Category: Interviews

  • Professor Chinasa Elue on Grief, Trauma, and Talking About Loss Online

    Professor Chinasa Elue on Grief, Trauma, and Talking About Loss Online

    Chinasa Elue, PhD is an Associate Professor at Kennesaw State University where her focus is Educational Leadership and Higher Education. She is also an entrepreneur. Her company, True Titans Consulting is helping leaders and organizations with grief and trauma.

    How do you express grief, express loss, online? In this interview, Chinasa gets personal about the loss of her mother. Dr. Elue knows that we’ve been experiencing collective grief.

    Welcome to the featured interview series on The Social Academic blog. You can read, watch, or listen to the interviews shared here.

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    Meet Chinasa

    Jennifer: Hi everyone. My name is Jennifer van Alstyne. Welcome to the new season of The Social Academic. I’m here with Dr. Chinasa Elue, an associate professor of educational leadership and higher education at Kennesaw State University.

    Chinasa, I’m so happy to talk with you today. Would you please introduce yourself? Let everyone know a little bit about you.

    Chinasa: Absolutely. And so thank you so much for having me here today, Jennifer, I’m excited to be here and chat with you as well.

    My name is Chinasa Elue. As you mentioned, I’m a professor at Kennesaw State University, but I’m also an entrepreneur. I run my own coaching and consulting business where I am supporting organizational leaders lead with more trauma informed practices in the workplace.

    A lot of this work stems from our research around grief, leadership and trauma informed practices in organizational settings. I’m excited to be doing this work. It’s truly an honor to be able to leave such important work in this context that we’ve been navigating these past couple of years. Thank you.

    Jennifer: Yeah, thank you for introducing that and letting people know about your business. And I think that’s so important. One of the reasons that I want to highlight professors like yourself on the show is to show that people are doing more than just their faculty work. People are helping the world in different ways.

    Journey into the professoriate

    Having an online presence is something that becomes a part of that system for helping people. That’s one of the things that I wanted to talk with you about today.

    Now, since most of the people who are listening to this are professors themselves, can you tell me a little bit more about your higher ed life?

    Chinasa: Absolutely. So in terms of my journey into the professoriate is really interesting because in a lot of ways, when I was finishing my graduate program, I thought I was going to go into higher education administration. I thought I was going to work as the Dean of Students or something of that nature.

    But as you know, along the way, I had some really amazing mentors who really encouraged me to pursue a faculty life. They talked about the importance of impact in the field more systemic ways. I applied to many jobs and I was able to land my first gig right out of graduate school teaching.

    I think being a professor…It’s a journey in and of itself, right?

    There are a lot of ins and outs of this thing that I’ve learned over time. I’m getting ready to enter into my 8th year of teaching. I can’t even believe I’m saying that, but yeah, 8 years of teaching as a professor.

    It’s been an interesting journey. That’s the best way I can put it, because there are a lot of reasons why I’ve chosen to navigate my career in the ways that I have. Especially with my experiences and academe in general as a woman of color.

    That shaped and informed why I chose to not only be a professor, but also be an entrepreneur because I recognize the importance of having more systemic impact outside of my 9-to-5 job.

    I think it’s important to think about to what extent can you really enact change or have a more positive force in that context. I realized that for me, it needed to step outside of the ivory tower and look different in a lot of ways.

    Finding your voice on social media

    The Instagram logo

    Jennifer: It sounds like you realize that you could help more, that you have that ability and that you knew that you needed to do something. Like you needed to give more of yourself into a different area.

    That’s something that an online presence is so helpful for, because we can’t always communicate with everyone all the time. Right? There’s not people around like introducing themselves, “Hi, let me learn more about you.” But there are online. There are people who are looking for help in different areas.

    There are also professors who are looking to connect with other professors, you know, working in higher education. And I think that that online presence can be really beneficial in that, in that kind of system of communication.

    So what does your online presence look like? What are some of the things that you do to have an online presence?

    Chinasa: You know, it’s so interesting when we talk about online presence as a professor, right? In a lot of ways, I see a lot of faculty on Twitter. I think that’s the place of choice in a lot of ways where we’re able to share ideas more broadly.

    But I also know at the same time, one of my own pieces with building my online presence is also honing in on my voice and how I wanted to communicate information and in what ways I wanted to share that. And also letting my personality shine. Right?

    I think in a lot of ways, it’s very easy to be kind of cut and dry. Being very professional, which I am, but I’m also in a lot of ways, I bring in a lot of humor.

    And so what I like to do online, I don’t mind sharing. If it’s Twitter is more professional or whatnot, sharing

    • Research updates
    • Recent awards
    • Accolades
    • Conversations that are going on locally and in the world at large

    But Instagram is kind of where I have a little bit more fun. I share a little bit more personally in that space.

    I also have my own YouTube channel where I’ve done videos and those kinds of have a humorous bent to them as well. Humorous but also informative at the same time. I’ve done a lot of work around career coaching and supporting professionals in various spaces professionally. I wanted to bring some humor into a space of times that can be very dry.

    And oftentimes where we also have a lot of traumatic experiences in our respective industries that we may not talk about, but I want it to highlight it and make it a little bit more light and palatable so that we can have more systemic conversations.

    My preference just looks different depending on the platform, to be honest.

    Jennifer: I really like that. I think that it makes a lot of sense to have different audiences, but also different types of content that you share on each platform. And it really is based on your goals.

    It sounds like you have fun on Instagram. You share those kinds of motivational and short videos on YouTube. That can really help people connect with you. And then the more professional side is on Twitter. Is that right?

    Chinasa: Yes. Correct.

    How much do you share about yourself online?

    Jennifer: Well, I think that it’s really important for people to recognize what they’re interested in in terms of

    • where they want to share
    • what they want to share
    • how much they want to share

    So that’s my next question. How much do you share online about yourself?

    Chinasa: I think I share what I feel comfortable sharing. Right? I don’t use online as my journal entry point. 

    Jennifer: Yeah.

    Chinasa: I don’t come in there to narrate my initial reactions to anything.

    I talk about this often when I’m talking to friends or colleagues that whenever there’s a hot button topic, where there is a decision or a case or an event that’s happened…

    A lot of times, people will flock online to share their initial reactions or emotions.

    Jennifer: They love to do that. It’s like a gut reaction to go and talk about your feelings about something. For sure.

    Chinasa: Yeah! But I realized that that in a lot of ways it doesn’t serve me well, personally. That I need time to be in community with people that I talked to more systemically and consistently to really process the events.

    Because a lot of times it’s something that’s near and dear to your heart, right? These are some really hot topics that are going to impact me, my children, my family for generations to come. 

    I realized in a lot of ways, I don’t want to just contribute a hot bite and not then take action.

    My reaction is just to not necessarily go online, but to pick up a phone and get in touch with someone where I can process more systemically. And then, make a post that I think could contribute in a more meaningful way.

    It just serves me better. And I think in a lot of ways, I don’t want people to come to me and try and take a sound bite without knowing the true impact that this is going to have long-term. So I process, and then I share within reason in terms of what I feel comfortable sharing.

    Sometimes I don’t [post]. Sometimes I write a blog. Sometimes it drives me to do research, or to do an article, or something else. Right? But I am more intentional about not emoting outwardly first, but being more reflective in nature.

    Jennifer: Oooh, I really like what you said about how that time to reflect and to actually talk with people who you’re close with about the experiences and the things that are happening. It really allows you to focus your energy in your reaction to that. Either, either it goes into social media, but it has all these other options too, which a lot of people don’t consider when they have a gut reaction to something that they’ve experienced.

    I like that, you know, that could be channeled into research or into a blog post, like into these different forms of reaction. So I really like that. Thank you for sharing that.

    Chinasa: Absolutely.

    We are walking through collective trauma

    Five white candles on a table next to a dead branch

    Jennifer: Now, one of the things that you talked about is that you share things that you feel comfortable with online.

    And I know that grief is something that we’ve all been dealing with collectively recently, but you yourself have lost your mother. That’s something that you’ve been able to talk about online and even connect with people about. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

    Chinasa: You know, I never thought that I would be doing research on grief. That wasn’t my initial mo (modus operandi) when I came into the professoriate at all. I was initially studying issues of access and equity to higher ed.

    I lost my mom in may of 2019. And when I lost her, that was the first time I’ve lost someone so close in proximity to me. The loss in and of itself was so debilitating in ways I can’t even describe to be honest.

    So when I think about being in that space a year before we knew a pandemic was looming ahead. Right? Losing my mom, and having young children at the same time and figuring out how to navigate being a faculty member and being all the other things that I do on a daily basis…It was a really trying time to be frank.

    Coming into the pandemic it was almost like I had an awakening of sorts. Right? We started to see loss on a massive scale in the midst of our racial reckoning in this country that’s still ongoing [United States], the social political climate that has continued to traverse even until now.

    I recognized that what we’re walking through at the time was collective trauma and collective grief.

    I felt a prompting to begin to ask some deeper questions. As a higher ed researcher, I wanted to know how are institutional leaders responding to loss right now? Because I know how debilitating the was for me before a pandemic, before all of the other factors were there, to navigate that.

    But let’s say you lost someone due to COVID. Right? And maybe, perhaps you’re a person of color or any other dimension of your identity that’s been impacted by any number of it. You name the headline, it’s present today. Okay?

    Based on where you’re socialized in this world and in this country specifically, it really impacts how you’re able to show up every day.

    People are quick to move back to a normal or ‘a new normal,’ which is what we keep hearing now that the pandemic is over, which I beg to differ, honestly, but we’re here.

    In a lot of ways, if you lost someone during these past 2.5 to 3 years, and then have to face any number of events…The ways in which you’ve had to navigate and cope have had to vary based on who you are in this country.

    How are organizational leaders responding to grief?

    Chinasa: I wanted to know how leaders, especially as a higher ed scholar, how are leaders responding?

    How are you providing space to

    with your faculty, staff and students who have experienced traumatic loss? Who are showing up on your campus and they’re not the same person they were before the pandemic, right?

    Chinasa Elue in front of a whiteboard wearing a white blazer and a patterned dress

    These are not the same people that are returning back to us. And so when I think about grief now in this context, I think we’ve been in prolonged grief. There’s been just so much that has gone on, and it’s been such a trying season to be in right now where we are trying to figure out how to pick up our feet and move forward. But at the same time, we keep getting knocked down every step that we take. Right?

    And so in this context, it’s more so okay, how do we continue to create spaces that allow us the opportunities to process the ongoing traumatic onslaught of grief that we’re seeing unfold day in and day out. There is no reprieve right now.

    The conversations have to look different.

    The events that we’re hosting the organizations that we’re building have to look different because we have to be more intentional about how we are creating spaces for people to show up in their true authenticity, but still be able to thrive.

    And to not care about the bottom line, but to honestly care about the individual 1st –before you care about the deadline, the project, the goal at hand. But to know that these are real people that need a real leader to recognize them for the totality of their humanity. They want you to see them.

    I think one big piece about The Great Resignation that we’re noticing right now is that people are leaving because they want more, they desire more. They realize that they’re worthy of more.

    If leaders wake up to the fact that your employees, your colleagues don’t want to be seen as a bottom line item, they want to be seen as a human being who has been experiencing trauma and loss. Then you have to respond differently. Because if you don’t, this is going to be an ongoing situation that we see for many years to come.

    Jennifer: Hm. That was a lot. What it sounds like is that your own grief helped prompt this research that is hopefully going to make this bigger impact on universities around the world and on organizations too. I mean, trauma is something that every company and every organization is dealing with because people are collectively grieving. You’re right.

    Talking about the loss of her mom on social media

    Three chocolate chip cookies are stacked on top of each other next to a cup of espresso in a clear glass. There are two small purple flowers next to the cookie.

    Jennifer: Now what does that look like with social media for you? Like, you’ve been able to talk about some of your grief on social media. And I’m curious how that’s been. What have people’s reactions been? Have you been able to make connections based on that shared grief?

    Chinasa: Absolutely. I think social media, you know, it’s the catch 22 with it, right? It’s a great connector in a lot of ways. You’re able to build a community and networks in that vein. It could be a big detractor at the same time with differing opinions. And then the armchair bullies that show up every now and then, right?

    Jennifer: Oh, yeah.

    Chinasa: Yeah. For me, personally, I’ve been able to talk about grief in a very authentic and raw way.

    I don’t shy away from it because grief is, in my opinion, the final act of love. We’ve loved people deeply. And so we’re going to grieve them deeply. And grieving looks different for any person. For me, I’ve chosen to be more public and sharing my emotions and how I’ve been processing things.

     don’t run to Instagram or Twitter as my journal to share. But I share things that I’ve processed through

    • Events
    • Milestones
    • Holidays (i.e. Mother’s Day)
    • Cooking my mom’s favorite recipe

    I’m just remembering those times. I have no issue sharing a picture of her because she’s so near and dear to me, I think about her every day. I think in a lot of ways, I also use social media as a way to memorialize her. To let people know that she was here because it’s very easy to want to power ahead, but that person still lives in a very present part in my heart. My mom does for me, right?

    And I think for those who are experiencing loss and being able to share my experiences online and saying that it’s okay. That it is three years later and I’m still grieving. Right? That there’s no timeframe here that you have to give yourself the grace and the space you’d need to

    • Process
    • Emote
    • Take your time
    • Slow down as needed

    And I think it’s a space to gain encouragement when you’re walking through something similar and to connect with others who are on the same path.

    Because I’ve been able to make those connections with others who have lost parents, who’ve lost, loved ones who understand and who send me messages, or we connect offline and are able to talk more systemically.

