It comes as a surprise to many newly-appointed faculty members, but a large part of what we do is program development and administration. Viewed positively this is “faculty governance,” although it can feel more like doing paperwork. I have been involved in all sorts of administration and service since I have been at UK.

I developed an initiative with Professor Andrew Leyshon of the University of Nottingham (Great Britain) to formally set up an exchange agreement between the School of Geography at Nottingham (http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/~lgzwww) and the Department of Geography at UK. Under this exchange program there are annual visits by faculty to the partner institution. The visiting faculty members each give a public lecture and participate in organized discussions with students and faculty at the host campus. There is some potential for graduate student exchanges under this agreement.  

Additionally, I have been working with Dr. Proinnsius Breathnach at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth to further enhance and strengthen the existing partnership between the NUI and UK (http://www.may.ie/academic/geography/ and http://www.may.ie/academic/geography/Student_exchange.html) which is related to the broader sister cities relationship between Lexington-Fayette County and County Kildare (http://www.lfucg.com/LFUCG/SCKildare.asp).

As well as working on these initiatives to enrich our institutions and the geographical community more generally, I find myself on more and more standing and ad hoc committees at every level -- from the departmental to the university. My views on academic administration are challenged and refined with each new assignment. A few years ago, for example, I learned a great deal about restructuring in the academy through serving on the College of Arts and Sciences Executive Committee during a particularly nasty round of budget cuts. I have also got a much better sense of how a university works, and how hard it is to make real change happen, through serving for two years as a member of the President's Commission on Diversity. In past years I have been the Department's Director of Graduate Studies and I enjoyed leading efforts to further strengthen the graduate program. I have also served the AAG, most recently as a member of the Honors Committee.

Through all these administrative or service duties, I try to act on my inclination to look out for faculty and students and my honest dedication to equity, openness, and shared governance. These, I believe, are the basic pre-conditions for a healthy and vibrant intellectually-driven scholarly community.