Review Materials - Dan Ryan - 2015
Associate Professor Step 2
Sociology
Mills College
For consideration for promotion to Full Professor Step 1
Context
I was promoted to Associate Professor, Step 2 in 2008. In 2011 the Appointments, Promotion, and Tenure Committee forwarded a favorable review on promotion to Full Professor, Step 1 which the then President chose not to forward to the Board of Trustees. Having served on the search committee that hired the new president, I chose not to have an appeal of that decision be one of the first things to come across her desk. The file from that review is available here.
When the next opportunity for consideration came along in 2012-13 I requested and received a deferral from the then provost since I was in the midst of several semesters of teaching leaves, sabbatical leave and leave of absence without pay while attempting to resolve my family's "two body problem."
This file covers my work since the last review. The materials in the current file are all online on this website. The tabs above take you to different components. Each component is available to download as a PDF. The entire file will also be available as a single download.
Thank you for your consideration.CUMULATIVE FAR 2010-2015
DAN RYAN
Personal Information:
Dan Ryan
Sociology/Anthropology
Associate Professor 2005
Education
1999 | Yale University, Ph.D. Sociology. |
1994 | Yale University, M.A., M. Phil. Sociology. |
1986 | Universität Trier, Germany, Guest Student (German/Politics). |
1983 | New College of Florida, B.A. Mathematical, Physical, and Computer Sciences |
Employment
1998-present |
Mills College |
2014-2015 |
University of Southern California: Adjunct Professor of Technology and Social Science |
1997 |
Yale School of Management: Instructor, "Geographic Information Systems for Market Analysis" |
1994-97 | Yale University Founder and Coordinator of The City Room at the Institutional for Social and Policy Studies. |
1992-3 | Yale University, Part-Time Acting Instructor |
1990-91 | New College of Florida, Visiting Instructor in Sociology |
Various times | Consultant higher education, data visualization, organizational behavior, software development |
Teaching
Courses taught in the last three years
Courses Taught Title (enrollment|credit) |
|
Fall 15 | Spring 16 |
Hist. Sociological Thought (34|1.0) | Proseminar (11|1.0) |
IS Human Centered Design (6|0.5) | Research Methods* (42|1.25) |
Assignment: Innovation Lab | GIS (23|0.5) |
IS Design Thinking Prototyping (2|0.5) | Modeling & Simulation + LAB (17|1.25) |
* team-taught | |
Fall 14 | Spring 15 |
SABBATICAL LEAVE | UNPAID LEAVE |
IS GIS (1|1.0) | |
IS Technology and Society (1|1.0) | |
Fall 13 | Spring 14 |
GIS + LAB (15|1.0) | SABBATICAL LEAVE |
Modeling & Simulation + LAB (6|1.0) |
Course or curriculum development; other contributions to teaching.
- New courses: Design Thinking as Liberal Art, Social Network Analysis
- Introduced video course descriptions
- Developed and implemented oral exam protocol
- Teaching wiki – all of my teaching materials are available online
- Wikipedia editing in class
- Coursera-based blended course in PPOL225
- Blended course using Novo-Ed/IDEO platform for independent study in Human Centered Design
- Developed and taught in "popUp curriculum" at USC Iovine Young Academy and introduced same at Mills
Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activities
Books
- The Ghosts of Organization Past (2015). Temple University Press. (original edition)
Articles in refereed journals.
- "Democracy and the Information Order," G. K. Hadfield and D. Ryan European Journal of Sociology / Volume 54 / Issue 01 / April 2013, pp 67-95. Fully equal co-authorship.
Book reviews, other articles, and notes.
- Chapter for revision of the Handbook of Community Movements and Local Organizations (from Carl Milofsky, Bucknell, and Ram Cnann, Penn 2016)
- Review of Networked by Barry Wellman and Lee Rainie. Contemporary Sociology, March 2014 vol. 43 no. 2 180-183 (doi: 10.1177/0094306114522414b)
- "But What if the Shared Vision Is Myopic?" Dan Ryan and Sara Goldrick-Rab. Chronicle of Higher Education, January 12, 2015. Fully equal co-authorship.
- "Majoring in the 21st Century," Mills Quarterly Winter 2015
Talks, abstracts, and other professional papers presented.
Invited talks, etc.
- "(Disruptive) Innovation as a Liberal Art", College for a Day, Denver Colorado (2016)
- "The Wellbeing University," George Mason University, November 2015, cancelled due to events at Mills.
- "(Disruptive) Innovation as a Liberal Art", Washington D.C. Mills Club (2015)
- "If Small Liberal Arts Colleges Did Not Exist, Would Someone Invent Them?", Address at Palo Alto Mills Alumnae Club Meeting (2014)
- "Learning to be a Node," USC Department of Sociology (2014).
- "Can EdTech Save Liberal Arts Colleges or Can Liberal Arts Colleges Be Saved From EdTech," Mills College Alumnae San Diego Chapter (2014).
- "Majoring in the Twenty-first Century," Mills College Aurelia Henry Reinhardt Society and The Cyrus and Susan Mills Society (2013)
- "Democracy and the Information Order," USC Law School Faculty Workshop (with G Hadfield)(2013)
- "In the Beginning…" Mills College Baccalaureate Address (2011)
Other Talks
- "Better Meetings: DeBono's Six Hats Method," USC Iovine Young Academy popUp Series (2015).
- "Tricks of the Trade for Speaking in Public" USC Iovine Young Academy popUp Series (2014).
- "Pedagogical Productivity and the Survival of SLACs in the Age of MOOCs," Mills College Faculty Colloquium, December. (2012)
- "How to Run a College Like a Business Without Running a College Like a Business" (2010)
- Guest lectures, Mills College. "19th German Social Theory" (for HIST127, Germany and Central Europe); "Power in Organizations" (for GOVT101 "Organizational Theory") 2011
- "A Pre-Transition Agenda for Mills College" (2010)
- "Democracy, Courts, and the Information Order" (co-authored with Gillian K. Hadfield) presented at Annual Meetings of the Pacific Sociological Association, Oakland, CA April 2010.
Web Presence
- danryan.us - a wiki on which all of my teaching materials are made available on the open web. In 2015 the site received 44,000 visits from over 35,000 unique visitors with about 170,000 page views based on web logs.
- Numerous videos for college planning processes and instruction
- "Mills Innovation Minutes" – proof of concept for series of short videos highlighting teaching innovations at Mills
- Blog : The Sociology of Information: research related essays (195 posts with 39,000 page views)
- Blog : Assessing Assessing: organizationally informed commentary on the assessment industry in higher education (36 posts with 1200 page views).
- Blog: Majoring in the 21st Century: investigations into what college should look like in the 21st century (44 posts with 1300 page views).
- Blog: ICYMI:In Case You Missed It –aggregates articles on higher education issues for colleagues (197 posts with 3300 page views).