    I think that’s a big piece there with leveraging social media when you have different events happen. You can use your online presence to have more personal conversations that are meaningful to you. And also, still have impact by providing encouragement and space to have dialogue that may not exist outside of those online virtual walls. And so I appreciate that about social media for that, for sure.

    Jennifer: Chinasa I really appreciate that. And for anyone who’s listening, who is experiencing grief right now, but maybe you’re not so sure how much you want to post about it online, or if you want to reach out to people that way. Remember that you can also use direct messages and actually have those kinds of private conversations about this through social media as well.

    So there are many options for talking about grief, but it sounds like Chinasa has gotten a pretty positive response from being able to open up about her mom and the grief that she’s felt online.

    Chinasa: Absolutely. And I think in a lot of ways, people are like, well, nobody wants to hear about this anymore. She’s been gone for some while. Right? Like we sometimes get in our own heads and feel like we need to emote or share for other people.

    But I put that to the shelf. I think you have to just come out. A big piece of me sharing is also me being honest and authentic. I don’t show up every day just smiling, like the world is glorious and good.

    Like it is, right? Some days.

    But there are days where I’m really in the pits with grief. And I might feel that to share so that people understand that this is a process. You don’t have to beat yourself up if you don’t feel like you are where you thought you would be a year from now, two years from now.

    I think in a lot of ways, it’s great to serve as a possibility model for others who are probably in the beginning stages or midway through who are wondering, will it get better again? Or what does this look like?

    You know, we all grieve differently. Right? All I can do is model my process.

    I may share more than another person, but I think in a lot of ways that sharing does open up the doors for more prolonged conversations that I think honestly needs to happen more, especially when we think about people die every day. Every day.

    And if we can’t talk about death, which is a natural part of life, then when will the conversation ever happen? If we can’t talk about it at work, we can’t talk about it at home, or with our friends or loved ones. Like we have to talk about it because we will all unfortunately experience this.

    I think the online community provides a great outlet to have a space to do it.

    Jennifer: I’ve lost both my parents. I think the grief has been a long journey. My mom died about 20 years ago and my dad 15 years ago. And I’m still processing it.

    Chinasa: Yes.

    Jennifer: It doesn’t go away. It doesn’t stop. And being able to talk about it has been something that has been so healing for me.

    I think the only reason I haven’t done it online is because so many of the people who knew them have also passed. They were quite a bit older when they adopted me.

    And so I think that kind of like public remembrance, that public memorial that you say is part of some of the posts that you do, it’s just so beautiful. I love that. I’ve seen that before, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone talk about what that feels like for them. And what posting about, you know, your mom’s cookies makes it feel like when you post. And so I really liked that. Thank you.

    Chinasa helps people who are experiencing grief

    A paper cut out heart is broken down the center. The rip goes through about 2/3 of the heart. A red and white thread is strung through two holes on either side of the heart to hold it up.

    Jennifer: Now, tell me a little bit more about your business because your business is now helping some people who are experiencing trauma. Both individuals and organizations, is that right?

    Chinasa: Yes. I’m so excited about the work that I’m doing right now with organizations. I’ve had the opportunity to be able to talk more in detail with leaders who are looking for ways to perhaps set the stage for these conversations that I’m talking about right now.

    I think if I were to say the most rewarding part of being an entrepreneur in this space, academic entrepreneur of this kind, I think in a lot of ways is being able to leverage your research to do the work. But then also to realize that there are more practical ways to implement it across different organizations and systems. The entrepreneurial route has been very affirming in a lot of ways and very encouraging to me to be able to step out and do this more systemically.

    I offer talks to different organizations based on what their needs are, how they want to engage in the conversation.

    I’m open and transparent. I bring the research with me. I’m sharing with them real time data because I think at times people need to know. They need to know the statistics. They need to know the experiences of others.

    And then they also need to provide the space for those within their organizations to now begin to talk about, well, how do we perhaps cultivate something like this for ourselves? I appreciate that space to be able to do this work in this context.

    In the same vein, I also offer grief coaching and grief circles. [Laughs]. I’m laughing because I never thought I would offer that. I never thought that I would be in the space or the head space to do it.

    But it was so ironic. At the height of the pandemic, a good friend of mine asked me to start leading grief circles for her organization.

    I hesitated at first because you know, in a lot of ways, as an academic, you feel like you need to have all the certifications and credentials under your belt.

    In order to step out and do it, but I’ll be frank and say, I started to do it and engage in the work and it has been some of the most eyeopening and rewarding components of what I’ve been able to do since.

    To be frank, it’s an absolute honor to be able to support people in this capacity. It’s a tough space to be in. It is a hard place to, you know, step outside of oneself and make yourself available to support others in their journey. But at the same time, it has been absolutely rewarding to see people find what they need in that space at the same time.

    I don’t come to it as the guru or the person that’s bringing everything. I come to it as a supportive guide to help people, as they’re thinking through and navigating their own loss. And to think about perhaps how they may begin to forge a path way forward.

    A lot of times we just feel stuck. We feel stuck. We don’t think we are going to ever be able to pick up our feet and move one in front of the other.

    But when you’re in spaces, when you choose to not isolate, and you get into community with people, I think that is where we’re able to begin to make some semblance of meaning from the gravity of it all.

    It’s a lot, but we have to find ways to just think about how may I perhaps begin to move forward. Not necessarily leaving the person in the past by carrying them with you in your heart. And doing things that are intentionally honoring them in yourself along the way.

    Jennifer: Oh, that’s beautiful.

    I’m so glad that we talked about this because so many people are grieving right now and holding it in. And just trying to stay strong for themselves, for their families to keep moving forward.

    And sometimes you just can’t. Sometimes moving forward is just not something you can do on your own. And it’s not something that your family can help you do. Sometimes they don’t have that capacity. Sometimes you don’t have that capacity. But there is help out there. There are ways that you can move forward by working with other people by finding that community. And maybe by hiring Dr. Chinasa Elue as your trauma coach.

    I know that I would need something like that. Now that I know that it exists, I wish I had that when I was younger. And I think other people will be glad to have heard you talk about it as well.

    Chinasa: Thank you.

    Be yourself online

    Dr. Chinasa Elue

    Jennifer: Well, this has been a wonderful conversation. Is there anything else you’d like to add about online presence, about your work, before we wrap up?

    Chinasa: I would just say for those who are kind of on the edge of finding their voice online or putting themselves out there. I would just say it’s trial and error. Right? Don’t make it such a high stakes thing.

    In a lot of ways, it does take time to find your voice. You’re going to mess up. You might say things…We always worried about getting canceled and the whole nine.

    We have to think about perhaps how we might engage in conversations. Like I mentioned beforehand, when there’s a hot button issue that is on the docket for the day. Pick any day, there’s always something new, right? Thinking about our online behaviors is key before we begin to engage in those conversations.

    What might we say that contributes in a meaningful way? I don’t like to fan the flame perhaps, but I do like to contribute in ways that provide solutions in a more sustainable way towards action. I think thinking about how you want to engage is key.

    And then we think about who you are as a person. We’re not static people, right? There’s depth and range to who we are individually. Let your personality shine forth. That’s the secret sauce. Be yourself.

    I think I’ve gotten really comfortable in my skin. I share what I share because it’s who I am, right? And it may not be everybody’s jam, but for me, my jam is just fine. And that’s just the way I choose to present myself.

    So if someone is thinking about perhaps ways to express themselves online. I would just say lean into you. Do you. Okay? They can’t go wrong.

    Jennifer: Oh, I love that.

    Chinasa: Yeah, you can’t go wrong.

    Jennifer: Just be you.

    Well thank you so much! Be sure to share this interview with your friends.

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    Bio for Chinasa Elue, PhD

    Dr. Chinasa Elue is a professor, speaker, coach, and the CEO and Founder of True Titans Consulting Group. She is an expert on grief leadership in higher education and trauma-informed practices in organizational settings. She supports leaders in moving forward to make impactful change in the midst of uncertainty with empathy and care. She provides strategic coaching and consulting that opens the doors to transformation through policy and practice. She hosts Grieving in Color, a podcast that explores the various ways we navigate our experiences with grief and loss and a place where we find the courage to intentionally heal in our daily lives.

    Dr. Elue is an Associate Professor of Educational Leadership and Higher Education at Kennesaw State University. She leads the Research Lab for the Study of Emotional Intelligence, Leadership Effectiveness, and Well-Being of Educational Leaders.

    Connect with Chinasa on social media @DrChinasaElue.

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  • Graphical Abstracts and Animations To Share Your Science Online with Dr. Tullio Rossi

    Graphical Abstracts and Animations To Share Your Science Online with Dr. Tullio Rossi

    Tullio Rossi, PhD helps scientists share their research with visuals

    Dr. Tullio Rossi is a marine biologist turned entrepreneur helping scientists around the world share their research. Tullio found that video animations and graphical abstracts increase the impact of your science.

    And, they’re great for sharing your research with the media. Now as Director of Animate Your Science, Tullio and his team are changing the way scientists communicate with visuals.

    I’m Jennifer van Alstyne. Welcome to my blog, The Social Academic. It’s all about your online presence in Higher Education. Whether you’re a graduate student, professor, scientist, researcher, or independent scholar, The Social Academic is here to help you communicate online.

    In this featured interview, Tullio and I talk about

    Subscribe to The Social Academic blog.

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    Meet Dr. Tullio Rossi

    Jennifer: Hi everyone, it’s Jennifer van Alstyne here on The Social Academic blog, YouTube channel, and podcast. We’re here talking with Dr. Tullio Rossi, Director of Animate Your Science.

    I’m so excited to have this conversation today because having some kind of

    can make a really big difference for sharing your research.

    Tullio, welcome to The Social Academic. Would you mind starting us off by introducing yourself?

    Tullio: Hi, Jennifer. Thank you for having me. It’s great to be here. So I’ll give you a bit of a background about myself.

    Everything’s started when I was still a teenager and I started playing around with graphic design. For years I made flyers and posters for events because my best friend organized events. So one day we thought, why don’t we make a flyer for the next event? It was a lot of fun.

    I always considered [graphic design] as a bit of a plan B career, if you like. Because then I went on and pursued a career in marine biology. That was back in Italy, in my home country I did undergrad, master’s degree and then a PhD, which brought me here in Australia, where I currently live.

    I was doing that PhD when I realized that actually science really needs some help from the world of graphic design and communication in general.

    Because there’s so much great research published in these peer-reviewed articles, which nobody gets to hear about. Often not even the researchers themselves. So that pushed me to try things that not many others were even considering to figure out a way on how we can make sure that this research we publish is noticed. That it’s not just lost in this giant online repository of papers.

    The question is how do we make sure that our research stands out?

    That led me on a new journey. I experimented with

    • scientific posters
    • graphical abstracts
    • video animations

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    Watch Tullio’s 1st video about his research

    Jennifer: That’s amazing. And I actually watched one of your early videos about your own research. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

    Tullio: Sure. My research was about the effect of climate change on fish and the ocean in general. It’s a kind of research that has absolutely no commercial application whatsoever.

    The only point of that research is to let the public know what we risk if we don’t address our climate change problem.

    I concluded that I really needed to get these results out in some way. So I read a lot about storytelling.

    I found that whiteboard animations are actually within reach to everyone. I’m not trained as an animator. I used to be a graphic designer. Yes, but I’m not an animator. But anybody can actually make a whiteboard animation. Because there are a number of fairly user-friendly software out there that have very extensive libraries of drawings and assets that you can just use.

    I figured out, okay, I actually can put together an animation myself with…my budget was what? $30 [laughs], which was like a one month license to this software I used. And so I decided to try it.

    What really made the difference is that I told about the research in a way that didn’t feel like lecture, but in a way that felt like the story. And that makes all the difference, really. 

    So I started the video, “Imagine to be a baby fish,” you know, and that really drew people in.

    I had the opportunity to observe people watch my video. I could see emotions on their faces. And I was like, yes, that’s the holy grail of communication is when you make people feel something. 

    That video worked really well. It was seen by thousands of people around the world. It won prizes in science communication. And even got me an email from a stranger saying, “Oh, I finally understand what the problem is with this thing called ocean acidification. Thank you for making the video.”

    I was like, all right, I think nobody has ever told me thank you before for doing the work I was doing. That feels good.

    The world is not just made of angry planet climate change deniers. Now, also nice people out there will show signs of gratitude if us researchers do the little extra effort to break it down in a simple and accessible way for everyone. That was really a great experience.

    Then, I presented this work at a scientific conference and the feedback from other researchers was really good. A lot of them came after my talk and said, “Oh, I love what you did. I wish I could do the same. I just don’t know how to do it.” Or, “I don’t have the time.” And so that turned on a light bulb in my head thinking, I should take these more seriously and perhaps I can even make a career out of this.

    And so that’s started a new part of my life of my career into science communication and led to where I am today, leading Animate Your Science, a science communication agency that is privileged to help researchers and institutions from all around the world, literally all continents to communicate science using tools like

    • Animation videos
    • Graphical abstracts
    • Posters
    • Infographics
    • Training

    So either we do it for you if you’re busy, but if you have the time we can also teach you some skills.

    Jennifer: I think that’s amazing. And that really helps anyone who needs this kind of skill in their life, whether it’s having it done for you or getting help to learn how to do it yourself. 

    What you were talking about in terms of being able to see the emotions of people who watched your video, the very first video you created about this. I wish you would see me watching it. I was like crying by the end. And I remember going to my fiancé and being like, you know, how much we care about sustainable fishing? Let me tell you about this video that I just watched and how important it is for us to understand our oceans,  understand what climate change is affecting, and what we can start to share about it.

