)
Hazel Markus (also received Ph.D. from Michigan)
Susan Nolen-Hoeksema (clinical psych, now at Yale)
Edward E. Smith (cognitive science; also received Ph.D. from Michigan)
Claude Steele
Bob Zajonc (also received undergraduate degree and Ph.D. from Michigan)
Miscellaneous
Phil Converse (former director of both UM's Institute for Social Research and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, which, though not officially affiliated with Stanford, is on Stanford property)
I want to thank the following people for their comments and for suggesting individuals for the list, beyond those I had initially put up: David Buss, Barbara Fredrickson, Julie Garcia, Jon Krosnick, Mark Lepper, John (Jack) Mayer, Jennifer Overbeck, Steve Peck, David Sears, and Christian Waugh.
I'll continue doing these Michigan/other school linkages. Please send me your suggestions of schools to link with Michigan!
An Unofficial Page by Alan Reifman, Ph.D. '89
Saturday, February 12, 2005
Thursday, February 10, 2005
It was just recently announced that James Jackson will become the new director of the UM's Institute for Social Research (ISR). The news release gives a pretty extensive summary of his career history and achievements, so I won't repeat it.
James was the social psychology area chair when my cohort entered the graduate program in Fall 1984. In that capacity, James presided over our first-year students' introductory seminar, helping socialize us into the program and the field. I always found him very enthusiastic and very helpful.
Congratulations to James!
James was the social psychology area chair when my cohort entered the graduate program in Fall 1984. In that capacity, James presided over our first-year students' introductory seminar, helping socialize us into the program and the field. I always found him very enthusiastic and very helpful.
Congratulations to James!
Monday, February 07, 2005
Mark Blumenthal, who operates the website Mystery Pollster (and who, as noted in my October 18, 2004 entry, did his undergraduate work at UM; click for October 2004 archives) recently reviewed polling data on President Bush's Social Security proposals. In my opinion, Mark's is the webpage of record for explaining the mechanics of polling to a general audience.
In analyzing recent polls on Social Security, Mark invokes the concept of "non-attitudes," coined by Phil Converse. "Non-attitudes" refer to opinions that are spontaneously generated by respondents who want to create the impression they are well-informed. Converse, though best known in political science circles, received his training as a social psychologist.
For nearly the entire time that my cohort and I were in graduate school at Michigan, Converse was the director of the Institute for Social Research, where social psychology faculty and student offices were located at the time. Converse then moved in 1989 to become director of Stanford's Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, a position he held until 1994.
Converse is today listed as a Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Michigan.
In at least two of the graduate courses I took at UM -- Hazel Markus's on advanced social psychology and Don Kinder's on public opinion -- we covered Converse's work.
In analyzing recent polls on Social Security, Mark invokes the concept of "non-attitudes," coined by Phil Converse. "Non-attitudes" refer to opinions that are spontaneously generated by respondents who want to create the impression they are well-informed. Converse, though best known in political science circles, received his training as a social psychologist.
For nearly the entire time that my cohort and I were in graduate school at Michigan, Converse was the director of the Institute for Social Research, where social psychology faculty and student offices were located at the time. Converse then moved in 1989 to become director of Stanford's Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, a position he held until 1994.
Converse is today listed as a Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Michigan.
In at least two of the graduate courses I took at UM -- Hazel Markus's on advanced social psychology and Don Kinder's on public opinion -- we covered Converse's work.
Thursday, January 27, 2005
Today marks the exact one-year anniversary of the launching of this website. During the first year, I wrote 46 entries, close to my goal of weekly postings (the most recent writings are shown further down on this page, whereas older ones are automatically moved to the archives, which can be accessed via headings over to the right, midway down). This website has helped put me back in contact with several classmates and professors from my Michigan days. I've enjoyed working on the website and I hope you have enjoyed reading it.
I will, of course, continue to post writings. However, to really keep this page fresh and vibrant, I would like to invite all of you out there who have any sort of connection to the Michigan social psych program to supply me with "guest commentator" write-ups.
You can discuss anything, including your favorite research projects, professors, courses, parts of campus, Ann Arbor establishments, etc. If you had to boil down your favorite or most significant UM experience, what would it be?
You can just e-mail me some text (a link to my Texas Tech faculty webpage, which has an e-mail link, is available in the upper right of this page) and I'll put it up. I really want to make this website an historical repository (an electronic yearbook or scrapbook, if you will) and having multiple contributors will help immensely.
I hope to continue with this website for a very long time and, as always, Go Blue!
Thursday, January 20, 2005
One aspect of life at the University of Michigan people who go there know they'll have to put up with is the cold winter weather. In thinking about the coldest days I could remember, I'm highly confident that the most severe weather occurred exactly 20 years ago to this day.
January 20, 1985 was a Sunday, a Super Bowl Sunday, in fact. It was also, of course, a presidential inauguration day, for Reagan's second term (more on that later). The combination of these two major national events makes the date very memorable.
The Ann Arbor weather that day, as I recall, was around -40°F with the wind chill factor. And windy it was! Being out in that weather was literally painful to my exposed skin.
Two grad students hosted a Super Bowl party at their apartment. I lived in the graduate dorms on North Campus that year (my first year) and the party was at an apartment complex south of campus near the Briarwood Mall, so I got a ride from someone.
Other than walking for a few minutes at a time between residences and the car, I was indoors all day, but even the relatively short periods outside were highly memorable.
The bitter cold spell was not limited to the state of Michigan or even the Midwest. In fact, it went as far east and south as Washington, DC, where the inauguration was taking place. As described in a history of the second Reagan inauguration:
"Because January 20, 1985 fell on a Sunday, the public Inauguration ceremony was scheduled for Monday, January 21, 1985. Reagan was sworn in privately on January 20. Owing to record cold temperatures on January 21, 1985, however, the public Inauguration ceremony was moved indoors to the Rotunda, and became a semiprivate ceremony."
For the record, the DC temperature was reported to range from -10°F to -20°F wind chill.
For my remaining years of graduate school (ending in 1989), I lived in apartments in the Central Campus area, where virtually everywhere one would want to go was within short walking distance. During these latter years, I remember two or three other occasions where I thought, "Wow, this is really cold!," but these did not match the intensity of January 20, 1985.
I remember being told once that, ostensibly because such a high percentage of the people who need to be on campus (i.e., faculty, staff, and students) live within walking distance of the university, UM has never once cancelled classes due to inclement weather. That may be an overstatement, but I don't recall any cancellations during my five years.
I just checked the Weather Channel's Ann Arbor data (see link in upper right-hand corner) and for the present January (2005) to date, the average high temperature has been 30°F. This confirms my impression that the Super Bowl/Inauguration weekend 20 years ago was unusually cold.
Lastly, I want to add that while the weather may deter some people from going to UM, I was one of three Californians in my entering social psychology graduate cohort and there were additional Californians in other years (and even one person from Hawaii, Eric Lang).
January 20, 1985 was a Sunday, a Super Bowl Sunday, in fact. It was also, of course, a presidential inauguration day, for Reagan's second term (more on that later). The combination of these two major national events makes the date very memorable.
The Ann Arbor weather that day, as I recall, was around -40°F with the wind chill factor. And windy it was! Being out in that weather was literally painful to my exposed skin.
Two grad students hosted a Super Bowl party at their apartment. I lived in the graduate dorms on North Campus that year (my first year) and the party was at an apartment complex south of campus near the Briarwood Mall, so I got a ride from someone.
Other than walking for a few minutes at a time between residences and the car, I was indoors all day, but even the relatively short periods outside were highly memorable.
The bitter cold spell was not limited to the state of Michigan or even the Midwest. In fact, it went as far east and south as Washington, DC, where the inauguration was taking place. As described in a history of the second Reagan inauguration:
"Because January 20, 1985 fell on a Sunday, the public Inauguration ceremony was scheduled for Monday, January 21, 1985. Reagan was sworn in privately on January 20. Owing to record cold temperatures on January 21, 1985, however, the public Inauguration ceremony was moved indoors to the Rotunda, and became a semiprivate ceremony."
For the record, the DC temperature was reported to range from -10°F to -20°F wind chill.
For my remaining years of graduate school (ending in 1989), I lived in apartments in the Central Campus area, where virtually everywhere one would want to go was within short walking distance. During these latter years, I remember two or three other occasions where I thought, "Wow, this is really cold!," but these did not match the intensity of January 20, 1985.
I remember being told once that, ostensibly because such a high percentage of the people who need to be on campus (i.e., faculty, staff, and students) live within walking distance of the university, UM has never once cancelled classes due to inclement weather. That may be an overstatement, but I don't recall any cancellations during my five years.
I just checked the Weather Channel's Ann Arbor data (see link in upper right-hand corner) and for the present January (2005) to date, the average high temperature has been 30°F. This confirms my impression that the Super Bowl/Inauguration weekend 20 years ago was unusually cold.
Lastly, I want to add that while the weather may deter some people from going to UM, I was one of three Californians in my entering social psychology graduate cohort and there were additional Californians in other years (and even one person from Hawaii, Eric Lang).
Friday, January 07, 2005
Within social psychology, most observers would consider the top three empirical research journals to be the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (JPSP), Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (PSPB), and the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (JESP). Unlike medical journals that sometimes have one-word names such as Eye, Pain, and Thorax, social psychology journals have long names that necessitate the use of the aforementioned abbreviations in our conversations.
Just as January marks the start of a new year, it also marks the beginning of a new annual volume for most academic journals, at least those that publish monthly (some journals publish two or more volumes a year, but one of them would often start in January). The beginning of a new publishing year provides a nice opportunity to note the 1980s-era University of Michigan social psych Ph.D.'s serving in editorial roles for these three social/personality journals.