- Blog: Sociology @ Mills (316 posts with 13,000 page views)
- Blog: That's Interesting Radio Sociology (8 posts with 2400 page views)
- Blog: Excel Mills (34 posts with 1100 page views)
- Blog: Mills 2017: Strategic Planning Ideas (66 posts, 819 pageviews)
- Twitter @djjr
- Facebook group Mills Sociology/Anthropology Alums for continued contact with over 100 alumnae
- Facebook group Innovation@Mills promotes innovation activities for Mills students, staff, and faculty
Contracts and Grants
2015 | Mills MAK Curriculum Development Grant with Maia Averett for Data Science, $3,000. |
2014 | Haverford College Workshop on Teaching Integrity in Empirical Research, ~$500. |
2012 | Mills College Research Grant for "Mapping the Higher Education Lobby," $1,245 |
Fellowships and Prizes
2014-15 |
Sabbatical Leave, Mills College |
2012-15 | Kathryn P. Hannam Professorship in American Studies |
2011 |
Baccalaureate Speaker, Mills College |
2010-11 |
Visiting Scholar, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences |
2008-11 |
Robert and Ann Wert Chair, Mills College |
Consulting
2013 | National Endowment for the Humanities: Member, Review panel for NEH Collaborative Research in Social Sciences Grant Applications. |
2012 | Loyola Marymount College: Program Review Department of Sociology. |
Service
Advising
- Undergraduate: See above.
- Graduate: I am regularly consulted by graduate students in public policy, management, interdisciplinary computer science.
- Other advising activities. I am the faculty advisor to the campus student democrats organization, "FemDems"
Campus service: Departmental.
I have either organized or participated in numerous iterations of our graduate and career workshops, orientation activities, etc.
Campus service: College.
- Travel and talks for Mills Alum Association
- Travel and talks for Mills Undergraduate Admissions
- Talks for Southern California admitted students (2014,2015)
- Ongoing Mills College: Interdisciplinary Computer Science Program Committee, Political Legal and Economic Analysis (PLEA) Program Committee
- 2015 President's ad hoc planning group for innovation
- Leader of undergraduate academic initiatives working group for strategic planning process and member of strategic plan steering committee.
- Consulting with marketing/branding consultant.
- 2012-13 Mills College, Chair Course Evaluation Committee, Chair Strategic Planning Working Group on Undergraduate Program
- 2011-12 Mills College, Campus Budget Committee
- 2011-13 Mills College, Chair ad hoc committee on electronic course evaluations.
- 2011 Fall Mills College, Chair of Faculty Executive Committee
- 2010 Mills College, Presidential Search Committee
- 2010-11 Mills College, Chair of Faculty Executive Committee
Professional service.
- 2013-15 American Sociological Association Committee on Awards
- 2012 Loyola Marymount College: Program Review Department of Sociology
- 2013 Review panel for National Endowment for the Humanities for Collaborative Research Social Sciences Program
- 2011-13 Secretary-Treasurer and Information Officer, American Sociological Association Section on Communication and Information Technology
- 2013-15 Member Committee on Awards, American Sociological Association
- 1995-2015 Organizer, "Soon-to-be-Author-Meets-Non-Critics: Leave Your Swords at the Door" Annual Meetings of the American Sociological Association
Reviewing, etc.
At various times I have reviewed scholarship for Contemporary Sociology Temple University Press, University of Chicago Press, Sage, Symbolic Interaction, Time and Society, The Sociological Quarterly, Social Psychological Quarterly
CURRICULUM VITAE
DAN RYAN
Personal Information:
Dan Ryan
Sociology/Anthropology
Professor 2016
Education
1999 | Yale University, Ph.D. Sociology. |
1994 | Yale University, M.A., M. Phil. Sociology. |
1986 | Universität Trier, Germany, Guest Student (German/Politics). |
1983 | New College of Florida, B.A. Mathematical, Physical, and Computer Sciences |
Employment
1998-present |
Mills College |
2014-2015 |
University of Southern California: Adjunct Professor of Technology and Social Science |
1997 |
Yale School of Management: Instructor, "Geographic Information Systems for Market Analysis" |
1994-97 | Yale University Founder and Coordinator of The City Room at the Institutional for Social and Policy Studies. |
1992-3 | Yale University, Part-Time Acting Instructor |
1990-91 | New College of Florida, Visiting Instructor in Sociology |
Various times | Consultant higher education, data visualization, organizational behavior, software development |
Teaching
Courses taught in the last three years
Fall 15 | Enroll | Credits | Spring 16 | Enroll | Credits |
Hist. Sociological Thought | 34 | 1 | Proseminar | 11 | 1 |
IS Human Centered Design | 6 | 0.5 | Research Methods* | 20(42) | 1.25 |
Assignment: Innovation Lab | n.a. | n.a. | GIS | 23 | 0.5 |
Modeling & Simulation + LAB | 17 | 1.25 | |||
* with Henderson, Hunter, & Sheldon | |||||
Fall 14 | Enroll | Credits | Spring 15 | ||
SABBATICAL LEAVE | UNPAID LEAVE | ||||
IS GIS | 1 | 1 | |||
IS Technology and Society | 1 | 1 | |||
Fall 13 | Enroll | Credits | Spring 14 | ||
GIS + LAB | 15 | 1 | SABBATICAL LEAVE | ||
Modeling & Simulation + LAB | 6 | 1 |
Course or curriculum development; other contributions to teaching.
- New courses: Design Thinking as Liberal Art, Social Network Analysis
- Introduced video course descriptions
- Developed and implemented oral exam protocol
- Teaching wiki – all of my teaching materials are available online
- Wikipedia editing in class
- Coursera-based blended course in PPOL225
- Blended course using Novo-Ed/IDEO platform for independent study in Human Centered Design
- Developed and taught in "popUp curriculum" at USC Iovine Young Academy and introduced same at Mills
Research, Scholarly, and Creative Activities
Books
- The Ghosts of Organizations Past (2015). Temple University Press. (original edition)
Articles in refereed journals.
- "Democracy and the Information Order," G. K. Hadfield and D. Ryan European Journal of Sociology / Volume 54 / Issue 01 / April 2013, pp 67-95. Fully equal co-authorship.
- "Emergent Temporal Effects in Community Initiatives." Sociological Perspectives, Vol. 51, Issue 1, pp. 139–162.
- "Getting the Word Out: Notes on the Social Organization of Notification." Sociological Theory, September 2006. See also Tierney, J. 2007. "As the Grapevine Withers, Spam Filters Take Root." New York Times, 22 May 2007.
- "Everything Here is So Political: Separating the Organizationally Normal from the Political in Communities of Organizations" Journal of Drug Issues, vol. 36, no. 2 (Spring 2006).
- "Why is it so difficult to form community coalitions?" with Charles Kadushin and Matthew Lindholm. City and Community,4:3 September 2005.
- "'Fighting Back' Against Substance Abuse: The Structure and Function of Community Coalitions." Matthew Lindholm, Dan Ryan, Charles Kadushin, Leonard Saxe, Archie Brodsky. Human Organization. Fall 2004. Vol. 63, Iss. 3
Book reviews, other articles, and notes.
