Five Questions with Department Chair Mario Small: An Exit Interview

1. What’s the biggest change you’ve seen in the department since you became chair?

I have seen several. The physical spaces are very different, far more appealing. I like our new 5th floor lounge, and I especially like that our walls now feature recently published work of our own faculty and students (thanks in no small part to your work, Ari!). People are spending more time in Knox---probably not at pre-COVID levels but certainly more than in those first few lonely years after COVID. I also like that I now know what most of our faculty are working on right now, thanks to the wonderful workshop that Tara has organized. I like that our departmental staff are more involved in all aspects of our program, including the design of our new spaces (like the student lounge and the fifth-floor lounge) and all our (many) conferences, workshops, and events. It's a "well-oiled machine."  It has also been a pleasure to see all our assistant professors become more active leaders in departmental matters. So, that's not one "biggest change," but to me all of these changes have accumulated to result in a very different feel. 

2. Is there anything that you’re particularly proud of accomplishing?

This one is easy. I am delighted by the small role I played in bringing our stellar three new colleagues, Tara Gonsalves, Barbara Kiviat, and most recently Xi Song. Enormous credit goes to Jennifer Lee for making possible Xi's joint appointment with the AAI. I believe hiring three women in a row may be a historic first for Columbia Sociology. But even if it isn't, I have been delighted by the very clear impact on our community of bringing such extraordinary scholars.

3. Is there anything that you wish you had been able to accomplish, but did/could not? Any unfinished business?

Always. Improving our work, our teaching, our scholarship, our local culture, our relationship to our students, our operations, our impact on the world---all of these are ongoing projects. But I would say there is one particular person, a wonderful senior scholar, I am still hoping we can bring to Columbia in the near future. 

4. What’s one piece of advice that you have for Adam regarding serving as department chair?

Hah! Adam knows Columbia far better than I did (and do), so, I'm not sure there is much I can offer. Perhaps it's this: keep a journal; show it to no one.

5. Is there anything that you learned about yourself (as a person, researcher, leader) or about Columbia (as an organization, university) through serving as chair?

Yes. I have been in administrative roles before, and therefore thought I knew something about being chair or dean. But I did not realize the following: Assume that to achieve any goal in any organization you always need to follow some process, whether formal or informal. Well, there are people who love achieving the goals, and there are people, I did not realize, who love the process---people who take real pleasure in scheduling and attending meetings, talking things through extensively, discussing institutional history, and participating in shared governance through deliberation. In contrast, I would be perfectly happy achieving every goal I care about that would help others without scheduling a single meeting. Maybe it's just because I am an introvert. 

Bonus Question. What are you looking forward to spending more time on? Teaching, research, being with family...?

Shortly before I became chair, I published a paper on how institutional contexts shape how people mobilize their ties---the kind of paper that would lead to a good ten years' worth of empirical studies. Since then, I have written exactly zero of those empirical studies. It's time to get back to them. I am also returning to urban research and the Data and Racial Inequality Project, which all but paused for three years. This semester, we started a DRIP working group, and I'm working on papers with several graduate students, postdocs, and faculty on urban mobility, neighborhood entrepreneurship, and organizational capacity. I'll be back to mostly thinking about scholarship again. 

Congratulations on a successful tenure as chair, Mario! Thank you for your service to our department!