A friend recently asked if I visited Germany because they treated me like a king? They jokingly referred to me as ‘Jason von Thatcher’.
Which made us both laugh.
While funny, it made me introspect on the assumptions folks make about my academic travel.
My friend assumed that I was touring around & sharing American wisdom with Germanic tribes.
The assumption felt a lot colonial - suggesting that the American way was the best way to run a research program.
While I do sit with students, learning about their work, their methods and offering suggestions, I do even more watching & learning from students & their advisors.
Why? After twenty years as a professor? Am I deeply embedding myself in a different system? Of thinking about problems? And arranging work?
My experience immersing myself in German academe has taught me new models for mentoring, evaluating research problems & building community. It’s kept research fun!
My German friends have taken me from being a-ok researcher to a great mentor.
What lessons have my German friends taught me?
First, they have underscored that a chair’s job is to take care of the students.
My German mentors specialize in opening doors for students.
They open doors for all their students - future academics & future practitioners.
In the States, that second group is neglected. In Germany, my friends do not differentiate.
I am now a better mentor.
Second, they focus their students on impact.
My German mentors start with research problems, ask about their impact, work with their students on solutions, & then chase publications.
In the States, we often start by asking where an idea can be published - and if it can’t be published, we never chase a solution.
My German friends have made me acutely aware of impact.
Third, they focus on community building.
My German mentors run multi-year teams, with students working across cohorts & years to solve problems.
In the States, we tend to work with a few students & poorly connect topics and people across time & space.
My German friends have taught me how to construct communities.
My teams now span my students from different uni’s and friends from different countries.
Fourth, they focus on relationships.
I’ve watched some effective and some not effective ways (by he who must not be named) ways of coordinating work across schools & at the intersection of academe and industry.
My German friends have opened my eyes to how to coordinate & communicate the value of my work.
I now spend more time on industry.
Fifth, they’ve made the work fun again - they only do work they care about - and have shown me the value of being selective & focusing on the best ideas.
German summer school has made me better & my Ph.D. students are better prepared for the future.
If you get a chance, enroll. You won’t regret attending summer school in another country.
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