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On my view of mentorship (particularly undergraduate students)

A post this morning written by Professor Stephen Saidemann from Carleton University resonated with me quite a lot was the trigger for me to write this post that summarizes my view of mentorship in higher education. I know many of my colleagues in the UBC Department of Political Science feel the same way I do about mentorship, and it’s always nice to know that this view is shared in other universities and departments (see my colleague Dr. Janni Aragon from University of Victoria for but one example of excellent mentorship).

I was talking this past week with four of my undergraduate students (all of whom are working on research projects with me – I try to involve undergraduate students in my research all the time – it’s a valuable experience for post-graduation), and I asked them what their career plans were. Obviously, there are several of my students (who currently are undertaking research with me) who will not go on to academia, but the experience of collaborating in my scholarly work is (hopefully) one that will leave them with employable skills (I emphasize hire-able skills in my teaching too).

When I mentioned to my students that I was keen to know where they went and that I would always keep tabs on what they did, they all were extremely impressed and grateful. Even my former students whom I have not mentored directly (in collaborative research relationships) know that they can always count on me if they need advice or direction, or a letter of reference written for graduate school or a job. And while it’s nice to get the “thank you” cards that I do (rather frequently), it’s more what Professor Saideman indicates what drives me (and the heritage from my academic parents too, who did the same for their own students), and I quote:

It was not my intention that my last four graduate students at McGill have been women, but it is a point of pride that they are thriving and succeeding. I know that they will face a lot of crap in this business, but I also know that they know that I will always be there for them. In my view, agreeing to be an adviser is akin to an unbreakable vow–a magical binding contract. And as always, with great power, comes great responsibility.

I completely agree. Agreeing to work with you (as a student of mine) means to me that I will keep tabs on you in the future, regardless of which country you (or I) live in. It’s a binding contract whereby I agree to help you develop your skills and make a contribution in this world. That’s the underlying reason of why I agree to teach at the university level, and that’s the reason why I became an academic in the first place: to make a positive impact in the world, hopefully not only with my own scholarship but also through my students too.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – April 27, 2012

World Water Day 2012: Water and Food Security

Travelling by False Creek Ferries across the water

While the interactions between food security and water is not my field of scholarly research, I have always had concerns about the amount of freshwater used in agricultural production. From the materials that the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) produced to promote World Water Day 2012 (whose theme this year is Water and Food Security), I found some interesting (and intriguing) thoughts.

In the last 50 years, the world’s cultivated area has grown by 12% and agricultural production has grown 2.5 to 3 times (FAO, SOLAW, 2011). Agricultural water use has helped meet rapidly rising demand for food and has contributed to the growth of farm profitability and poverty reduction as well as to regional rural development and environmental protection. 55% of the food production comes from irrigated or drained areas and 45% from the other areas. But…It takes in average 3 000 litres of water to produce the food needed to feed one person for a day. With the world population increasing to 9 billion by 2050, and most of that growth expected in urban areas, the challenge of feeding the world in a resource scarce environment has never been greater.

Already today in an increasing number of regions and watersheds, the demand for water outpaces available supply, translating into environmental degradation and increased competition among dierent users. About 12%of the global land area is currently in use for cultivation of agricultural crops. Agriculture also uses 70% of all water withdrawn from aquifers, streams and lakes. After water has been used for domestic, industrial and agricultural purposes, only lower quality water is returned to the system, directly or by non point sources pollution (nutrients, pesticides derived from crop and livestock management). Yet in some countries in the arid and semi-arid zone, food production is only possible by irrigating. Food production is
not negotiable but what can be negotiated is where, when and how food is produced and consumed.

Urban corn farm in Mexico

At no point did I read in these materials any discussion on the use of wastewater in agricultural irrigation (a practice that is relatively frequent in Mexico and that I have documented and discussed previously in my research on wastewater governance – see for example Pacheco-Vega 2005, Pacheco-Vega and Basurto 2008, Pacheco-Vega 2011). This is sometimes a bit of a taboo topic, as the use of wastewater in agricultural irrigation has inherent risks (as noted by Scott, Zarazua and Levine 2000). Yet, in regions afflicted with drought, wastewater use may not be a luxury but a necessity.

