Does your research stop after you’ve left academia?
This is a question that I’d like to explore with you today.
In this 48th episode of the Rise with Clarity Podcast, I wanted to do things a little differently and start by offering some reflections on a few professional experiences that I’ve had this year.
As some of you already know, I’m now a little over 2 years out from having left my tenured faculty position as well as having started a coaching and consulting business for women of color faculty, called Rise with Clarity. In addition to running my small business and working with faculty clients, I am also a primary caregiver for my father, who had an acute bilateral thalamic stroke in January 2023, and who has since required 24-hour care and assistance with all activities of daily living.
It is a lot balancing full-time caregiving with my business, which in many ways has had to take more of a back seat during the past 2 years. Everything right now revolves around my dad’s health and providing him with comfort care, and I have to make career decisions based on what I’m currently able to accommodate in my schedule and his. Fortunately as the owner of my own business, I have the ability and the agency to decide what I’m able to take on, and what I decide to decline or postpone.
Some of the things that came my way this year weren’t initially on my radar as possible professional opportunities. But they have been experiences that I’ve definitely learned and grown from. And they’ve also incorporated my experiences and skill-set as an academic researcher.
Authoring an Essay on a New Research Topic
The first thing I want to share about was a publication that I worked on this year. In October, I had a chapter that was published as part of an edited volume called Transformative Coaching for Faculty and Staff in Higher Education: Powerful Tools to Address Institutional Challenges. And this was edited by an amazing team: Karen Gonzalez Rice, Susan Hrach, Katie Linder, and Kitty Maynard and this was published by Routledge. I think this is a really fantastic and important volume that draws on the expertise of several higher ed coaches and offers an exploration of how impactful coaching can be in academia for faculty, staff, and also institutional success.
I was intrigued by the idea of writing a chapter on a topic that wasn’t connected to my previous areas of research. So I pitched an essay that drew on my experiences as a minoritized faculty member and as a higher ed coach. The title of my chapter is: “Developing an Awareness of the Structural Barriers at Play for Women of Color Faculty: One Coach’s Perspective.”
I use a diagram that I’ve actually talked about before on this podcast called “The ‘Problem’ Woman of Colour in the Workplace.” And I use this as a springboard to discuss issues that are related to some of the systemic challenges that exist for minoritized women faculty, particularly in North American institutions of higher learning. It’s a diagram that I recommend anyone in higher ed look at, and you can find an image of this at RisewithClarity.com/11.
In the chapter, I wanted to provide examples of scholarly literature that engages with this topic, in addition to practical suggestions for peer coaches who work with women of color faculty, who often have to deal with higher work loads, microaggressions, feelings of isolation, and shifting goal posts. I also include some examples from my time as a faculty member and some of the challenges that I dealt with.
The research and the writing for this chapter came pretty easily, and I was able to move through the revision process quickly. I wasn’t so sure to what extent I would be able to continue publishing after my transition out of academia. Since I’m no longer compelled to publish for the purposes of my next promotion, the motivation to write academic articles has shifted and has become quite different.
So, this was a pleasant surprise to me…to discover that I can still draw on my background as a researcher, a scholar, and as a writer to publish pieces that are meaningful to me, and that are hopefully useful for a broader audience.
Serving as a Consultant for a Formal Faculty Mentoring Program
Now the second professional opportunity that came up this year was pretty unexpected. I was hired as a consultant to help develop and implement UC Santa Barbara’s inaugural campus-wide Faculty Mentoring Program. This was a contract gig that involved a couple of different components: helping to advise on matters related to formal mentoring programs, developing handouts and resources for the program, conducting a needs assessment, and delivering trainings to both mentor and mentee faculty.
Many institutions are starting to recognize that some of the traditional models of mentoring are not really hitting the marks for new faculty. And that advice-giving is not necessarily the go-to modality of mentorship because we are living in the midst of a lot of change in the academy right now.
So just a case in point: what one senior faculty member did in order to achieve tenure in their department 20-25 years ago, doesn’t exactly reflect what may be needed today in terms of research, teaching, and service. And therefore the senior faculty member giving advice as to what they did in order to achieve tenure to the new faculty member is not going to be that helpful.
So, UCSB’s mentorship program is structured so that each new faculty member is matched with 3 tenured faculty—with the aim of providing a formal network of mentors and to help develop a culture of mentorship on campus. Because the structure for the mentor faculty is quite different from what they are used to, I introduced some elements of coaching into the trainings—which could be: active listening, centering the mentee, being curious, asking questions, being more of a sounding board, and moving into brainstorming, when appropriate. And I introduced aspects of coaching to the mentors as a way to expand their already existing repertoire or toolkit.