    This video affected me so much that I was already telling people about it within just a few minutes of having watched it myself. And I just think that that kind of excitement, that kind of emotional impact that that video had on me, just goes to show how important a company like yours is, how important the work that you’re doing to help other researchers and scientists communicate their work to the general public, but also to other researchers who can benefit from it. It’s amazing.

    Tullio: Thank you, Jennifer, I’m very happy to hear that it touched you. That’s always the deck part of communication is reaching people not just at the brain level, but way deeper down here in the heart.

    Jennifer: Yeah.

    Tullio: And when that happens, which is not easy, you really hit the jackpot in communication.

    Jennifer: For sure.

    What is a graphical abstract to share your research?

    Jennifer: We’ve been talking about a little bit about video, but they’re also amazing at graphical abstracts and that’s something that you’ve helped scientists with. What is a graphical abstract?

    Tullio: Sure.

    When I started this new part of my career in business, I looked around or what was out there in terms of graphical abstracts. And I realized that pretty much none of what was out there was actually suitable if you wanted to communicate your research to a non-expert audience. So if you want to reach the general public with your graphical abstract, none of what was out there would work.

    All the graphical abstracts we used to see are very technical. They are straight to the key process, let’s say molecule A meets molecule B, they have a reaction to create this new molecule. That’s pretty much what they look like. Some in the medical field even go as far as having p-values, which definitely will mean nothing to a non-expert.

    My interests and vision was really to bring science to society, not just to other experts. I wanted to create something that will go beyond the expert sphere.

    I created the new format, the graphical abstract, which is a little bit more wordy, I limit it to 80 words. But it has the advantage that it gives some context. It tells the story of that research.

    In 80 words, I figured it was enough to just touch on

    • A little bit of background highlighting what the knowledge gap or the question that the research is asking.
    • Providing the key results and why that matters. Can it be done in 80 words? I’m not saying it’s easy, but it can be done.
    • And the rest are visuals relevant to the research.

    The reality is that people process images way, way faster than the process text. That’s why we have street signs that are not worthy. Yeah, they don’t explain things with words. They explain with iconography.

    Same applies to your graphical abstract. The more visual it is, the more rapidly the viewer will be able to understand it.

    Jennifer: So by limiting the words you’re really able to communicate through both words and visuals, what the story is in that graphical abstract it sounds like.

    Tullio: Yeah. With this balance between words and visuals, you can really reach anybody. Then you’ve got a much wider audience. Then at the end of reading [the graphical abstract], they’ll be able to decide whether they want to go and read the actual paper. Great. That might be your goal.

    Or, just to understand what the key message is, and then move on.

    But they can still then share it on social media with friends, which is still a very important thing. It really extends the potential impact of the research passively.

    Jennifer: That’s great. So it sounds like once you have this graphical abstract, it’s something that you can share on social media. That must really help scientists to reach more people.

    Tullio: Absolutely. So we’re seeing a great use case for graphical abstracts is social media. I will say Twitter above all.

    The wrong approach, which I still see very often is to say, “Hey, I published a new paper.” And you pop the link to the paper and that’s it. Well, that’s a tweet that goes unnoticed because it’s not visual. It’s just a string of text.

    Some researchers then screenshot one of the figures, maybe the previous figure and they pop it in there. That’s a little bit better, but still people don’t want to see charts on Twitter.

    Jennifer: That’s kind of a figure out of context too. You don’t necessarily have access to that paper right away.

    Tullio: Yes, it’s often out of context, so people will struggle to make sense of it.

    Here is where the graphical abstract really helps. In one panel where you can flesh out that key story and attract people with visuals.

    Jennifer: That’s amazing. A thing I really like about it is that it can be shared on its own and in conjunction with the paper.

    It’s okay if people are only connecting with the graphical part of it, they don’t necessarily need to read the paper to be able to share it.

    That just really increases the impact.

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    Increase the impact of your publication by sharing a visual with it on social media

    Jennifer: Do you have any stats about that in terms of how much impact it can make for a paper?

    Tullio: Sure.

    So there’s actually really interesting research from the field of surgery which I’m going to read out to you. This is a study published in the Annals of Surgery in 2017, [Visual Abstracts to Disseminate Research on Social Media: A Prospective, Case-control Crossover Study]. The authors are Andrew M. Ibrahim, MD, MSc, Keith D. Lillemoe, MD, Mary E. Klingensmith, MD, and Justin B. Dimick, MD, MPH.

    They compare how effective it is to tweet about your research with, or without a graphical abstracts. Still consider that these are fairly technical graphical abstracts. So not those I was describing. Even with the technical [graphical abstract], here’s what they found:

    The reach (how many people will see it on Twitter) is almost 8x as high.

    The number of retweets (how many times people will share it) is more than 8x as high.

    Article visits (how many people click and actually read your paper) is almost 3x as high.

    Jennifer: Wow.

    Tullio: This is pretty amazing. Isn’t it like day and night?

    Jennifer: Yeah.

    Tullio: I think it should become the standard that when you publish your paper and you want to share it on Twitter or any other social media it needs to have a graphical abstract.

    It will be a massive lost opportunity if you don’t. It might be.

    Jennifer: Yeah, it sounds like if we’re seeing those kinds of numbers with the kind of really technical graphical abstract, having something from you or something that really just communicates more effectively to the general public can even increase that potential reach even more.

    That potential for retreating, if you don’t understand what is going on in the abstract, it’s going to go down. Once you have that connection, that connection that helps you not only understand, but know why it might be helpful for other people to see it too. That’s what increases that potential for sharing. So I just love that.

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    Scientific Poster vs. Graphical Abstract

    Jennifer: Now what’s the difference between a graphical abstract and a scientific poster? In the humanities. I think I’ve done one poster about my research and it wasn’t very good.

    What is a scientific poster versus a graphical abstract?

    Tullio: Sure. In my view, they are actually very similar. The key difference is the size.

    Jennifer: Okay.

    Tullio: Graphical abstract is typically something that needs to fit in a tweet on social media.

    As I said, I would not write more than 80 words and have one or two key visuals.

    On a poster, you have much more real estate. Typically it’s printed on an eight zero format, which is very large. Yeah, plenty more real estate.

    But having all that real estate often leads these researchers to make the most common mistake, which is to dump everything they’ve got on it. So they dump a couple thousand words. They dump not one chart, maybe eight. And then a couple of tables too.

    Then the whole thing becomes this wall of text and chart that is just overwhelming for the audience. That’s the key problem of posters.

    One of my battles is to change that. Because if we designed posters this way, we’re creating a disservice to ourselves and our audience.

    These posters are ineffective because they put people off. Literally. If something looks overwhelming, you don’t want to look at it.

    Think about the typical poster session, pre-corona. You know, it’s the end of the day, you get your first glass of wine. You’re starting to relax. And you go around and look at posters.

    Do you really want to read for half an hour 2,000 words and processes, and eight complicated charts? I don’t think so.

    What you want is to have a conversation with the person presenting that poster. Right?

    The poster should, first thing, attract attention. Because, you know, it’s a room full of posters. There’s probably maybe some conferences, hundreds of posters.

    Jennifer: Right.

    Tullio: The first thing is that you need to stand out. The way you achieve that is by having one key large visual that is related to your research. Let’s say if your research is on let’s say the bone structure chemistry, have a large bone. Something that is recognizable from that other side of the room.

    Jennifer: Ahh, so a big visual.

    Tullio: One key, big visual that will make your poster stand out from the other side of the room. People will notice it, get curious, walk towards you and then start the conversation.

    The goal is not to watch people read your poster. The goal is to quickly walk them through the story in a one minute spiel. And then ask a question and start conversation which is supposed to go two ways. Right? And that’s how good networking is supposed to be.

    Bottom line is that a poster is an eye-catcher first, and a conversation-starter second. That’s what it’s supposed to be.

    To achieve that we need to slash the amount of content we put on our posters. That’s the key thing that will dramatically improve. Even without getting into graphic design principles. If you just cut the content in half, you improve your poster massively.

    Because everyone is making the same mistake, having way too much on it.

    Jennifer: I definitely made that mistake. Yeah.

    Tullio: Yeah, look, we are all guilty, but in a way, we’re not because we don’t know any better. Researchers don’t get any training on this. And that’s why I want to change this.

    Jennifer: That’s great!

    Tullio: That’s why I am providing training on scientific posters in the form of workshops and online courses. Because literally I couldn’t find any training on this. I was lucky to have this background in graphic design. But 99.9% of researchers, don’t.

    Jennifer: Right.

    Tullio:  We need to at least spend a couple of hours learning how we should design an effective poster before we go to the first conference and then get disappointed because,

    • Oh, nobody came to talk to me.
    • People were not really interested in my poster.
    • Nobody really noticed it.
    • I don’t have any contacts from this conference.
    • I think it was a waste of time and money.

    That’s not the kind of experience you want. It should be the opposite!

    You should be full of people that want to talk to you, having lots of new contacts. To thrive in your career. That’s the whole goal of a poster session.

    Jennifer: I guess that’s why your course is called How To Design An Award Winning Poster. So this isn’t just a poster that’s going to do well for your research. It’s a poster. That’s going to capture that attention so you can really meet people who are interested in it, interested in what you’re doing. I just love that.

    Tullio: Yes. And ideally your poster should work for a broad audience, not just technical audience, you know? It depends on where you set the bar, but let’s say for most scientific conferences, it’s a technical audience and that’s fine.

    When designing a research poster for a general audience

    Jennifer: We were talking about different uses for posters. What is a good poster that you could make for a general audience?

    Tullio: For a general audience, the key thing is keeping jargon in check. Because if you’re not an expert and you’re not familiar with the jargon on something.

    One jargony word. Okay. Two? On the third one, you’re like, this is not for me. I feel stupid. And you switch off. And you stopped reading.

    And you lost the person. It’s just how it goes.

    If you want to reach a broader audience with your poster, definitely keep the drive in and check. It’s better to have a few extra words, but to explain a concept, rather than just relying on jargon.

    Other than that, you cannot assume people will be able to understand complex charts. Like 3D plots? Forget about it. Like, bar charts? Fine. Most people can understand a bar chart, but forget about all the more complex things like 3D plots, which is very common in some disciplines. Or, some crazy charts like in evolutionary biology or genetics which look so complicated.

    If those are your visuals, you should really rethink how you present your data visually for a broader audience.

    But if you go to a genetics conference and there’s just hundreds of geneticists around you, then go for it and that’s fine.

    Jennifer: [Laughs.] Then the jargon will make sense to them.

    Tullio: Then the jargon will make sense. Then the complex genetics chart will make sense too. And then it’s fine.

    The first thing is always to ask yourself

    • Who am I talking to?
    • Who am I presenting to?

    Once we’ve got clarity on that, then that sets the bar for your communication.

    Jennifer: I think that’s wonderful. I really enjoy talking to you about this because I think that visuals are so important for researchers in all fields, not just scientists, but everyone who’s working on something that maybe a limited audience is going to be able to read that kind of final product.

    It can really help to talk about it online, whether you’re embedding a video on your website or sharing it on social media. There’s potential to reach way more people than most researchers expect with that kind of visual. So I just have enjoyed this conversation so much.

    Is there anything else you’d like to add before we wrap up?

    Tullio: Oh, look I could talk about this stuff for hours.

    Resources on the Animate Your Science website

    Tullio: Something I wanted to add is that yes, we have this online course on our website called How To Design An Award Winning Scientific Poster. But we also have plenty of free resources on our blog including some poster templates, which many researchers find really handy. So feel free to visit our website. If you can dig into the resources section on the blog. There’s plenty of very well-written valuable materials for free.

    But then if you’re interested in really going deep, I recommend our online course. That would be the right way to go.

    Jennifer: [Laughs]. Well I am so excited to share your course with people. I hope that if you’re working on a scientific poster you check it out. Having that ability to reach more people can really affect how you feel about your research. 

    Well, thank you so much for joining us today.

    Tullio: Thank you for having me, Jennifer.

    Jennifer: Check out Tullio on social media @Tullio_Rossi and @Animate_Science.

    Thank you so much for reading The Social Academic.

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    Bio for Tullio Rossi, PhD

    Graphic for Tullio Rossi, PhD Director of Animate Your Science who is featured on the blog in March 2022

    Dr. Tullio Rossi is an award-winning science communicator, marine biologist and graphic designer.  

    As founder of the science communication agency Animate Your Science, he helps researchers tell their story to the world.  

    His engaging video animations and eye-catching graphics make science understandable for everyone, reaching millions of people around the world, thereby creating a real-life impact.

    Visit Tullio’s personal website.

    Connect with Tullio on social media @Tullio_Rossi and @Animate_Science.

    Virtual. Self-paced. Choose your own adventure.

    Free online presence workshop

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  • Your Personal Website Can Grow Over Time with Interview Guest Jane CoomberSewell

    Your Personal Website Can Grow Over Time with Interview Guest Jane CoomberSewell

    Jane CoomberSewell started her website in graduate school, now it’s time for a re-design

    Meet Jane CoomberSewell, PhD in this featured interview. She’s been a business owner throughout graduate school. Jane recently completed her PhD in Media and Culture Studies, researching English entertainer Joyce Grenfell.

    Jane’s website has always been helpful. Now as an independent researcher, her website has needed to change over time. That’s what this interview focuses on: how personal website can change over time to meet your needs.

