Tag: PhD
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Higher Education Inquirer : President Elect Lowman, PhD
Higher Education Inquirer : President Elect Lowman, PhD – talks about the Association of Black Psychologists (Sincere Media Network)
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UKRI increases PhD stipend by 8 per cent
Let’s get the headlines out of the way first.
UKRI is increasing its PhD stipend by eight per cent to £20,780 from 1 October 2025. Wonkhe understands that this will not be funded by a reduction in the overall number of grants but instead forms part of UKRI’s funding settlement for 2025–26.
Pay
This means that UKRI will provide a take home income that is equivalent to the take home National Living Wage. This is not the same as the Real Living Wage but it is nonetheless a significant and welcome increase.
This is the single largest real terms increase of the stipend for funded students since 2003. Given that UKRI supports 20 per cent of doctoral students, and many universities choose to mirror the terms of UKRI, this will undoubtedly have a significant impact on improving the conditions of PGR students.
There is a sort of unwritten expectation that providers will generally peg their own grants to the levels of UKRI’s. Albeit, as we learn from the accompanying financial analysis that goes with the main report about around one in five students receive an amount above the minimum stipend. However, while half of respondents to a survey on the UKRI stipend indicated that at least 90 per cent of their non-UKRI funded doctoral students received a stipend equivalent to that of UKRI’s minimum level, around one in ten indicated that all of their non-UKRI funded doctoral students receive a stipend lower than UKRI’s minimum.
The potential implications of this are that some providers will further stretch their already stretched resources in maintaining UKRI’s funding levels, or that some providers will fall behind the UKRI minimum rate for students they fund directly. Prior to today’s announcement providers were generally positive about mooted increases. However, while 72 per cent of respondents say they would increase their own stipends to match the National Living Wage this is lower than the 89 per cent who said they would be very or somewhat likely to increase their own stipends by inflation (and a little higher than the 66 per cent said who said they would be very or somewhat likely to increase their stipend if it was anchored to the Real Living Wage).
Providers, for their part, stated in interviews that
Institutions would endorse in principle an increase in line with price inflation (at a minimum) or National Living Wage (which institutions feel, morally, would be preferable) and thought they would be able to match this for university funded stipends. However, for UKRI training grants, were such a raise not accompanied by additional grant funding from UKRI, ROs might need to reduce student numbers in the future to ensure they can continue paying the minimum stipend.
Providers may see some good news in the increase in the minimum fee for a UKRI student increasing by 4.6 per cent to £5,006.This should mean that providers can recoup a slightly greater amount of funding for their students and like with grants many providers will align their home PGR fees to the UKRI minimum. This is an entirely different question as to whether providers are anywhere close to recouping the actual cost of teaching PGR students.
Terms
The funding increase will grab the headlines but the revisions to UKRI’s Standard Terms and Conditions of Training Grant (TGCs) are likely to be as impactful.
In February 2023 UKRI commissioned Advance HE to carry out a review of its TGCs from an EDI perspective which has been considered alongside UKRI’s own new deal for postgraduate research. There is also a new companion document to the update to the TGCs by the UKRI commissioned Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Caucus (EDICa). In their report EDICa highlighted the impacts of child support on the continuation of studies, the wide variability in disabled students getting the support they need, the inflexibility in moving between full and part-time study, and the considerable time it takes in getting medical evidence for securing adjustments. As the authors state
However, for many current doctoral training students, the system of support in its current form is entrenching wider inequalities, particularly relating to caring responsibilities, disability and the benefits that may be achieved through change of mode of study.
This seems to be a message that UKRI has taken seriously.
The first thing to point out is that UKRI is not a regulator and it is at pains to point this out
UKRI is not a regulator and while we for the first time are explicit that we expect compliance with consumer law, employment law, Office for Students and Medr regulation (all where applicable), providers remain responsible for their own compliance and regulators for enforcement.
It feels self evident but the revised terms make it explicit that the role of UKRI is to steer the organisations it funds, and by extension the sector, toward better conditions for PGR students. UKRI will impose conditions on its own grants but it has a wider set of expectations for the sector on improving the conditions for PGRs.
The reason it is steering not shoving the sector are numerous. Primarily, it has limited powers within HERA but it also acknowledges that it is providers that are best placed to make decisions on their own students. The revision to the terms is the moment where some of the ambitions of the Tickell review have come to life in loosening the conditions and reducing the bureaucracy on student grant funding.
