By Emma White JD, MAAssistant Professor and Department Chair, English, University of Hawai`i, Maui College Navigation and cartography may be overused clichés, but they helped me through tenure’s stormy seas. And the process of obtaining tenure is an especially stormy sea for women in particular. Data from the American Association of University Women shows that only 27% of tenured faculty among four-year institutions are women. Women faculty—especially women faculty of color—also face additional barriers in the form of systemic sexism, racism, and isolation based on the marginalized identities they hold. I cannot solve most of the challenges women face around promotion & tenure in one article, but I can share some of my own experiences in hopes of helping other women faculty along in the process. I applied for and was awarded tenure while pregnant with my first child. Over the five-year process to gain tenure, I followed a highly effective strategy that helped me improve my teaching, align with my goals, and manage my stress. I’ve since had the honor of mentoring other women through the tenure process, and as I look back on how I navigated my own, several guideposts emerge. Accept that you need a map and […]
Dr. Sumanth G. Reddy received his B.S. from the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, an M.S. from the University of North Texas, and a Ph.D. from Kansas State University, all in Geography. His research interests are in medical, cultural, population, and tourism geography, with regional application in Africa and Asia. Dr. Reddy has traveled globally for research, conferences, and leisure to over 45 countries. He is passionate about study abroad and providing students with the opportunity to experience the world beyond the classroom. As an undergraduate, he studied abroad in a semester-long program in Scotland, and he again studied abroad in Ghana as a graduate student. In 2016, he took 10 students to China on a 2-week Study Abroad trip, and in 2017, he took 10 students to Ghana and London on a 3-week Study Abroad trip (Travel Blog). For summer 2022, Dr. Reddy was awarded a $14,000 grant from the American Association of Geographers to conduct a camping and hiking trip with his students to explore several national parks in the Southwest. He was also the recipient of the University Presidential Teaching Award for 2021-2022. Besides the classroom, he enjoys hiking, cycling, gardening, cooking, and meeting people. He is a native of Bangalore, India.
In Academic Impressions’ 2021 survey of higher ed faculty, staff, and administrators to understand the current state of professional development, 51% of respondents reported experiencing clinical levels of burnout. Faculty burnout comes on the heels of their being asked to do more than ever during the COVID-19 pandemic, plus the additional challenges of meeting the needs of students that resulted. But faculty who learn how to set boundaries with their work and maintain a healthy integration are far more likely to continue to enjoy their work and maintain their sense of professional well-being. Join us for an interactive session on how to better develop and maintain boundaries with your work as faculty. Our expert speaker Dr. Jackie Leibsohn has served in faculty positions and leadership at all levels. She will walk you through identifying what is being added to faculty’s plates, how and when to say no to additional work, and how to survive a changing faculty environment. We will also provide resources for you to continue to practice professional well-being in your faculty role.
On average, it takes three submissions before a faculty member will get their proposal for funding accepted by a grant agency. To complicate matters, the reviews that accompany the rejection are often complex and contradictory, so it can be difficult to know how to move forward – especially when many faculty get little help interpreting reviews. As such, many faculty members, especially junior faculty, simply give up on the proposal too soon and do not put effort into revising and resubmitting it. When this happens, important research may be left undone, the institution cannot meet its strategic goal of growing research, and faculty find it difficult to publish in top journals and stay on track for promotion and tenure. Join our expert instructor to learn how to review and analyze your declined grant proposals with a fresh perspective – one that will give you confidence in how to best move forward with your declined proposal, as well as all future proposals. Our expert will guide you through the process that will teach you how to: Objectively assess your individual reviews Identify patterns and uncover the most critical feedback Anticipate hidden weaknesses Identify both the root causes and underlying conditions preventing an award Develop a plan for resubmission If you’re looking to better understand the proposal review process and put yourself in reviewers’ shoes, this webcast is for you!