Most journals in the field tend to have the same editorial structure. Each journal has an editor, a small set of associate editors, and a pretty large board of consulting editors. When an author submits a manuscript to a journal to be considered for publication, the editor will either oversee the review process for that manuscript him/herself or transfer it to an associate editor to oversee. The editor/associate editor will generally send the manuscript to around 3-5 reviewers (from among the consulting editors and experts not on the board, the latter being known as "ad hoc reviewers"). The editor/associate editor overseeing the review of a given manuscript will then integrate the reviewers' evaluative comments along with his/her own independent judgment, leading to an editorial decision of accept, revise-and-resubmit, or reject (immediate acceptances are extremely rare).
At this moment, there is at least one UM Ph.D. grad serving as an associate editor at all three of the social/personality journals listed above. JPSP is such a large journal that it is divided into three subsections: Attitudes and Social Cognition, Interpersonal Relations and Group Processes, and Personality Processes and Individual Differences. Monica Biernat serves as an associate editor for the Attitudes and Social Cognition section of JPSP (this latter link takes you to lists of the editorial teams for all three JPSP sections).
PSPB's list of associate editors includes two Michigan grads, Paula Niedenthal and Bill von Hippel.
Finally, Steve Spencer is an associate editor for JESP.
In looking at the larger category of consulting editors for these journals (available via the above links), the Michigan alums (and post docs) listed are too numerous to mention. I particularly applaud the associate editors, however. I have only served as a reviewer (both as a consulting editor for JPSP in previous years and as an ad hoc reviewer for many journals), and simply reviewing a manuscript is a lot of work. I'd imagine that the effort must be magnified considerably for an associate editor or editor.
Just as January marks the start of a new year, it also marks the beginning of a new annual volume for most academic journals, at least those that publish monthly (some journals publish two or more volumes a year, but one of them would often start in January). The beginning of a new publishing year provides a nice opportunity to note the 1980s-era University of Michigan social psych Ph.D.'s serving in editorial roles for these three social/personality journals.
Most journals in the field tend to have the same editorial structure. Each journal has an editor, a small set of associate editors, and a pretty large board of consulting editors. When an author submits a manuscript to a journal to be considered for publication, the editor will either oversee the review process for that manuscript him/herself or transfer it to an associate editor to oversee. The editor/associate editor will generally send the manuscript to around 3-5 reviewers (from among the consulting editors and experts not on the board, the latter being known as "ad hoc reviewers"). The editor/associate editor overseeing the review of a given manuscript will then integrate the reviewers' evaluative comments along with his/her own independent judgment, leading to an editorial decision of accept, revise-and-resubmit, or reject (immediate acceptances are extremely rare).
At this moment, there is at least one UM Ph.D. grad serving as an associate editor at all three of the social/personality journals listed above. JPSP is such a large journal that it is divided into three subsections: Attitudes and Social Cognition, Interpersonal Relations and Group Processes, and Personality Processes and Individual Differences. Monica Biernat serves as an associate editor for the Attitudes and Social Cognition section of JPSP (this latter link takes you to lists of the editorial teams for all three JPSP sections).
PSPB's list of associate editors includes two Michigan grads, Paula Niedenthal and Bill von Hippel.
Finally, Steve Spencer is an associate editor for JESP.
In looking at the larger category of consulting editors for these journals (available via the above links), the Michigan alums (and post docs) listed are too numerous to mention. I particularly applaud the associate editors, however. I have only served as a reviewer (both as a consulting editor for JPSP in previous years and as an ad hoc reviewer for many journals), and simply reviewing a manuscript is a lot of work. I'd imagine that the effort must be magnified considerably for an associate editor or editor.
Saturday, January 01, 2005
Happy new year to everybody! Later today, Michigan will be playing in the Rose Bowl against the University of Texas. As I've noted in previous postings, I've lost considerable interest in football over the years, due to the violence and injuries of the sport. Football is, however, an enormous part of the fabric of the University of Michigan, so I think at least a brief mention of the Wolverines' bowl-game history is warranted. Further, this provides me an opportunity to recommend a major book that came out a few years ago on the role of athletics in university life.
First, regarding today's game, this will be Michigan's 19th appearance in the Rose Bowl, played in Pasadena, California (I found a web document on Michigan's history of bowl appearances, which is up to date through January 1, 2003; the Wolverines have also earned trips to the Rose Bowl on New Year's Day of 2004 and 2005). In fact, dating from when a previous policy forbidding the Big Ten from sending teams to any other bowl besides the Rose Bowl was eliminated in the mid-1970s, Michigan has made it to a bowl game for 30 straight seasons. And these bowl appearances have often been of the prestigious New Year's Day variety.
Based upon an unscientific survey I recently conducted of family members with Michigan ties, there seems to be somewhat less enthusiasm for the Wolverines' Rose Bowl game this year than in previous ones. This probably stems in large part from the fact Michigan lost its traditional regular-season finale to Ohio State and made the Rose Bowl only through losses by key Big Ten rivals.
Further, the Rose Bowl has traditionally pitted the champions of the Big Ten and Pacific Ten conferences. However, this year, Pac Ten champion USC is playing in the Orange Bowl, under a relatively new provision that if a Big Ten or Pac Ten team is ranked in the top two nationally heading into the bowls, then traditional conference linkages to particular bowls can be overridden to let the top two teams play for the national championship. As a result, Michigan is playing a non-Pac Ten opponent, in the Texas Longhorns. Just as a matter of novelty, I would think the Texas team and its fans would be more fired up for the game than their Michigan counterparts. However, once the game starts, Michigan should be fired up, too (if the players weren't already).
As I suggested above, football is a major part of UM's identity, both to the external public and to people associated with the school. What else can be said about a university whose home games consistently draw over 100,000 fans per game? How should we feel, both at Michigan and elsewhere, about the huge role of athletics in university life, with tens of millions of dollars being used to build palatial sports facilities, coaches at big-name schools making salaries perhaps 10 or 20 (or more) times those of faculty members, and schools' lowering their admissions requirements for athletes (relative to students at large at the same institutions)?
As someone who is both a sports fan and one who cares deeply about universities' academic missions, I have been concerned about this issue for a long time and have sought out information on the topic. One source I would highly recommend is the 2001 book The Game of Life: College Sports and Educational Values, by James L. Shulman and William G. Bowen.
Shulman and Bowen begin by reviewing mission statements from some select universities and asking, "How, then, does intercollegiate athletics relate to such missions?" (p. 3). The authors then present an enormous research study of three generations of alumni (some of whom were athletes) at 30 academically selective universities, including the University of Michigan. From admissions to academic performance while in college to post-college achievements, the book provides statistical analyses on virtually every kind of comparison imaginable -- high-profile sport-, low-profile sport-, and non-athletes; participants in men's and women's sports; and alumni from different generations. The appendices have a lot of further information, including athletic budgets from the schools in the study.
Lastly, and tying this all back to Michigan social psychology, two former UM professors are mentioned in the book. Nancy Cantor, who as discussed in my February 20, 2004 entry (February 2004 archives), is now the Chancellor at Syracuse University, gave one of the testimonial blurbs on the back of the book and had some of her research cited inside. Also, the research of Claude Steele, who moved from Michigan to Stanford over a decade ago, is featured in the book.
First, regarding today's game, this will be Michigan's 19th appearance in the Rose Bowl, played in Pasadena, California (I found a web document on Michigan's history of bowl appearances, which is up to date through January 1, 2003; the Wolverines have also earned trips to the Rose Bowl on New Year's Day of 2004 and 2005). In fact, dating from when a previous policy forbidding the Big Ten from sending teams to any other bowl besides the Rose Bowl was eliminated in the mid-1970s, Michigan has made it to a bowl game for 30 straight seasons. And these bowl appearances have often been of the prestigious New Year's Day variety.
Based upon an unscientific survey I recently conducted of family members with Michigan ties, there seems to be somewhat less enthusiasm for the Wolverines' Rose Bowl game this year than in previous ones. This probably stems in large part from the fact Michigan lost its traditional regular-season finale to Ohio State and made the Rose Bowl only through losses by key Big Ten rivals.
Further, the Rose Bowl has traditionally pitted the champions of the Big Ten and Pacific Ten conferences. However, this year, Pac Ten champion USC is playing in the Orange Bowl, under a relatively new provision that if a Big Ten or Pac Ten team is ranked in the top two nationally heading into the bowls, then traditional conference linkages to particular bowls can be overridden to let the top two teams play for the national championship. As a result, Michigan is playing a non-Pac Ten opponent, in the Texas Longhorns. Just as a matter of novelty, I would think the Texas team and its fans would be more fired up for the game than their Michigan counterparts. However, once the game starts, Michigan should be fired up, too (if the players weren't already).
As I suggested above, football is a major part of UM's identity, both to the external public and to people associated with the school. What else can be said about a university whose home games consistently draw over 100,000 fans per game? How should we feel, both at Michigan and elsewhere, about the huge role of athletics in university life, with tens of millions of dollars being used to build palatial sports facilities, coaches at big-name schools making salaries perhaps 10 or 20 (or more) times those of faculty members, and schools' lowering their admissions requirements for athletes (relative to students at large at the same institutions)?
As someone who is both a sports fan and one who cares deeply about universities' academic missions, I have been concerned about this issue for a long time and have sought out information on the topic. One source I would highly recommend is the 2001 book The Game of Life: College Sports and Educational Values, by James L. Shulman and William G. Bowen.
