WRT333

Why Learn Page Layout?

Why does page layout matter? A Story.

In the summer and fall of 1997, I was approached by Dr. Stephen Dellaporta, Professor of Biology at Yale University. Dr. Dellaporta was a URI PhD graduate, and a national leader in plant genomics. He called to discuss an idea for development of core facilities on the URI campus to support contemporary research in biotechnology. Over that summer, Steve took it upon himself to come frequently to the URI campus, and to talk with many URI biologists about his vision. During the fall, groups met and began to carve out ideas. What did the campus need, we asked, and how could we articulate and reach for a vision? Working under Dellaporta's gentle and careful leadership, and with Steve providing the core of necessary writing and writing coordination, we produced a paper outlining the concept of an Environmental Biotechnology Initiative, providing a vision, rationale, and a tentative outline of a mission statement and strategies. The document we produced was completed in the spring of 1998, along with a separate document suggesting tentative floor plans for an interim facility in Ranger Hall.

To improve the visual appeal of the document, I converted it from an MSWord document into a PageMaker document, adding illustrations and various appearance enhancements. A copy of the document is online, here (PDF).

The document was written for the explicit purpose of gaining approval of URI's President, who had expressed major reservations about building new medical biotechnology facilities earlier in the decade; we also sought approval of the Provost, and wrote with these two in mind as our primary audience.

On June 29, 1997, Provost Swan responded to the committee with this note:

Although the Provost was jesting, she acknowledged that we had accomplished our purpose with the document and had gained the first level of acceptance toward our goal.

The point of all of this is to recognize the significant role which presentation and image played in determining success. Would the original MSWord document have had the same effect? I don't know. I honestly do not know whether the Provost or the President ever actually read the document or the two page executive summary that we also provided, but that hardly matters. I do know that in an effort to reach a critical audience for a particular purpose, the audience's response was influenced by the appearance of the document. My guess is that we had a positive bias working for us from the first glimpse at the cover of our paper. I believe this is so, in all sincerity, to this day.

Neither the process of approval nor the role of graphic page layout ended with URI's administration. Next, we addressed the Board of Governors, crafting a single page document, produced by URI webmaster John Peterson, to make the main points as expediently as possible. The message was written to address the desires of the Board to support URI's teaching mission and to make it clear that the Initiative supported both URI research and State economic development . The document took two full days to draft, as we wrestled with virtually every word in an effort to say the right things in the most concise fashion. A copy is here (PDF). The Board responded with enthusiastic approval.

We were underway. I felt that there was also a need to make the case for a general increase in URIs research mission. I took it upon myself to write "Reinventing the Research University: A Blueprint for the University of Rhode Island," in March 1999. This document (PDF, here) used PageMaker 6.5 to incorporate a large argument (complete with attractive headings and pullquotes) and a critical set of graphs that were intended to paint a portrait of research within URI's colleges, and to present a scan of national opportunities for federal grants improvements. The document was not well recieved by URI administration (it was never acknowledged by anyone), but did create a backlash which wrote a white paper on URI research (plagiarizing at least one full paragraph from my paper!). Reinventing, however, also made its way to the then head of the RI Public Interest Group, Gary Sasse. Dean (and Vice Provost) Leinen had aired a copy of Reinventing with a group of senior faculty (from the College of Resource Development, which preceeded CELS and the Graduate School of Oceanography), who persuaded her to visit Sasse; she was accompanied by The Provost. In response to Leinen's claim that URI had a research funding problem, Sasse pulled out a copy of the document (which I had provided) and said, "I know. I've read about it," citing the many charts and arguments of the document. Sasse agreed to take the case to the Rhode Island Economic Policy Council (RIEPC) for a discussion of State investment in URI as an "engine of economic development."

In December 2000, a week after a decision that I would step down from administration (I was Director of the RI Agricultural Experiment Station for the previous 5 years and Director of RI Cooperative Extension for 2 of those years), I was hired by the Executive Director of RIEPC, Christopher "Kip" Bergstrom, as a consultant and charged to create a document to flesh out many of the arguments made in Reinventing. In November 2001, I presented the Council with Research Benchmarks: Funding University Research Operations and Infrastructure." (PDF, here). Bergstom viewed this document as a rhetorical "tank," meaning that he saw it as a super heavyweight foundation for an argument supporting greater state investment in URI research and research infrastructure. Discussion of the document in the Council persuaded Governor Almond, previously motivated by the arguments in the Environmental Biotechnology Initiative concept paper, that this investment was a high priority for the State. Again, the document used a mixture of presentational methods, including charts and very dense, information-rich tables and appendices of benchmark data, as the basis for its arguments. Presentation of critical supportive numerical analyses would not have been nearly as effective were the document not prepared with the rich array of devices that were available through the appropriate page layout technology; this time, we used Abobe's InDesign, which has additional capacities for formatting documents made in several sections (the 61 page report had five major sections, including substative appendices). The arguments made in the report may also have been persuasive in the formative thinking leading to current discussions about development of URI -affiliated research and commercialization parks.

RIEPC further produced an database-driven website and an 8-page summary (based on this draft). The net result was to pursuade Governor Lincoln Almond that to develop a significant and critical research[enabling capacity in environmental biotechnology should be URI's highest research priority. I was told that this was communicated to President Carothers during one of URI's basketball games by the Governor (pers. comm., Wm. M. Sullivan).

In the spring of 2009, the Center for Biotechnology and Life Sciences opened on the north edge of campus. Groundbreaking was already underway next door for a sibling facility for state of the art pharmacy research, and plans were underway for new chemistry facilities as well. Certainly, URI was overdue for these sorts of major infrastructure investments, but I am not convinced that they would have happened without the uniquely effective forms of persuasion briefly outlined here. My point? As the Provost said, "...never underestimate the power of good visuals and formatting."