From the editor's desk.

Many times the most ordinary things present us with the most extraordinary moments. That truth came home to me dynamically a short time ago. I was watching a woodworker install hardwood floors in a home being remodeled. Part of the project was the rebuilding of the main stairway. With sleeves rolled

up for a long and steady stairway task, he singled out each piece of solid oak and carefully reviewed every line. Seasoned and calloused hands gently but definitely explored each inch of wood as if getting to know it personally. As he sawed and carved, it seemed nothing could distract him. Carefully and with undoubted knowledge, he cut each piece with exquisite precision. He sanded over and over again, and then stained each step with a red-gold mastery as if burning the color into each piece. He cured each step and carefully fit each precisely into place. As wood is one of my favorite media, I could not pull myself away but found myself drawn more and more into the mastery that was taking place. As he began to put the finishing touches on his work, I caught a glimpse of something that arrested my attention. There, while he was staining, sanding and curing, I saw a single bead of perspiration catch on the end of an eyelash. I thought I saw a flash, a glint. It seemed that for one brief second I was caught up in a fire that I never expected. Something enduring swept open a path. Labor and passion met mastery and brilliance. For one brief moment, it seemed I had left my own time and space and had journeyed back centuries to witness a lost form of expression. I was watching a master. This was no mere technician. This was no assembly line production. This was more than just the remodeling of a set of stairs. This was art. Here was what the ancient Greeks would call "techne." Craft. And suddenly my definition of "technology" had changed--in the swift glint of a bead of sweat washing an eyelash of inspiration.

This edition of the Journal of Research Administration occurs as we draw to a close the 40th anniversary of the Society of Research Administrators International. It strikes me as important that this edition of the Journal celebrates the craft, the technology and the industry that is our profession. Our profession is the sometimes awkward conjoining of inspiration and perspiration. We sense the technology that is ours sometimes with that same bead of sweat that prisms the glint behind our eyes when we have brought a tedious contract to fruition, or completed a critical proposal review, or finalized a patent application. Regardless of the specific task, our profession is itself a hard hewn art that requires the masterful care of building, and fitting, and staining, and curing. It is a process. Sometimes it splinters. But if fired with red-gold dedication, it is a fitting stairway that facilitates the traffic of human ideas and processes and invention. Indeed, ours is a craft that captures both industry and innovation.

In this edition, our craft, our industry, our technology, and our innovation are celebrated in special and unique ways. Dr. Sharon Stewart-Cole invites us to consider research administration as a systemic reality while Dr. Elaine Larson and colleagues complete professional analysis on interdisciplinarity in research first considered in the previous edition. Dr. Robert Porter, and Mr. Remgarajan Balaji and his colleagues explore various means of bringing the service of research administrators most effectively to investigators and research communities. After these considerations, various international authors present us with provocative and important considerations concerning how our technologies serve researchers in diverse nations and cultures. Dr. Peter Gist and Dr. David Langley explore how programs of service can be enriched by project management methods and technologies. Noting the current debate in research ethics concerning customer-service terminology, Dr. Ian Carter discusses how these same concepts can be reinterpreted to highlight research administration as a service with important levels of accountability to those who depend upon our efforts. In another vein, Dr. Isaac Mazonde and his colleagues reflect critically upon the challenges of research ethics in international cultures. To complete our global reflections upon the craft and technology of research administration, Dr. Vincent Gallicchio reminds us that our profession must truly be stretched--never tied to one place or one time--but ordered to the common good that makes us truly international. Our considerations are rounded out by two insightful book and law reviews from Ms. Frances Chandler and Mr. J. Michael Slocum. The volume is then completed by another highly informative edition of Voice of Experience as prepared by Dr. Elliott Kulakowski and the VOE Co-Authors.

The articles in this edition of the Journal are a point of unique pride for each of us in research administration leadership. In 1916, Carl Sandburg published his famous "Chicago Poems." Many of us are very familiar with the central selection of that work. Seeming to burst with Middle American pride, Sandburg boasts Chicago as....

   "Hog Butcher for the World,
   Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
   Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight
   Handler;
   Stormy, husky, brawling,
   City of the Big Shoulders...."

Sandburg uses the city of Chicago as a type of personification of the human spirit that rejoices in the buzz and hum of labor and industry and invention. He celebrates the "doing" that is not just American, but that belongs to every culture, in every time, and in every place.

We indeed are a "Profession of the Big Shoulders." We bear up much. And we know why. We know the stakes. Despite the challenges we may encounter and the setbacks that we may know occasionally, we celebrate the inspiration and the perspiration that we expend on behalf of those we serve. Perhaps this is the image, the glint, of the art-form and the industry that we call research administration. As we celebrate an anniversary, we look to the next generation that will continue to help build human progress through research of every discipline. Perhaps the greatest gift we can give to those who will come after us is a wonderfully raucous spirit bursting with pride-of-industry. Perhaps our celebration this year is best capped by echoing Sandburg's words:

   "Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing
   as a young man laughs,
   Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs
   who has never lost a battle,
   Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is
   the pulse.
   and under his ribs the heart of the people,
   Laughing!
   Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter
   of Youth,
   half-naked, sweating, proud to be
   Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
   Player with Railroads and Freight Handler to
   the Nation."

Dr. Edward Gabriele

Editor, Journal of Research Administration

efgabriele@comcast.net