- Chapter for revision of the Handbook of Community Movements and Local Organizations (from Carl Milofsky, Bucknell, and Ram Cnann, Penn 2016)
- Review of Networked by Barry Wellman and Lee Rainie. Contemporary Sociology, March 2014 vol. 43 no. 2 180-183 (doi: 10.1177/0094306114522414b)
- "But What if the Shared Vision Is Myopic?" Dan Ryan and Sara Goldrick-Rab. Chronicle of Higher Education, January 12, 2015. Fully equal co-authorship.
- "Majoring in the 21st Century," Mills Quarterly Winter 2015
- Review of Time Use by William Michelson. Contemporary Sociology 36, 3 (May 2007).
- "Time and Globalization" in Encyclopedia of Globalization
- "Time" in Encyclopedia of Social Theory, edited by George Ritzer
- "How to Enjoy a Convention" The Pacific Sociologist Volume 6, #3. September 1998 (Republished by ~25 professional associations and websites)
- "The City Room: A View of a Virtual Repository" Yale Institution for Social and Policy Studies Newsletter Winter 1995.
- Farrar, C., Moskowitz, M., Rae, D. and D. Ryan. New Haven Maps! '95 A book of maps based on GIS analysis of data sets assembled by the Regional Data Cooperative for New Haven. September, 1995.
- Le Beau, M. M., D. Ryan, Jr. and M. A. Pericak-Vance. "Report of the committee on the genetic constitution of chromosomes 18 and 19." Cytogenetics & Cell Genetics 1989:51(1-4):338-57.
Talks, abstracts, and other professional papers presented.
Invited talks, etc.
- "(Disruptive) Innovation as a Liberal Art", College for a Day, Denver Colorado (2016)
- "The Wellbeing University," George Mason University, November 2015, cancelled due to events at Mills.
- "(Disruptive) Innovation as a Liberal Art", Washington D.C. Mills Club (2015)
- "If Small Liberal Arts Colleges Did Not Exist, Would Someone Invent Them?", Address at Palo Alto Mills Alumnae Club Meeting (2014)
- "Learning to be a Node," USC Department of Sociology (2014).
- "Can EdTech Save Liberal Arts Colleges or Can Liberal Arts Colleges Be Saved From EdTech," Mills College Alumnae San Diego Chapter (2014).
- "Majoring in the Twenty-first Century," Mills College Aurelia Henry Reinhardt Society and The Cyrus and Susan Mills Society (2013)
- "In the Beginning…" Mills College Baccalaureate Address (2011)
- "Democracy and the Information Order," USC Law School Faculty Workshop (with G Hadfield)(2013)
Other Talks
- "Better Meetings: DeBono's Six Hats Method," USC Iovine Young Academy popUp Series (2015).
- "Tricks of the Trade for Speaking in Public" USC Iovine Young Academy popUp Series (2014).
- "Pedagogical Productivity and the Survival of SLACs in the Age of MOOCs," Mills College Faculty Colloquium, December. (2012)
- "How to Run a College Like a Business Without Running a College Like a Business" (2010)
- Guest lectures, Mills College. "19th German Social Theory" (for HIST127, Germany and Central Europe); "Power in Organizations" (for GOVT101 "Organizational Theory") 2011
- "A Pre-Transition Agenda for Mills College" (2010)
- "Democracy, Courts, and the Information Order" (co-authored with Gillian K. Hadfield) presented at Annual Meetings of the Pacific Sociological Association, Oakland, CA April 2010.
- "Democracy, Courts, and the Information Order" (co-authored with Gillian K. Hadfield) presented at Annual Meetings of the American Sociological Association, Boston, MA August 2008.
- "Notification and the Information Order," Mills College Faculty Works-in-Progress Forum, October 2007.
- "Women, Men, and the Information Order," Annual Meeting of the Pacific Sociological Association, Oakland, CA, April 2007.
- "Notification and the Information Order," Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, CA, April 2007.
- "Communities as Organizational Junkyards," Organizational Change Study Group at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, CA, March 2007.
- "The Mathematics of Petition Trees," presented to Political Economy and Formal Modeling Working Group at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, CA, February 2007.
- "Getting the Word Out: Notes on the Social Organization of Notification" presented at Mills College Social Science Works in Progress Seminar, Oakland, CA, October 2004.
- "Separating the Organizationally Normal from the Politically Pathological in Communities of Organizations" presented at Annual Meetings of the Pacific Sociological Association, San Francisco, CA, April 2004.
- "Social Networks" mock lecture for Mills College admissions event 2002.
- "Making Methods a Lab Course," Annual Meetings of the Pacific Sociological Association, Vancouver, BC, April 2002.
- "'Please take a few minutes… : Using 'Pointless' Internet Petitions to Characterize the Shape of Acquaintance Networks" presented at Annual Meeting of the Pacific Sociological Association, San Francisco, March 2001 and in poster session at Annual Meetings of American Sociological Association, Chicago, IL, August 2002.
- "Getting the Word Out: On the Social Organization of Notification," Annual meetings of the Midwest Sociological Association, St. Louis, April 2001.
- "Are Chain Letters Completely Useless? Extracting Social Network Information from ‘Pointless’ Internet Petitions," Annual Meetings of the Pacific Sociological Association, San Francisco, CA, March 2001.
- "Getting the Word Out: Notes On the Social Organization of Notification," Annual Meetings of the American Sociological Association, Washington, D.C., August 2000.
- "Temporal Notification Norms: An Application in Formal Sociology," Annual Meetings of the Pacific Sociological Association, San Diego, CA, March 2000.
- "Notes on the Social Organization of Notification," "Pre-author meets non-critics" session at the meetings of the American Sociological Association, Chicago, August 1999.
- "It’s About Time: Time as a Social Structure in Communities of Organizations," SSSP meetings, Chicago, August 1999.
- "Do Kids Today Lack a Work Ethic? Or: Organizational Learning Across Social Networks," Bay Area Public Pool Operators Association, January 1999.
- "Some Thoughts on Undergraduate Research," Dallas Area Mills College Alumnae Group, April 1999.
- "Access to Information is Neither the Problem nor the Solution," Pacific Sociological Association Annual Meeting, San Francisco 1998.
- "Urban Communities as Organizational Junkyards," ASA meetings, San Francisco, CA, August 1998.
- "Throwing Like a Girl" guest lecture in "Introduction to Sociology" course at Mills College, Oakland, CA, October 1997.
- "Everything Here is Political: Communities of Organizations as Settings for Community Initiatives" presented at ASA meetings, Toronto, ON, August 1997.
- "New Haven: A Virtual Tour." Invited talk, Yale Law School Reunion, New Haven, CT, October 1996.
- "The City Room at ISPS: Efforts toward Bolstering the Local Information Economy." Yale University Department of Statistics 1996.
- "Some Notes on the Social Psychology of Combat" (with Daniel F. Chambliss), ASA meetings, San Francisco, CA 1989.