    I’m Jennifer van Alstyne. Welcome to The Social Academic blog, where I share articles and interviews on managing your online presence in Higher Education.

    Whether you’re just creating your website, or need to re-design your outdated website, I hope this interview helps you. Jane and I talk about

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    Meet Jane

    Jennifer: Hello everyone. I am Jennifer van Alstyne. Welcome to the 1st featured interview of 2022. Today. I’m here with Dr. Jane CoomberSewell. We’re going to be talking about how a website can change over time.

    Dr. Jane CoomberSewell created her website when she was in graduate school. And it’s been a journey to figure out exactly what belongs on the website, if the website is going to work long term. Now some changes are being planned, they’re ready to be made. So I thought this is a great subject to share with you.

    Jane, it’s great to talk with you today. Would you mind introducing yourself?

    Jane: I’m Jane. In the networking world in the United Kingdom, I’m now being referred to as Doctor Word Nerd. I run a business with my wife which has two parallel streams. Which is one of the reasons why the website is now websites. Joyce is an autism advocate and specialist.

    Jane’s website was originally shared with Joyce. Now they will each have their own website.

    Joyce’s one of the few people in the United Kingdom who is qualified to mentor autistic people who is herself autistic. While we’ve worked both work words, I am very much moving from 

    • Proofreading
    • Editing
    • Student support

    more and more into being a family and company historian and biographer. Because companies have life cycles and stories to tell just as much as individual’s do.

    Jennifer: That’s right. And websites because they help us tell those stories to a wider number of people, it needs to be changed and updated with time as our needs change. And as the things that we want to share with those people change as well. So I’m really glad that we’re getting to talk today.

    Can I ask, what was your graduate background and what did you do your PhD in?

    Jane: So my, my PhD, it comes under media and cultural studies. But very broadly. It was a 4.5 year–cause I started off part-time and then went full time–adventure into the life of a lady called Joyce Grenfell who is a British entertainer. And really considering her as a sociopolitical commentator, hence the history side of it. And a feminist.

    Was she a feminist? The answer being probably only with the small ‘f.’

    But really looking at the power-knowledge dynamics that she explores in all her sketches which she wrote herself. Now I’m trying to turn that into a book for normal people.

    Jennifer: You want to write a book about that for a general audience it sounds like?

    Jane: Yeah. There’s 2 books at the moment. One is something that be useful to undergraduates, sort of a different spin on feminism. Feminism moves away a bit more from theory into lived feminism.

    And then hopefully something very much more for the general readership.

    I am the only person currently that has ever looked at Grenfell academically. There’s been journalistic approaches and there’s a very good biography by her goddaughter who is also a journalist. But that more general approach I think hasn’t been done yet.

    Jennifer: Fascinating. Well, thanks for sharing that with me about your research.

    Can I ask, is that something that shows up on your website?

    Jane is working toward launching a new version of her personal website

    Joyce: It is. I suppose there’s been 3, no 2.5 versions of the website so far. There was the one that we launched at the very beginning of my grad school days.

    It was fine. Actually, when you look at my website or our websites, they don’t look very much different at all. The colors are the same. The logos haven’t changed.

    We’ve updated the photos cause because you get fat, you get thin, you get fat, you get thin.

    [The websites] They’ve become a lot more focused I think.

    The 2nd version, which was launched about 18 months ago was about giving us a lot more on control our end. It’s when I started blogging.

    I have a love-love-bit-of-hate relationship with blogging. In that I would love to spend more time doing it. And I think I could make it better work better than I am. But you just keep rethinking how you blog all the time.

    I think that’s my big thing, not just with the blogging, but with websites is that it’s not something static. With the 1st version of the website, the major mistake we made was it was static. It didn’t change it. Didn’t have a blog element. And I may be looked at it once every couple of years. And I sent off a note to our web designer. She would charge me £15 to change 2 words on a page.

    The way it is, or the way version 2.5 is that all the actual text and layout I can control myself. It’s only when we want to do more technically advanced things like changing pictures and adding new drop downs that I have to contact my designer for. And that’s the level I’m comfortable with.

    Jennifer: And you like, you like being able to do some of those things.

    Can I ask, did you work with a designer on version 1 of the website?

    Jane: Yes and no. Accessibility was always important to us. I come from a disability services background. That’s what I did when I was a civil servant. For most of the times the civil service disparity employment advisor. I was always aware of making things accessible in terms of scaling font and it still looking good.

    We had a young designer to do our logo for us. And I love our logo. Would I change it? Probably not. I might tweak it a little bit, but I don’t think I’d actually change it.

    But all the text I’ve always written. Partly because I’m quite…Okay. Yeah, let’s be honest…quite arrogant about my use of English language.

    Search engine optimization for academic websites

    Jane: That has its downside. Because of course, search engine optimization (SEO) wise, I dislike…balancing got to get 5 versions of the keyword into the box pick-it-up vs. flow. I find that a tricky balance. And getting all your metatags right. I find all those things I find quite tricky. So sometimes I will get a bit of help on that side of it.

    Jennifer: For some of our readers, they might not know what SEO is. SEO stands for search engine optimization. It’s something that people with websites do in order to help more visitors actually find their page. There are specific keywords or phrases that you might go search for on Google.

    If those phrases or keywords match up with the phrases or keywords on Jane’s website, for instance, it will help you find her website.

    Jane is saying that it’s difficult to balance the number of keywords she puts into the copy she writes for her website and actually writing it. I think that’s something that many people with websites struggle with.

    If you’re brand new to websites, this is your very first website, you might not be doing so much SEO work as Jane is. But you do want to have keywords, like your name in there.

    Being able to put your name on your website is so important for helping people find it.

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    Jennifer: Thanks, Jane. I appreciate you bringing that up.

    Jane: I think there’s also something really important about keywords in that. Often the keywords we end up having to use to get found and not words we’re comfortable with.

    My wife’s previous business was that she ran a telecoms billing platform. She wanted her website to say ‘value.’ Okay, but people don’t type into Google value. They type in ‘cheap.’ So she had to change this whole page…to ‘cheap’ to get her SEO to work, which is not the image she wanted to portray. But it’s what she needed to get people to then come and have that conversation with her.

    Jennifer: Yeah. I think with academics in particular, keywords might even be a little bit easier than that because they’re looking for a really specific audience. So if your research is on a specific type of microbiology, for instance and you include that phrase in there, it’s pretty likely to, you know, show up in Google.

    It’s definitely harder when you’re looking at a keyword that’s as general as ‘value’ or ‘cheap,’ because there’s only one word. It can make a really big difference in the types of visitors you get.

    My recommendation for anyone reading is try to be really specific when you’re thinking about the keywords that are going on your website.

    Remember, you’re looking for a specific audience. In this case, you may not be needing money that’s tied to that. Maybe you’re just looking for readers for your publication. So there’s lots of options for keywords.

    Jane: Yeah. Yeah. That’s true. And it’s very industry specific. You really have to think through a strategy. Which is why it’s useful to use a designer sometimes.

    Curious about SEO for your personal scientist website? Watch my YouTube live conversation with Patrick Wareing.

    It’s time to update an old or outdated personal website

    Jennifer: Tell me more about what your old website was like. It sounds like you really didn’t like that you couldn’t do update yourself. And that you had to pay for updates. What else didn’t you like about it?

    Jane: I think it was mainly just the staticness of it. It was very difficult and expensive to keep it current as you know. Obviously when you start a business, especially now, you can’t start a business without a website.

    But in those first 2 years–I mean, I think businesses are always evolving and changing–but in those first 2 years, that’s probably when they move most.

    Therefore, if you’ve constantly got to be sending information to somebody else to tweak your content…

    The layout was very current, which meant of course, it very quickly became very dated because just like clothes, just like hairstyles–there’s style, and then there’s fashion.

    Jennifer: Hm.

    Jane: Because I don’t do the graphic aspect of it, I find it very difficult to pinpoint what that is. But it’s things like a Hermès scarf is always stylish. There are other things that are very fashionable for a very short period of time.

    I think there are elements of website design, which I hope we’re getting now, which is much more about a classic style. While still being able to bolt on [things like] on Joyce’s site, she’s got the live transcription so that she can vlog rather than blog which connects in with the fact that she’s dyslexic. When she vlogs it will transcribe it live. Speaking as somebody who does audio transcription, it’s good. It’s still not as good as me sitting there and doing it for her will ever be, but it’s a lot quicker than me doing it. Cause it does it live.

    Jennifer: So live transcription is one of the ways in which your separate websites revisioned the blog that you were, you were both working.

    Jane: Yes.

    Jennifer: So you still blog. And [Joyce] vlogs.

    Jane: Yes. Well, she’s learning to vlog.

    How you blog on your personal website may change

    Jane: It’s one of those things like the blogging. I always feel that I’ve got more to learn and I could always do more of it.

    And as a writer there’s a great discipline in blogging because it keeps you writing and it keeps the ideas flowing.

    Jennifer: Right.

    Jane: Often, I don’t know about you, but the ideas always come at the most inconvenient moment, you know? When you’re in the car I can’t really scribble an idea down. And then unless you have something like Otter AI on your phone so you can give yourself a quick note, the idea has gone.

    Jennifer: I feel like I have a lot of blog ideas. I keep a list of them on my computer. And then I have time to write a lot of them. [Laughs]. That’s my problem.

    Are you in grad school? Consider starting a blog about your research. Read my interview with Dr. Chris Cloney of Gradblogger.

    Jane: When we first relaunched a new [website], we were religious. One of us blogged every single Monday. But we’ve been so busy. I’ve been so busy writing books. I haven’t had the emotional energy, I think, to blog as well.

    Jennifer: That’s interesting. Can you tell me a little more about that? What do you mean by emotional energy to blog?

    Jane: There are lots of different approaches to blogging, aren’t there? You can be your intellectual expert, or you can be a raconteur. Cause it’s all about engaging with your particular audience.

    Because particularly when I’m doing the family biographies, people are telling me things. It’s not supposed to be a therapeutic thing, but often it becomes therapeutic. Often people will tell us things–cause Joyce does the interviewing and I do the writing–very personal and perhaps stuff they haven’t talked about for years.

    So I want my blogs to be quite open to. And I often reflect on something that has happened during the week. If I have been very busy writing, I perhaps haven’t had time to process that myself.

    I don’t feel I can blog about it until there’s a little bit of distance.

    I think the last blog I did was about the phrase ‘self care.’ I really struggle with the phrase ‘self care.’ I think being middle-aged and British…And anything foregrounded with self gets linked just to words like ‘selfish,’ which is not how I feel about it but it’s kind of like a kick reaction. It took me ages to write that blog because I had to kind of balance it out.

    And I think if you blog from the heart, which is what I try and do because I want our customers to know us because we feel very strongly that integrity is something that is impossible to attain, but must be your strongest goal. Sometimes those blogs take a lot of emotional energy.

    When I used to copywrite blogs for another company, you know, I can churn out 500 words on why certain photocopiers are the best on the market. Really I can probably do that in about half an hour.

    And the other thing I find quite time consuming when I’m blogging is sourcing the illustrations. Cause I always try and put in a couple of irrelevant illustrations.

    And I think it was you or somebody in the same meeting we met at who told me about Unsplash.

    Jennifer: Yeah!

    Jane: And that has made that a lot easier, but actually again, we’re back to keywords. Finding the right keywords to get the image you want…

    Jennifer: It can be difficult [chuckles].

    Have a personal website you can control

    Jane: It’s a constant learning thing, isn’t it? I think that’s that’s the biggest message is if you can always have an element of your website that you control. Even if it’s not the techie stuff. Because it’s an absolutely live document. You will never finish your website.

    Jennifer: That’s right. That’s what I teach all of my [website design] clients. The process that I worked through with them, you know, we go through an intensive planning process for their websites to figure out what they actually need.

    Then we sit down and we create the copy for the website or they do it on their own. Once that copy is placed, I actually teach them how to

    • update pages on our website
    • add new pages
    • navigate the backend so that they can find what they’re looking for

    And they get a recording of that so that they can do it themselves afterwards.

    Learn more about working with Jennifer on your personal website.

    I actually don’t do long-term management for websites that kind of nickel and diming that you were talking about changing two words for £15 pounds, I don’t do that. I want to help as many people as possible. That means that I can’t manage websites long-term.

    I really need the academics that I work with to be able to do some of that work themselves. So I think that’s really important having some of that control yourself.

    It sounds like it’s making a really big difference for you on your website.

    Jane and Joyce used to share a website, now they’ll each have their own

    Jane: I also find it much easier to help Joyce. So what we’ve done now is we’ve separated [our websites]. I’ve retained CoomberSewell.co.uk.

    And Joyce now has Autism.CoomberSewell.co.uk.

    We’ve done little things so some of the pages mirror each other totally. And others, obviously her autism pages are a lot more detailed than mine. My pages is like a condensed version on autism, but it links to her website.

    So silly things like I know for a fact at the moment because I’ve spent more time on her website than mine, her price list for proofreading as much more up to date than the one on my website, but I’m the one who does the proofreading!

    In fact I’ve got a list of jobs to do at the weekend. And it’s this knowing that I was going to talk to you. That led to #6, being “Update price list.”

    Do this when preparing to update your old or outdated personal website

    Jennifer: It’s good to actually create a list like you’re doing right now. Like what are the things that I need to change on my website?

    If you are approaching a website update project, I do recommend make a list of all the things that you

    • don’t like about your website
    • do like about your website
    • things that you need to change.

    Then once you have that list, go ahead and schedule it in your agenda.