To ensure food security we may need to consider access to non-conventional sources of water, and bring this topic to the table. I hope UN-WATER and the FAO can make this topic part of the global discussion on water scarcity. As I have predicated at length in my research (and teaching), looking at water from an integrated, closed-cycle perspective is extremely important. Wastewater can’t continue to be the “ugly duckling” of social studies of water. We need to get beyond the culture of flushing and learn to really govern water properly.

Posted in bridging academia and practice, water governance, World Water Day.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – March 22, 2012

Reforming the scholarly publishing system I: Time to peer-review

Recent online (and offline) discussions around the fact that the academic system is ripe for disruption have encountered a high degree of resonance amongst the scholarly community at all levels (on the tenure-track, tenured, non-tenure-track, adjuncts or contingent faculty, graduate students). The topic itself (reforming academia) is extremely complex, and a systematic review would be outside of the scope of this particular blog entry. But one of the areas that really needs profound reform, I believe, is the scholarly publishing system (and I am not even going to discuss the open-access vs. non-open-access topic here).

In particular, the one element that I think needs profound reform in order to catch up to the realities of online, speedy publishing is the peer review process. Some of the “top ranked journals” have waiting times of 4-6 months (in some case, this is the “fast” speed!). Full disclosure: the journals on whose editorial board I sit have a one-month review policy and the editors in chief are quite good at getting reviews back on a timely fashion.

peer review

Personally, I have a one-month policy for every review I do, and most of the journals who have asked me to peer-review know this, and I encourage them to email me gentle reminders. I do also know of other journals who have withdrawn their requests to peer-review manuscripts to reviewers when the time to respond/review goes beyond one month. I am not 100% sure what can be done to reform this small part of the system, but I think it’s one of the most important ones. Manuscripts that sit on reviewers’ desks for months without review make authors frustrated and obviously, the publication of data and results ends up being sometimes rather untimely (and outdated). I don’t have an answer to this question, but I remain frustrated.

Thoughts, of course, most welcome.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – March 21, 2012

A reflection after the Our Canada, Our Future: Stop the Carbon Pipeline event

While it’s quite publicly known that I don’t do scholarly research on the politics of climate change, I am a specialist in environmental politics, I’m well aware of the issues around global environmental change and my work on pollution reduction/control and water governance also has systemic implications that necessitate my awareness of research around climatic change. Global environmental issues don’t have clearly defined boundaries and thus require us to at least maintain a certain level of understanding of the issues. Thus, I made the time to attend the event “Our Canada, Our Future: Stop the Carbon Pipeline” at UBC this week.

UBCC350 Event on Enbridge Pipeline

Yesterday, I sat in to listen (and for a change, not to speak!) on a panel of colleagues of mine (Dr. Kathryn Harrison from the Department of Political Science at The University of British Columbia, Dr. Hisham Zerriffi from the Liu Institute for Global Issues at UBC, Dr. George Hoberg from the Department of Forest Resources Management at UBC), and a former student of mine, Gordon Katic (Political Science, UBC). The panel was organized by UBCC 350, and was primarily an information session where speakers presented about issues surrounding the construction of the Northern Gateway Pipeline and other plans to increase BC carbon exports. My colleagues presented some really interesting data on carbon exports, projections of carbon emissions, the need to engage in scholarly activism and my former student Gordon Katic gave a vibrant, engaging and galvanizing talk that resulted in a call to action for the event participants. Very well done, everyone.

For someone like me, who doesn’t work in the specific field of climate policy, this session was very informative and provided me some talking points that I plan to use in my teaching on global environmental politics and on Canadian environmental policy. From an outsider perspective, it looks like it was a successful event as the room was pretty packed; considering that the event took place on a Thursday evening, when it is hard to bring out anybody to events, I would applaud UBCC 350.