This new flexibility comes in a number of forms. UKRI has extended the time a student can draw their stipend while on sick leave from 13 to 28 weeks. UKRI is also removing the requirement for students to provide medical evidence when taking medical leave, instead this process will be more closely managed by a students’ provider. This is because obtaining a diagnosis was a barrier to students taking the leave they needed.
It is in their approach to supporting disabled students where the dynamic of UKRi improving its own conditions while encouraging universities to do likewise comes to light. They note
We will require that disabled students are offered reasonable adjustments at the earliest opportunity and that the research organisation or provider has a policy to support this. For our part, we will update UKRI’s Disabled Students’ Allowance (DSA) Framework in April 2025.
Again, the expectation is that providers will not just act reasonably but they will only ask students for evidence of a disability where it is necessary to do so. This is a reflection of EHRC guidance, recommendations of the OfS Disabled Students’ Commission and the Bristol v Abrahart judgement.
Finally, UKRI is removing restrictions on students moving between full or part-time modes of study. Their view is that providers are better placed to advise on student modes of study, and they may offer additional funding if they wish.
There are other important measures within here which deserve consideration. Grant funding will include an individual risk assessment when a student is pregnant, breastfeeding or has given birth in the last six months. There is not strong evidence that PGR students are disadvantaged when joining a trade union. And there are still a whole range of challenges in getting support for international students due to the interplay between visa regulations and PGR study.
In total this feels like the kind of policy change that the sector has been calling for. It is not the kind of public argument, back and forth debate, that has been seen on other culture measures like updating the REF. Instead, it is a considered series of changes to the actual conditions of PGR students that will put more money in their pockets while allowing greater flexibility around: leave, illness, support for disabled students, and mode of study. It is not perfect and the wider pressures PGR students will feel are still acute, but it is a big step forward.
UKRI has taken an approach which the sector may recognise as reasonable. They have updated their own conditions based on the evidence presented to them, explained where they have chosen not to, and given greater flexibility to providers to do the things they believe are important.
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Student Booted from PhD Program Over AI Use (Derek Newton/The Cheat Sheet)
This one is going to take a hot minute to dissect. Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) has the story.
The plot contours are easy. A PhD student at the University of Minnesota was accused of using AI on a required pre-dissertation exam and removed from the program. He denies that allegation and has sued the school — and one of his professors — for due process violations and defamation respectively.
Starting the case.
The coverage reports that:
all four faculty graders of his exam expressed “significant concerns” that it was not written in his voice. They noted answers that seemed irrelevant or involved subjects not covered in coursework. Two instructors then generated their own responses in ChatGPT to compare against his and submitted those as evidence against Yang. At the resulting disciplinary hearing, Yang says those professors also shared results from AI detection software.
Personally, when I see that four members of the faculty unanimously agreed on the authenticity of his work, I am out. I trust teachers.
I know what a serious thing it is to accuse someone of cheating; I know teachers do not take such things lightly. When four go on the record to say so, I’m convinced. Barring some personal grievance or prejudice, which could happen, hard for me to believe that all four subject-matter experts were just wrong here. Also, if there was bias or petty politics at play, it probably would have shown up before the student’s third year, not just before starting his dissertation.
Moreover, at least as far as the coverage is concerned, the student does not allege bias or program politics. His complaint is based on due process and inaccuracy of the underlying accusation.
Let me also say quickly that asking ChatGPT for answers you plan to compare to suspicious work may be interesting, but it’s far from convincing — in my opinion. ChatGPT makes stuff up. I’m not saying that answer comparison is a waste, I just would not build a case on it. Here, the university didn’t. It may have added to the case, but it was not the case. Adding also that the similarities between the faculty-created answers and the student’s — both are included in the article — are more compelling than I expected.
Then you add detection software, which the article later shares showed high likelihood of AI text, and the case is pretty tight. Four professors, similar answers, AI detection flags — feels like a heavy case.
Denied it.
The article continues that Yang, the student:
denies using AI for this exam and says the professors have a flawed approach to determining whether AI was used. He said methods used to detect AI are known to be unreliable and biased, particularly against people whose first language isn’t English. Yang grew up speaking Southern Min, a Chinese dialect.