    Maybe you don’t have time to accomplish all the things on your list right away, but if you space it out over time, you’re going to get those updates made.

    You don’t want to wait 1-2 years between updates on your website. Things get outdated more quickly than you think.

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    Asking a close friend for valuable feedback

    Jane: And that is very, very true. I also think it’s good to have an honest friend. A really honest friend. I had a very amusing phone call today, a video call actually. My longest term friend, we’ve known each other since I was 5 months old, contacted me today on video call.

    She’s just about to launch a professional photography website. The one thing that she’s not good at is photos of herself.

    Jennifer: Right.

    Jane: She said, Jane, choose between these 2 [photos] for me. She showed me 2. And I said, “Oh, dear God. It’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie vs. The Famous Five on crack.

    [Laughter].

    And whilst, perhaps that was a little over blunt, it did help her choose the pictures that she was going to choose. And acknowledge the fact that it’s only going to be a holding picture till she can get some new ones done.

    Jennifer: Yeah. That’s important. And having that honesty and that rapport with you, it helped her move forward in her thinking of it.

    Jane: I think particularly on the visual side. And on the text side, because I mean, as a proofreader, there’s one rule that I have. It’s just proofread to proofread thyself. Because it is almost impossible when you’ve written something and edited it and re-edited it…

    I mean, you know, where I’ve been sort of trying to convert my, my thesis into a book, I am aghast at the mistakes have slipped through as I’ve put it to bed for 6 months and then come back to it.

    Really, did I say that? Was I on said drugs at the time?

    Jennifer: [Laughter]. And you’re a professional, you’re a proofreader.

    Jane: It’s the hardest thing in the world to proofread your own work.

    Jennifer: That’s so true.

    Jane: So having a trusted friend who is good at being straight, but also kind is really, really important.

    I think in business, we get very hooked up on should I be paying for this? Should I be paying for that? 99.9% of the time, I would say, Yes. But occasionally it’s okay, especially if it’s just a quick check to ask a friend for a favor because this guarantee there’s a bit of skills barter that can go on.

    Jennifer: I think so. That I explain it to my clients is that your friend, they love you and they care about you. They’re actually going to be reading and examining your website with greater depth than your average visitor.

    They’re going to stay on it longer.

    They’re going to read into it more, try to understand it more so that they can talk with you about it. And that’s more than your average website visitor is doing.

    If your friend is telling you that something’s

    • Confusing
    • Distracting
    • That it shouldn’t be there

    well that’s something that you should listen to because other people aren’t even going to give you as much time or attention as a friend is. So it’s worth listening to what they have to say.

    You don’t have to, you don’t have to respond to it. You know, you don’t have to do it, but getting that opinion is so helpful.

    Do it while you remember (or write it down so you don’t forget)

    Jane: And I think, I think also we’ve talked about planning and making sure we prioritize, but I think there’s also some times merit in striking while the iron is hot as well.

    I mean a year ago you said to me, “Jane, you need to make more of the fact that your ‘bilingual.’” Do you remember this conversation? It was, it was a, it was a comment about my proofreading, the fact that I’m being of Canadian heritage, that I can proofread in

    • Canadian English
    • American English
    • English English

    You said you need to make that much clearer on your website and you should blog about it. I still haven’t done it because I didn’t do it in that moment. And if I had done, it would have been very much more impactful.

    I am going to get round to it. I am going to blog on it, but I don’t think it will be as good a blog as if I’d done it within 24 hours.

    Jennifer: Oh, I don’t know that that’s the case. It’s possible that even that you’re thinking about it for the last year is going to add even just one sentence to that blog that is emotionally in a better space now than it would have been then.

    So you never know that. I think it’s totally going to be awesome when you do it now.

    Jane: Interestingly though, I have remembered to use the phrase when I’ve been talking to people.

    Jennifer: Wonderful.

    Jane: And I think I’ve pretty much got every American PhD student at my university now sending me their theses for proofreading.

    Jennifer: I love that. I love that. I remember that conversation so well, and you were telling me about all the amazing things you were doing. And I was like, oh, I just read your website and it didn’t say that. Like, that was so awesome how you have a skill that really is going to help people that are English language speakers bet the proofreading that they need.

    I also think that the way that you go about updating your website to meet your needs is so awesome. It sounds like version 1 and version 2 were both joint websites. And now version 2.5 is like separating that a little bit.

    But what it does is it gives you each more space. So it’s like your website is growing. It’s like your needs are growing, your website’s growing and all of that copy, all of the things that you know, can be updated, hey–everything gets updated with time. That makes sense.

    Jane: I think it also provides a lot of clarity. We were trying to be all things to all people. And although we work together and our sides of the business compliment each other. They’re not the same.

    Joyce, certainly couldn’t do what I do. I know, I don’t have the patience, I think, to do what she does.

    At the moment, they’re very similar. I’ve done a way updates, but I think over time as she grows the vlogging side of it…I’m teaching her how to edit. It’s going to be hysterical cause she’s even more of a Luddite than I am…And as I continue to blog, I think it will give me the room.

    How Jane shared her thesis and publications on her personal website

    Jane: One of the other things I did based off the conversation you had with me is that I changed one of the pages entirely. You said to me earlier, I’ve just remembered this, you know, is your thesis on your website?

    Well, I took a sidebar. And that now has every journal article every, every time I’ve contributed to a podcast. It’s all on there. There’s a publication sidebar. So you don’t even have to go to a separate page for it.

    If you’re interested in having me write a biography for you. You can get a sample of my writing by clicking on the sidebar. It was actually me being tight because I didn’t want to pay to have another page created. Actually it works really well.

    Jennifer: Well I love that innovation can cause you to adapt. It sounds like you didn’t want to pay for another page so you needed to find another solution and that creative solution ended up working out for you.

    That’s what websites are all about: experimenting to see what’s going to work well for you long term. And if it doesn’t, well, that’s something that needs to be changed.

    I think that adapting with your website, making room for it to grow, it’s not going to happen all at once.

    Jane: Right.

    Your website will change, and that’s a good thing

    Jennifer: You’ve had now 2.5 versions of this website, and you can still see it changing in the future. So for anyone who’s reading this interview, I definitely want to let you know that your website, it’s probably is going to grow or change over time.

    Even if he just have a simple 1-page website that has your bio and a photo on it. Those elements are going to change. Your bio will be updated over time. Your photo. You’re going to want to change that over time so that it looks like you.

    I think that being open to that is such a great quality to have when you’re building a website. And when you’re approaching a big update.

    Jane, I just want to thank you so much for your candor in talking about how that website change has been for you.

    What’s it like to work with multiple designers on your website over the years?

    Jennifer: I want to ask a little bit more about what it’s like to work with someone since you worked with, it sounds like multiple designers on your website.

    Jane: Two, yeah. So we had our original website designer. There were some design elements that came from other people, but as such, we had our original website designer and then we’ve got our current website designer.

    And I think there’s something really important to say about I current website designer, not so much about his technical skills as a designer, although they’re very strong. It’s about personality matching. You know, particularly for, for joy as an autistic.

    Choosing a website designer

    Her technical skills are very different from mine. Actually, they’re great, but she worries about them. And so we needed a designer who got how you talk to this person on the spectrum. Because actually once you’ve met one person on the spectrum, you’ve met one person on spectrum.

    A lot of the problems with our previous version is that I’m not convinced our previous designer was quite on particularly Joyce’s wavelength.

    From that point of view, I would encourage people that if you feel like somebody is talking a load of jargon and your constantly running to catch up, they’re possibly not the right designer for you.

    Jennifer: Oooh, that’s so important. So picking a designer is not just about budget. It’s not just about location or what their portfolio is. It’s also about how they get along with you and how well you communicate with each other.

    Jane: I mean after all. I think we both know that you can go and buy a product. You could go buy website product. Most of my Canadian and American friends tend to use SquareSpace. If they’re building it from scratch and over here, it will be something like GoDaddy. But ultimately if you’re going to invest in that tailored service…People buy people. They don’t buy a product. They buy people. So get to know your designer.

    I am fortunate in that our designer is the partner of a friend of ours. And he will come and train Joyce in exchange for a handmade pizza. But, from that point of view, it is worth spending the time not just getting quotes, not just finding out what particular language they’re skilled in, or design they’re skilled in…

    You know, have a coffee with them if you can in these days of masks. Take your time. It might not be a big investments in dollars or pounds, but it’s a big investment in terms of your business. Or your future in terms of the academic reputation that you want.

    So take your time. Yes, you can change later on. Because we’ve been talking about keeping the websites updated, constantly.

    But actually, if you’re going to move that whole relationship to another designer, it is a bit of a hassle. You know, getting them to shift domain names from one host to another, it’s not a big job, but it is a hasley job. So take your time picking your person.

    Jennifer: Oh, well, wonderful advice. You know, meeting someone in advance can make a whole difference in how you understand them. Seeing their facial expressions, seeing how they respond to questions or how they ask questions of you can make a big difference for people’s comfort levels.

    Thank you so much for sharing that with me.

    Jane’s new article on Sara Paretsky’s Guardian Angel

    Jennifer: Speaking of academic reputation, you were telling me about a new article that you have out about your favorite lockdown read. Tell me a little bit more about that.

    Jane: Oh, that was wonderful. I think that again is something I’ve learned about academia this year. I’ve written or half written or even sent off terribly intellectually worthy articles. And they tend to fall over.

    I’m often always telling my students, don’t overcomplicate things. Go with your first instinct. Build on your first instinct. If you’ve made the right choices, it will flow.

    I just happened to see this call for paper and I drafted out this article in about 40 minutes.

    Jennifer: Pretty quickly.

    Jane: It didn’t even have a single edit on it. Because it was passionate. I’m probably underselling my skills here because that’s what I do.

    It’s a piece in the South Central Review. They did a lockdown special. I think they chose 25 articles in the end. They ask people to write on their favorite lockdown re-read. I chose a book by Sara Paretsky.

    Jane: To be honest, I could have chosen any book by Sara Paretsky because I love them all. It was a joy to write, and I think that’s what comes through in the reading of it.

    My major message from it was about independent researchers. I find Paretsky a very brave writer. She’s always gone with the flow and she’s changed publishers when she’s needed to. If she believes in something, she goes for it. Even if people tell her not to.

    Read “A Favourite Among Favourites: Sara Paretsky’s Guardian Angel” by Jane CoomberSewell in the South Central Review from John Hopkins University Press, volume 38, numbers 2-3 (2021).

    And I think to be an independent researcher, which is what I am, and to an extent what you are…

    Jennifer: That’s right.

    Jane: …is a brave place to be. And I think academia needs to take us a little bit more seriously. Because actually for us to stick our necks out with no institution backing us, with no access to other funding. You know, there used to be this attitude and I think there still is this attitude that if you’re not sponsored, you can’t be any good. But actually I think it’s the other way round. I think if, if you survive without an institution backing you or without permanent post, you are brave. You actually you’re showing your metal.

    I was self-funded through my PhD. You don’t set out to spend £25,000+ unless you’re sure you can produce the goods or at least you’re brave enough to find out.

    I think that was my big message in this article is academic world, you’ve really got to stop underestimating and putting barriers in the way of us independent researchers.

    I’m doing a piece of research next week which I feel rushed on because it’s the last piece I was able to get ethical approval on before I finished my PhD.

    I have more options in the arts than my wife does in the sciences because there are publications who will take me without being without ethical approval as long as I’ve gone through my own kind of ethical quality assurance.

    But stop putting barriers in the way of us independents, because we’ve got plenty to say. Because we’re independent. Sometimes we can do things that you can’t.

    Jennifer: I think that academia does need to listen up to independent researchers and where they’re at because so many PhD students that are graduating these days will end up as independent researchers in some way or another.

    There are not enough teaching positions to go around at the university level. And the adjunctification of the university is prolific. And it’s and it’s not changing. It’s not going to go down. I mean, I hope it does, but that’s not what the trends are saying.

    We do need to have more conversations like this. We do need to talk about things like open access and journals accepting independent researchers and appreciating the contributions that they make unfunded, frankly.

    I’m so glad that this kind of lockdown reread inspired you to just kind of jump into a new article and get it out into the world.

    Which book did you choose by the way?

    Jane: I chose Guardian Angel (1992). As I say, I could have chosen any. There was another one I didn’t choose because I realized the specific remit was what’s your favorite re-read? I could have chosen one of the others.

    But I realized it was my favorite purely because I’d won my copy in competition.

    And bless her, Sara Paretsky had posted to me herself. And being daft enough bless her—sorry, Sara—to leave her home address on the envelope.

    Which I promise you faithfully, Sara I’m not going to come and stalk you. But I do still have the old envelope and it is very carefully preserved.

    Jennifer: That’s sweet. It meant a lot to you. And that’s why you felt so strongly about the book.

    Well, the people who ran the organization or the competition for that book are like, “Yes! Our competition really inspired someone to love this book.”

    Jane: I really hope. Yes, I really hope so.

    Jennifer: Well, Jane, thank you so much for our conversation today. I have really loved talking with you about your website and how it’s changed throughout the years.

    Is there anything else that you’d like to add before we wrap up?

    Jane: No. I think I would just, just underline: your website is never finished and that’s okay.

    Jennifer: Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Jane! We’ll see you again in 2022. Bye, bye.

    Jane: Lovely. Thank you for inviting me, you take good care.

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    Find more interviews from scientists, professors, and researchers like you here on The Social Academic blog.

