2. Service that Advances One’s Professional Scholarly Community

I have been extremely active in service over the past decade to my professional communities. Several of these activities have required leadership and initiative. For example, as Book Review Editor for the Quality Management Journal, I’m responsible for managing an Associate Editor, and building a pipeline with publishers so that we always have fresh (and free) new books to review. As another example, I am frequently responsible for coordinating abstract submissions and developing technical programs for national and international conferences, which requires both technical and practical leadership.

The following sections outline many of the professional service activities I have been engaged in recent years, with evidence provided through the documents and images that are linked.

a) Serving as a referee or reviewer of scholarly articles or textbooks.

Academic Journals

I typically review between 7 and 13 articles per year, in total, from these 4 journals. Over the 2013-2014 academic year, I reviewed 10 submissions. The Editor of the QMJ and the manager for JTMAE have both complimented me on the quality of my service, as indicated in the linked emails.

Course/Textbook Development

In addition to writing chapters for books, I also started editing textbooks over the past year. For Statistics in Practice, I managed a major revision to the 30-chapter test bank, which included reviewing approximately 700 problems for accuracy and presentation, and creating almost 150 new questions that required 8 new datasets.

 

b) Reviewing proposals for sponsored government, academic, or industry programs.

Since 2003, I have served on 18 of 20 (invited) confidential review panels, many for the National Science Foundation (NSF), to evaluate requests for funding for scientific instrumentation and facilities ranging from small grants (~$300K) to large multi-year grants ($115M). A complete list of the panels on which I’ve served (with evidence) is available from the PAC Chair. NSF has strict confidentiality requirements, particularly for panels where large multi-million dollar research facilities are being assessed for continued funding, precluding the insertion of this material into my application.

I also served on the 2007 Dark Energy Survey (DES) review panel for Fermilab, and the 2009 TeraGrid Science Advisory Board (SAB), reviewing annual performance to strategy and objectives for the earlier generation of the national, federally funded cyberinfrastructure to support research supercomputing. These were not confidential panels.

 

c) Serving as an officer of a professional organization.

I have served as an elected officer within the American Society for Quality at the Division (national) level, as Chair of the Software Division from 2009 to 2011, and as Vice President for the Management Division of the Association for Technology Management and Applied Engineering (ATMAE) at the national level from 2010 to 2012. My responsibilities for ASQ mainly involved planning and leading quarterly meetings, approving travel requests and ensuring that our activities followed our budgeted plan, leading strategic planning activities, tracking the progress on planning for national and international conferences, and signing Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs). My responsibilities for ATMAE were primarily to oversee production of the technical program for the management tracks at our annual conference.

Since 2012, I have been serving as the Vice Chair for the ASQ Innovation Interest Group. We are working to generate interest, build a repository of resources, and apply for status as a full Division. I also launched the group’s inaugural Newsletter and have been serving as Newsletter Editor since the summer of 2014.

American Society for Quality (ASQ)

Association of Technology Management & Applied Engineering (ATMAE)

 

d) Serving as an editorial member of a professional journal.

In addition to the journals I serve listed in Section a) above, I have also recently accepted an editorial position with a new journal — the first to specifically address the electrical, mechanical, and software aspects of large telescopes:

 

e) A major effort conducting workshops, symposia, and training sessions in one’s professional area.

I have been extremely active in conference planning, reviewing submissions, creating technical programs, and moderating sessions for the past decade. In particular:

  • I was responsible for a major innovation in the SPIE Advanced Software and Control for Astronomy Conference after 2008, when I proposed to change the name of the conference to SPIE Software and Cyberinfrastructure for Astronomy, in order to cover the high-performance computing aspects of our program. Our third event, bringing together over 500 engineers, scientists, and technicians, was held this summer.
  • I introduced 5-minute “Lightning Talks“ to the SPIE conference in Software and Cyberinfrastructure in Astronomy starting in 2010, and continue to plan and moderate this 90-minute long event every two years. This session is highly successful and extremely well attended. In 2010 and 2012 we had over 100 attendees.
  • I helped to organize “SPIE Software Hack Day” on June 26, 2014, and supported the event as a facilitator, moderator, and R software instructor.

Conference Program Committees (Technical Reviewer)

I regularly review abstracts for professional conferences, helping to create well-organized, themed conference programs. Although the ATMAE efforts listed below were done as part of my Vice President role in the Management Division, the ASQ TPC positions are selected on a rotating basis and this service responsibility comes with a grant that covers registration to the WCQI conference (approximately $895). All conference activities below for SPIE are documented in my SPIE Service Profile on that organization’s web site.

  • 2014 Program Chair, SPIE 2014, Software and Cyberinfrastructure for Astronomy
  • 2012 Program Chair, SPIE 2012, Software and Cyberinfrastructure for Astronomy
  • 2012 Program Committee/Referee, SPIE 2012, Observatory Operations
  • 2012 Technical Program Committee (TPC), American Society for Quality (ASQ) World Conference on Quality and Improvement (WCQI), Anaheim CA
  • 2011 Chair, Management Track, Association for Technology Management and Applied Engineering (ATMAE) Annual Conference, Panama City FL
  • 2010 Technical Program Committee (TPC), American Society for Quality (ASQ) World Conference on Quality and Improvement (WCQI), St. Louis MO
  • 2010 Chair, Management Track, Association for Technology Management and Applied Engineering (ATMAE) Annual Conference, Panama City FL
  • 2010 Program Chair, SPIE 2010, Software and Cyberinfrastructure for Astronomy
  • 2010 Program Committee/Referee, SPIE 2010, Observatory Operations
  • 2008 Program Chair, SPIE 2008, Advanced Software and Control
  • 2008 Program Committee/ Referee, SPIE 2008, Observatory Operations
  • 2006 Program Committee/Referee, SPIE 2006, Advanced Software and Control

Conference Program Committees (Non-Reviewer)

  • 2009 Program Organizing Committee, Astronomical Data Analysis & Software (ADASS) – I helped review conference submissions, schedule speakers into appropriate slots, and served as a moderator for two days of the four day conference.
  • 2009 Marketing Chair, International Conference on Software Quality (ICSQ) – I created the conference brochure and program, designed and ordered the conference bookbags, and ordered 150 ICSQ-imprinted flash drives which I manually loaded the entire conference program onto for distribution to our attendees.
  • 2008 Marketing Chair, 4th World Congress for Software Quality (WCSQ) – I created the conference brochure and program, designed and ordered the conference bookbags, and ordered 500 WCSQ-imprinted flash drives which I manually loaded the entire conference program onto for distribution to our attendees.

 

f) Other professional service to the faculty member’s professional scholarly community which the PAC deems to be a leadership contribution.

Community Engagement

I worked with technology professionals in the Charlottesville area to organize the inaugural all-day “beSwarm” event on February 27, 2010. This is an “unconference” where participants dynamically create the agenda for discussing technology applications and tools. The event was very successful and attracted nearly 40 attendees and reporters from one TV station.

Position Papers

I was part of the 8-person steering committee that formulated the ASQ Software Division Position Statement on Agile Methods for Software Projects in 2011, which served as guidance for our organization’s 4000 members regarding when and when not to apply agile management methodologies. I have also participated in standards development for software engineering and social responsibility, and educational programs related to raising awareness of those standards.

Standards/Body of Knowledge (BOK) Development