- "Big Problems Demand Small Solutions : Towards a General Strategy for Excellence in Education" (with Daniel F. Chambliss), Conference of the New England Educational Research Organization 1998.
- Numerous public presentations on computer networks and organizations, urban organizations, and New Haven demographics 1990s.
Web Presence
- danryan.us - a wiki on which all of my teaching materials are made available on the open web. In 2015 the site received 44,000 visits from over 35,000 unique visitors with about 170,000 page views based on web logs.
- Numerous videos for college planning processes and instruction
- "Mills Innovation Minutes" – proof of concept for series of short videos highlighting teaching innovations at Mills
- Blog : The Sociology of Information: research related essays (195 posts with 39,000 page views)
- Blog : Assessing Assessing: organizationally informed commentary on the assessment industry in higher education (36 posts with 1200 page views).
- Blog: Majoring in the 21st Century: investigations into what college should look like in the 21st century (44 posts with 1300 page views).
- Blog: ICYMI:In Case You Missed It –aggregates articles on higher education issues for colleagues (197 posts with 3300 page views).
- Blog: Sociology @ Mills (316 posts with 13,000 page views)
- Blog: That's Interesting Radio Sociology (8 posts with 2400 page views)
- Blog: Excel Mills (34 posts with 1100 page views)
- Blog: Mills 2017: Strategic Planning Ideas (66 posts, 819 pageviews)
- Twitter @djjr
- Facebook group Mills Sociology/Anthropology Alums for continued contact with over 100 alumnae
- 1Facebook group Innovation@Mills promotes innovation activities for Mills students, staff, and
faculty
Contracts and Grants
2015 | Mills MAK Curriculum Development Grant with Maia Averett for Data Science, $3,000. |
2014 | Haverford College Workshop on Teaching Integrity in Empirical Research, ~$500. |
2012 | Mills College Research Grant for "Mapping the Higher Education Lobby," $1,245 |
2007 | Fulbright German Studies Seminar |
2006 | Quigley Research Grant, Mills College: "Women, Men, and the Information Order." Course release. |
2002 | Mills College Faculty Development Grant “Feasibility of Establishing GIS Data Warehouse for Oakland” with Julia McQuoid (Mills undergraduate). |
2000 | Mills College Irvine Classroom Technology Initiative for the development of online lab materials to accompany methods of social research course. $4,000. |
1998 | Mills College Course Development Grant for “Geographic Information Systems and Sociological Geography.” $3,500. |
1996 | Robert Wood Johnson Foundation/City of New Haven. “An Inventory of Faith Community Involvement in Substance Abuse Related Programs in New Haven.” $15,000. |
1995 | Robert Wood Johnson Foundation/City of New Haven. “Local Assessment of Substance Abuse Related Data in New Haven.” $16,803. |
1994 | City University of New York Research Foundation. “Fighting Back in New Haven: Community Study Pilot Project.” $18,566. |
1994 | Co-author of Yale University’s “Community Outreach Partnership Center (COPC)” proposal funded by HUD. $540,000. |
Fellowships and Prizes
2014-15 |
Sabbatical Leave, Mills College |
2012-15 | Kathryn P. Hannam Professorship in American Studies |
2011 |
Baccalaureate Speaker, Mills College |
2010-11 |
Visiting Scholar, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences |
2008-11 |
Robert and Ann Wert Chair, Mills College |
2003 |
"Pearl M" as honorary member of senior class, Mills College. |
2000 |
Sussman Dissertation Prize, Yale University Department of Sociology. |
1995 |
Elm/Ivy Award for community service role at Yale in New Haven |
1994 |
President’s Public Service Fellowship, Yale University |
1993 |
University Dissertation Fellowship, Yale University |
1988 |
National Science Foundation Three Year Graduate Fellowship |
1987 |
Yale University Graduate Fellowship |
1983 |
American Institute of Physics Summer Industrial Intern Fellowship, IBM T. J. Watson Laboratory |
1981 |
National Science Foundation Undergraduate Research Summer Fellowship, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute |
1977 |
Out-of-State Tuition Scholarship, New College of Florida |
National Merit Scholarship |
Consulting
2013 | National Endowment for the Humanities: Member, Review panel for NEH Collaborative Research in Social Sciences Grant Applications. |
2012 | Loyola Marymount College: Program Review Department of Sociology. |
2008-9 | Michelle R. Clayman Center Institute for Gender Research. Data visualization for "Dual-Career Academic Couples" project. |
2005-8 | Mills College. GIS mapping for Office of Admissions, Alumnae Association. Web site development for Curriculum Revision effort. (pro bono) |
2003 | Gaucher College: Program Review Department of Sociology and Anthropology. |
2003 | Hamilton College Project on Assessment of Learning in the Liberal Arts. |
1999 | Cooper Robertson & Partners, Architects. Developing methods of data visualization for Museum of Modern Art renovation project. |
1997 | Yale Office of University Planning and Cooper Robertson & Partners on campus planning project. Developed methods of visualizing campus activity patterns by combining multiple sources of administrative data with geographic information systems. |
1997 | Leadership, Education, Athletics in Partnership (LEAP). Organizational climate and effectiveness. |
1997 | The Waterbury Foundation/ The Counseling Center. GIS mapping. |
1995 | NIDA funded Community Health Care Van Project, providing GIS support and community information. |
1996 | New Haven Childcare Coalition. GIS mapping and spatial analysis. |
1996 | “Liaison, Information Exchange, and Consultation Core” component of Yale's Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS proposal. |
1995 | Dr. Joann Elmore, Yale University Medical School. GIS mapping of breast cancer incidence data. |
1995 | New Haven Fighting Back. Assisted with planning for local community based self-assessment of program effectiveness. |
1994 | Collaboration Studio at Yale School of Architecture. Organizational design and analysis. |
1989 | Hamilton College Board of Trustees Admissions Committee. Data analysis and development of criteria for identifying multiple admissions markets. |
Service
Advising
- Undergraduate: See above.
- Graduate: I am regularly consulted by graduate students in public policy, management, interdisciplinary computer science.
- Other advising activities. I am the faculty advisor to the campus student democrats organization, "FemDems"
Campus service: Departmental.
I have either organized or participated in numerous iterations of our graduate and career workshops, orientation activities, etc.
Campus service: College.
- Travel and talks for Mills Alum Association
- Travel and talks for Mills Undergraduate Admissions
- Talks for Southern California admitted students (2014,2015)
- Ongoing Mills College: Interdisciplinary Computer Science Program Committee, Political Legal and Economic Analysis (PLEA) Program Committee
- 2015 President's ad hoc planning group for innovation
- Leader of undergraduate academic initiatives working group for strategic planning process and member of strategic plan steering committee.
- Consulting with marketing/branding consultant.
- 2012-13 Mills College, Chair Course Evaluation Committee, Chair Strategic Planning Working Group on Undergraduate Program
- 2011-12 Mills College, Campus Budget Committee
- 2011-13 Mills College, Chair ad hoc committee on electronic course evaluations.