    Bio for Jane CoomberSewell, PhD

    Jane CoomberSewell, PhD

    Having had a previous incarnation as a Civil Servant and public sector manager, Jane CoomberSewell (@JaneCoSe) is an independent researcher/biographer based in Kent, South East England. Jane completed her Doctorate in 2020, with a thesis re-examining the socio-political contributions of monologuist and entertainer Joyce Grenfell. Jane’s research interests include reception theory and female-led detective fiction.

    Jane is an advocate for change in the way independent researchers are viewed by the establishment, believing that those who succeed in publication without the support of a University may be some of the strongest researchers in their field, certainly in terms of determination. When not working on one of the several biographies and other research projects she has under way at the moment, Jane can be found walking with her wife Joyce, an autism advocate or working in the garden to progress the couple’s drive for self-sufficiency. This may or may not include having lively conversations with her chickens about the history podcasts she plays to them.

    Connect with Jane on LinkedIn.
    Visit Jane’s website.

    Subscribe to The Social Academic

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  • RJ Thompson is a Professor and Digital Marketer in Higher Education

    RJ Thompson is a Professor and Digital Marketer in Higher Education

    RJ Thompson talks about Higher Education as a professor and marketer

    In this featured interview interview, meet RJ Thompson, MFA, the Director of Digital Marketing at the Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business and College of Business Administration at the University of Pittsburgh.

    Many professors and graduate students aren’t sure what the marketing and communications offices at their universities do. That’s why I invited RJ for this featured interview.

    • What’s it like to be on the staff side and the faculty side of a university?
    • Awards and accolades have been helpful for RJ’s career, why to put yourself up for more awards.
    • Learn how to be more creative, especially if you think you’re not creative at all.
    • Many professors and researchers have fear or anxiety about sharing their accomplishments.
    • Do you want to know how to get better students? RJ has a secret to share with you.

    RJ’s story is inspiring. From his frankness about what professors can get from being open with university communication teams, to opening up about living with an invisible disability, this featured interview is a can’t miss. Watch, listen, or read the interview below.

    Subscribe to The Social Academic blog.

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    Meet RJ Thompson

    Jennifer: Hi everyone, I’m Jennifer van Alstyne. Welcome to The Social Academic. Today we’re recording the new featured interview. Actually this is the last featured interview of 2021. So, welcome RJ Thompson. Could you start us out by introducing yourself?

    RJ: Hey, thanks Jen for having me, this is really great! And I’m so glad you saved the best for last.

    Yeah, my name is RJ Thompson. I am the Director of Digital Marketing for The Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business at the University of Pittsburgh.

    • And on top of that, I do a number of other things. I do market research. I do graphic design.
    • I teach graphic design at Point Park University and the Community College of Allegheny County.
    • And starting next semester, I’ll be teaching in the business school at Pitt, teaching advertising.

    So, I’m kind of all over the place.

    And if you’re listening or paying attention, you might’ve seen me through the HigherEdSocial group and the Marketing and Communications (MarComm) group by HigherEdSocial. So I’m everywhere.

    Jennifer: That’s exactly why I wanted to invite you on this show and why I wanted to feature your interview especially. Because so many professors, grad students, researchers that are connected with universities out there don’t really know what the marketing communications teams at universities do.

    And you’re someone who is on both sides of the aisle.

    So, could you tell me a little bit about what you do?

    What does a higher education marketing and communications professional do?

    RJ: Yeah, you know, to your point, it is an unusual divide, especially like between

    • design and marketing professors
    • and design and marketing teams

    For as many similarities as there are, there’s many differences.

    On the staff side, primarily what we do is, we’re a marketing and communications department. Our work includes, promoting

    • our programs
    • the business college and its programs to prospective students

    so there’s an enrollment piece to that.

    There’s also a heavy public relations component where we’re trying to promote the goodwill and works that we’re doing to not just the local, but the greater regional, national and global communities.

    And also along with that on the communication side, we’re doing a lot of internal marketing and communications to our students, to the broader university, University of Pittsburgh.

    It’s all inclusive. So, if you needed admissions campaign, we’re gonna work with the admissions team to produce that.If it’s for social media, we’re gonna develop out that social strategy plan, but also the ad spends, the ad spend strategy and execution.

    If we’re putting together a magazine, alumni magazine, we’ll work with philanthropic and alumni engagement to produce that.

    So, we are at the center of all of these deliverables and we collaborate with the different corresponding units to help them get their messaging out and ultimately create value for the students and alumni.

    That value manifests as, primarily as

    • brand reinforcement
    • brand management
    • making sure that the reputation of their degree not only maintains but exceeds and grows.

    So, that’s really what we do.

    And myself as the Director of Digital Marketing, I am responsible for designing and maintaining our web properties be it our primary website, our micro-site, PPC [Pay-Per-Click] campaigns.

    I have responsibility to our social media and also our digital advertising. If it’s digital, I own it.

    Jennifer: So, it sounds like you’re working with a lot of different teams. You’re working with people across the university and with your own team in order to share good things about the

    • University
    • Student
    • Alumni
    • Community

    And it really takes that kind of all encompassing approach to really communicate the amazing things that universities can do.

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    RJ talks about leaving his tenured position and how he loves continuing to teach

    Jennifer: Now, it’s really interesting that you’re able to do that and also teach. You have this real passion for teaching and really helping students get to the next place in their careers. Let’s talk about your teaching.

    RJ: Sure, so the first part of my career, I’ve spent 13 years on the faculty side.

    I’ve taught at so many different institutions. The last one that I was at Youngstown State. I was there for seven years. I was tenured faculty.

    To make a long story short, the commute from Pittsburgh to Youngstown, it’s about an hour each way. It was really starting to wear down my body.

    I missed a lot of time with my daughter who’s six, so, a decent amount of her infancy I missed.

    And one of the things that Youngstown is experiencing now is significant brain drain and enrollment decline. If you look at the data, you can kind of sort of see that coming.

    So, I got out about in the summer of 2019. That is when I left the university.

    HigherEd is my life. It’s where I belong. It’s where I fit. I never want to leave this industry. I always wanna be on the teaching side. I’m loving the staff side.

    But unfortunately, when I decided to transition out of Youngstown State University, there weren’t any full time tenure track positions available in Pittsburgh.

    I decided to try something new and pursue the staff route and it’s been amazing actually. It lets me do both things, so I get the salary I want with a good work-life balance. As a part of that balance, it also gives me the time to do a lot of

    • Side teaching
    • Freelance
    • Extracurricular stuff.

    And, I made this remark to my wife the other day: “I’ve never felt so liberated.”

    When you’re on the faculty side, especially when you’re chasing tenure and promotion, you are always doing some kind of peer reviewed research, peer reviewed projects that help you build your reputation, build your bona fides. Those are typically passion projects you don’t necessarily get paid for. They take an extreme amount of time investment. And I felt like I hit a peak at Youngstown State University.

    That’s when I switched gears. When I became staff side, I started taking on more practical work, freelance stuff. I started doing more professional development and certifications.

    I read a book! Let me be very clear, you would think that that is like, why is that at such an important point? Some faculty don’t have time to read, I never did. I never had time to actually sit down and read a book, be it fiction or non-fiction. So I have time for that now.

    And all the other crazy things that I do that you would see on LinkedIn,

    • getting involved in HigherEdSocial
    • starting the competitions
    • painting a mural
    • being a poll worker

    like I’m just checking off the bucket list stuff. And by the way, you’re absolutely allowed to criticize me for having poll worker on my bucket list.

    Jennifer: No, I think that’s so exciting and yesterday must have been a good day for you. This interview was recorded live on November 3, 2021, the day after United States elections.

    RJ: It was a long. It was long, long day. For sure.

    Jennifer: You know, you’ve done so many things and I just, I’m so glad that you came on this The Social Academic to talk about it. Because, even though you’re talking about how much time that took, you’re still teaching. You’re still doing this and keeping this as part of your life.

    You’re working with faculty, you’re working with graduate students to tell their stories through some of the marketing work that you do.

    I mean, you really are able to do it all.

    So, when you talk about liberation, when you talk about the freedom that this job gives you, it sounds like one of the things that you love most is being able to work on all of those things.

    Whereas before maybe your focus would only been able to be research as like the main priority.

    RJ: Yeah, yeah.

    When it comes to liberation, it wasn’t just the ability to do new things and different things, but it was also the ability to explore my creativity in an area that mattered, in something that mattered a lot.

    I’ve become disillusioned with freelance work over the past number of years and a lot of it has to do with clients that I call the low hanging fruit. These are typically the clients that want the world on a shoestring budget with a deadline of yesterday. That’s really stressful for a design faculty person chasing tenure and promotion. So I just decided to put that stuff away.

    Awards are important to RJ, why to put yourself up for awards too

    RJ: When I came to the business school at Pitt, they’ve got such a great marketing team, but they always had limited capacity to really just rip the lid off of it, go for broke and do some really strategic and creative things.

    And, they just let me go. That resulted in a profound amount of accolades. Like I was, not to brag, but just to illustrate the point…

    The websites I designed for the business school, back-to-back award winner in the Best of American Web Design by GDUSA [Graphic Design USA], which is one of the top…[Jennifer clapping]. Thank you…one of the top periodicals for the design industry.

    Being able to meet folks like you and speak at conferences and help #HigherEdSocial build their foundation, it’s just exciting.

    Jennifer: Wow, bragging is one thing that I actually wanted to talk with you about because when we first met, you had invited me on onto your podcast and you had mentioned that awards were something that were important to you.

    Not only important for you, but important to put your team up for it, to encourage other people to apply for awards.

    I love celebrating with you. I see your news on social media, on Facebook, on Twitter. It’s exciting when something good happens to people. I enjoy seeing that and so, I love cheering you on.

    Can you tell me more about looking for awards and why that’s important to you?

    I’ve been a competitive graphic designer for 25 years

    RJ: Yeah, so this is layered.

    The first part is, I’ve been a designer for 25 years. I’m 36. I’ve been doing this since I was a kid. And graphic designers tend to be very competitive people.

    They need to be because, they’re competing against each other for jobs in industry and industry typically tends to choose the most talented people.

    So, I’m fortunate in that I’ve been doing, I’ve been a designer my entire life, and I know all facets of it. I don’t claim to be a master of any of them, but, you need me to animate something, I can do that. You need to do some video, I can do that. I have a Jack of all trades vibe.

    Being able to work in the different aspects of design and compete with others is exciting to me.

    And what I get out of that is, it’s not necessarily a satisfaction, it’s like a justification. It’s more like, “hey, you know, you said you could do it and you did it.” And you put all of the work in to get to that point.

    Accolades were the foundation for RJ’s career

    So the Pitt Business website, when I redesigned it, it took 13 months. That’s all I did every day. It was a real labor of love and I was proud of the work. It’s also important to me that when you do a project like that, you don’t ever do it alone.

    To reinforce the point that you made about getting people to submit their work, I made sure that my entire marketing team had their names on that project. My marketing team save for my designer, are in their early career. It’s important to get them those accolades because that’s the foundation for the rest of their career.

    I would not have been able to get where I am and doing what I’m doing, had I not pursued design competitively. Those accolades got me my next job and my next job and opened up so many opportunities.

    It opened up teaching to me, frankly. I won an award for a book I made. A faculty person happened to see it, and they’re like, “you should teach.”

    Four months later I got a teaching job.

    So, it’s kind of proof positive. There’s the benefits you get from asserting yourself and putting yourself out there as a competitive person, a high performance kind of person. I think that is attractive to a lot of different people.

    RJ has cystic fibrosis, an invisible disability

    The third part is, I’m a person with an invisible disability. I have a genetic disease called cystic fibrosis.

    Had you met me when I was a kid, I was scrawny and frail and sickly. Over the years, I’ve gotten better and now I’m on gene therapy and my symptoms are gone. I’ve made amazing, great strides in my self care.

    But I had a doctor tell me once, “you’re not gonna live to see 40.”

    I’m 36.

    Now, what that doctor doesn’t know is that I’m actually immortal and I’ll never die.

    But what that did was that motivated me to shoot for as far and as wide and as fast as towards my goals as I could. I mean, in high school, I was moderate student, average, but when I got to college, I made it a point to like be A’s across the board. I knew that grades would not necessarily matter when I entered the industry. It was more about personal pride and the stakes that I put into performing.

    I put all of my effort, all of myself into my work.

    Even at the college level, I got awards there that led on to internships at agencies and the like. It’s been a beneficial thing for me.

    At the end of my career, I want to be able to say, I didn’t get to everything I wanted to, but the things that I did get to, I did really well at.

    And then I can wipe my hands of it and put it away and go build a bird house or something. Whatever retired people do.

    I don’t think I’ll retire ever. Even if, you know, once a designer, always a designer, I’ll still be making something.

    Building CommCentered, an archive to celebrate Higher Education Marketers

    Jennifer: You do work at making different things. In the last year, along with doing all of that design work that you’ve been doing for the marketing team, along with teaching, you also created CommCentered which is this massive archive for HigherEd marketers. Tell me a little bit about that.

    RJ: So, CommCentered is an interesting little story that started with another inventory that I built. One of the things that I like to do is, I like to understand systems comprehensively, holistically, and I like looking at trends and commonalities.

    Myself and one of my colleagues, a retired computer science professor, one of the things that we did was we did an inventory of all of the logos of municipalities in America with populations of 10,000 or above.

    We collected thousands of logos, thousands, and I put them into an archive. I was able to look at everything and say like, wow, when you look at the 4,000 logos or whatever it is that we found, half of them have a specifically designed brand concept and then the others are municipal seals.