Shulman and Bowen begin by reviewing mission statements from some select universities and asking, "How, then, does intercollegiate athletics relate to such missions?" (p. 3). The authors then present an enormous research study of three generations of alumni (some of whom were athletes) at 30 academically selective universities, including the University of Michigan. From admissions to academic performance while in college to post-college achievements, the book provides statistical analyses on virtually every kind of comparison imaginable -- high-profile sport-, low-profile sport-, and non-athletes; participants in men's and women's sports; and alumni from different generations. The appendices have a lot of further information, including athletic budgets from the schools in the study.
Lastly, and tying this all back to Michigan social psychology, two former UM professors are mentioned in the book. Nancy Cantor, who as discussed in my February 20, 2004 entry (February 2004 archives), is now the Chancellor at Syracuse University, gave one of the testimonial blurbs on the back of the book and had some of her research cited inside. Also, the research of Claude Steele, who moved from Michigan to Stanford over a decade ago, is featured in the book.
Thursday, December 23, 2004
As December and the holiday season got underway, I began to think about traditions in the UM/Ann Arbor community at this time of year. Given that most people probably leave Ann Arbor for the holidays (often for warmer climes), I could not come up with a lot. One tradition that quickly came to mind, however, was the Galens Tag Days. This event is conducted by UM medical students every December to raise money for children's groups generally, with an historic focus on children in medical settings. Then, several days into December when my Ann Arbor Observer magazine arrived, the cover illustration featured a Galens volunteer, so I knew I was on the right track.
The campaign is named after Galen, an ancient Greek physician. The Tag Days date back to 1927. According to an article in the publication Medicine at Michigan:
"Funds from the first drive were used for a December party for the children in University Hospital, and a portion was saved to found the Galens Workshop the next spring.
The Workshop, which still exists, offers pediatric patients the opportunity to be more 'kid' than patient. Held on the eighth floor of Mott Hospital since the mid-1960s, the Workshop offers events ranging from art projects to Halloween costumes, from parades to parties, from face painting to visits by Michigan collegiate athletes."
As described in the same article:
"The appearance of Galens members in their red ponchos, standing on Ann Arbor street corners with their buckets on the first weekend in December, is a familiar sight to local residents. 'It’s Galens time again,' people say, either preparing to drop coins or paper bills into the buckets or flashing a tag to show they already did. The trademark red and green tags can be seen on almost every winter coat in town that weekend, proud symbols of wanting to help the children of Washtenaw County."
I can't remember if I used to put my tags on my winter jacket or on my backpack.
According to an article in the Michigan Daily (student newspaper):
"The funds granted to Mott are used toward the Child Life Program, which provides activities for children in the hospital and helps them cope with their illness. 'We do it during holiday time because it's a giving time, but it is not holiday-oriented. The money funds activities throughout the year for the children,' said [medical student Paul] Pfeiffer."
As I've mentioned in some of my earlier postings, I'm a faculty member in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies at Texas Tech University. I remember from a few years back that an undergraduate I had in class wanted to become a child life specialist.
In concluding, I just want to wish everyone inside (and outside) the UM community a happy holiday season!
The campaign is named after Galen, an ancient Greek physician. The Tag Days date back to 1927. According to an article in the publication Medicine at Michigan:
"Funds from the first drive were used for a December party for the children in University Hospital, and a portion was saved to found the Galens Workshop the next spring.
The Workshop, which still exists, offers pediatric patients the opportunity to be more 'kid' than patient. Held on the eighth floor of Mott Hospital since the mid-1960s, the Workshop offers events ranging from art projects to Halloween costumes, from parades to parties, from face painting to visits by Michigan collegiate athletes."
As described in the same article:
"The appearance of Galens members in their red ponchos, standing on Ann Arbor street corners with their buckets on the first weekend in December, is a familiar sight to local residents. 'It’s Galens time again,' people say, either preparing to drop coins or paper bills into the buckets or flashing a tag to show they already did. The trademark red and green tags can be seen on almost every winter coat in town that weekend, proud symbols of wanting to help the children of Washtenaw County."
I can't remember if I used to put my tags on my winter jacket or on my backpack.
According to an article in the Michigan Daily (student newspaper):
"The funds granted to Mott are used toward the Child Life Program, which provides activities for children in the hospital and helps them cope with their illness. 'We do it during holiday time because it's a giving time, but it is not holiday-oriented. The money funds activities throughout the year for the children,' said [medical student Paul] Pfeiffer."
As I've mentioned in some of my earlier postings, I'm a faculty member in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies at Texas Tech University. I remember from a few years back that an undergraduate I had in class wanted to become a child life specialist.
In concluding, I just want to wish everyone inside (and outside) the UM community a happy holiday season!
Sunday, December 19, 2004
Yesterday was Texas Tech University's commencement ceremony for the fall semester. As a faculty member at the university, I regularly attend the graduations. The commencement speaker was writer Thomas Mallon, a former English professor at Texas Tech and at Vassar and currently a presidential appointee to a panel within the National Endowment for the Humanities.
The message I extracted from Mallon's talk involved the importance and value of preserving artifacts of one's past, so that one could look back on these items and interpret the memories associated with them from new perspectives. Two examples given by Mallon were his old Little League jersey his mother had saved for 30 years (which made him reflect upon how different the times were when he was a child, as opposed to the present) and a box of hundreds of cancelled checks written decades earlier by his deceased father (which drove home all that his father had done for the family).
Preservation of the past, both of individuals and of communities, has been a steady theme in Mallon's career. Roughly 20 years ago, as I learned from some web research I just did, he wrote a book entitled A Book of One's Own, examining diary writing and famous historical practitioners of it. Currently, his work within NEH involves a major project to digitize newspapers (not just, as he pointed out, those from big cities, but from small- and medium-sized ones, as well) going far back in history, thus increasing their availability to citizens. As Mallon noted, it is communities, as well as families, that say a lot about the fabric of our lives.
Naturally, I view this retrospective Michigan social psychology website in a similar light. I sometimes refer to it as an "electronic scrapbook." As I've alluded to in some of my earlier postings, however, I also have retained physical artifacts of my Michigan education, primarily my course notebooks.
I certainly do not believe people should live their lives exclusively in the past. I nevertheless found it validating to hear a speaker encourage the young, newly minted college graduates (and faculty, administrators, and parents) to preserve their personal histories. Who knows? Maybe 20 years from now, one of the Texas Tech graduates from this past weekend will create a website similar to mine, looking back on his or her years as a Red Raider.
The message I extracted from Mallon's talk involved the importance and value of preserving artifacts of one's past, so that one could look back on these items and interpret the memories associated with them from new perspectives. Two examples given by Mallon were his old Little League jersey his mother had saved for 30 years (which made him reflect upon how different the times were when he was a child, as opposed to the present) and a box of hundreds of cancelled checks written decades earlier by his deceased father (which drove home all that his father had done for the family).
Preservation of the past, both of individuals and of communities, has been a steady theme in Mallon's career. Roughly 20 years ago, as I learned from some web research I just did, he wrote a book entitled A Book of One's Own, examining diary writing and famous historical practitioners of it. Currently, his work within NEH involves a major project to digitize newspapers (not just, as he pointed out, those from big cities, but from small- and medium-sized ones, as well) going far back in history, thus increasing their availability to citizens. As Mallon noted, it is communities, as well as families, that say a lot about the fabric of our lives.
Naturally, I view this retrospective Michigan social psychology website in a similar light. I sometimes refer to it as an "electronic scrapbook." As I've alluded to in some of my earlier postings, however, I also have retained physical artifacts of my Michigan education, primarily my course notebooks.
I certainly do not believe people should live their lives exclusively in the past. I nevertheless found it validating to hear a speaker encourage the young, newly minted college graduates (and faculty, administrators, and parents) to preserve their personal histories. Who knows? Maybe 20 years from now, one of the Texas Tech graduates from this past weekend will create a website similar to mine, looking back on his or her years as a Red Raider.
Thursday, December 09, 2004
Bonnie Barber, whom I've known since we were both undergraduates at UCLA (and then later both graduate students at Michigan), is now at Murdoch University in Australia. Her new faculty webpage can be accessed by clicking here. A developmental psychologist, Bonnie previously served on the faculty at Penn State and University of Arizona. To Bonnie's friends and colleagues in the United States, this gives a whole new meaning to the song lyric, "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean."
Monday, December 06, 2004
Gretchen Lopez, a Michigan social psych Ph.D. who was at UM in the late 1980s and early 90s, has just been named as a Faculty Associate for Diversity at Syracuse University. As described in a Syracuse news release, it appears that Gretchen will be participating in a number of campus initiatives.
Gretchen has been studying intergroup relations for many years and, as noted in her profile on the Social Psychology Network, has continued to publish extensively in this area. Gretchen also co-edited a 2004 issue of the Journal of Social Issues (along with fellow UM Ph.D.'s Sabrina Zirkel and Lisa Brown) on the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education.
Gretchen has been studying intergroup relations for many years and, as noted in her profile on the Social Psychology Network, has continued to publish extensively in this area. Gretchen also co-edited a 2004 issue of the Journal of Social Issues (along with fellow UM Ph.D.'s Sabrina Zirkel and Lisa Brown) on the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education.
Tuesday, November 30, 2004
With the airing today of the Jeopardy show (filmed in September) on which Ken Jennings had his winning streak snapped at 74, I feel compelled to point out that among the all-time Jeopardy greats is Chuck Forrest, who appeared on Jeopardy while attending the University of Michigan Law School in the mid-1980s (1985 or '86, if I had to guess).