- 2011 Fall Mills College, Chair of Faculty Executive Committee
- 2010 Mills College, Presidential Search Committee
- 2010-11 Mills College, Chair of Faculty Executive Committee
Professional service.
- 2013-15 American Sociological Association Committee on Awards
- 2012 Loyola Marymount College: Program Review Department of Sociology
- 2013 Review panel for National Endowment for the Humanities for Collaborative Research Social Sciences Program
- 2011-13 Secretary-Treasurer and Information Officer, American Sociological Association Section on Communication and Information Technology
- 2013-15 Member Committee on Awards, American Sociological Association
- 1995-2015 Organizer, "Soon-to-be-Author-Meets-Non-Critics: Leave Your Swords at the Door" Annual Meetings of the American Sociological Association
- 2004 Program Committee, Annual Meetings of the Pacific Sociological Association
- 2003 Nominations Committee, Culture Section of the American Sociological Association
Reviewing, etc.
At various times I have reviewed scholarship for Contemporary Sociology Temple University Press, University of Chicago Press, Sage, Symbolic Interaction, Time and Society, The Sociological Quarterly, Social Psychological Quarterly
TEACHING
Repertoire
I have taught all of the required courses in the sociology program: Introduction to Sociology (soc55), Research Methods (soc91), History of sociological Thought (soc116), Proseminar (soc190), and Senior Seminar (soc191) and I regularly teach the following electives in sociology: Sociology of Everyday Life, Social Control, Geographic Information Systems, and Modeling and Simulation in the Social and Policy Sciences for the public policy graduate program.
While at Mills I have also developed as new courses the following: "Social Network Analysis," "Mathematics for Social Sciences," "Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software" (agent-based modeling for social sciences), "Computers and Society," "(Disruptive) Innovation as a Liberal Art." In addition I have recently experimented with independent studies using online curricula for "Human Centered Design" and "Design Thinking and Prototyping." I am currently collaborating with colleagues on a combined research methods for the social sciences course.
Course evaluations are available on my website.
A summary of my teaching for the last six years:
Courses Taught Title (enrollment|credit) |
|
Fall 15 | Spring 16 |
Hist. Sociological Thought (34|1.0) | Proseminar (11|1.0) |
IS Human Centered Design (6|0.5) | Research Methods* (42|1.25) |
Assignment: Innovation Lab | GIS (23|0.5) |
IS Design Thinking Prototyping (2|0.5) | Modeling & Simulation + LAB (17|1.25) |
* team-taught | |
Fall 14 | Spring 15 |
SABBATICAL LEAVE | UNPAID LEAVE |
IS GIS (1|1.0) | |
IS Technology and Society (1|1.0) | |
Fall 13 | Spring 14 |
GIS + LAB (15|1.0) | SABBATICAL LEAVE |
Modeling & Simulation + LAB (6|1.0) |
Fall 12 | Spring 13 |
Hist. Sociological Thought (19|1.0) | Course Release - FEC 2009-10 (-|1.0) |
Sociology of Everyday Life (16|1.0) | Course Release - FEC 2010-11 (-|1.0) |
Modeling & Simulation + LAB (11|1.0) | Course Release - FEC Fall 2011 (0.5) |
Fall 11 | Spring 12 |
Hist. Sociological Thought (13|1.0) | Social Control (16|1.0) |
GIS + LAB (14|1.0) | Network Analysis + LAB (9|1.0) |
Modeling & Simulation + LAB (12|1) | |
Fall 10 | Spring 11 |
Hist. Sociological Thought (19|1.0) | Modeling & Simulation + LAB (16|1.0) |
Senior Seminar (10|1.0) | Proseminar (20|1.0) |
Course Release (-|1.0) | IS Sociology (1|1.0) |
I also consider academic advising to be a part of my teaching repertoire. I eschew "drive-by/just sign this/check off the requirements" advising and instead cultivate a more intensive and interactive advising experience by requiring each advisee to submit an "advising contract" each semester. In the contract she explicates her current long and short term goals, the shape of her current academic program, the state of her non-academic activities and how these relate to her education, and criteria by which we jointly assess the semester after it is over. We meet for at least 30 minutes at the start of the semester to discuss the contract and we both sign it when we have come to an agreement about what we are hoping to accomplish in the semester ahead. I have at least one follow up meeting with most advisees during the semester and then one at the end of the semester (or the beginning of the next one) to assess whether our agreed upon criteria were met.
Enrollments
From 2010 to 2014 my enrollment loads have been, in retrospect, unacceptably low. Based on an analysis of college-wide enrollment statistics and budget data, I've concluded that I need to be teaching a minimum of 95 students per year to "pay my way." My numbers are reflect teaching a course each year in the then small public policy graduate program, teaching mostly required courses in the sociology major during a time of relatively low enrollment, and having a teaching repertoire not well matched to the non-analytical,
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Ryan Adjusted* Enrollment Load 2010-2015 | |||||
2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 |
81 | 64 | 77 | 53 | LOA | 105 |
*Total number of students taught adjusted for five course schedule. | |||||
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non-computational, and non-quantitative inclinations of students who gravitate toward sociology and anthropology. I am responding to this by strengthening my association with public policy, the graduate school of business, and math and computer science and expanding my offerings toward design thinking and innovation so as to be able to serve more students.
Pedagogy
Over the last half decade are so my teaching has shifted in several ways:
- substantive changes in course content
- procedural changes in how courses work
- serious pursuit of productivity gains
- rethinking assessment
I have rethought what I teach in several courses - especially social control, social theory, but also research methods, junior and senior seminar. This year I have begun to develop new courses around innovation and design thinking. I have also rethought how I teach: I have started to think about my courses as multiple, almost-stand-alone modules; I am experimenting with alternatives to lectures and alternatives forms of lectures; I have experimented with "flipped classrooms" and deploying online modules in a face-to-face context. I have made almost all of my teaching materials into open educational resources - meaning both my students and my colleagues around the world have access to everything I have developed for teaching. I have created elements of "proof-of-concept" prototypes for bottom-up outcomes assessment as an alternative to the pedagogically disastrous top-down regime to which we are at present subject.
Substantive Innovations
I long ago converted what is usually taught as "Sociology of Deviant Behavior" to "Social Control," trading the three most common paradigms - the so-called "nuts and sluts" approach in which a parade deviant behaviors is subject to etiological inquiry (why do they do it?); the "battling schools of thought" approach in which symbolic interaction is pitted against conflict theory (or, occasionally, an archaic version of functionalism); and the "postmodern" approaches built around Foucault and intersectional critiques of power in society - with one that looks at generic problems of social regulation making draws on cognitive neuroscience, law and society, and law and economics perspectives. This yields a course that positions sociology students to engage with practitioners in other fields and that fits in the curriculum for students of economics, politics, computer science, and law too.