This session was a refreshing reminder that, even though I am a scholar, I myself have grappled with questions of whether we academics can afford NOT to be activists when we see pressing issues and the need for action. This is not an easy debate to have. I find myself increasingly frustrated with how little politicians listen to scholars like me and colleagues of mine on pressing policy issues. Much of what I do involves knowledge mobilization (and I use a variety of avenues to engage with the public, not only public lectures and speaking, but also sharing tidbits of my own research on this blog and on my social media platforms). But I share my colleagues’ frustration that behavioral change to deal with pressing climate issues isn’t coming about fast enough.

It is encouraging to see so many undergraduate students (many of my own, in fact) involved in sustainability-focused activities, such as UBCC350. I have long argued that behavioral change needs to happen earlier in life (e.g. high-school, grade school and university).

UBCC350 Event on Enbridge Pipeline

Inspired by the global climate movement fostered by 350.org, UBCC350 is a group of UBC students, faculty, and staff committed to advocating for meaningful government climate action. We strongly support aggressive global and national action to address the climate crisis, but our immediate focus is on carbon exports from British Columbia. BC has enacted progressive climate policies, but they have yet to be implemented. Recent proposals for projects that would increase BC’s carbon exports threaten to negate and even overwhelm BC’s commitments to reduce greenhouse gases. There are three main channels of carbon exports from BC: coal, tarsands pipelines, and unconventional natural gas/shale gas. UBCC350 is an independent group of students, faculty and staff and do not represent the views of the University.

Whatever your take is on climatic change, I strongly encourage you to educate yourself on the issues and to engage with the topic. The rest of my photo set from the evening is here. And should you be interested in the March 31st event (Storm The Riding), here is some information.

Posted in bridging academia and practice, climate change, climate policy.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – March 9, 2012

On building a research programme, closing down projects and mapping new research trajectories

Bookcases

photo credit: d.p.Hetteix

The biggest challenge I have had in the past decade or so has been to remove myself from continue to investigate topics I have undertaken scholarly research on. For a solid decade, I studied transnational networks of environmental organizations. During the same period, I completed my doctoral dissertation on a completely different topic (the industrial/urban restructuring of cities and their associated leather and footwear industrial clusters). I also began working on water issues even before finishing my doctoral dissertation. I realize that not every scholar has faced the same issue, but I have a really hard time letting go of research avenues. It’s incredibly hard to maintain my fingers on the pulse of the literature on transnational environmental social movements.

The field of environmental economic geography continues to expand. And water? Social sciences’ scholarship on water has bloomed in the past 20 years. And yet, if you ask me, I would want to never have to stop studying these topics. I find, however, that I don’t have the actual time nor space of mind (nor have I dug in the literature enough) to continue conducting research on topics whose bodies of literature I no longer have at my fingertips.

I was having a conversation with a very close friend of mine with whom I’m working on a water/energy project, and I asked him how he dealt with “closing down projects”. That is, how do you leave projects behind? How do you convince yourself not to continue to want to do research on something that still interests you?

I think the answer is clear when the research project is associated with a specific dataset, or with a stream of research income (e.g. a grant). You were funded for N years. You committed to write A, B and C scholarly products and to present at W, Z and X conferences and to fund R, S and T graduate students. You end the project once you have gotten all the products you committed to at the end of the project.

But what do you do with projects that you feel you could still “wring”? Projects that could potentially help you build a new research trajectory? For example, I am right now extremely excited about work I’m doing on the water and energy nexus. I don’t foresee my excitement will wane in the next 5 years. What to do? Just out of the fact that I am only one individual, I will most likely have to give up on exploring other research avenues. This is a trade-off (money, time, human resources) I am sure other scholars face, so I’m putting the question out for you all to answer.

All feedback appreciated. How do you decide when you no longer want to pursue a particular research avenue?

Posted in research.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – March 6, 2012

Debunking Myths and Fallacies Around Water Governance (come hear me speak!)

