by P.D. Lesko

I NORMALLY DON'T like to write in response to anything published in the current issue of the magazine in which my column appears. However, Brian Caterino's piece on Stanford's Office of Learning and Technology got me thinking. In particular, I'm thinking about Professors Cohen and Boyer, the scientists whose patent brought in a cool $100,000,000 to Stanford. Of course, Drs. Cohen and Boyer earned quite a bit of money from said patent. However, it's hard to look at the difference between a few million dollars and a hundred million dollars and be satisfied that these fellows weren't shortchanged (quite literally). Of course, any employee who brings in $100,000,000 dollars for her or his employer is nothing short of a rainmaker. Employers love rainmakers. Are scientists the only potential rainmakers on campus?

Let's meander over to the College of Arts and Literature and see if we can't find a few more rainmakers. Shall we begin in the English Department, with the Creative Writing program faculty? Professor Usula K. LeGuin, at the University of Washington, has been cranking out sci-fi best-sellers for years. The University could snap up her royalty checks every month and dole out a few bucks to her on a quarterly basis. And what about the other Creative Writing faculty out there? Not every one of them is an Ursula K. LeGuin, but I'm sure the $5,000 dollar paycheck for publishing a short story in, say, The Atlantic, would be of interest to any administrator with a penchant for pinching pennies. Short fiction and poetry sales can add up surprisingly fast. Let's not forget about writing grants and award money. A Guggenheim or Rockefeller award can be worth $40,000-$50,000.

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