My GIS class is now structured around the open source Quantum GIS platform and Open Street Map, the wikipedia of global mapping data, and web-based mapping instead of ESRI products we used to use. This trains the student in more accessible software than conventional courses (with no loss of utility as switching to proprietary solutions is not difficult) and introduces her to open source ethos. The course is also structured as an alternative gateway to provoking an interest in learning to code.
In the "History of Sociological Thought" (aka "Theory") I switched from an approach that takes students on a wild ride through hundreds of years of theory with an emphasis on the "founding fathers" of sociology (an approach that ends up being the study of theorists). Intellectual history IS important, but with just one semester to teach theory, more that is deeply useful can be accomplished in an approach that is built around the question of how humans accomplish social order - culture, hierarchy, markets, groups, and networks. This permits us to transcend the classical/contemporary, quantitative/qualitative, and wholist/individualist divides, avoid artificial taxonomies, and incorporate ideas from economic theory, game theory, evolutionary biology, etc. Rather than being a rushed version of the multi-semester sequence a sociology grad student would study, the course yields a set of practical analytical tools for people who will work in communities and organizations and participate in civic debates about markets and hierarchies, shared values, social norms, and social networks.
Procedural Innovations
I have just begun to transform my semester courses into sub-semester-length modules. The goal will be to have units that can be offered as half or third semesters as well as units that can be combined with those of other instructors to form courses or that could be "dropped into" other instructors' courses for increased pedagogical efficiency. My first prototype of this work will be a revised version of my modeling class in spring 2016 and a new combined research methods course I am currently designing with colleagues.
History of Sociological Thought class was combined with Anthropological Theory for the last two years. I have introduced three new features this year. One is the use of (nearly) text-free slides - if I lecture with digital slides, I endeavor to use an absolute minimal amount of text so that students do not fall into "copying the slide" as a mode of taking notes. I also include in each module an interactive simulation or exercise which then becomes touchstone throughout the course (e.g., we did a public goods game replicating the experimental research in an article we read, and we did a market simulation to demonstrate the emergence of externalities).
In the Modeling and Simulations class (PPOL225) I have experimented with "flipping the classroom" by using video lectures recorded by a colleague, Scott E. Page of the University of Michigan, for a Coursera course as the exposition component of the class and then dedicating class time to group problem solving. I am currently looking into similar approach in other courses, combining course-based lectures, edited/curated lecture videos, and videos I make myself.
Teaching More, Better, and Easier
One element of my "Majoring in the 21st Century" project is to explore how to use technology and technique to be able to teach more students more effectively with less average effort. I argue that this imperative should inform how we think about educational technology, institutional restructuring, and on-the-ground pedagogy.
In fall 2015 I am piloting the deployment of an online course with a "bricks and mortar" instructor (me). Several students and I (and a colleague) signed up for "Human Centered Design." We met weekly using the curriculum developed by Acumen and Ideo.org but adapted for our own interests. A subset of the original group continued with a second course in prototyping. This model allowed me to make this course available to students with much less effort than developing it from scratch and teaching it "all by myself" would have required, it let the students learn from students all over the world, and their experience of the course was greatly enhanced because of the value added of the instructor in the room.
It occurred to me a few years ago that too often we teach one thing and examine another - in the classroom we might lecture, do group works, engage in discussion but then when it comes to time to evaluate student work we ask them to write essays. It would be like having the soccer team practice all week on the field and then have a swim meet on the weekend. As an experiment I have developed a protocol for oral exams (two midterm and one final) in History of Sociological Thought that motivates students to prepare assiduously, rehearse with one another, practice skills that are both substantively related to course materials and useful beyond (e.g., oral presentation, elevator speech, high pressure interviews), and that establishes continuity between activity in class and activities used to assess students. Each exam is about 15 minutes in length and consists in problems randomly selected from a stock to which students have access from the start of the course. In each section of the course we have one or more "Pitch and Catch" sessions in which students practice for oral exams by asking one another questions and evaluating their responses. The sessions are wrapped in coaching from me on what to look for in an answer, how to study for such an exam, and how to use this form of examination as an opportunity to demonstrate what one has learned and as a model for other interview situations (e.g., we talk about body language, voice, and structuring one's response).
These oral exams sound onerous, but they are not. For this large class, I have to make available 34 twenty minute slots - about 12 hours. But I spend almost no time creating the exam, and grading is finished instantly (no tallying, curving, etc.). Compared to a conventional course with three essay exams
One tool that can allow us to teach more/better/easier is sharing pedagogical resources (sometimes called Open Educational Resources). Since around 2011 I have been moving all of my teaching materials - handouts, lecture notes, slides, syllabi, images, diagrams, exams, quizzes, reading notes, bibliographies - online via a wiki platform (danryan.us). The course-based collections are all works-in-various-stages-of-progress, but when complete they will represent a fully searchable collection of creative-commons licensed materials.
One component of these open resources is a question/problem bank. As of this fall I've developed over 400 "questions/problems" related to various courses that I teach. These are available to students as well as other instructors. The tool allows me easily to assemble practice tests, flashcard study tools, study questions, and problem sets for use in a flipped classroom.
Another tool that might be used to increase pedagogical efficiency is the "popUp curriculum." I first developed this idea while working at the Iovine Young Academy at USC last year. A popUp is a (usually) one-off lecture, workshop, simulation, field trip, or group exercise that complements the course-based curriculum. By their nature, popUps are either "just in time" learning that can serve students in a variety of courses or components of courses that can be "popped out" and either shared with particular other courses (as when my lectures on probability would work in your statistics course) or with the student body as a whole because they represent some useful skill that could be appreciated by people who will never encounter it if the only way to do so is by taking your whole course (2015). The popUp format also provides an infrastructure for fielding a broad diversity of non-course-based learning by units across the college.
Assessment
I have long been a critic of the "assessment movement" - my critique rooted in the shallowness of its goals and and the poverty of its methods - but I am a fan of the underlying motivation to ascertain whether or not what I am doing as a teacher works well and how to improve it, and I share the concern of those who find it strange that as teachers we largely get to assess our own work.
I am developing an alternative to the top-down ("mission goals > program goals > course outcomes…") illogic currently guiding conversations about assessment. I have begun to move toward thinking about courses in terms of explicit input assumptions and outcome expectations (e.g., "before taking this course you should be able to x, y, and z" and "when you have completed this course, you should be able to do a, b, and c") that would emerge from consideration of a broad range of very explicit skill descriptions for each module of each course. Below is an example from the decision tree module in my simulation and modeling class (click on skill to expand its description). Within the module all texts, examples, and problems can be tagged with the skill code so that a student can locate all related materials with a single click.
- outcomes & events
- mutually exclusive & exhaustive
- independence
- P(A or B)
- P(A and B)
- P(A|B)
- $P(x) \times \mbox{value of outcome X}$
- Expected value of a set of mutually exclusive alternatives (e.g., branches coming out of a chance node) is sum of expected values.
- Read a description, draw the tree
- See a tree, write the description
- Work backwards to calculate values of chance nodes and pick decisions at choice nodes.
