Recently, the ATS team came together to answer the question: What is our value to Stanford? The Program is quite unique in that we report through the Library, but we have our offices and spend the majority of our time (officially 80%) within the unit (department, program, or center) where we are assigned. This is an unusual but wildly successful program. How does it work? What makes it successful?  We identified eight themes and each wrote individually on one of those themes with the assumption that no single theme could capture the program as a whole. Instead the set of posts together draw a picture of the program that is more than merely the sum of the individual posts.

Our newest ATS, Kenny Ligda (English) chose to write about how ATSes are in a unique position to see the big picture in their approach to problem solving. Carlos Seligo, from the Program in Human Biology, wrote about the importance of collegiality with faculty.  Accountability, or how our success is measured, was addressed by one of the program managers and the Anthropology ATS, Claudia Engel.  The ATS for IRiSS (Institute for Research in the Social Sciences), Vijoy Abraham, gives examples of the importance of flexibility and adaptability.  Mike Widner, the ATS for the Division of Literatures, Cultures and Languages wrote about how ATSes contribute to innovation in research.  Jason Heppler, based in the History Department, discusses the role of creativity in ATS work. The other two program managers, Ken Romeo (Language Center) and Nicole Coleman (Humanities Center and CESTA), wrote about the broad view of pedagogy and the ATS service model, respectively.