I write this short blog to share with you a few of my experiences as a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University, California, USA. My time at Stanford was rather short (3 months), but it was indeed intellectually invigorating! I came here during the summer quarter, which is a much more quiet time of the year in Stanford University just like in Finland. However, as a very large University as Stanford is, the place is always full of different types of seminars, conferences, executive training programs, and other activities. In fact, I seized the opportunity to also participate in some of these activities for free (once I showed my Stanford ID card).
In terms of academic visits (doctoral students, postdoc, and professors), over 8000 scholars visit Stanford University every single year. The two leading nationalities of visitors are Chinese and German scholars. As a visiting scholar, one of the first things which struck me – or perhaps came as a bit of a shock, was the MANDATORY sexual harassment training requirement that all visiting scholars, professors, doctoral students at Stanford must complete within the first-two weeks of their arrival. I believe this requirement will be ‘foreign’ to many scholars as well from Finnish Universities. The training is usually completed online or by physically attending class and participating in discussions of all types of sexual harassment. Well, as this training was foreign to me and I was also very curious to learn what it actually entailed, I participated in the physical class session: please, don’t ask me more – it’s a long story. But, I can tell you for sure that the physical class session was interesting! In fact, Stanford requires all faculty and staff to complete this training every two years. So, you can imagine how serious Stanford (Harassment Policy Office) takes this.
With respect to doing research and academic life in general at Stanford, I must say that my experience has been extremely positive – I certainly encourage other colleagues from Turku School of Economics (TSE) to visit as well. As part of SCANCOR (Scandinavian Consortium for Organizational Research), we have a research seminar every Wednesday dedicated to just one scholar to present and receive developmental feedback from Stanford professors and other SCANCORIANS. The Wednesday seminars are always followed by refreshments after 4 pm to continue the discussion. I know of other visiting scholars from Aalto and Lappeenranta University who seized the opportunity of being at Stanford to also arrange data collection interviews as well as used the Stanford Behavioral LAB to collect data for their various studies. In short, being here at Stanford and seeing how things are done quickly gives you a good sense of what makes an institution such as Stanford and its faculty this successful in terms of research.
Find here a short interview I had with the Director of SCANCOR program (Professor Francisco Ramirez: popularly known as ‘Chiqui’) here at Stanford. I asked him few questions regarding: (1) What SCANCOR is about; (2) Research; (3) University-Industry Collaboration; and (4) Teaching. Additionally, enjoy some photos of me and Stanford University.
See you all very soon in Turku!
William Degbey,
University Teacher
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