Use decision tree to calculate the value of information provided by a perfect test (how much should we be willing to pay for information?)
- Take an ordinary DT and add a test/no test choice node, calculate value of test
- Expected value of perfect information (EVPI)
- Define false positive and false negative
- "Flip" a tree to calculate expectations of test outcomes
Explain/distinguish related concepts: choice/chance nodes, exhaustive/mutually exclusive, folding-back, imperfect tests, risk-aversion, the value of information, utility theory
When are DTs useful? When should they not be used? Identify and respond to typical concerns and caveats
These "micro" skills would then be clustered into higher and higher skill sets until we could express the outputs from a given course. This same consideration would also yield a way to think about input expectations and where those input skills might be gained. As humans we are much better at clustering and deriving an overarching concept than we are at a priori dividing the universe up at the top level.
In summary, here are some of my teaching highlights:
- Flipped classrooms (2012)
- "Player/Coach" online courses (2015)
- Social theory for 21st century social science (2012)
- Laboratory sections in social science courses (1999)
- Wikipedia editing as a class assignment (2011)
- Teaching materials as open educational resources (2011)
- Introducing social science students to coding (2013)
- Video course descriptions (2015)
- Bringing "design thinking" and the "maker movement" to Mills courses (2014-15)
- Introduction of the "popUp curriculum." (2015)
- Social science "problem bank" (2012-)
Exhibits
Sociology Core
Sociology Electives
Public Policy
Special Topics
- soc180 Mathematics for Social Science
- soc180 Social Network Analysis
- coll60v Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software
Academic Advising
SCHOLARSHIP
Ongoing Work
My ongoing scholarly work in recent years has been channeled in two directions. One was a book that was published in June 2015 as The Ghosts of Organizations Past: Communities of Organizations as Settings for Change by Temple University Press. The book follows in a long line of studies the urban community in New Haven, Connecticut. In it I show how the challenges that arise in attempts at community improvement through interorganizational collaboration can be understood through the lens of organizational thinking. The image in the title alludes to a new model of urban communities that I introduce in the book: community as organizational junkyard.
The second direction is continued work in an area I call the "sociology of information." This resulted in a 2013 paper co-authored with Gillian K. Hadfield of USC Law School called "Democracy, Courts, and the Information Order" which appeared in the European Journal of Sociology. This second publication on the sociology of information (see also Ryan 2006 and coverage in the New York Times Science Times) and a work in progress (presented last year in the USC Department of Sociology) called "Learning to Be a Node" are prefatory to a book on the topic, elements of which have appeared in 195 posts on my blog, The Sociology of Information (~39,000 page views). The core new idea of a sociology of information is that there exists in human societies a "social information order" – the distribution of who knows what and who knows who knows what – and multiple levels of normative dynamics – we know who should know or be told what – that generate the forces that govern the keeping of secrets, the spilling of beans, the blowing of whistles, and the broadcast of news.
New Work
I have also been active over the last several years learning about innovation processes in general and innovation and change in higher education and liberal arts colleges in particular. This work is non-traditional scholarship insofar as my goal is not to produce a book or scholarly articles based on data I have collected. Instead, my orientation is toward becoming more of an expert in this area so that I can be a more effective leader of innovation in the institutions where I work.
This move hearkens back to a longstanding interest in alternative education, and brings together research I have done with Daniel Chambliss (author, recently, of How College Works), visits to Goucher College and Loyola Marymount University as an outside evaluator, things that I learned serving in faculty leadership at Mills, and my experience helping to launch a new program on innovation education at USC in 2014-15.
I gather all of this work under the name "Majoring in the 21st Century." The tangible elements of this project include a wiki called "The 0.0 Initiative" that describes concrete organizational and technological innovations for higher education institutions like Mills, several blogs:
- Assessing Assessing: organizationally informed commentary on the assessment industry in higher education (36 posts with 1200 page views)
- Majoring in the 21st Century: investigations into what college should look like in the 21st century (44 posts with 1300 page views)
- ICYMI:In Case You Missed, a curation of articles on higher education issues for colleagues (197 posts with 3300 page views),
a series of talks on the future of liberal arts colleges:
- "(Disruptive) Innovation as a Liberal Art", Washington D.C. Mills Club (2015)
- "If Small Liberal Arts Colleges Did Not Exist, Would Someone Invent Them?", Address at Palo Alto Mills Alumnae Club Meeting (2014)
- "Can EdTech Save Liberal Arts Colleges or Can Liberal Arts Colleges Be Saved From EdTech," Mills College Alumnae San Diego Chapter (2014).
- "Majoring in the Twenty-first Century," Mills College Aurelia Henry Reinhardt Society and The Cyrus and Susan Mills Society (2013), published in the Mills Quarterly in 2015.
- "Pedagogical Productivity and the Survival of SLACs in the Age of MOOCs," Mills College Faculty Colloquium, December. (2012)
- "How to Run a College Like a Business Without Running a College Like a Business" (2010)
and proposals for new courses and programs at Mills.
- An Undergraduate Program in Quantitative Social Science
- An Undergraduate Program in Technology, Business, and Design
Alongside of this work that could be called the sociology of higher education organizations, I have also been re-establishing my relationship with technology and engineering, teaching workshops in soldering, woodworking, adding GPS to web pages, taking apart machines, lock picking, and circuit building.
Exhibits
The following exhibits are attached to this document under "Scholarship"
Peer Reviewed Publications (2013-15)
- The Ghosts of Organization Past: Communities of Organizations as Settings for Change. Temple University Press, 2015.
- "Democracy, Courts, and the Information Order" with G. K. Hadfield. European Journal of Sociology / Volume 54 / Issue 01 / April 2013, pp 67-95. (564 downloads BE Press)
Other Publications (2013-15)
- "But What if the Shared Vision Is Myopic?," with Sara Goldrick-Rab. Chronicle of Higher Education, January 12, 2015.
- "Majoring in the 21st Century," Mills Quarterly Winter 2015.
- "This Doesn't Change Everything: Review of Networked by Barry Wellman and Lee Rainie." Contemporary Sociology, March 2014 vol. 43 no. 2 180-183 (doi: 10.1177/0094306114522414b).