I suspect that relatively few people nationally -- outside of the hardest of hardcore Jeopardy fans -- would have heard of Chuck or would remember him if they had seen him play. In addition to the passage of time, another likely factor preventing Chuck from achieving the kind of status reached by Jennings is that during Chuck's run (and indeed for most of Jeopardy's history), contestants had to leave after five consecutive wins. Also, of course, there was no Internet during Chuck's run, so that websites celebrating Jennings's streak (such as Andy Saunders's compilation of Jennings-related statistics) could not have helped fuel a similar Jeopardy mania for Chuck.
As noted in the web document linked above to Chuck's highlighted name, he was the show's all-time leading money winner at one point, amassing over $100,000. That, of course, pales in comparison to Jennings's final cumulative total of $2,520,700. However, in addition to Jennings's not having any limit on the number of shows on which he could appear, dollar values for the Jeopardy and Double Jeopardy rounds were doubled within the last couple of years.
Don't get me wrong. For Jennings -- or anyone else, for that matter -- to win 74 straight games is an enormous, mind-boggling feat. No question about it. The point I want to make, however, is that the five-show limit of yesteryear did not allow Forrest and other previous greats the opportunity to see how astronomically far they could potentially take their winning streaks.
I never knew Chuck Forrest during the time we were both at Michigan. However, given the extensive media coverage he was receiving at the time (locally, at least), he almost certainly would have been very well known in the UM/Ann Arbor community. And now, at a time when Ken Jennings and Jeopardy are being lauded nationally (with no less than tonight's ABC Nightline being devoted to the show), I feel a welling up of Maize and Blue pride for a Jeopardy giant of two decades ago.
I suspect that relatively few people nationally -- outside of the hardest of hardcore Jeopardy fans -- would have heard of Chuck or would remember him if they had seen him play. In addition to the passage of time, another likely factor preventing Chuck from achieving the kind of status reached by Jennings is that during Chuck's run (and indeed for most of Jeopardy's history), contestants had to leave after five consecutive wins. Also, of course, there was no Internet during Chuck's run, so that websites celebrating Jennings's streak (such as Andy Saunders's compilation of Jennings-related statistics) could not have helped fuel a similar Jeopardy mania for Chuck.
As noted in the web document linked above to Chuck's highlighted name, he was the show's all-time leading money winner at one point, amassing over $100,000. That, of course, pales in comparison to Jennings's final cumulative total of $2,520,700. However, in addition to Jennings's not having any limit on the number of shows on which he could appear, dollar values for the Jeopardy and Double Jeopardy rounds were doubled within the last couple of years.
Don't get me wrong. For Jennings -- or anyone else, for that matter -- to win 74 straight games is an enormous, mind-boggling feat. No question about it. The point I want to make, however, is that the five-show limit of yesteryear did not allow Forrest and other previous greats the opportunity to see how astronomically far they could potentially take their winning streaks.
I never knew Chuck Forrest during the time we were both at Michigan. However, given the extensive media coverage he was receiving at the time (locally, at least), he almost certainly would have been very well known in the UM/Ann Arbor community. And now, at a time when Ken Jennings and Jeopardy are being lauded nationally (with no less than tonight's ABC Nightline being devoted to the show), I feel a welling up of Maize and Blue pride for a Jeopardy giant of two decades ago.
Tuesday, November 16, 2004
The recently arrived issue of the Michigan Alumnus magazine included some poll results taken from online surveys at the UM Alumni Association website. I don't know how representative the samples were compared to random cross-sections of Wolverine alums, but the findings comport with what I would have expected.
One question asked about the alums' favorite season of the year in Ann Arbor. Not surprisingly, fall (81%) won overwhelmingly. On most college campuses around the nation, each fall brings the "buzz" of a new academic year, students returning to campus (or first arriving), pleasantly cool autumn temperatures, and (if you're a fan) the start of the college football season. At Michigan, this means action at the "Big House" (the 100,000-plus-seat Michigan Stadium).
In addition to these aspects of fall that are pretty uniform around the country, there are, of course, aspects that are unique (or relatively unique) to Ann Arbor. First on my list are the fall colors, which are more pronounced in some regions of the country than in others (and virtually non-existent in some). I found an excellent slide-show on the web of Ann Arbor fall colors at a site called "Phlog" (above each photo, there's a heading that says "next >>" that you can click to advance the slides; the heading may be hard to see on some screens). Having grown up in Los Angeles, which has little change of season, the Michigan fall colors were a major treat (now if we could do something about those winter temperatures...).
Another poll question inquired into alums' favorite UM sport. Naturally, football (74%) was a runaway winner. The second-place finisher -- ice hockey, with 21% -- may be a surprise to some, given that men's basketball is usually among the top two favorite sports on a college campus (the generic "basketball" finished third among Wolverine grads with 4%). Michigan's hockey program is, however, the most successful one historically in the nation. Also, whether by rules, custom, or some combination of both, college hockey (like that in the Olympics) has remained a game of speed and finesse, avoiding the gratuitous violence characteristic of professional hockey.
Talking about gratuitous violence, this Saturday is the annual Michigan-Ohio State football game, considered by some the greatest rivalry in college football. Though they have been away from the sidelines for quite some time, the rivalry almost certainly would be embodied in many people's minds in the coaching match-up of UM's Bo Schembechler and OSU's Woody Hayes. Schembechler retired as Wolverines' coach shortly after I finished up at Michigan.
Though football was one of my favorite sports for many years, starting around 1993 I decided that the sport's violence and injuries overshadowed the athleticism, in my mind. I have not attended a football game for over a decade. If I'm at home and one of the schools with which I'm affiliated is playing on TV, I may peek in a little for short stretches. That's probably what I'll end up doing on Saturday.
One question asked about the alums' favorite season of the year in Ann Arbor. Not surprisingly, fall (81%) won overwhelmingly. On most college campuses around the nation, each fall brings the "buzz" of a new academic year, students returning to campus (or first arriving), pleasantly cool autumn temperatures, and (if you're a fan) the start of the college football season. At Michigan, this means action at the "Big House" (the 100,000-plus-seat Michigan Stadium).
In addition to these aspects of fall that are pretty uniform around the country, there are, of course, aspects that are unique (or relatively unique) to Ann Arbor. First on my list are the fall colors, which are more pronounced in some regions of the country than in others (and virtually non-existent in some). I found an excellent slide-show on the web of Ann Arbor fall colors at a site called "Phlog" (above each photo, there's a heading that says "next >>" that you can click to advance the slides; the heading may be hard to see on some screens). Having grown up in Los Angeles, which has little change of season, the Michigan fall colors were a major treat (now if we could do something about those winter temperatures...).
Another poll question inquired into alums' favorite UM sport. Naturally, football (74%) was a runaway winner. The second-place finisher -- ice hockey, with 21% -- may be a surprise to some, given that men's basketball is usually among the top two favorite sports on a college campus (the generic "basketball" finished third among Wolverine grads with 4%). Michigan's hockey program is, however, the most successful one historically in the nation. Also, whether by rules, custom, or some combination of both, college hockey (like that in the Olympics) has remained a game of speed and finesse, avoiding the gratuitous violence characteristic of professional hockey.
Talking about gratuitous violence, this Saturday is the annual Michigan-Ohio State football game, considered by some the greatest rivalry in college football. Though they have been away from the sidelines for quite some time, the rivalry almost certainly would be embodied in many people's minds in the coaching match-up of UM's Bo Schembechler and OSU's Woody Hayes. Schembechler retired as Wolverines' coach shortly after I finished up at Michigan.
Though football was one of my favorite sports for many years, starting around 1993 I decided that the sport's violence and injuries overshadowed the athleticism, in my mind. I have not attended a football game for over a decade. If I'm at home and one of the schools with which I'm affiliated is playing on TV, I may peek in a little for short stretches. That's probably what I'll end up doing on Saturday.
Tuesday, November 09, 2004
The November 2004 APA newsmagazine Monitor on Psychology includes an article on a July conference held at the University of British Columbia (UBC) that brought together evolutionary and cultural psychologists. Several current and former University of Michigan professors participated in the conference and were mentioned in the article.
In fact, one can trace the origins of much of this research to the mid-late 1980s at UM. Consider the following scholars mentioned in the Monitor article...
Hazel Markus, who as a graduate student and faculty member was at Michigan for approximately 20 years before moving to Stanford in 1994, progressed through different stages of studying processes related to the self-concept during the years I was in grad school (1984-89).
Hazel appeared to be moving from self-schematicity (Markus, 1977; Markus, Crane, Bernstein, & Siladi, 1982; Markus, Smith, & Moreland, 1985) to possible selves (Markus & Nurius, 1986; Cross & Markus, 1991; Ruvolo & Markus, 1992) to cross-cultural differences in self-conceptions. I saw Hazel give some talks at Michigan on her early ideas in the cultural area, ideas that came to fruition in publications such as Markus and Kitayama (1991, 1994). In my February 2, 2004 entry, I summarized Hazel's Presidential Address at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology conference, in which she presented her continued cross-cultural research (February archives).
(Many of you who are familiar with these lines of research, as well as others mentioned later in this entry, can recognize the articles in question; if you want more information such as the journals they appeared in, just e-mail me.)
Hazel's frequent collaborator, Shinobu Kitayama, was also mentioned in the Monitor article. Shinobu received his Ph.D. in 1987 from Michigan (where he was my office mate for about two or three years). After serving on the faculty at the University of Oregon and then at Kyoto University in Japan, Shinobu recently returned to UM as a professor.