Travelling by False Creek Ferries across the water

Earlier this year, the University of British Columbia Political Science Students Association (UBC PSSA) invited me to speak around the topic of water politics and policy. As you may know, the World Water Assessment Programme (WWAP) is about to release its 4th Edition of the United Nations World Water Development Report (March 12th) and World Water Day is also coming up (March 22nd). Supporting students’ activities is one of my highest priorities (even more so, as in the case of the UBC PSSA, when the student organization members are also my current or former students). So, below is the invite (please RSVP on Facebook so we can have an idea of how many people are coming).

The PSSA is proud to host a talk titled “Debunking Myths and Fallacies around Water Governance” by Dr. Raul Pacheco-Vega February 29th at 3pm in Henry Angus Room 435. Dr. Raul Pacheco-Vega’s presentation will offer evidence to debunk the myth of water abundance in North America and discuss the difficulties in developing a cohesive water governance policy at an urban, national, and trans-boundary level in North America. Through this presentation, Dr. Pacheco-Vega will offer some answers to the question “what is the role of co-operation in water governance?”

Lynn Canyon Park (North Vancouver)

This talk is intended more or less to the general lay people, although I will definitely be using concepts drawn from the political science literature. I have been working hard enough in the field of knowledge translation to know that it is really easy to get people lost when you speak academic-ese. So, my goals with this talk are twofold: First, to outline what makes it challenging to create one, coherent, cohesive water policy at the country- and continental-level, and second, to showcase some of the research projects I am currently engaged in with students (current and former), demonstrating the kind of research questions I am interested in exploring.

I recognize it takes place during a weekday and at a time that may be not so early in the day to skip work, but I am hoping you will find it interesting enough to come by and listen to what I have to say. This is a topic I’m extremely passionate about and that has occupied my research mind for at least the last 8 years of my life.

Posted in bridging media and academia.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – February 27, 2012

Knowledge translation, mobilization and the #MyResearch hashtag

While many scholars (particularly now-tenured, though some non-tenured too) have taken to blogging and social media lately (the movement seems to have exploded in 2011 and 2012, with many academic conferences having their own Twitter hashtag – check the American Anthropology Association, the MLA and the upcoming American Association of Geographers 2012 hashtags), I have experimented with social media since 2006 (though, at the time, it was purely for personal use). I have been using social media in my teaching and my own research extensively since 2009, and I’m glad that my fellow academics are now embracing it as a tool to build new collaborative research networks. That’s the purpose of the #MyResearch hashtag.

As a way to provide context, let me summarize a bit of my academic history. When I was a PhD student, I built my scholarly networks the old-fashioned way. I emailed senior professors all over the world, I kept constant contact via email, I joined list-servs and participated in scholarly conversations in these forums. I then would attend conferences and meet the folks I had emailed and/or had discussions with over the list-serv and talk “in real life”. This meant that it took YEARS to build the kind of robust, strong collaboration networks I have built. With social media, the ability to create collaborative networks, and advance knowledge translation and knowledge mobilization strategies is much enhanced. The recent (early) success of the #MyResearch hashtag in spreading throughout the world appears to confirm my suspicions: that social media can (and SHOULD) be used to advance scholarly research and improve the way in which we academics liaise with the world that will eventually use our findings.

A few months ago, I attempted to showcase to my students and colleagues how Twitter could be used to spread the word about my (and other scholars’) research findings. At that time, it didn’t really take off. This time (and for reasons that probably warrant research itself), it did, and as you can tell from this visualization created by Marc Smith (thanks to Ines Mergel for connecting me with Marc, via Twitter no less), there have already been emerging some interesting conversational patterns.

20120114-NodeXL-Twitter-myresearch network graph

These are the connections among the Twitter users who recently tweeted the word MyResearch when queried on January 14, 2012, scaled by numbers of followers (with outliers thresholded). Connections created when users reply, mention or follow one another. The data set starts on 1/9/2012 8:10 and ends on 1/15/2012 0:32 UTC. Green lines are “follows” relationships, blue lines are “reply” or “mentions” relationships. Visualization by Marc Smith, and credit to Marc Smith on Flickr

Thanks to everyone who has retweeted my plea to summarize your research findings. A number of scholars (yes, I’ve read your tweets) seem to be skeptical about people wanting to broadcast their plans for a research grant (the closed view of the world in academia where you need to be FIRST to publish something probably needs some expansion). I don’t think that any scholar needs to post exactly what they are planning to do, but for those of you who are interested, there’s a whole stream of thought called Open Research (and Open Science).