Although it’s not specified, it is likely that Yang is referring to the research from Stanford that has been — or at least ought to be — entirely discredited (see Issue 216 and Issue 251). For the love of research integrity, the paper has invented citations — sources that go to papers or news coverage that are not at all related to what the paper says they are.Does anyone actually read those things?
Back to Minnesota, Yang says that as a result of the findings against him and being removed from the program, he lost his American study visa. Yang called it “a death penalty.”
With friends like these.
Also interesting is that, according to the coverage:
His academic advisor Bryan Dowd spoke in Yang’s defense at the November hearing, telling panelists that expulsion, effectively a deportation, was “an odd punishment for something that is as difficult to establish as a correspondence between ChatGPT and a student’s answer.”
That would be a fair point except that the next paragraph is:
Dowd is a professor in health policy and management with over 40 years of teaching at the U of M. He told MPR News he lets students in his courses use generative AI because, in his opinion, it’s impossible to prevent or detect AI use. Dowd himself has never used ChatGPT, but he relies on Microsoft Word’s auto-correction and search engines like Google Scholar and finds those comparable.
That’s ridiculous. I’m sorry, it is. The dude who lets students use AI because he thinks AI is “impossible to prevent or detect,” the guy who has never used ChatGPT himself, and thinks that Google Scholar and auto-complete are “comparable” to AI — that’s the person speaking up for the guy who says he did not use AI. Wow.
That guy says:
“I think he’s quite an excellent student. He’s certainly, I think, one of the best-read students I’ve ever encountered”
Time out. Is it not at least possible that professor Dowd thinks student Yang is an excellent student because Yang was using AI all along, and our professor doesn’t care to ascertain the difference? Also, mind you, as far as we can learn from this news story, Dowd does not even say Yang is innocent. He says the punishment is “odd,” that the case is hard to establish, and that Yang was a good student who did not need to use AI. Although, again, I’m not sure how good professor Dowd would know.
As further evidence of Yang’s scholastic ability, Dowd also points out that Yang has a paper under consideration at a top academic journal.
You know what I am going to say.
To me, that entire Dowd diversion is mostly funny.
More evidence.
Back on track, we get even more detail, such as that the exam in question was:
an eight-hour preliminary exam that Yang took online. Instructions he shared show the exam was open-book, meaning test takers could use notes, papers and textbooks, but AI was explicitly prohibited.
Exam graders argued the AI use was obvious enough. Yang disagrees.
Weeks after the exam, associate professor Ezra Golberstein submitted a complaint to the U of M saying the four faculty reviewers agreed that Yang’s exam was not in his voice and recommending he be dismissed from the program. Yang had been in at least one class with all of them, so they compared his responses against two other writing samples.
So, the exam expressly banned AI. And we learn that, as part of the determination of the professors, they compared his exam answers with past writing.
I say all the time, there is no substitute for knowing your students. If the initial four faculty who flagged Yang’s work had him in classes and compared suspicious work to past work, what more can we want? It does not get much better than that.
Then there’s even more evidence:
Yang also objects to professors using AI detection software to make their case at the November hearing.
He shared the U of M’s presentation showing findings from running his writing through GPTZero, which purports to determine the percentage of writing done by AI. The software was highly confident a human wrote Yang’s writing sample from two years ago. It was uncertain about his exam responses from August, assigning 89 percent probability of AI having generated his answer to one question and 19 percent probability for another.
“Imagine the AI detector can claim that their accuracy rate is 99%. What does it mean?” asked Yang, who argued that the error rate could unfairly tarnish a student who didn’t use AI to do the work.
First, GPTZero is junk. It’s reliably among the worst available detection systems. Even so, 89% is a high number. And most importantly, the case against Yang is not built on AI detection software alone, as no case should ever be. It’s confirmation, not conviction. Also, Yang, who the paper says already has one PhD, knows exactly what an accuracy rate of 99% means. Be serious.
A pattern.
Then we get this, buried in the news coverage:
Yang suggests the U of M may have had an unjust motive to kick him out. When prompted, he shared documentation of at least three other instances of accusations raised by others against him that did not result in disciplinary action but that he thinks may have factored in his expulsion.
He does not include this concern in his lawsuits. These allegations are also not explicitly listed as factors in the complaint against him, nor letters explaining the decision to expel Yang or rejecting his appeal. But one incident was mentioned at his hearing: in October 2023, Yang had been suspected of using AI on a homework assignment for a graduate-level course.