Dick Nisbett, who is approaching 35 years on the UM faculty, appeared in the mid-late 1980s to be transitioning from his longtime concentration on reasoning and cognitive processes (Nisbett & Wilson, 1977; Nisbett & Ross, 1980; Nisbett, Krantz, Jepson, & Kunda, 1983; Nisbett, Fong, Lehman, & Cheng, 1987) to cultural studies. One of Dick's first major lines of cultural research (with then-graduate student Dov Cohen) involved the southern "Culture of Honor," culminating in a 1996 book by that name. More recently, Dick has blended cognition with cross-cultural studies, probing thought processes in Eastern and Western cultures. That work produced the 2003 book, The Geography of Thought.
Ara Norenzayan, a 1999 Michigan Ph.D. who is on the faculty at UBC, was also mentioned in the Monitor article.
On the evolutionary side, the Monitor article mentioned University of Texas, Austin professor David Buss, who served on the UM faculty in personality psychology from 1985-1996. A prolific author, Buss, along with his students and collaborators, has published numerous books and articles on evolution-related topics, focusing on mate-selection and related topics. Also mentioned in the Monitor article was UM psychiatrist Randolph Nesse. He spoke in the psychology graduate proseminar when I was in school.
The spread of culture is also a major interest of mine. It would have been great to go see the aforementioned (and other) speakers, but it just didn't fit within my travel plans last summer. I maintain a website on the spread of culture.
I would be remiss if I didn't mention two people featured elsewhere in the same Monitor issue with UM ties. Personality-social psychologist David Winter, who has been on the Michigan faculty since around 1988, was mentioned in an article about presidential personality traits. Finally, Steve Behnke, a UM clinical psychology Ph.D., regularly writes in the Monitor on ethical issues in psychology, in his capacity of APA Ethics Director (profile of Steve from when he began at APA).
In fact, one can trace the origins of much of this research to the mid-late 1980s at UM. Consider the following scholars mentioned in the Monitor article...
Hazel Markus, who as a graduate student and faculty member was at Michigan for approximately 20 years before moving to Stanford in 1994, progressed through different stages of studying processes related to the self-concept during the years I was in grad school (1984-89).
Hazel appeared to be moving from self-schematicity (Markus, 1977; Markus, Crane, Bernstein, & Siladi, 1982; Markus, Smith, & Moreland, 1985) to possible selves (Markus & Nurius, 1986; Cross & Markus, 1991; Ruvolo & Markus, 1992) to cross-cultural differences in self-conceptions. I saw Hazel give some talks at Michigan on her early ideas in the cultural area, ideas that came to fruition in publications such as Markus and Kitayama (1991, 1994). In my February 2, 2004 entry, I summarized Hazel's Presidential Address at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology conference, in which she presented her continued cross-cultural research (February archives).
(Many of you who are familiar with these lines of research, as well as others mentioned later in this entry, can recognize the articles in question; if you want more information such as the journals they appeared in, just e-mail me.)
Hazel's frequent collaborator, Shinobu Kitayama, was also mentioned in the Monitor article. Shinobu received his Ph.D. in 1987 from Michigan (where he was my office mate for about two or three years). After serving on the faculty at the University of Oregon and then at Kyoto University in Japan, Shinobu recently returned to UM as a professor.
Dick Nisbett, who is approaching 35 years on the UM faculty, appeared in the mid-late 1980s to be transitioning from his longtime concentration on reasoning and cognitive processes (Nisbett & Wilson, 1977; Nisbett & Ross, 1980; Nisbett, Krantz, Jepson, & Kunda, 1983; Nisbett, Fong, Lehman, & Cheng, 1987) to cultural studies. One of Dick's first major lines of cultural research (with then-graduate student Dov Cohen) involved the southern "Culture of Honor," culminating in a 1996 book by that name. More recently, Dick has blended cognition with cross-cultural studies, probing thought processes in Eastern and Western cultures. That work produced the 2003 book, The Geography of Thought.
Ara Norenzayan, a 1999 Michigan Ph.D. who is on the faculty at UBC, was also mentioned in the Monitor article.
On the evolutionary side, the Monitor article mentioned University of Texas, Austin professor David Buss, who served on the UM faculty in personality psychology from 1985-1996. A prolific author, Buss, along with his students and collaborators, has published numerous books and articles on evolution-related topics, focusing on mate-selection and related topics. Also mentioned in the Monitor article was UM psychiatrist Randolph Nesse. He spoke in the psychology graduate proseminar when I was in school.
The spread of culture is also a major interest of mine. It would have been great to go see the aforementioned (and other) speakers, but it just didn't fit within my travel plans last summer. I maintain a website on the spread of culture.
I would be remiss if I didn't mention two people featured elsewhere in the same Monitor issue with UM ties. Personality-social psychologist David Winter, who has been on the Michigan faculty since around 1988, was mentioned in an article about presidential personality traits. Finally, Steve Behnke, a UM clinical psychology Ph.D., regularly writes in the Monitor on ethical issues in psychology, in his capacity of APA Ethics Director (profile of Steve from when he began at APA).
Thursday, November 04, 2004
This past spring, when I was teaching an advanced graduate statistics course at Texas Tech University on structural equation modeling, I wrote a tribute to the late Frank Andrews and Laura Klem (who is still active at UM), who taught the same course to me at UM in 1988 (April 13 entry, April archives).
Right now, in the Fall semester, I am teaching introductory statistics at the graduate level. Accordingly, I thought I'd say a few words about the professor I had for intro stats at Michigan during my first year of graduate school (1984-85), the late J.E. Keith Smith.
Keith was always very friendly with a quirky sense of humor, but he taught intro stats very rigorously, deriving formulas and attempting to document their theoretical background. In all candor, the material was complex and sometimes difficult to follow.
However, if you went to Keith's office with a specific data-analysis question (either while in his class or even several semesters after you'd had him), he was as clear as could be. He would instantly grasp the type of analysis you'd need to do given your research design, and his instructions for how to implement the analysis on the computer were easy to follow. I know that several faculty members and graduate students would consult Keith on various statistical and experimental-design questions and his advice was always valued.
(As an aside, I still have my textbook that I used in Keith's class, Statistics [3rd ed.], by William L. Hays. Hays, who passed away in 1995, had himself been a faculty member at Michigan until 1973 and finished his career at the University of Texas, Austin. My Hays book was bound so poorly that within a year of my purchasing the book, chunks of pages were falling out; I've had to scotch tape these pages back in over the years. Although I do not teach with the Hays book, I continue to refer back to it for formulas and explanations.)
In my second year of graduate school, I sat in on a categorical data analysis course Keith was teaching. Essentially, this latter course covered more advanced and sophisticated variations on the basic chi-square test. Given a table showing, for example, how many people fell into each of the six cells created by the combinations of gender (male/female) by party identification (Democrat/Republican/Independent), we would typically compare the frequencies in the table as a whole to what would be expected by chance. Keith was working toward facilitating tests of how the frequencies in one (or more) cell would compare to the frequencies of other cells.
When I remarked during one class that the technique he was showing looked very similar to contrasts in Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), which we had learned about in intro stats, he replied, "You've been with me long enough to know that eventually everything will look like a contrast!"
At the time, there was a famous categorical data analysis program called ECTA (Everyman's Contingency Table Analysis). Keith said he was working on a program called VECTA (Very Easy Contingency Table Analysis), which, Keith also noted, was how a New Yorker would pronounce "Vector."
Keith died in 2002. His obituary is available here (you have to scroll down once the page comes up).
To this day, I have a love of numbers and statistical analysis, as exemplified not just in my teaching of research methodology and statistics, but also in fun endeavors such as my hot hand website, which applies probability and statistics to the analysis of sports streaks. I think this represents, at least in part, a legacy of my having learned statistics from Keith.
Right now, in the Fall semester, I am teaching introductory statistics at the graduate level. Accordingly, I thought I'd say a few words about the professor I had for intro stats at Michigan during my first year of graduate school (1984-85), the late J.E. Keith Smith.
Keith was always very friendly with a quirky sense of humor, but he taught intro stats very rigorously, deriving formulas and attempting to document their theoretical background. In all candor, the material was complex and sometimes difficult to follow.
However, if you went to Keith's office with a specific data-analysis question (either while in his class or even several semesters after you'd had him), he was as clear as could be. He would instantly grasp the type of analysis you'd need to do given your research design, and his instructions for how to implement the analysis on the computer were easy to follow. I know that several faculty members and graduate students would consult Keith on various statistical and experimental-design questions and his advice was always valued.
(As an aside, I still have my textbook that I used in Keith's class, Statistics [3rd ed.], by William L. Hays. Hays, who passed away in 1995, had himself been a faculty member at Michigan until 1973 and finished his career at the University of Texas, Austin. My Hays book was bound so poorly that within a year of my purchasing the book, chunks of pages were falling out; I've had to scotch tape these pages back in over the years. Although I do not teach with the Hays book, I continue to refer back to it for formulas and explanations.)
In my second year of graduate school, I sat in on a categorical data analysis course Keith was teaching. Essentially, this latter course covered more advanced and sophisticated variations on the basic chi-square test. Given a table showing, for example, how many people fell into each of the six cells created by the combinations of gender (male/female) by party identification (Democrat/Republican/Independent), we would typically compare the frequencies in the table as a whole to what would be expected by chance. Keith was working toward facilitating tests of how the frequencies in one (or more) cell would compare to the frequencies of other cells.
When I remarked during one class that the technique he was showing looked very similar to contrasts in Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), which we had learned about in intro stats, he replied, "You've been with me long enough to know that eventually everything will look like a contrast!"
At the time, there was a famous categorical data analysis program called ECTA (Everyman's Contingency Table Analysis). Keith said he was working on a program called VECTA (Very Easy Contingency Table Analysis), which, Keith also noted, was how a New Yorker would pronounce "Vector."
