Owl Have You Know

Season 1, Episode 17

Dr. Tom Kolditz, founding Director of the Ann and John Doerr Institute for New Leaders at Rice University, joins host David Droogleever. Tom explains why institutions of higher education don't necessarily deliver on their leadership development promises and what the Doerr Institute is doing to change that.

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By Jennifer Latson

None of us shed a tear for the commutes we lost when we first started working remotely. Their loss, we thought, was our gain — an extra hour (more or less) to do whatever we wanted with. Get in a workout! Cook a gourmet breakfast! Or, for some: More time to work!

Now, a year into the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve started to miss our old routines — even the ones we never valued in the before times. It’s why the “fake commute” has become a thing: people put on “real clothes,” pack a lunch, leave their house, walk around the block, and then go back inside and sit at their desk to start the work day.

These people haven’t cracked: They’re taking an essential step toward rebuilding the boundaries that have blurred during lockdown, according to British researchers. “Engaging in a ‘pretend commute’ at the beginning and the end of the day not only provides an opportunity to build some physical activity into your daily routine but also provides an opportunity to transition between work and non-work parts of lives,” says University College London Professor Anna Cox.

Scott Sonenshein, an organizational psychologist at Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business, has been a fan of the fake commute since the early days of lockdown. It started as a way to get his two daughters to settle down for a day of virtual school, he says.

“At first there was nothing — there was no structure, there was no virtual program, and it was quickly obvious that they were languishing. My wife and I divided up the homeschooling responsibilities, and we talked about how to signal when the school day starts and stops,” he says. “I needed that marker for myself, too. So very quickly, probably within the first week, we decided to walk around the block and then come in, and that means you’re in school. They took it seriously — they’d put their backpacks on — but they also had fun with it. After a while they were like, ‘Can we ride our bikes to school? Can school be further away?’”

Replacing the old routine with a new one helped make the “new normal” less daunting, explains Sonenshein, the author of “Stretch: Unlock the Power of Less — And Achieve More Than You Ever Imagined” and the co-author, with Marie Kondo, of “Joy at Work.”

“Routines allow us to habituate action. They mean we don’t have to think about certain things; they happen automatically,” he says. “And they provide predictability, which these days is hard to come by. The paradox of the pandemic is that people are struggling with the monotony of lockdown, but we’re also longing for these routines that have been upended. This goes down to the deep-seated need humans have for control — that’s what we’re missing during the pandemic.”

Humans are hardwired to make and keep routines, in part because surprises are biologically alarming to us. We are, at heart, prediction machines, writes Kate Murphy, the author of “You’re Not Listening: What You’re Missing and Why It Matters.” Disrupting the way we’ve always 
done something — from driving to work to shopping for groceries — pulls the rug of predictability out from under us, sending our brains into a tailspin. 

“Our brains are literally overburdened with all the uncertainty caused by the pandemic,” she writes. “Things we had already figured out and relegated to the brain’s autopilot function — going to work, visiting the gym, taking the kids to school, meeting friends for dinner, grocery shopping — now require serious thought and risk analysis.”

In retrospect, our commutes may have been the unsung heroes of our old workdays. Not only did they create a valuable transition between our “on” and “off” hours, they gave us the opportunity to operate on autopilot, freeing up brainpower for new ideas and insights, Sonenshein says.

“Studies show that doing something mindless — just walking around the block or playing with a fidget spinner — allows your mind to wander and make connections. So even though it seems like you’re not working, the brain is working and coming up with ideas. Activities that don’t require a lot of concentration, but stimulate the brain really mildly are typically when the best insights come to you,” he says. “For many of us, those activities were built in to our old workdays. Just having a routine like walking to lunch or walking to get a coffee help make you more productive because you need that space to make the connections that don’t come to you when you’re thinking really hard about something.”