I would like to encourage folks to continue to share your research findings via the #MyResearch hashtag. I have seen early signs of beginnings of collaboration among Twitter users and I’m excited by what may come from this.

Posted in bridging academia and practice.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – January 16, 2012

Recommended background courses for Public Policy undergraduates in pursuit of graduate school

I take my role as a mentor very seriously. Much of the time I spend contributing to the scholarly community is focused on helping scholars whose careers are more junior than mine (and given that I’m an early-ish career scholar, that usually means my undergraduate students, or PhD students in the same department I teach or in the department where I graduated from). Or, in some cases, PhD students from other universities worldwide who reach out to me because of my specific expertise. I also contribute frequently to the online forum #PhDChat.

Recently, a very bright student of mine (current) asked me which courses I would suggest that she takes BEFORE heading into graduate school. While my department (Political Science at The University of British Columbia) has an extremely well-rounded BA degree, I’m sure my students would benefit from taking other courses that would allow them to arrive to graduate school more prepared.

Given the recent emphasis in political science and public policy in quantitative methods, I suggested to my student to take a couple of courses in basic economics: microeconomics and macroeconomics. I also suggested an additional course in statistics (although our course in statistics in political science, taught by my colleague Dr. Fred Cutler, is a very robust course). Several of my fellow colleagues in the department have very strong quantitative and formal modeling backgrounds.

On a personal level (read: my own methodological preferences) I work with mixed research methods. I have about the same degree of fluency in discourse analysis and institutional ethnography as I do in multivariate analysis. I am (obviously) a fan of geographical information systems (GIS) and thus I enjoy and encourage my students to undertake spatial analysis.

I also suggested a course in econometrics, as it will definitely be valuable (honestly, it never hurts to know econometrics). Josh Greenberg and Wendy Waters both suggested additional courses, in discourse coalitions analysis, dramaturgy, public-private partnerships and some housing policy (although in my Public Policy course I do talk about housing). Janet De Luna (a graduate student at the University of Chicago, in Public Policy) also suggested political institutions and political economy. Reema Faris suggested courses in humanities (but I’m sure they DO already take those!).

If you were to suggest courses that undergraduate students could take to arrive to graduate school in public policy better prepared, which courses would you recommend? Feel free to add in the comments section.

Posted in policy analysis, public policy theories, teaching.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – November 26, 2011

Students at UBC: Call for papers UBC Journal of Political Studies & UBC Journal of International Affairs

This year, students of mine are the Editors in Chief of both the UBC Journal of Political Studies AND the UBC Journal of International Affairs. In view of this, I’m hereby writing to promote both calls for papers. Note that deadlines are fast approaching.

UBC Journal of Political Studies

The UBC Journal of Political Studies is one of the premier undergraduate student research journals in the country and is now accepting submissions for its 2012 edition. This is an excellent opportunity for students to showcase their work and to be published.

The Journal attempts to publish papers from a wide variety of political science-related fields, and students are encouraged to submit papers from all the sub-fields of political science. Papers not written for course credit will also be accepted, provided they are still relevant to the discipline. All papers must be the author’s original, previously-unpublished work and each author is permitted to submit a maximum of two papers for consideration. All papers should be 1500-3000 words in length.

Students are strongly encouraged to review their papers before submitting them, and to use any feedback they may have received. Students should also contemporize their papers if necessary.

The deadline for submission is December 15th, 2011 at 5pm.
Papers should be submitted to the Editor-in-Chief at editor.ubcpssa@gmail.com.