Keith died in 2002. His obituary is available here (you have to scroll down once the page comes up).
To this day, I have a love of numbers and statistical analysis, as exemplified not just in my teaching of research methodology and statistics, but also in fun endeavors such as my hot hand website, which applies probability and statistics to the analysis of sports streaks. I think this represents, at least in part, a legacy of my having learned statistics from Keith.
Saturday, October 23, 2004
Tonight begins the 2004 World Series between the Boston Red Sox and St. Louis Cardinals. Twenty years ago, during my cohort's first semester of graduate school, baseball fans in the UM community got to root for the Detroit Tigers as they won the 1984 World Series. One list places this Tiger squad as the No. 9 best World Series-winning team of all-time.
At the start of the Fall '84 semester, there was about a month left in the regular season, as the Tigers coasted to the American League Eastern Division title. The Tigers then made short work of the Kansas City Royals in the American League Championship Series and the San Diego Padres in the World Series (back then, there was one fewer round of play-offs than today).
The '84 Tigers started the season off 9-0 (including a no-hitter by Jack Morris against the White Sox) and 35-5 (click here for a full game-by-game log). That they were in first place every day of the season inspired the title of George Cantor's book on the team, Wire to Wire, which I read recently. The book, published earlier this year, features a series of short chapters each focusing on a different member of the '84 Tigers. Many former players were interviewed to get their reminiscences on the championship they won two decades earlier.
That Detroit team was noteworthy for the fact that its core consisted of a number of players who had come up through the Tiger farm system within a few years of each other. These players included the aforementioned Morris, Alan Trammell (now the Tigers' manager), Lou Whitaker, Lance Parrish, and Kirk Gibson (pictured on the book-cover photo linked above).
Gibson is well-known for a dramatic home run he hit while injured for the Los Angeles Dodgers in the 1988 World Series. He also hit an important one for the Tigers in the closing (fifth) game of the '84 World Series; against San Diego pitcher "Goose" Gossage, who had overruled his manager's decision to walk Gibson intentionally, Gibson blasted a late three-run homer to give the Tigers, who had been leading by only one run at the time, some insurance runs. In fact, on one list of greatest World Series moments, Gibson appears twice: his '88 homer is No. 1 and his '84 homer is No. 9.
I lived in a graduate dormitory (Baits) on North Campus my first year and I remember watching Gibson's homer off Gossage, as well as the Tigers' recording the final out against the Padres, from one of the nearby dining halls, where I had gone for a late afternoon snack on a Sunday.
Among the Detroit pro sports teams, the Tigers appeared to have the most support among the people I hung out with at UM. Now that the Tigers' on-field performance has plummeted in recent years, it wouldn't surprise me if hockey's Red Wings and basketball's Pistons, both of which have won championships in their respective sports within the last few years, have overtaken the Tigers.
The '84 Tigers are one of the very few World Series champions to have none of their players in the Hall of Fame (among teams going far back enough so that their players would have sufficient opportunity to be voted in). Morris, Trammell, and Whitaker are most commonly discussed as potentially deserving to get in. Cantor discusses this a few times in his history of the '84 Tigers, but even people not linked to the Tigers make similar arguments. Rob Neyer, whose Big Book of Baseball Lineups seeks to determine the best historical lineups fielded by every team, writes that:
"If you study the issue with any sort of sophistication, it's pretty clear that Trammell, like... [teammate Darrell] Evans, ranks among the all-time greats at his position" (p. 90).
The Tigers were managed by Hall of Fame skipper Sparky Anderson, who had previously managed two World Championship teams with Cincinnati. (As an aside, this year the Cardinals' Tony LaRussa will attempt to join Anderson as the only people to manage World Series winners in both leagues; LaRussa led the 1989 Oakland A's to the title.) Anderson was (and presumably still is) a very colorful personality, with his own unique style of expression.
I also had the opportunity during my Michigan years to listen to Hall of Fame broadcaster Ernie Harwell on the radio. I consider Harwell and the Dodgers' Vin Scully (whom I listened to growing up in L.A.) to be the two top baseball broadcasters I've ever listened two (not favoring one over the other).
Another important piece of the team's history is Tiger Stadium, which hosted its last game at the conclusion of the 1999 season. Author Tom Stanton attended every Detroit home game that year in doing research for his book The Final Season. The book, which I read a couple of years ago, really transcends baseball. Stanton used the Tigers as a vehicle for blending in reflections on his family life. He also interviewed a lot of the "everyday people" who worked at Tiger Stadium.
Since 2000, the Tigers have played at the new Comerica Park. I attended one game at Tiger Stadium, in 1987, during my graduate school days.
At the start of the Fall '84 semester, there was about a month left in the regular season, as the Tigers coasted to the American League Eastern Division title. The Tigers then made short work of the Kansas City Royals in the American League Championship Series and the San Diego Padres in the World Series (back then, there was one fewer round of play-offs than today).
The '84 Tigers started the season off 9-0 (including a no-hitter by Jack Morris against the White Sox) and 35-5 (click here for a full game-by-game log). That they were in first place every day of the season inspired the title of George Cantor's book on the team, Wire to Wire, which I read recently. The book, published earlier this year, features a series of short chapters each focusing on a different member of the '84 Tigers. Many former players were interviewed to get their reminiscences on the championship they won two decades earlier.
That Detroit team was noteworthy for the fact that its core consisted of a number of players who had come up through the Tiger farm system within a few years of each other. These players included the aforementioned Morris, Alan Trammell (now the Tigers' manager), Lou Whitaker, Lance Parrish, and Kirk Gibson (pictured on the book-cover photo linked above).
Gibson is well-known for a dramatic home run he hit while injured for the Los Angeles Dodgers in the 1988 World Series. He also hit an important one for the Tigers in the closing (fifth) game of the '84 World Series; against San Diego pitcher "Goose" Gossage, who had overruled his manager's decision to walk Gibson intentionally, Gibson blasted a late three-run homer to give the Tigers, who had been leading by only one run at the time, some insurance runs. In fact, on one list of greatest World Series moments, Gibson appears twice: his '88 homer is No. 1 and his '84 homer is No. 9.
I lived in a graduate dormitory (Baits) on North Campus my first year and I remember watching Gibson's homer off Gossage, as well as the Tigers' recording the final out against the Padres, from one of the nearby dining halls, where I had gone for a late afternoon snack on a Sunday.
Among the Detroit pro sports teams, the Tigers appeared to have the most support among the people I hung out with at UM. Now that the Tigers' on-field performance has plummeted in recent years, it wouldn't surprise me if hockey's Red Wings and basketball's Pistons, both of which have won championships in their respective sports within the last few years, have overtaken the Tigers.
The '84 Tigers are one of the very few World Series champions to have none of their players in the Hall of Fame (among teams going far back enough so that their players would have sufficient opportunity to be voted in). Morris, Trammell, and Whitaker are most commonly discussed as potentially deserving to get in. Cantor discusses this a few times in his history of the '84 Tigers, but even people not linked to the Tigers make similar arguments. Rob Neyer, whose Big Book of Baseball Lineups seeks to determine the best historical lineups fielded by every team, writes that:
"If you study the issue with any sort of sophistication, it's pretty clear that Trammell, like... [teammate Darrell] Evans, ranks among the all-time greats at his position" (p. 90).
The Tigers were managed by Hall of Fame skipper Sparky Anderson, who had previously managed two World Championship teams with Cincinnati. (As an aside, this year the Cardinals' Tony LaRussa will attempt to join Anderson as the only people to manage World Series winners in both leagues; LaRussa led the 1989 Oakland A's to the title.) Anderson was (and presumably still is) a very colorful personality, with his own unique style of expression.
I also had the opportunity during my Michigan years to listen to Hall of Fame broadcaster Ernie Harwell on the radio. I consider Harwell and the Dodgers' Vin Scully (whom I listened to growing up in L.A.) to be the two top baseball broadcasters I've ever listened two (not favoring one over the other).
Another important piece of the team's history is Tiger Stadium, which hosted its last game at the conclusion of the 1999 season. Author Tom Stanton attended every Detroit home game that year in doing research for his book The Final Season. The book, which I read a couple of years ago, really transcends baseball. Stanton used the Tigers as a vehicle for blending in reflections on his family life. He also interviewed a lot of the "everyday people" who worked at Tiger Stadium.
Since 2000, the Tigers have played at the new Comerica Park. I attended one game at Tiger Stadium, in 1987, during my graduate school days.
Monday, October 18, 2004
With the 2004 presidential election quickly approaching, people are paying increasing attention to the polls (my favorite poll compendia are Polling Report for national polls and Race 2004 for state ones). For a variety of reasons there are questions about how accurate the polls will ultimately turn out to be on Election Day. As one example, a small but growing segment of the American population does its telephone communication only by cell phones, which survey researchers are by law not allowed to call.
Mark Blumenthal, who works in the polling industry, recently created a blog called Mystery Pollster in an attempt to address virtually the full spectrum of issues regarding how pre-election surveys are conducted and what the implications of these controversial issues are for the polls' potential accuracy. Blumenthal's biographical sketch notes that he is a graduate of the University of Michigan in political science and that he later did some graduate work at the Joint Program in Survey Methodology at the University of Maryland.
As part of the research methods course I teach at Texas Tech University, I had developed a website on one specific aspect of this year's polling controversy, sample weighting by party ID. I e-mailed Blumenthal to let him know about my webpage and also the UM connection, and he sent me a nice reply. It turns out that Don Kinder, from whom I took a graduate seminar in public opinion in Fall 1985, advised Mark on his undergraduate honors thesis. (Don is also mentioned in my June 5, 2004 entry on the Michigan-UCLA connection; click here for June archives.)