In addition to sparking good ideas, these mundane moments can also increase our sense of joy and purpose, says Samantha Heintzelman, a psychology professor at Rutgers University. By infusing our lives with pattern and regularity, they add a sense of coherence and comprehensibility to the world around us.

“When the world makes sense, life feels more meaningful,” she writes.

And while we tend to think of finding meaning in life as a grand, lightning-bolt moment, Heintzelman’s research shows that it’s more closely intertwined with the small habits we often take for granted: our morning hygiene regimen, our daily coffee runs, our weekly grocery shopping excursions.

“Some correlational research suggests that routines (e.g., consistently sitting in the same seat in a classroom or routinely visiting the same neighborhoods) are associated with feelings of comfort, confidence, safety, and control,” she wrote in a 2018 paper.

Those feelings are the scaffolding around which our sense of a larger purpose is constructed. The good news is that the routines themselves don’t matter as much as the sheer fact that they are routines: regular, reliable and consistent. Every routine was brand-new once, of course, and just doing something new once a day for two weeks will make it feel automatic—and likely to stick, King’s College London researcher Benjamin Gardner tells The Economist. That means the routines we established during lockdown are likely so well established by now that they’ll linger long after the pandemic ebbs. 

But it’s never too late to create new routines, Sonenshein says. We can start by letting go of the ones that no longer make sense in our new normal.

“Don’t focus on what you don’t have,” he says. “Find potential in what’s around you. That starts with taking stock of what you’re able to do and the places you can go.”

If your fake commute starts to get old, infuse it with the kind of (limited) novelty you might have done with your real pre-pandemic commute, he suggests. On their “commute” to “school” every morning, Sonenshein and his kids try to spot three new, interesting things each time.

“The commute is always the same, but there’s always at least three new things we notice,” he says. “It could be something new in someone’s yard, a flower sprouting from a gutter, or an interesting doorknob. I would bet you can get through the whole pandemic on your same route and find new things each time.”

The commute itself may be pretend, after all, but the benefits of sticking with it are very real.

Jennifer Latson is an editor at Rice Business and the author of “The Boy Who Loved Too Much.”

Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business is expanding its operations management program due to increased demand from students and industry. The school has also recruited Tolga Tezcan, a leading scholar in business analytics and operations management.

Successful business operations strategies are the foundation for growing and distributing a company’s products, services and profits in a post-pandemic world, school leaders said.

Joining Rice Business from the London School of Business, Tezcan has conducted extensive research on designing and managing service systems in customer service and healthcare systems. He has been published in Management Science, Operations Research, Manufacturing and Service Operations Management, Annals of Applied Probability and other academic journals.

Tezcan and Amit Pazgal, the Friedkin Chair in Management and professor of marketing and operations management at Rice Business, will be the first two faculty in the new operations group, with three additional faculty expected to be hired in the next year to further expand the areas of focus.

Pazgal is the academic director of operations management, a leadership role in operations management curriculum design across all Rice Business programs. His research has been published in leading marketing, management, operations and economic journals.

“Our operational management faculty aim to deliver a deeper understanding of a company’s competencies rather than a technical engineering view of operations,” said Jeff Fleming, deputy dean of academic affairs at JGSB. “Tolga and Amit’s work will elevate Rice Business’ current offerings and pave the way for innovation in an expanding industry.”

Owl Have You Know

Season 1, Episode 16

Pranika Sinha ’04, managing director of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and Organizational Development at Greystone, joins host David Droogleever. She talks about what stops her from hitting the snooze button in the morning, how a sense of belonging factors into diversity and inclusion, and what unconscious bias is and how to recognize it.

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Increased internet-access spending by Texas public schools improved academic performance but also led to more disciplinary problems among students, a study of 9,000 schools conducted by a research team from Rice, Texas A&M University and the University of Notre Dame shows.

Whether students benefit from increased internet access in public schools has been an open question, according to the researchers. For example, some parents and policy advocates contend it increases children’s access to obscene or harmful content and disciplinary problems. Others believe it promotes personalized learning and higher student engagement.

