Sam Schwartz

Rule #1: Differentiate yourself from your peers. Life's more interesting that way. I'm skipping the traditional faculty bio - let's set up a time to chat instead! I want to learn about your background, too. Shoot me an email at schwarsd@uwec.edu. 

In particular, are you a student or faculty member looking to partner with me? Read on - there are three genres of projects at work that I'm focusing on these days:

1) Interdisciplinary collaboration with people from across the university. Do you have a cool research idea in English/Biology/Music/Underwater Basket Weaving/Whatever which could use some code? Let's talk about the feasibility of turning your software dream into a research reality.

2) The MARS (Mapping & Analyzing Research Software) project. We're asking questions like, "Just how many research software projects are out there? What do they look like? How do they compare to other types of software? Based on these kinds of analyses, what are the tools we can create to enable and support developers of research software?"

3) Startup ideas, community collaborations, and student entrepreneurship projects. Do you have a tech-involved business idea but don't know where to start? Let's talk. I'll keep it confidential.

I also have a love for all things higher education, for improving the sector, and, in a zig-zag way in my corner of the world, rebuilding public trust in universities. One of more niche "inside baseball" things I'm advocating for is to have faculty across academia evaluated under a different set of criteria than the historic norm.

Traditionally, faculty are evaluated on teaching, research, and service. I think that framework has failed us.

Instead, faculty should be evaluated against this three-part framework: 

• Sharing Knowledge,
• Expanding Opportunity, and
• Stewardship

This includes both stewardship of organizations and institutions, but also stewardship of people, which I call mentorship. Out with Teaching, Research, Service. In with Knowledge, Opportunity, Stewardship/mentorship.

I'm full of all sorts of good/bad/wild ideas about how to make academia better, and I bet you are too! Again, let's chat! Shoot me an email.

If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, let's go together.