Yet another Michigan graduate is playing a role in 2004 presidential polling. Jon Krosnick, a 1985 UM social psych Ph.D. who is now at Stanford after many years on the faculty at Ohio State, is collaborating on a large Internet-based survey with The Economist magazine and "You Gov" polling firm, both British concerns. Further information is available via a Boston Globe article on the project. The paper by Morris Fiorina and Jon that was alluded to in the article can be accessed here.
Jon is quite a versatile guy. He has academic appointments at Stanford in communications, political science, and psychology. He is also an accomplished jazz drummer, as noted in my May 14, 2004 entry (May archives).
Mark Blumenthal, who works in the polling industry, recently created a blog called Mystery Pollster in an attempt to address virtually the full spectrum of issues regarding how pre-election surveys are conducted and what the implications of these controversial issues are for the polls' potential accuracy. Blumenthal's biographical sketch notes that he is a graduate of the University of Michigan in political science and that he later did some graduate work at the Joint Program in Survey Methodology at the University of Maryland.
As part of the research methods course I teach at Texas Tech University, I had developed a website on one specific aspect of this year's polling controversy, sample weighting by party ID. I e-mailed Blumenthal to let him know about my webpage and also the UM connection, and he sent me a nice reply. It turns out that Don Kinder, from whom I took a graduate seminar in public opinion in Fall 1985, advised Mark on his undergraduate honors thesis. (Don is also mentioned in my June 5, 2004 entry on the Michigan-UCLA connection; click here for June archives.)
Yet another Michigan graduate is playing a role in 2004 presidential polling. Jon Krosnick, a 1985 UM social psych Ph.D. who is now at Stanford after many years on the faculty at Ohio State, is collaborating on a large Internet-based survey with The Economist magazine and "You Gov" polling firm, both British concerns. Further information is available via a Boston Globe article on the project. The paper by Morris Fiorina and Jon that was alluded to in the article can be accessed here.
Jon is quite a versatile guy. He has academic appointments at Stanford in communications, political science, and psychology. He is also an accomplished jazz drummer, as noted in my May 14, 2004 entry (May archives).
Saturday, October 09, 2004
In various previous postings, I have alluded to the wide array of seminars, colloquia, and lecture series available for individuals in the University of Michigan community to attend on campus. One that I have not yet discussed is the Group Dynamics Seminar, hosted by the Research Center for Group Dynamics (RCGD) in the Institute for Social Research (ISR).
Just as a historical note, the original RCGD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) was founded by Kurt Lewin, one of the most eminent social psychologists of all time. According to a UM biography of one of Lewin's colleagues, Ronald Lippitt:
"In 1946 Lippitt resumed work with Kurt Lewin, helping him to found the Research Center for Group Dynamics at M.I.T., where Lippitt was also an associate professor of social science from 1946 to 1948... Upon Lewin’s death in 1948, Lippitt moved the Research Center for Group Dynamics to the University of Michigan’s Institute of Social Research, acting as program director in the Research Center, as well as associate professor of sociology and psychology at the university."
Back during the 1980s, social psychology faculty, staff, and graduate students had their offices within RCGD; other subdisciplines of psychology such as developmental, personality, and biopsychology were also scattered around the campus. Some time in the early-mid 1990s, however, the long-awaited psychology building (East Hall, a renovation of the former East Engineering) finally opened, bringing all the areas under one roof. Never having been based full-time at UM in the "new-building era," I cannot compare the experiences of being in the social psych program in the ISR versus East Hall. My strong speculation, however, is that links to the Group Dynamics Seminar and other RCGD activities would have been stronger in the former era.
For the first few years I was in grad school at UM (starting with Fall '84), the "Group Dy," as people referred to it, was held every Tuesday night during the Fall and Winter semesters. Toward the latter years of my time at UM, it moved to a late-afternoon time.
As is still the case today, each semester's Group Dy series would have a theme. One thematic series that I'd like to discuss in the remainder of this posting is the one focusing on social conflict, which as I recall was held during Fall '84 (I have a folder with handouts from many Group Dy talks, but none from the social conflict series).
Given UM's strong overall social science portfolio, the Group Dy series on social conflict included, among others, professors speaking on anthropological and political science approaches to conflict. Each semester's series is organized by one of the social psych faculty members; this one was organized by Gene Burnstein.
Interestingly, among the attendees during the semester on social conflict was Robben Fleming, who had served as UM President from 1968-1979 (and then later as Interim President in 1988 during the gap between Harold Shapiro and James Duderstadt). Fleming's background was as a law professor and labor mediator. Given the tumult on the UM campus in the 1960s and '70s over the Vietnam War and Civil Rights issues, the book The Making of the University of Michigan 1817-1992 by Howard H. Peckham, notes that Fleming "brought to the office of president... a unique combination of skills that seemed tailored for the times" (p. 290).
The book reported on one incident during Fleming's tenure as president that I find absolutely fascinating:
"Despite public criticism, Fleming refused to take inflexible stands on unimportant matters. When the Inter-Faith Council for Peace wanted to dig a large 'bomb crater' on the Diag to symbolize the destruction of North Vietnam, Fleming found them a safe place to do it. His reaction to the crater affair was typical of his willingness to co-operate with peaceful dissent. 'Why not let them dig one? Everybody else is digging holes for new buildings, and so forth. It's not a big job to throw the dirt back in the hole after they get tired.' In response to those who objected to his willingness to compromise, Fleming reasoned, 'If you make an issue of activities that do no harm and don't interfere with the running of the University, you run the real risk of attracting a lot of other students who will then be sympathetic to their other demands' " (p. 292).
Fittingly, toward the end of the Group Dy semester on social conflict, Fleming himself was the speaker. He recounted various instances of protests he had to handle, and how he did so. One had to do with students who occupied the Administration Building. I don't recall the details, but I remember Fleming saying that it had been resolved satisfactorily to both sides, to the point where the protesters exited the building singing the UM fight song, "The Victors."
According to a 2003 article on the lives of retired academics, "Fleming, now 86, has lived on one campus or another since he and his wife Sally were college sweethearts at Beloit College in Wisconsin. The couple decided to retire to Ann Arbor and Michigan's 92-unit University Commons."
I'm tempted to say that "only at UM" could you have a speaker series where you'd hear stories like that; it may not be "only" at UM, but the number of such universities would likely be very small.
As a concluding note on the topic of social conflict, I would like to recommend strongly the new (2004) book How Soccer Explains the World, by Franklin Foer. In this book, you'll learn of bands of soccer fans who, in their cheers (more like taunts) and fight songs, spew the most hateful and even violent rhetoric you could imagine (sometimes followed up by actual violence). I wrote a review of this book for the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) electronic discussion list.
Just as a historical note, the original RCGD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) was founded by Kurt Lewin, one of the most eminent social psychologists of all time. According to a UM biography of one of Lewin's colleagues, Ronald Lippitt:
"In 1946 Lippitt resumed work with Kurt Lewin, helping him to found the Research Center for Group Dynamics at M.I.T., where Lippitt was also an associate professor of social science from 1946 to 1948... Upon Lewin’s death in 1948, Lippitt moved the Research Center for Group Dynamics to the University of Michigan’s Institute of Social Research, acting as program director in the Research Center, as well as associate professor of sociology and psychology at the university."
Back during the 1980s, social psychology faculty, staff, and graduate students had their offices within RCGD; other subdisciplines of psychology such as developmental, personality, and biopsychology were also scattered around the campus. Some time in the early-mid 1990s, however, the long-awaited psychology building (East Hall, a renovation of the former East Engineering) finally opened, bringing all the areas under one roof. Never having been based full-time at UM in the "new-building era," I cannot compare the experiences of being in the social psych program in the ISR versus East Hall. My strong speculation, however, is that links to the Group Dynamics Seminar and other RCGD activities would have been stronger in the former era.
For the first few years I was in grad school at UM (starting with Fall '84), the "Group Dy," as people referred to it, was held every Tuesday night during the Fall and Winter semesters. Toward the latter years of my time at UM, it moved to a late-afternoon time.
As is still the case today, each semester's Group Dy series would have a theme. One thematic series that I'd like to discuss in the remainder of this posting is the one focusing on social conflict, which as I recall was held during Fall '84 (I have a folder with handouts from many Group Dy talks, but none from the social conflict series).
Given UM's strong overall social science portfolio, the Group Dy series on social conflict included, among others, professors speaking on anthropological and political science approaches to conflict. Each semester's series is organized by one of the social psych faculty members; this one was organized by Gene Burnstein.
Interestingly, among the attendees during the semester on social conflict was Robben Fleming, who had served as UM President from 1968-1979 (and then later as Interim President in 1988 during the gap between Harold Shapiro and James Duderstadt). Fleming's background was as a law professor and labor mediator. Given the tumult on the UM campus in the 1960s and '70s over the Vietnam War and Civil Rights issues, the book The Making of the University of Michigan 1817-1992 by Howard H. Peckham, notes that Fleming "brought to the office of president... a unique combination of skills that seemed tailored for the times" (p. 290).
The book reported on one incident during Fleming's tenure as president that I find absolutely fascinating:
"Despite public criticism, Fleming refused to take inflexible stands on unimportant matters. When the Inter-Faith Council for Peace wanted to dig a large 'bomb crater' on the Diag to symbolize the destruction of North Vietnam, Fleming found them a safe place to do it. His reaction to the crater affair was typical of his willingness to co-operate with peaceful dissent. 'Why not let them dig one? Everybody else is digging holes for new buildings, and so forth. It's not a big job to throw the dirt back in the hole after they get tired.' In response to those who objected to his willingness to compromise, Fleming reasoned, 'If you make an issue of activities that do no harm and don't interfere with the running of the University, you run the real risk of attracting a lot of other students who will then be sympathetic to their other demands' " (p. 292).