    When you start to really narrow the focus, and understand why half was the way that it was,

    and the other half, etc, you learn that it came down to a lot of like complex things like

    • Elected leadership
    • Municipal governance
    • Laws
    • How communities were financed

    That was an informative lesson for me because the company I run is called Plus Public. Part of our work is in branding communities. So I wanted to understand why some of these communities don’t have good marketing.

    That inventory was very informative with respect to that.

    So, CommCentered was a response to what was going on in HigherEd Social. #HigherEdSocial is a Facebook group about 90,500 members strong, all across the world, HigherEd Marketers, HigherEd Designers, social media marketers.

    Are you a professor, researcher, or Higher Education staff member communicating publicly for your school? Whether you’re working on marketing and communications at the program, department, college, or university, HigherEdSocial is an amazing professional society you should join. RJ and Jennifer are both official members of the HigherEdSocial Community, join them!

    The sense that I was getting was that a lot of these folks did not have a great swell of pride in their work. Even in the little tiny corners of the world that they work, they may not have had a lot of pride in their work because their messaging is very highly overseen.

    Their protocols for how to communicate with people and in some cases, especially on the social media side, it’s kind of a thankless job.

    I want to celebrate those people. I want to celebrate 

    • The work that they’re doing
    • How they’re doing it
    • Why they’re doing it

    The concept of having to advertise education is fascinating to me. This is an act that people learn something new every day, whether or not they are trying. That’s just a part of the human experience. So, the fact that we have to advertise it is just really compelling to me.

    Taking that concept and then also wanting to be the biggest cheerleader for these people and celebrate their work led to CommCentered.

    When you layer in that brand’s inventory for the community brands inventory, I basically did a study where we took all of the institutions, HigherEd institutions in every state and we looked at the commonalities.

    Every state has their own set of trends that some correlate to others. Some do not. It’s been really, really informative.

    Right now I’m finishing my series of 50 posts on the brands of HigherEd, just for the United States. And I have plans on expanding that globally.

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    Nothing happens until someone gets excited, why RJ hopes CommCentered helps Higher Education

    Jennifer: Ah, that is so exciting.

    You know, when you told me that this project had suddenly been created, I was shocked because last time we had spoken, you had said that you were gonna be updating your personal website.

    We’d actually chatted about it and you had this plan. Then all of a sudden, there was this massive archive, this big website that really can help people around the world understand more about HigherEd Marketing. That can really celebrate their work in a way that the public can see, that each other can see. It was astounding that you’d created this massive project.

    And you’re also working on these other things. You have your job, you have your teaching and here you are creating this non-profit project.

    I was just so amazed by you. I think my heart grows bigger every time I talk to you, because you’re so generous with what you give to the world.

    RJ: Well, thank you for that.

    There was one lesson I learned a long time ago is that nothing happens until someone gets excited. Leave it to an advertising guy to say that. But it’s absolutely true, and I believe that wholeheartedly.

    Whatever effort I put into something, I hope that it excites people double the effort that I put in.

    Fortunately, I kind of have a knack for choosing the right things. Sometimes I don’t, but for the most part I do and it’s always exciting to build community around common threads.

    The thing with people in HigherEd, I think most of them would stay and talent would be retained at a higher frequency, at a higher rate, if certain conditions were met relative to just the work, the daily working life and the process and the experience of those types of jobs.

    With CommCentered, it was really important to me to not only be a contrast to some of the other HigherEd marketers that you’ll see out there. I didn’t wanna tell people how the work was done. They know how the work is done.

    I wanna show them what work was done. The thinking here is a picture’s worth a thousand words.

    If you see one logo, or if you see one ad campaign, that’s gonna kick off a spiral of new ideas for the people that are looking at it.

    I also have an additional point to that but I think is a propos. On Twitter, on social media, even in the HigherEdSocial groups, there are a ton of people that assert themselves as HigherEd marketing thought leaders. I’ll use the term know-it-alls as positively as possible.

    There are a lot of authors that assert their knowledge and wisdom and it’s valuable. But it consistently skews more towards :here’s the roadmap, here’s the foundation, here are some of the strategies. And that’s where it ends.

    Okay, well, thank you, I loved reading your 400 page book. The fact that the strategies and the roadmaps are great, but what have people done with it? I wanna see what people have done with it.

    CommCentered, I wanna feature the work that people are creating so that they can understand the context or the outputs of those roadmaps and get inspired on their own.

    A bad impression of someone else can create something completely original

    The last part of this is I love voice actors. This is a really unique hobby of mine. I watch cartoons with my daughter and I’m able to pick out, oh, that’s Rob Paulsen.

    Jennifer: You can recognize them.

    RJ: I can recognize the voices, even if they are doing a completely different voice. If you listen to some of the podcasts from voice actors, they love their jobs so much because all they do is play. Playing to them is doing a bad impression of someone else. So it’s additive.

    For example, if I did…and I won’t do any impressions, I won’t embarrass myself to that degree…But if I did an impression of Christopher Walken, and it was terrible. That’s okay, because I’ve just created a new character, something completely original.

    I can intentionally do something bad and create something really good and funny out of it. That was one of the other inspirations behind doing the archive, the logo inventory, featuring, doing assessments on social media ads and all of that stuff.

    When I look at your work, or someone else’s work, I judge it. I’m like, damn, that’s a good idea, I really like that. How can I take that idea, if it’s a box, how can I push one side in and rotate it and make it my own? It needs to be malleable.

    So, and the last part to that is that concept, that theme is absolutely part and parcel to who I am as a person and how I teach creativity.

    That’s kind of the overarching through line of my entire life and career and teaching career too.

    Professors and researchers, do you think you lack creativity?

    Jennifer: You teach creativity, I really like that. A lot of professors, a lot of graduate students don’t believe they have creativity. It doesn’t matter what field they’re in.

    You talk about creativity as something that can be taught. I think that a lot of those people who feel like they don’t have creativity actually do, and maybe they don’t necessarily recognize it in themselves. What do you think about that?

    RJ: So there’s kind of an anecdote or a dosh that I share with my students: I can teach you all the software in the world, but if you can’t think creatively, then all of that knowledge is not really useful.

    You’re solving problems that are very finite and technical. And dare I say, just kind of binary, yes or no one way or the other.

    Creativity is something that can be, you can be born just with this incredible intrinsic creativity, but you have deficits in other areas.

    I relay a story to my students where I’ve always been an ambitious, creative person, even when I was like a five-year-old. When I was four or five, I opened up my parents’ typewriter, typewriter, and I made stories. I pinpecked at the keyboard.

    Then I moved on to a neighborhood newspaper. Five, six years old doing this. Who does that? I’m sure it does happen. And I’m not saying that I’m special by any means, but it’s at least indicative of how my creativity manifested organically, naturally.

    There are some people that feel that they are not creative at all. And to them, I say, you are creative, but you are maybe a different aspect or facet of creativity.

    For the most part, the problem is that people don’t understand the steps in which to be creative. One of the things that I teach them is how to solve problems using a creative inquiry. That’s essentially also an aspect of design thinking.

    I had mentioned the project, I didn’t tell you what it was that kicked off my teaching career. It was a book called Thompson Design Methodologies. It was all about all about solving problems visually. This is something I deal with with my clients.

    If I’m making a logo for you, Jen, what’s one word that you would want your clientele to associate you with? Let’s say, it’s integrity.

    What does integrity look like as a box or a shape rather? Is it a rectangle? Is it a triangle?

    Is a triangle proportional? Or is it skewed?

    If you had to hold it in your hand, how heavy would it be?

    What’s the texture?

    Ask really abstract questions to fire up the creative parts of their brain and purposely getting them to zag instead of zig

    If you’re always zigging on something, you’re always making the same type of choice. If I put you in a box and make you do something different, that is forcing creativity on you, because you don’t know what comes next.

    Then as you branch out from there, every decision you make is based on an unknown output. It’s a lot about challenging conventions, challenging your comfort zones. I talk a lot about fear and the boxes of fear and complacency and all that stuff.

    Once people start to really understand why they are in the box and they can’t get out of the box, once they start to understand that, they realize that this isn’t like some tried and true foundation for making creativity happen. It’s more of an understanding and recognition of their own hesitancies and character flaws that they perceive that they have to work out of.

    It’s more psychological about them as a person and then once you kind of overcome some of those things, solving problems isn’t hard, it’s fun. If you know how to solve those problems, you have a 12 like a step process and your process is built with error and experimentation built into it, then your work becomes more fun.

    But the best thing of all is that your work becomes more informed and it’s of a higher quality so much so that you start solving problems unlike anybody else.

    When your employer sees help deeply and immersively you understand a problem and how you use that deep immersion to create a unique and amazing and equally immersive solution, they don’t wanna lose you. I could go on and on, but it’s absolutely true.

    It’s one of my favorite things about teaching. Seeing people really break out of the box and rise above and into their careers and meeting their self-concept.

    This idea of the idealized self-concept. Who are you in your most ideal sense? If you can use these design methodologies, these creative problem solving tactics, you can get closer and closer to that thing.

    If your dream for your career has always been to be a director of digital marketing, and then when you get there and it’s like, oh wow, I was able to get there using these tactics and techniques, what do I do next?

    Some people may not have envisioned the next thing beyond that ultimate thing. So it’s liberating in that respect too.

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    Facing backlash from colleagues when sharing good news (and why to share your accomplishments anyway)

    Jennifer: One of the things that you brought up while you were just talking was fear and anxiety, and it actually reminded me that I wanted to ask you about that as it relates to awards that you’ve won.

    Professors that I work with and people who are in my courses, feel really anxious when talking about their awards on social media, especially sharing it with their department, even internally. There’s a lot of anxiety when it comes to that.

    Have you ever experienced any backlash for sharing your awards?

    RJ: As a matter of fact, yes. It’s what led me to leave my tenure teaching position. It’s unfortunate that it worked out the way that it did.

    One of the things that I dealt with specifically was, I put all of myself into my work. And I believe in my work whole heartedly. When you put me into a position where you basically say, ‘Hey, in order to get tenure and promotion, you have to have peer-reviewed evaluations of your work. Part of that are competitions, juried exhibitions. That’s part of the game. That is the game.’

    I made it a point to put all of my effort into playing that game well.

    And I did, so much so that I received one of Ohio’s highest honors in art. I received an art award from the governor and I got to meet him and his wife and everything.

    What that did was the community that I was in, they celebrated that work. Because the thing that I made that got me that award was ultimately for the Youngstown region. It celebrated them.

    But on the faculty level, all that did was breed jealousy and resentment and inferiority complexes shot through the roof. Because I was junior faculty, that was used against me.

    Instead of seeing that as an opportunity to build into my energy, collaborate, let’s share our successes together…

    Instead what happened was, some of my peer faculty grew resentful. They grew jealous. They use tactics to essentially punish me.

    They made sure that my tenure process was hell. On paper I was very tenurable, so, that’s one of the reasons why I got it. But I know that the spirit of celebrating your peers was not there.

    A lot of that came back to graphic design was a popular major. The professors that were jealous and resentful of me were not in graphic design. More importantly, they didn’t understand the forest for the trees. I was responsible for bringing a lot of new students to the design program and also those fine art programs.

    And I realized that, that summer of 2019, I didn’t wanna leave tenure, I fought so hard for it. But no amount of tenure or promotion was going to be worth the mental stress and anxiety that they would place on me just by virtue of wanting to do my job really well.

    Jennifer: Especially when it’s for, in this specific instance, this is for the community, this is something that you were doing for the town of Youngstown.

    RJ: Yeah, they basically said I was trying to be a showboat. And I was being obnoxious with…

    I’m a marketer.

    I understand how branding works. I understand how marketing works. If I’m gonna put all of my effort into something, I wanna make sure that people know about it. There’s nothing wrong with that.

    Frankly, for some of the folks that are concerned about, if they’re too timid to promote themselves in their work, I completely get that because of what I went through. And I say to hell with them, rise above it.

    If you submit your work to a competition and you get acknowledged, the people in your life, if they’re worth keeping around, they will celebrate your efforts. They will support you.They will champion you. And you will do the same for them in return.

    If they don’t do that for you, then you need to consider your place in that community.

    Do I want you to leave that community? Absolutely not.

    But it is much easier to leave a situation than it is to change an entire community of people that ultimately don’t want you to be successful. They want the successes that you captured for themselves.

    And no one wants to be around folks like that. No one grows when resentment breeds eternal like that.

    The benefits from an award hopefully exceeds the criticism you get

    RJ: If you believe in your work, you put yourself into it completely, and you have some money to spare to put it into a competition or any peer reviewed situation like that, do it. Because the benefits you get from it will hopefully far exceed the criticism that you get.

    To give you an example, when I did that work for Youngstown and got the award from the Ohio governor, I had a number of communities knocking on my door saying, we want you to replicate that work here. We’ll pay you a market value for what you do. We’ll defer to your expertise. We just want good work and you’re a proven commodity. Okay, let’s do it, and so we did.

    In the case of just to switch gears real quick, in the case of Pitt Business School, it was really important to me that I was given so much freedom and latitude to essentially do what I felt was best from a marketing perspective, from a design perspective. I was able to completely reboot all of our marketing collateral.

    I didn’t do it alone, and I wanted people to know in my college that my marketing team, the one I’m on, is the best. We’re the best ones for the job.

    I also wanted to tell all the 300 some odd marketers at the University of Pittsburgh that we’re the best marketing team on campus. And we did it two years in a row. When we do that, we say, yeah, we believe in our work enough to do this.