To address these policy questions, the research team created a multiyear dataset (2000-14) of 1,243 school districts representing more than 9,000 Texas public schools. The team measured internet-access spending, 11 academic performance indicators and 47 types of school disciplinary problems. It used econometric techniques to develop causal estimates linking internet-access spending to academic performance and disciplinary problems. Using student earning, the researchers calculated the economic impact of increased annual internet spending.

To date, this is the largest and most comprehensive study linking school internet-access spending to academic and disciplinary outcomes, the researchers said.

The team found that increased school district internet spending is associated with not only improved graduation rates, but also higher numbers of students meeting SAT/ACT criterion and completing advanced courses. It also led to an improvement in commended performance in math, reading, writing and social studies. Interestingly, the researchers noted these improvements were stronger for students who lived in counties with greater internet access (as measured by the number of broadband providers).

On the flip side, increased school district internet spending also led to higher rates of disciplinary problems at schools, they said.

The team also calculated how much economic benefit a school district’s internet access will bring students during their lifetimes. It found that a $600,000 increase in annual internet-access spending produces a financial gain of approximately $820,000 to $1.8 million per school district, together with losses from disciplinary problems totaling $25,800 to $53,440.

In other words, investments in internet access are well worth the costs.

“We are proud that Texas public schools can serve as a live learning case for understanding education policy,” said study co-author Vikas Mittal, a professor of marketing at Rice’s Jones Graduate School of Business. “Investments in internet access provide clear and meaningful academic benefits. Yet, schools need to implement policies to address increased disciplinary issues such as cyberbullying.

“K-12 education has transformed into virtual learning due to COVID-19,” he continued. “Our research conclusions apply to a setting where physical learning is supplemented by internet access.”

However, Mittal cautioned that these benefits cannot be expected to hold if physical learning is completely supplanted by internet-based learning.

The paper, “Investigating the Academic Performance and Disciplinary Consequences of School District Internet Access Spending,” which appeared in the February issue of the Journal of Marketing Research, was co-authored by professors Shrihari Sridhar of Texas A&M and Yixing Chen of Notre Dame. It can be downloaded at https://doi.org/10.1177/0022243720964130.

Constance Porter, assistant clinical professor of marketing at Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business, has joined the leadership team of the school’s newly expanded Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI).

As the senior associate dean of the DEI office, Porter is part of the Rice Business Task Force on Racial Equity and Social Justice, which is charged with researching, evaluating and recommending actions to promote diversity and inclusion at the school.

“I am honored to serve in this new role at a momentous time in the history of our school. The task force established by Dean (Peter) Rodriguez paved the way for the expansion of our DEI office,” Porter said. “I look forward to engaging and partnering with students, staff, faculty, alumni and stakeholders in our greater community as we continue the work to be done to amplify DEI at Rice Business.”

Porter joined Rice in fall 2011 and teaches marketing, marketing research and customer relationship management, consistently earning outstanding reviews from her students. She also leads an experiential learning course, Marketing Lab, as well as two integrative executive seminars.

“I look forward to working with Connie as she brings her deep insight and thoughtful perspective to this new position as we commit to advancing the school’s goals of diversity, equity and inclusion with students, staff, faculty, alumni and beyond,” Rodriguez wrote in an announcement to the campus.

Porter earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania (with dual concentration in finance and public policy), an MBA from the University of Michigan (with dual emphasis in operations and corporate strategy) and a Ph.D. in marketing from Georgia State University. Prior to her career in academia, she spent several years as a management consultant with multiple firms.

Owl Have You Know

Season 1, Episode 15

Kyle Judah, Executive Director of the Liu Idea Lab for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (Lilie) at Rice University, and Sophie Randolph ’22, join host Christine Dobbyn. They discuss programming at Lilie during the pandemic, Houston's startup ecosystem and resources for alumni entrepreneurs.

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