UBC Journal of International Affairs

Founded in 1985, the Journal of International Affairs is a student-led, faculty-reviewed journal at the University of British Columbia that showcases UBC undergraduate essays of the highest caliber. UBC students get a chance to have their work circulated to numerous universities and institutions across Canada and the world, offering an incredible opportunity to have their work published and distributed early in their academic careers.

The JIA is also accepting undergraduate essays from an international network of 21 schools, whose work serves to broaden the journal’s perspectives.

We are looking for research papers or photo essays from a variety of disciplines written on Post-1945 topics related to global political issues.

Some suggested themes include:

Sustainability and climate change

Regime change

Financial turmoil

Civil liberties, humanitarian law.

Access to food and water

Gender issues

Arab spring

Please remember that essays are not restricted to these topics, and that students may submit papers that are related to any number of global concerns that they feel are relevant to the field of International Relations.

Requirements

Submitted papers must be roughly 1200-3500 words, written in English, be properly cited, have received a grade worth 80% or more, and must not have been previously published.

Deadline

The deadline for submissions is December 15th, 2011. Students should include their name, University, Faculty/Department, and year standing in their submission.

Possible Questions:

How many submissions do you get? We get on average 80 to 100 that we seriously consider. Last year we published 10.

What is the proccess like? You’ll submit your paper online. It will get reviewed and placed on a short list for publication. From there there will be several rounds of editing partnering you and other students experienced in the field. If the Editorial Board then decides to publish it, it will be reviewed by a faculty sponsor. The JIA is published in Mid-March.

We look forward to your papers! Please send them in Microsoft Word (.doc) format to Iana Messetchkova, JIA Director of Communications at irsa.prelations@gmail.com.

Posted in bridging academia and practice.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – November 25, 2011

On managing climate change financing (a new paper in Science by Donner, Kandlikar and Zerriffi)

Blue Skies Leaving Kota Kinabalu..

photo credit: thienzieyung

While climate change isn’t really very directly my area of expertise, most of the scholarly research I undertake has deals with public service delivery decisions, budget allocations and policy choices under multiple constraints. Determining where to allocate scarce funds within the domestic policy arena is hard enough, one can only imagine the multiple degrees and layers of complexity that addressing climate change brings along.

I just learned of a new Policy Forum paper by my colleagues at UBC Simon Donner, Milind Kandlikar and Hisham Zerriffi where they address these questions. Donner et al indicate that mechanisms should be implemented to ensure that the funding goes to critical areas to tackle the most pressing challenges.

You can read the Policy Forum abstract of Donner, Kandlikar and Zerriffi (2011) here:

At the 2010 Cancun Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the international community agreed in principle to one of the largest development programs in history. The developed nations pledged to mobilize U.S.$100 billion per year by the year 2020 to “address the needs of developing countries” in responding to climate change. The funds, which may apply to adaptation and mitigation, are proposed to flow through multiple channels, including existing development banks, official development assistance, bilateral programs, international private investment flows (e.g., carbon markets), and other public and private mechanisms. Recommendations provided by a transitional committee for the management and operation of the proposed climate change financing will be considered by the parties to the UNFCCC at the upcoming conference in Durban, South Africa

My own research has used integrated assessment (a set of heuristics to integrate multiple disciplines to provide policy-makers with robust suggestions on policy decisions) to address issues of industrial restructuring. One of the tenets of integrated assessment is to focus on where resources can be better spent so maximum effectiveness can be attained with the least investment.

In their paper, Donner, Kandlikar and Zerriffi have sought to spell out sound policy recommendations on how financing should occur. From the media release at UBC:

Donner, Kandlikar and Zerriffi provide specific recommendations for ensuring that countries meet the funding commitment, that waste and misappropriation are minimized and that money is directed to the most effective programs. These guidelines include instituting an “adaptive” regulatory system to close funding loopholes, employing a decentralized network of third-party auditors and adopting a scientific approach to evaluating program effectiveness.

It will be very interesting to see if policy-makers and participants in COP 17 in Durban will listen to the sound advice of these UBC scholars.

Posted in bridging academia and practice, environmental policy, policy instruments.

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By Raul Pacheco-Vega – November 17, 2011