Online Writing
Videos and Animations
- College Innovation
- Course Catalog Prototype
- Innovation Lab
- Talks and Presentation Slides
- Miscellaneous Instructional Videos
Citation Counts, etc.*
- "Democracy, Courts and the Information Order." G Hadfield, D Ryan. European Journal of Sociology. SSRN 68 downloads, BEPress 564 downloads
- "Why it is so difficult to form effective community coalitions." C Kadushin, M Lindholm, D Ryan, A Brodsky, L Saxe. City & Community 4 (3), 255-275 (63 citations)
- "Getting the Word Out: Notes on the Social Organization of Notification." D Ryan. Sociological Theory 24 (3), 228-254 34 2006 (35 citations)
- "“Fighting back” against substance abuse: The structure and function of community coalitions." M Lindholm, D Ryan, C Kadushin, L Saxe, A Brodsky. Human organization 63 (3), 265-276 (30 citations)
- "Emergent temporal effects in community initiatives." D Ryan. Sociological Perspectives 51 (1), 139-162 (9 citations)
- "The Ghosts of Organizations Past: Organizational Aspects of Urban Social Structure in the Implementation of the Fighting Back Initiative in New Haven, Connecticut 1989-1996." D Ryan jr. Yale University (6 citations)
- “Everything Here is so Political.…” Separating the Organizationally Normal from the Political in Communities of Organizations. D Ryan. Journal of Drug Issues 36 (2), 331-350 (4 citations)
*Unless otherwise noted, data from Ryan Works on Google Scholar
Blogs
SERVICE
Nature and Significance of College Service
Since my last promotion my college service has included departmental leadership/service, college and program committee service, hiring, elected faculty leadership, college relations, admissions, and the application of professional skills on behalf of the college.
Committee Service
I served several years on the Faculty Executive Committee including two and a half as its chair. I have also served on the Retention Task Force (co-chair undergraduate subcommittee), Assessment Committee, Ad Hoc Course Evaluation Committee. I chaired the undergraduate education working group of during the 2013 Strategic Planning Process and created a "Request For Comments" blog on proposals related to undergraduate programs.. I am an ongoing member of the Interdisciplinary Computer Science and Public Policy program committees. I served on search committees for Director of Spiritual Life and President.
Recent College Work
In spring 2015 I helped the president plan the Institute for the Future workshop and am on the follow up Infrastructure committee, and produced videos to explain project ideas that emerged from the workshop. During summer 2015 worked with campus architect on design of Innovation Lab and during fall 2015 lead the development of programming for the space. In 2014 I consulted with the branding consultant on survey design and in 2013 assisted in the editing of the college's strategic planning document.
Departmental Work
At the time of my last promotion I was completing a term as head of the Anthropology and Sociology department. Since that time I have participated in or organized our annual career and graduate school nights and various social gatherings for majors, done summer and winter transfer advising sessions, recruited, interviewed, and mentored adjunct instructors. I administer an active Facebook group for soc/anth alums with 100 members and a departmental blog with almost 13,000 page views.
This year I am working with my colleague Professor Hunter to re-imagine the sociology major and with Professors Hunter, Henderson, and Sheldon to design a combined research methods course that will be more intellectually exciting and more pedagogically efficient than our current offerings.
Admissions
I have given a keynote address and several mock lectures at Mills admissions visit days, have given talks at events for admitted students in southern California, interviewed students while traveling, consulted with admissions office staff on data analysis and the design of experiments, and participated in calling/emailing admitted students.
College Relations
In 2011 I organized faculty participation in alumnae phonathon. I have given prepared lectures to the Susan and Cyrus Mills Society, and Mills Clubs in Palo Alto, San Diego, and Washington DC. I will represent Mills at the "College for a Day" event in Colorado in January 2016.
College Visibility and Brand
I contribute regularly to college name recognition through social media including Twitter, Facebook (here and here), Wikipedia, and numerous blogs. I have "carried the flag" for Mills at the American Sociological Association, as a visiting scholar at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford and the Gould School of Law at USC, and as an observer at the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Meetings in Dubai (2014).
Enhancing Institutional Information Ecology
Over the last ten years I have failed spectacularly in most of my efforts to bring to the running of the college tools of the 21st century information society. At the Divisional and Departmental level I have maintained blogs for the purpose of shifting information posting and collegial conversation away from toxic email cascades to little effect. At the Institutional level I set up Excel!Mills as a community suggestion box around retention, and RFC Mills as an experimental in gathering feedback asynchronously on academic and other proposals; I failed to get traction on both. While on the Faculty Executive committee I created a wiki version of the faculty handbook and a platform called "Scrolls and Windows" that made all agendas, minutes, reports, and data accessible in one place. A data-base of ideas generated by faculty members on how to enhance the undergraduate academic program sits on the digital shelf even as we grab onto ideas thrown out in a speech by a visiting speaker this fall. In 2011 I set up a dynamic model of the curriculum under credit hour conversion that demonstrated many of challenges that have arisen since and a few we have not grappled with yet (e.g. lost student earnings), but we continue to muddle through. In 2014 I analyzed five years of individual enrollment data to build a detailed model of our cost of instruction. It showed, among other things, that enrollment loads are more important than course loads and that disparities in work load would doom any efforts at reform. I have learned more about innovation than the college has gained from these adventures, but they were tokens service none the less.
Exhibits
Blogs
Sociology Core
Sociology Electives
Public Policy
Special Topics
Peer Reviewed Publications (2013-15)
- The Ghosts of Organization Past: Communities of Organizations as Settings for Change. Temple University Press, 2015.
- "Democracy, Courts, and the Information Order" with G. K. Hadfield. European Journal of Sociology / Volume 54 / Issue 01 / April 2013, pp 67-95. (564 downloads BE Press)
Other Publications (2013-15)
- "But What if the Shared Vision Is Myopic?," with Sara Goldrick-Rab. Chronicle of Higher Education, January 12, 2015.
- "Majoring in the 21st Century," Mills Quarterly Winter 2015.
- "This Doesn't Change Everything: Review of Networked by Barry Wellman and Lee Rainie." Contemporary Sociology, March 2014 vol. 43 no. 2 180-183 (doi: 10.1177/0094306114522414b).
Online Writing
Videos and Animations
- College Innovation
- Course Catalog Prototype
- Innovation Lab
- Talks and Presentation Slides
- Miscellaneous Instructional Videos
Citation Counts, etc.*
- "Democracy, Courts and the Information Order." G Hadfield, D Ryan. European Journal of Sociology. SSRN 68 downloads, BEPress 564 downloads
- "Why it is so difficult to form effective community coalitions." C Kadushin, M Lindholm, D Ryan, A Brodsky, L Saxe. City & Community 4 (3), 255-275 (63 citations)
- "Getting the Word Out: Notes on the Social Organization of Notification." D Ryan. Sociological Theory 24 (3), 228-254 34 2006 (35 citations)
- "“Fighting back” against substance abuse: The structure and function of community coalitions." M Lindholm, D Ryan, C Kadushin, L Saxe, A Brodsky. Human organization 63 (3), 265-276 (30 citations)
- "Emergent temporal effects in community initiatives." D Ryan. Sociological Perspectives 51 (1), 139-162 (9 citations)
- "The Ghosts of Organizations Past: Organizational Aspects of Urban Social Structure in the Implementation of the Fighting Back Initiative in New Haven, Connecticut 1989-1996." D Ryan jr. Yale University (6 citations)
- “Everything Here is so Political.…” Separating the Organizationally Normal from the Political in Communities of Organizations. D Ryan. Journal of Drug Issues 36 (2), 331-350 (4 citations)
*Unless otherwise noted, data from Ryan Works on Google Scholar