Fittingly, toward the end of the Group Dy semester on social conflict, Fleming himself was the speaker. He recounted various instances of protests he had to handle, and how he did so. One had to do with students who occupied the Administration Building. I don't recall the details, but I remember Fleming saying that it had been resolved satisfactorily to both sides, to the point where the protesters exited the building singing the UM fight song, "The Victors."
According to a 2003 article on the lives of retired academics, "Fleming, now 86, has lived on one campus or another since he and his wife Sally were college sweethearts at Beloit College in Wisconsin. The couple decided to retire to Ann Arbor and Michigan's 92-unit University Commons."
I'm tempted to say that "only at UM" could you have a speaker series where you'd hear stories like that; it may not be "only" at UM, but the number of such universities would likely be very small.
As a concluding note on the topic of social conflict, I would like to recommend strongly the new (2004) book How Soccer Explains the World, by Franklin Foer. In this book, you'll learn of bands of soccer fans who, in their cheers (more like taunts) and fight songs, spew the most hateful and even violent rhetoric you could imagine (sometimes followed up by actual violence). I wrote a review of this book for the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) electronic discussion list.
Monday, October 04, 2004
Seeing the first Bush-Kerry presidential debate a few nights ago prompted another memory from my first semester of graduate school 20 years ago. In 1984, the incumbent President Ronald Reagan, a Republican, was being challenged by former Vice President Walter "Fritz" Mondale, the Democratic nominee. During the Fall '84 semester, Mondale spoke at a campaign rally on the UM's Diag and -- as best I can recall -- that appearance took place just a few days after the first Reagan-Mondale debate.
Nowadays (and perhaps then, too) political analysts talk about "rallying the base" of support within a candidate's own party, then "reaching out to the middle," i.e., moderate and undecided voters. Although it did not occur to me 20 years ago, the fact that Mondale was still rallying the base (very few cities in America are more liberal than Ann Arbor) in mid-October was a sure sign of how deeply in trouble Mondale was. In fact, despite by most accounts winning the first debate, Mondale ended up losing the election 59-41%. Mondale carried only his home state of Minnesota and the District of Columbia.
I attended the Mondale rally along with two other grad students. We found a spot behind a tree and got a decent view. Mondale was accompanied at the rally by former Sen. Gary Hart (D-CO), Mondale's nearest rival during the primary campaign. I searched pretty hard on the web for any record of the rally, but couldn't find anything. Twenty years ago would probably be too far back for web-archived newspaper accounts of the event. Further, given Mondale's lopsided defeat, it's understandable that nobody associated with the campaign would create a web-based tribute to Election '84.
Many of you will remember Hart from his failed 1988 campaign, which he started in many people's minds as the front-runner. Suffice it to say that Hart, the self-proclaimed "candidate of new ideas," got into trouble from something resembling one of the world's oldest ideas.
Nowadays (and perhaps then, too) political analysts talk about "rallying the base" of support within a candidate's own party, then "reaching out to the middle," i.e., moderate and undecided voters. Although it did not occur to me 20 years ago, the fact that Mondale was still rallying the base (very few cities in America are more liberal than Ann Arbor) in mid-October was a sure sign of how deeply in trouble Mondale was. In fact, despite by most accounts winning the first debate, Mondale ended up losing the election 59-41%. Mondale carried only his home state of Minnesota and the District of Columbia.
I attended the Mondale rally along with two other grad students. We found a spot behind a tree and got a decent view. Mondale was accompanied at the rally by former Sen. Gary Hart (D-CO), Mondale's nearest rival during the primary campaign. I searched pretty hard on the web for any record of the rally, but couldn't find anything. Twenty years ago would probably be too far back for web-archived newspaper accounts of the event. Further, given Mondale's lopsided defeat, it's understandable that nobody associated with the campaign would create a web-based tribute to Election '84.
Many of you will remember Hart from his failed 1988 campaign, which he started in many people's minds as the front-runner. Suffice it to say that Hart, the self-proclaimed "candidate of new ideas," got into trouble from something resembling one of the world's oldest ideas.
Monday, September 20, 2004
Just a few items from the September 2004 Ann Arbor Observer magazine:
One of the major articles, entitled "Borders Grows Up," reviews the recent ups-and-downs of the now 33-year-old icon of Ann Arbor bookselling. As virtually anyone reading this blog would know, Borders was founded (and located exclusively for many years) in Ann Arbor. In the mid-80s, Borders expanded, initially to some Detroit suburbs and then nationally. The article delves into issues such as competition with Barnes and Noble, competition from internet sales, and the healing process from last year's strike at the flagship Ann Arbor store.
Historically, Borders did a lot to cultivate a cerebral image, most notably making its workers pass a test (which, according to the recent Observer article, was "dropped years ago"). George Will wrote the following in a 1991 Washington Post article:
"Reading the torrent of essays about the end of reading, and the glut of books about the death of the book, leaves little time for savoring the significance of Borders bookstores, which are flourishing.
There are 14 of them so far. The first was in Ann Arbor, Mich. The one here in Rockville [Maryland] is typical. It has more than 100,000 titles, 1.3 million volumes and a staff who when asked `Where is `Billy Budd'?' will not reply, `He doesn't work here.'
No one works here who cannot pass a quiz featuring questions like, `In what subject areas would you look for books by or about Jean Piaget, Gustav Klimt, Dorothy Sayers, Karen Horney, Ludwig Wittgenstein'? `Who wrote `Tin Drum'? `Native Son'? `Where the Wild Things Are'?' Non-readers need not apply at Borders, which unlike lots of supposed bookstores sells neither games nor globes nor garden hoses.. . .
A better way of doing business in books began 20 years ago with the Border [sic, it should be Borders] brothers, University of Michigan graduate students, Tom, an English major, and Lewis, a computer wiz. Their idea was to use modern information systems to make possible, meaning profitable, small-volume purchases of many titles rather than large-volume purchases of titles that will sell at a high velocity."
I love that "Billy Budd" quote and am glad to be able to have found a reference to it on the web. Many parts of Will's article are obviously dated, including the test and the number of stores. Heck, today's Borders stores in the L.A. and Chicago areas alone might come close to numbering 14 (those are where I do most of my Borders visiting; my current home of Lubbock, Texas doesn't have one). I also, of course, love to visit the Ann Arbor flagship store, but I haven't been back since 2002.
The Observer article also provides an update on the Borders brothers: Tom now lives in Austin, Texas, and Louis is in Silicon Valley.
One quote in the Observer article really hits the nail on the head, in my view, regarding why Borders has been so successful:
"The saving factor for Borders, [its CEO] says, was that people still like to come to bookstores to browse."
One of the major articles, entitled "Borders Grows Up," reviews the recent ups-and-downs of the now 33-year-old icon of Ann Arbor bookselling. As virtually anyone reading this blog would know, Borders was founded (and located exclusively for many years) in Ann Arbor. In the mid-80s, Borders expanded, initially to some Detroit suburbs and then nationally. The article delves into issues such as competition with Barnes and Noble, competition from internet sales, and the healing process from last year's strike at the flagship Ann Arbor store.
Historically, Borders did a lot to cultivate a cerebral image, most notably making its workers pass a test (which, according to the recent Observer article, was "dropped years ago"). George Will wrote the following in a 1991 Washington Post article:
"Reading the torrent of essays about the end of reading, and the glut of books about the death of the book, leaves little time for savoring the significance of Borders bookstores, which are flourishing.
There are 14 of them so far. The first was in Ann Arbor, Mich. The one here in Rockville [Maryland] is typical. It has more than 100,000 titles, 1.3 million volumes and a staff who when asked `Where is `Billy Budd'?' will not reply, `He doesn't work here.'
No one works here who cannot pass a quiz featuring questions like, `In what subject areas would you look for books by or about Jean Piaget, Gustav Klimt, Dorothy Sayers, Karen Horney, Ludwig Wittgenstein'? `Who wrote `Tin Drum'? `Native Son'? `Where the Wild Things Are'?' Non-readers need not apply at Borders, which unlike lots of supposed bookstores sells neither games nor globes nor garden hoses.. . .
A better way of doing business in books began 20 years ago with the Border [sic, it should be Borders] brothers, University of Michigan graduate students, Tom, an English major, and Lewis, a computer wiz. Their idea was to use modern information systems to make possible, meaning profitable, small-volume purchases of many titles rather than large-volume purchases of titles that will sell at a high velocity."
I love that "Billy Budd" quote and am glad to be able to have found a reference to it on the web. Many parts of Will's article are obviously dated, including the test and the number of stores. Heck, today's Borders stores in the L.A. and Chicago areas alone might come close to numbering 14 (those are where I do most of my Borders visiting; my current home of Lubbock, Texas doesn't have one). I also, of course, love to visit the Ann Arbor flagship store, but I haven't been back since 2002.
The Observer article also provides an update on the Borders brothers: Tom now lives in Austin, Texas, and Louis is in Silicon Valley.
One quote in the Observer article really hits the nail on the head, in my view, regarding why Borders has been so successful:
"The saving factor for Borders, [its CEO] says, was that people still like to come to bookstores to browse."
. . .
In my May 14 entry on this blog (May archives), I wrote about Ann Arbor's jazz scene, including a mention of the Bird of Paradise club. We learn from the September 2004 Observer that, after 20 years, "The Bird" is no more, a casualty of financial difficulties. Here's an article on the club's farewell from the Ann Arbor News.
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