    Let us help you. We will do this because we’re colleagues, because we want to see you succeed as well.

    So you build a spirit of camaraderie in this community and rising tide lifts all ships. The ultimate goal would be, hey, my marketing team give some advice to all the different colleges at Pitt and maybe they come out with some better looking work and they see increased enrollment and everybody prospers. So, that’s kind of the intent.

    Let me just say that, I think for my supervisors, for my marketing team, they like the acknowledgement. It makes them feel good. It builds confidence in their work and it energizes them to do more ambitious work or more involved work.

    It’s not just going through the motions anymore, we’re building something. And it’s that paradigm shift that has caused a lot of our success and just good feelings about our jobs.

    How professors and researchers can work with universities to better promote their work

    Faculty are busy, there are only so many hours in the day

    Jennifer: Thanks for sharing that.

    Now, I wanted to ask for the professors and researchers out there, what are some ways in which you as a marketing department have collaborated with them to tell their stories?

    RJ: You know, I think, I would say first off, and I know many HigherEd marketers can relate to this. There is a perception in a well-founded perception that faculty generally are too busy to participate in marketing efforts. To an extent that is true. And there’s nothing wrong with that because they’re doing their jobs, right? We only have so many hours in the day.

    Part of our goal is we want to celebrate our faculty as much as we celebrate the outcomes and career goals of our students. Fortunately, we have very proactive, productive faculty that are doing world changing work. And they understand the value of marketing that, and they work with us to do that. But it doesn’t mean it’s easy,

    It’s not often easy to work with your faculty, to get what you need from them.

    Build your reputation within the community, faculty, and student body

    If you’re a faculty member and you open yourself up to being promoted, the work that you’re doing, you want it to be signal boosted, because that builds your reputation in your

    • Community
    • Faculty
    • Student body

    Be open to letting us help you signal boost your work.

    We can do some amazing and creative things if you just give us the time of day. Give us a couple hours every week and we will work our asses off for you.

    Collaborating with marketing and communication teams takes reciprocal respect

    It’s reciprocal and it’s a reciprocal respect and understanding that in order for collaboration to be successful for all stakeholders and all beneficiaries, you gotta put the time in.

    And we have a lot of faculty that are writing books, we just won an $800,000 grant from one of our marketing faculty won this massive grant. We wanna put that out into the world, so, let us help you.

    If you’re a faculty person, and you’re wondering how to get promoted, work with us. Respect our work. Respect our capabilities. You don’t have to do it alone. We champion our entire community.

    I think that is the best way to do it.

    And don’t be afraid to shout your accolades from the roof. It’s okay!

    Our students want professors that are doing amazing work.

    When I was a tenure track, and even still to this day is on the faculty side, I always show real world practical work that I’m doing because it contextualizes the professional experience for my students: “Oh, wow, he’s still doing something. That’s awesome I can learn from him because he’s still in play.”

    Let us in, we’ll tell your story and that will create ripple effects all through our marketing.

    Learn a secret to getting better students for the classes you teach

    There’s also another basic sort of formula here: The more you help us promote you, the better the students you’ll get.

    Every faculty person wants better students, every single one. It makes the teaching experience more enriching for them and for us. We don’t necessarily like having to go through the lecture, here’s the homework assignment, go on your merry way. We don’t wanna go through the motions, if we don’t have to. We have a profound amount of knowledge to share.

    If we have better students, they’re gonna be more engaged and more interested in learning those little details, those anecdotes from practice or whatever.

    It makes faculty feel good about their job and about the work that they do. So, I think that that is an operative sort of thing to think about.

    Avoid going through your dean or department chair

    Also consider the opposite, you don’t participate, you ignore us. That makes our lives a lot more difficult because we’ve got to track you down. If you don’t respond to us, then we have to talk to the chair or the dean. Then the dean and the chair come down on you. No faculty person really ever wants to talk to their chair or dean. I kid, I kid. But it’s true. It doesn’t have to come to that.

    So just work with us and we will do what we can 100%.

    Jennifer: I think that’s such an important sentiment. It’s gonna take work on both sides.

    You guys have so much expertise, you’re hoping to share with the faculty who wanna promote themselves and promote their research,

    I think that’s wonderful. But it sounds like maybe faculty really don’t know what to expect, they don’t know what the potential is for themselves.

    So, there are ways for you to celebrate them, but the faculty need to be more open about it in order for you to even be aware of each other.

    RJ: So, on that note, one tactic that I’ve taken recently is I’ve added all 125 of our faculty to LinkedIn. I track their profiles because they’re more prone to update their LinkedIn and self-promote versus telling us.

    As soon as I see something, it’s going over here, and then I just traffic control the content. And that actually brings in another point where…

    Marketing and communication teams what to make it as easy for professors as possible

    Hey, faculty, we wanna work with you as much as possible, but guess what? We wanna make the process as easy for you as possible.

    If we need you to record a video, we’re gonna script the whole thing, put it on a teleprompter. You come in, spend 10 minutes with us, read it and you’re out.

    You have to go teach their classes and depending on your institution and mine, rankings are extremely important. We need our faculty in the classroom, teaching our students well so our rankings go up, so our student body becomes more enriched and we pull in better prospects and everybody wins.

    Jennifer: So if faculty are more open about their accomplishments with their marketing teams and more willing to put in some effort, in order to help those marketing teams promote their work, then it can make a big difference for everyone.

    The faculty can get better students, the student body can hear more awesome news about their faculty, and it can really reach a larger audience. I see lots of HigherEd posts about professors, about scientists and researchers, being shared with much wider audiences than just the community. It can reach people around the world. So, this is great.

    Your university would love if you join Twitter or other social media platforms

    RJ: And you know the next step to that is, they see the results and then they decide to be proactive and really participate.

    If I could have 125 different Twitter accounts for every single faculty member and they were off and running and doing really well with it, awesome. Oh my God, the marketing ecosystem that would be working with would be profound and huge. And yeah, It would probably be stressful as hell, but we would have 125 of our biggest advocates out there in the world telling other people how good our programs are. You know, and that’s good branding.

    But they’re researchers. By virtue of the description of their positions, they’ve gotta be researching. They’ve gotta be teaching and writing grants, and that’s what they do.

    So, maybe we’ll get there someday.

    Jennifer: If you’re a professor, if you’re a researcher who’s watching this, check out the articles on The Social Academic blog. There are tons of resources for joining Twitter, joining other social media platforms.

    Social media doesn’t have to take all of your time. Just a little bit of practice talking about yourself, maybe talking about your research and sharing it publicly is going to make a big difference for you.

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    “Eventually I hit a wall…this has all been done before,” and persevering through that feeling

    Jennifer: RJ, I’m so glad we’ve had all of these conversations. We’ve talked about your work as a director of marketing, we’ve talked about Plus Public, your business. We talked about CommCentered. We talked about what it’s like to be a faculty member at the same time.

    Is there anything else that you’d like to share or chat about before we wrap up?

    RJ: I’m all over the place with my interests, but they are mostly HigherEd specific. And I walk on both sides of that HigherEd dividing line.

    I’m on the staff side and I’m on the faculty. It’s the best place to be as a marketer because it lets me understand what my audiences want. It’s a very organic transition of data and learning. My marketing savvy helps me teach better, because it’s vocal, it’s public speaking, it’s presentation of my PowerPoints and other things.

    On the opposite side, I’m learning how to better communicate with my students, but also prospective students, so they they’re mutually beneficial.

    With my HigherEd research on CommCentered, now I’m getting some of that research on the faculty side that I can apply to the staff side.

    One thing that I’ve been struggling with that I wanted to share was, and maybe some of the faculty listening can understand that. I often say when the muse speaks, listen. It may not always make sense. It may not always be compatible.

    I often have these moments where I’ve just got, the gears are turning in my head, it just randomly clicks on and I just start writing ideas down. Like last Saturday, it was a birthday party for one of my daughter’s friends. I was sitting in a Chuck E. Cheese and I’m at a table by myself with a notebook, like a super nerd and ignoring everyone else and I’m writing down pages of notes, just things that are firing through my head. My energy is like, “oh my God, this is so awesome. I think I can do this.”

    Then I eventually hit a wall and like, I look at my notes and I’m just thinking like, this has all been done before.

    So if you’re out there and like, you feel like you have this energy to like write a book or a series of books or contribute to the knowledge base in a big way, you actually can and you should.

    Don’t be afraid of imposter syndrome or that you feel like everything that has been said or done, can be said or done, has already been said or done.

    One of the things that I did was, I reached out to a few people and I said, I’ve got this energy, I know what I wanna say and how to say it, but I don’t quite know the format. Alexa Heinrich, our friend in HigherEdSocial, she said, “Everything that can be said or done in accessibility has been said and done.” The difference is her perspective on it. And she recognized that upfront. Learn about making your social media posts more accessible on Alexa’s website.

    That was for me really hard to swallow, to accept, because I come from this faculty academic side where original thought is highly coveted and valued, and I just couldn’t quite get there for whatever reason, confidence issues, self-esteem. I just didn’t have a good mentor to help me guide through this process. And Alexa just, she nailed it.

    I was feeling really down on CommCentered, because I hadn’t blogged in a while.

    And then I talked to Amy Jauman, who’s the Chief Education Officer for the National Institute for Social Media. Who wrote quite literally a book, this thick on social media. And I said, how did you get to that point? She basically said, “oh, I just sat down at the computer and started writing.”

    And I’m like screw you, get out of here. I don’t wanna hear it, I don’t wanna hear it.

    But she gave me some really great advice, and then I started to turn the gears a little bit and I’m like, okay, CommCentered should be what it already is. It’s a website. It’s active. It’s an archive. It’s the only inventory of HigherEd logos on the internet.

    I’ve already checked the boxes, but because of some lack of objectivity or lack of confidence or something, I feel, I felt like it wasn’t original. And sure enough it is.

    It’s one of the reasons why you and I connected and we keep circling this conversation.

    As I’m starting to get my confidence back…And if, again, if you’re an academic researcher and you hit that wall where you think no one’s gonna care, this is why you have to stay the course and continue on.

    Randomly, I got an email from a journalist at the Australian equivalent of The Chronicle of Higher Education. He’s like, ‘Hey, I came across CommCentered, and it is absolutely stunning. No one else, I’ve never seen anyone do anything like this, period.”

    All of a sudden my soul left my body and all of the energy that I took from the universe came right back into my body and I started writing those blog posts.

    The other parts of his message was, I wanna have you speak on these topics at Australia’s biggest HigherEd conference. And I wanna have you be a panelist. I wanna learn more about that work. So we got the ball rolling. But that’s not where it ends.

    Where it ends is to present day where, I looked at his website and all of the articles and I’m thinking, the Marketing and Communications sector of higher education is gigantic. There are over 9,000 universities globally. But there’s no centralized knowledge base for those people.

    So now I’m looking at all right, well, CommCentered was just a champion for the work. CommCentered 2.0, can be something else entirely.

    What that is just yet, I don’t know, but it could be big on that scale.

    So, stay the course, researchers, what you’re doing absolutely has value.

    Jennifer: Ah, thank you so much, RJ. I have loved this conversation. Thank you so much for joining me today.

    Watch my 1st podcast appearance ever on RJ’s podcast Talks with Thompson (YouTube).

    That’s it for The Social Academic interview series in 2021. Next week, the new gift guide for professors and researchers is coming out. Don’t miss it.

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    Bio for RJ Thompson, MFA

    RJ Thompson, MFA is an award-winning marketing and design professional. He is Director of Digital Marketing at the Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business and College of Business Administration at the University of Pittsburgh.

    Before joining Pitt, RJ was a tenured Assistant Professor of Graphic + Interactive Design in the Department of Art at Youngstown State University. Previous to Youngstown State, RJ taught at Carnegie Mellon University, La Roche University, and Edinboro University of Pennsylvania. Continuing his career in education, RJ has been an Adjunct Professor of Graphic & Interactive Design at Point Park University since 2019 where he was responsible for writing and teaching the interactive design curriculum. In 2020, he began teaching at the Community College of Allegheny County.

    Outside of marketing, design, and teaching, RJ is also the Co-Principal and Creative Strategist for +Public, a Pennsylvania-based social enterprise that focuses on cultivating community and economic development impact through the creation of branded communication platforms, creative place-making, and storytelling initiatives for communities-in-revival.

    Throughout his career, RJ has received many accolades for his creative works: In 2015, he was one of several recipients of the National Endowment for the Arts “Our Town” grant, valued at $100,000, for the INPLACE (“Innovative Plan for Leveraging Arts & Community Engagement”) project. In 2017, RJ received a “Best of Marketing Award” from the Ohio Economic Development Association for his efforts in rebranding the City of Youngstown, Ohio. In 2018, RJ was accepted into the prestigious Cohort 2 of the National Arts Marketing Project, a program supported by Americans for the Arts and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. In 2019, RJ also received a scholarship to join the National Arts Strategies Executive Program in Arts & Culture Strategy through the School of Public Policy at the University of Pennsylvania.

    In 2019, RJ was honored with the Ohio Governors Award in the Arts in Community Development, the state of Ohio’s highest recognition in the arts sector. Recently, RJ was the recipient of a certification scholarship from the National Institute for Social Media and received accolades from GDUSA and the University & College Designers Association for “Pitt Business Backstory” and “Business.Pitt.Edu” websites. RJ is presently a board member of the Pittsburgh chapter of the American Marketing Association.

    Connect with RJ on Twitter @RJTPitt

    Visit RJ’s personal website

    Visit CommCentered

    Interviews The Social Academic



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