As a result of COVID-19, almost all the interactions you have with your students, alumni, colleagues, and donors are now through webcam in virtual meetings. Environmental factors such as poor lighting and background movement can become distractions and have implications on the level of engagement and potential for relationship building. Your body language and eye contact play an important role too as they can either facilitate meaningful communication or hinder it. Join us online for an interactive training where you will learn best practices for creating a professional and engaging persona during a video call. Our expert instructor will demonstrate simple tips and strategies for improving the quality of your physical surroundings and your presentation style during video calls. We will discuss how to: Place your laptop in the right position to maximize your lighting and appropriately frame yourself on screen Choose a background that does not offend or disturb others Reduce unnecessary movement to minimize distractions Maintain appropriate eye contact and body language that resonates with others online We have deliberately designed this training to go beyond the stock tips and strategies you’ll find online. You will have the opportunity to turn on your camera so that you can […]
Mike is an executive coach and higher education leader with a focus in group dynamics, interpersonal communication, leadership, and second career development. Three questions inspire Mike’s work as a coach: What brings you joy? What are you good at? What does the world need you to be? Mike’s professional career has taken him in many different directions, but always with the same focus, on helping others to grow, change, and become better. As a faith community leader, spiritual director, learning coach, academic counselor, and now as an Assistant Dean for Faculty and Student Success at the MGH IHP in Boston, Mike has developed and honed deep listening skills, asking questions that both challenge and inspire, and he knows how to accompany a client on their unique journey without imposing his own agenda or needs. He is especially skilled in dealing with grief, change of career, LGBTQ+ leaders, and crisis leadership. His own work as a faculty member enables him to understand the unique challenges of faculty who may be torn between the demands of scholarship, teaching, and service, while struggling to meet home and personal concerns. Mike’s educational background includes an MDiv with coursework in counseling, philosophy, and psychology, a […]
Last fall, Academic Impressions launched our inaugural summit for Provosts. Held for 20 participating Provosts, the summit’s focus was on how Provosts can lead in the face of increasing ambiguity and complexity, a topic for which there is a lot more “talk” than “walk.” We wanted to show Provosts that there are proven strategies for doing so, and in particular, for engaging their teams in hard conversations when stakes are high. This is even more important because most senior teams avoid talking about the really hard topics—like allocating scarce resources, cutting programs, etc. At many of the institutions we work with, Deans are more likely to lobby the Provost privately rather than to voice candid opinions in team meetings. But not only does this pattern make it much harder for the Provost to make effective decisions, it also isolates decisions with the Provost and ensures that Deans can easily absolve themselves of any responsibility. What’s more, when the hard issues are only raised in one-on-one meetings, Deans and Vice Provosts don’t get to see the whole picture. The underlying mental models and assumptions that drive decisions can’t be challenged. And it reinforces a zero-sum mindset where there are only winners […]
Testing your campus’s crisis response plans frequently and rigorously is key to ensuring that you can protect campus resources and recover speedily following a crisis, and as of July 1, 2010, annual testing is mandated under the updated Clery Act. Nonetheless, annual testing represents a significant shift in practice for many institutions. Nearly a quarter of higher education administrators polled in an Academic Impressions survey in January 2010 reported their institutions had not tested their campus crisis response plan in over five years. Another 13% said their plans had not been tested within the past two years. “This finding indicates that a sizable subset of colleges and universities may be unaware of their crisis response plan’s actual ability to effectively address a modern campus emergency — a salient gamble in the wake of a series of high-profile campus crises.”Marla Whipple, Academic Impressions To help institutions that are preparing for annual testing of their emergency response plans, we turned to Hamilton College’s director of campus safety, Francis Manfredo, who shared with us lessons learned from his college’s recent drill. We also want to share strategies from Steve Charvat with the University of Washington, Cindy Lawson with the University of North Carolina Wilmington, and Eugene […]
Gender bias in higher education can lead us to prize men’s voices over women’s and to value authoritarian and transactional leadership over transformational, collaborative leadership. Yet collaboration is key to meeting the complex challenges our departments and institutions of higher education now face. So let’s explore: How best can men and women work together to develop this critical leadership trait that has traditionally been considered “feminine”? by Rosalind Spigel, Organizational Development Consultant and Leadership Coach, Spigel Consulting Previous articles in this series: In this series we are looking at leadership traits, how they are deployed and recognized differently for men and women, and how gender bias impedes women’s advancement within our colleges and universities. In this fourth article, we’ll take a close look at collaboration. We’ll examine: Why Collaboration is So Critical Remember that memo distributed by a now ex-employee of Google, criticizing diversity and defending the skewed percentage of male coders? After debunking the former employee’s false claim that men were inherently better coders for “biological” reasons, senior leaders at Google also argued that the coder “had fundamentally misunderstood what skills were needed…such as collaboration, creativity and teamwork” (Swinson, 2018, p. 332). While there are many differences between the Google campus and […]
The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) study in the nineties taught us the prevalence of traumatic experience in society, as well as how trauma influences lifelong learning, health, and behavior. Researchers have found correlations between high ACEs scores (indicating more traumatic experience) and learning or behavior problems, lower grades, and a higher rate of academic failure. While mental health is not a new issue to higher education, the COVID-19 pandemic and other unprecedented events have significantly impacted college student mental health and stress levels. It has therefore become increasingly vital for faculty to understand the effects of trauma and stress on the minds and behaviors of students so that they can tailor their pedagogical approach to better meet their students’ needs. Join us for a virtual training where our expert speaker Heather Rist will walk you through the effect of trauma, how it presents in the classroom, and how to implement classroom management techniques to reduce the risk of re-traumatization. You will learn to identify the signs and symptoms of trauma, as well as how to calm someone experiencing heightened trauma symptoms and to then connect them with appropriate care and resources on campus.