While I didn’t formally publish anything in relation to this consultancy, I did definitely utilize my background in research to review the latest trends in mentoring research and integrate these findings into the trainings and the resources. And I was able to draw on my experience as a trained ethnographer to conduct the needs analysis. And this was the part of the work that I really enjoyed the most. This meant speaking one-on-one with several faculty members (both mentors and mentees) to get a sense of what mentoring topics are top of mind, and to learn how to best support new faculty in their transition to a new campus.
Connecting with Old and New Research
OK. The last example that I wanted to share with you is very recent—in that it happened last week for me. I was asked by a friend (hat tip to Professor Zach Smith) to provide a series of talks for University of Central Arkansas’s Center for Global Learning and Engagement and their Center for Asian Languages and Cultures. For this, I had to arrange for respite care during my trip, and I’m very grateful to a dear friend who was able to come out to Michigan to help out.
Unlike some of the other talks that I’ve given this year, which are more connected to coaching or leaving academia, these talks were connected to my background as an ethnomusicologist, with expertise in traditional Korean music and culture. I developed 2 new talks—one was for a workshop for Arkansas state teachers that focused on KPop Demon Hunters (that film that came out this year) as an entry point into aspects of traditional and contemporary Korean culture.
And the second talk was a public lecture on the concept of Korean madang—which is very eloquently theorized by ethnomusicologist Donna Kwon—and I used this as a generative theoretical framework for thinking through the ways in which K-Pop’s global fan communities are connecting. Both talks were really fun for me to put together.
And the last 2 talks were for 2 sections of an undergraduate course on Global History of Student Protest. And this was based on research that I conducted well over 15 years ago, focused on the politicization of Korean percussion in scenes of protest during the democratization movement in late 1980s South Korea.
So I wasn’t expecting to still have the chance to publicly speak on topics related to my research area as an independent scholar. I’m really grateful to have been given an invitation to develop a new research talk as well as be back in the classroom. It felt really good to flex those muscles again, and to realize that they still work!!
It was also interesting to revisit one of my first research projects, and also realize that there were aspects of the research that are incredibly timely, with college students in South Korea who came up with a range of strategies to protest an authoritarian government.
I wanted to reflect on these professional opportunities because they came about when I was least expecting them to this year. I also wanted to think through the fact that even though I have formally left academia, I haven’t left my experience and my expertise as a researcher or as a scholar. That still stays.
This seems obvious to me now, and it’s clear that there are many people out there who identify as independent scholars, without institutional affiliations. But this fact wasn’t so apparent to me when I was in the throes of considering whether or not to leave my tenured faculty position two years ago.
I’m someone that has always enjoyed doing research—whether it was ethnographic fieldwork, archival work, or conducting oral histories. And with my decision at the time, it felt like I was abandoning all of my research projects when I pivoted out of higher ed.
To be fair, with some research projects or some writing projects, I have actually had to withdraw from, and others have been on the back burner due to my capacity levels. It’s been nice to reframe my own relationship to research, to be able to adjust expectations and audiences, and to also acknowledge that I’m integrating elements of research practice quite a bit even in my new career pivot.
So, I’d like to return to that question that I posed at the beginning of the podcast.
Does your research stop after you’ve left academia?
Well, the answer is: it depends. It depends how you define research and how you want to continue connecting with projects that you have initiated in higher ed and which projects still have meaning for you.
You may not have access to university libraries or the primary driving reason to publish in the same journals that you once had to publish in. And for those of you in STEM fields, it may not be possible to continue the same kind of research without access to larger sources of funding, other researchers, and lab equipment.
But what I’d like to suggest here is that you can certainly still draw on your professional researcher skill-set and your expertise to help inform your projects in your new job or to author essays, articles, or books that are not stuck behind paywalls and can actually reach a broader audience.
At least this is what I’ve come to learn in the past year. And I wanted to share this with you, because it kind of came as a surprise to me. And it’s something that I’d like to continue to do more of in some capacity, in connection with my coaching and consulting business.
So maybe a reframing of that question that I posed at the beginning is useful here:
What role do you want research to play in your life, even if you’re not in academia anymore?
I’d love to hear what you have to say on this. You can write to me at Katherine at RisewithClarity.com. And, do feel free to check out the “Workshops and Speaking” tab on my website if you’re interested in having me speak for a class or your community next year. I offer talks and workshops on a variety of topics. You can always send me a note, and we can have a chat about your needs.