“Any change, even a change for the better, is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts.” — Arnold Bennett
This morning I called Johannes Cronje, the Dean of Informatics at Cape Peninsula University of Technology, to which I'm considering switching instead of continuing at A.T. Still University. Since the school is in Cape Town, South Africa, I had to get up early enough to reach him before they close up shop in the afternoon their time. For someone in such an important post he's very friendly and approachable — he joked that he was nervous to speak to me, as he knows that calls from the U.S. are hideously expensive. I reassured him that I was using Skype, an Internet phone service, and it cost so little that I could talk all day. The downside was that while the the call quality started off all right, it deteriorated markedly, so I may want to consider other options if I'm potentially making calls there frequently.
Anyway, we talked about the faculty member he had originally suggested I might want to work woth closely, but it turned out that he'd chosen that person in particular because he thought that I was specifically interested in health informatics. When I explained that I was more interested in topics related to educational informatics, he said in that case he'd probably connect me with a faculty person there named Pamela Martin. Either way, he told me that the first thing I should do is email him a one page document that briefly outlines my proposal for a research topic.
Fair enough. The thing is, that means that now I have to decide what topic I actually want to do. Like really this time. At ATSU I got sort of pushed into something that was conducive to my interest in veganism, but not at all to my interests in development studies, educational technology, open educational resources, or distance learning. This time it's all up to me, but that means I have to choose carefully, and to find some aspect of the interplay of all these topics that actually suggests a sustainable research question.
The other thing is that in addition to Professor Martin as a primary supervisor, and being backed up by Dean Cronje, he reminded me that I'd also need to find a local external supervisor. The unfortunate thing is that even though I've attended one university in this area and worked at two others, I still don't know any faculty members there who I feel would be right in that role. I need to find someone nearby with a doctoral degree who's keen on open educational resources, the developing world, and educational technology, preferably within a reasonable drive of here. That's no easy task, so it's time to start seeing who in my network might know the right person. Then again, I had to find two external reviewers for the program at ATSU, so I ought to be able to find just one for Cape Peninsula.
So anyway, that's where I am right now. We'll see that happens, but it seems that I'm moving in this direction more and more and considering returning to A.T. Still University less and less.
Next up, behold the rise of the Chinese Ivy League!