UIUC Visit
I’m back in Champaign-Urbana for a couple of days, for Xiaobin’s prelim meeting (which went very well, naturally). I stayed in the Illini Union, which is right in the heart of the campus. It is a very spacious and attractive campus, although perhaps not as lively as the U of M. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
The trip made me reflect on impressions that I had of Champaign-Urbana and of the U of M when I first arrived.
When I came to Champaign-Urbana (from Austin, Texas), I was struck by the fact that there seemed to be a lot of crime in C-U. I actually checked, and then realized that the problem was that the local papers would report every single thing that happened (plant thefts were big, for example), whereas the Austin paper only reported unusual crimes.
Similarly, an early impression of Michigan is that people have complex personal relationships that you need to work around to get anything done. Thinking back on UIUC, I think the difference lies elsewhere. At UIUC, both within the Psychology department, and the University generally, the tradition was that faculty worked very independently and didn’t need to interact to get things done. The Beckman Institute was a notable exception. That isn’t my style, and I organized a number of larger-group activities, many of which were reasonably successful. But I don’t believe I ever participated in any such activity that I didn’t instigate (this is probably false), and I was always surprised at how much resistance there was to taking advantage of al the opportunities that there are for interdisciplinary activities. It seemed particularly ironic in a small town where many people live close together and where contiguity might breed collaboration. At Michigan, the tradition of collaboration and interdisciplinary activities seems to be part of the DNA. In part this is because many faculty seem to have complex appointments (I, for example, am in the Combined Program in Education and Psychology, Educational Studies, the Psychology Department, the Center for Human Growth and Development, and I may soon be part of the Center for Chinese Studies). The kinds of projects that I tried to organize are the norm, and it’s really nice to not have to be instigator of everything that I do, but to also be part of other people’s schemes. It feels like the children’s story about the ugly duckling, and I hope it always does.