Upcoming presentation by Laura
Hi friends of women in science,
I've been invited by the Department of Water and Power in LA to talk on November 3 at their Women's Leadership Legacy Conference on women's leadership in education. The organizers want a personal approach based on my own experiences, so I plan to emphasize my career as a professor of biology and my period as academic VP at Pomona College, including both the people and events that supported me in those roles and those that did not. I'm also going to cover challenges of trying to combine family and career, a major theme of my memoir Breaking Through the Spiral Ceiling.
On the advice of the Yale University Press reviewers, I focused on the academic part of my life in the memoir, so it's fun to be able to include a few insights from my administrative period in this talk. But it's only 30 minutes long, so I can't go too far into it.
I'd love to know if any of you have questions about academic adminstration, because that could help me choose what to emphasis in my talk. Just give them to me in the comments, and I'll answer as best I'm able.
cheers,
Laura
Hi Laura,
I would think that arguing for the other side would be particularly hard for a scientist, but yet quite a few academic administrators come from science. The legerdemain sounds more like Poli Sci to me, but you were obviously able to do it. I suspect your discomfort was rooted in shame, sorry to say. No doubt it was the worst part of the job.
MKS
Hi Xenia,
Yes, it does happen, but not too frequently. That is one of the worst parts of the job. I had to deal with presenting a different public and private persona twice while I was academic VP at Pomona, and I can't really talk about what the issues were, but they made me terribly uncomfortable. I had been warned up front that if the college took a line, my job was going to require that I support it, so I gritted my teeth and did what was required. As I teach students, you can argue for either side of the argument often, and if you're careful, you can keep people from seeing where you really stand. But I'm normally so WYSIWYG and open that it really hurts to do that.
best,
Laura
Dear Laura,
It's awkward, but I wonder how often an academic adminsitrator is put in the position of supporting something in public that she does not agree with in private? Did that happen to you when you were VP?
XD
Thanks for the ideas! Farsinee, you can plan in some research if your upper admin agrees; mine did, but I didn't succeed in arranging enough time to make it work well. I left my VP position and returned to the faculty after 5 years, and that's about the longest I can imagine taking before going back. But I've actually heard of people returning to the faculty after even longer times; they really strugged to get their research going again though.
Kathy, there are training programs at various places, including Harvard, but I didn't take any. I did serve as associate dean of faculty at Oxy before I came to Pomona as VP though. And yes, people who disagree with your decisions can hold it against you. I lost a few friends, but kept a lot of others through the administrative period. And the pay is quite a bit better than for professors, typically. Susan is right, you do find out interesting things about how institutions work, and if you have a goal (mine was making the faculty more diverse) you can make progress towards it better from an admin position than from a faculty slot, usually, because you have some policy control and some budget.
cheers,
Laura
Kathy, I can tell you one reason why. The pay is a lot better for administrators than for professors. Also some people like the kind of overview of how an institution works that you get in academic administration.
SES
I'm wondering if you need some kind of training or experience on the side to move into administration from a professorial job. Also, why would you want to do it? I hear a lot of complaints about the admin so I think it makes you kind of unpopular. Is there any reward to compensate for being disliked?
KB
Dear Laura,
If you go into academic administration, can you still do research? Is it possible to come back into the role of professor once you go into administration?
