Service is the third-leg of the traditional stool that defines faculty life. Unlike the more tangible nature of teaching and research, service can at times be more ambiguous and less defined in its outcomes.
The demands of shared university governance by definition create a basic need for faculty and staff service. As an administrator, David highly valued the input and at times mission-critical feedback that faculty and staff committees provided in a variety of organizations – be that an academic program, a department or an entire college. By the same token, David is loath to engage people in committee work that might absorb time or fill a needed requirement but in the end cannot or will not lead to fruitful impact – faculty and staff are simply too busy with so many of the other stressors. Moreover, there can be no greater disappointment to task a committee to solve some problem only to learn later that the advice was shelved and never given a true hearing.
Yet David’s notion of service extends well beyond committee service to an academic unit or perhaps to one’s profession. There are many additional ways faculty can impact the world around them. In some sense, engaged service is part of striving for an impactful academic life. For example, mentorship of young faculty, graduate students or young administrators learning a trade (be it structured or unstructured) can be extremely critical to their success. David has practiced this in many different settings and learned quite a bit in the process.
David is a big believer in the impact universities and the research they produce can have on society. To this end, he co-founded the National Forum on Corporate Finance, which still exists today. This expression of service resulted in the formation of a non-profit whose purpose was to bring leading faculty with cutting-edge research together with finance practitioners from top global corporations who face difficult decisions but are yearning to be exposed to current tools, techniques and thinking unencumbered by what can be biased information from Wall Street vendors. While certainly an unconventional form of service, this effort and others like it can reshape thinking in society – David has seen it happen first-hand.