{"id":7428,"date":"2014-02-18T16:00:39","date_gmt":"2014-02-18T16:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/2014\/02\/18\/must-begin-with\/"},"modified":"2014-02-18T16:00:39","modified_gmt":"2014-02-18T16:00:39","slug":"must-begin-with","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.earthwidemoth.com\/blog\/2014\/02\/18\/must-begin-with\/","title":{"rendered":"Must Begin with I"},"content":{"rendered":"\u23f3 Approximate reading time: <\/span> 2<\/span> mins<\/span><\/span>

Along with several other colleagues in my department, I was invited late last fall to be posterized as a faculty researcher at EMU. It’s part of a banner campaign devised to connect campus and Ypsilanti, and to make abstract-seeming faculty more real-seeming, I guess. And it is an honor to be invited. Humbling, really. Like others, I had a couple of photos taken in late November. The email arrived yesterday asking us to choose the best one. I let D., Is., and Ph. weigh in; two-thirds of them agreed on #122. I think I look slouchy, tired, and over-stressed (i.e., like a first-year WPA!) in most of them and so didn’t quibble with the rec. #122<\/a> it is.<\/p>\n

Next comes the harder part: along with formalizing a preference for a photo, we’re supposed to send in a one-liner–five words or less and must begin with ‘I’–that will function as a public research profile. Officially, it’s called an “integrated power statement”–but I’ll think of it as a bumper sticker-sized CV.<\/p>\n

I’ll be the first to admit that my 4.5 years at EMU in research terms has been spasmodic at best–due in large part to a constantly challenging orchestration of service responsibilities, institutional and departmental dynamics, and herky-jerky, stop-start bursts of writing with more change of speed and more spills than bad Olympic figure skating. Whoosh! Whoa! Oh sure, I get it: that’s the nature of this work in many places.<\/p>\n

But how does such a pattern of activity translate into four or five words of banner material? And what’s a more appropriate gesture–something with a university-ambivalent public in mind, something true to the specifics of a research agenda, or something attuned to undergraduates, prospective students, and their families? Fun to think about from a university outreach standpoint, but not especially helpful for settling on the best four or five-word string.<\/p>\n

Here’s what I’ve come up with so far:<\/p>\n