In a written statement shared with panelists, associate professor Susan Mason said Yang had turned in an assignment where he wrote “re write it, make it more casual, like a foreign student write but no ai.” She recorded the Zoom meeting where she said Yang denied using AI and told her he uses ChatGPT to check his English.
She asked if he had a problem with people believing his writing was too formal and said he responded that he meant his answer was too long and he wanted ChatGPT to shorten it. “I did not find this explanation convincing,” she wrote.
I’m sorry — what now?
Yang says he was accused of using AI in academic work in “at least three other instances.” For which he was, of course, not disciplined. In one of those cases, Yang literally turned in a paper with this:
“re write it, make it more casual, like a foreign student write but no ai.”
He said he used ChatGPT to check his English and asked ChatGPT to shorten his writing. But he did not use AI. How does that work?
For that one where he left in the prompts to ChatGPT:
the Office of Community Standards sent Yang a letter warning that the case was dropped but it may be taken into consideration on any future violations.
Yang was warned, in writing.
If you’re still here, we have four professors who agree that Yang’s exam likely used AI, in violation of exam rules. All four had Yang in classes previously and compared his exam work to past hand-written work. His exam answers had similarities with ChatGPT output. An AI detector said, in at least one place, his exam was 89% likely to be generated with AI. Yang was accused of using AI in academic work at least three other times, by a fifth professor, including one case in which it appears he may have left in his instructions to the AI bot.
On the other hand, he did say he did not do it.
Findings, review.
Further:
But the range of evidence was sufficient for the U of M. In the final ruling, the panel — comprised of several professors and graduate students from other departments — said they trusted the professors’ ability to identify AI-generated papers.
Several professors and students agreed with the accusations. Yang appealed and the school upheld the decision. Yang was gone. The appeal officer wrote:
“PhD research is, by definition, exploring new ideas and often involves development of new methods. There are many opportunities for an individual to falsify data and/or analysis of data. Consequently, the academy has no tolerance for academic dishonesty in PhD programs or among faculty. A finding of dishonesty not only casts doubt on the veracity of everything that the individual has done or will do in the future, it also causes the broader community to distrust the discipline as a whole.”
Slow clap.
And slow clap for the University of Minnesota. The process is hard. Doing the review, examining the evidence, making an accusation — they are all hard. Sticking by it is hard too.
Seriously, integrity is not a statement. It is action. Integrity is making the hard choice.
MPR, spare me.
Minnesota Public Radio is a credible news organization. Which makes it difficult to understand why they chose — as so many news outlets do — to not interview one single expert on academic integrity for a story about academic integrity. It’s downright baffling.
Worse, MPR, for no specific reason whatsoever, decides to take prolonged shots at AI detection systems such as:
Computer science researchers say detection software can have significant margins of error in finding instances of AI-generated text. OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, shut down its own detection tool last year citing a “low rate of accuracy.” Reports suggest AI detectors have misclassified work by non-native English writers, neurodivergent students and people who use tools like Grammarly or Microsoft Editor to improve their writing.
“As an educator, one has to also think about the anxiety that students might develop,” said Manjeet Rege, a University of St. Thomas professor who has studied machine learning for more than two decades.
We covered the OpenAI deception — and it was deception — in Issue 241, and in other issues. We covered the non-native English thing. And the neurodivergent thing. And the Grammarly thing. All of which MPR wraps up in the passive and deflecting “reports suggest.” No analysis. No skepticism.That’s just bad journalism.
And, of course — anxiety. Rege, who please note has studied machine learning and not academic integrity, is predictable, but not credible here. He says, for example:
it’s important to find the balance between academic integrity and embracing AI innovation. But rather than relying on AI detection software, he advocates for evaluating students by designing assignments hard for AI to complete — like personal reflections, project-based learnings, oral presentations — or integrating AI into the instructions.
Absolute joke.
I am not sorry — if you use the word “balance” in conjunction with the word “integrity,” you should not be teaching. Especially if what you’re weighing against lying and fraud is the value of embracing innovation. And if you needed further evidence for his absurdity, we get the “personal reflections and project-based learnings” buffoonery (see Issue 323). But, again, the error here is MPR quoting a professor of machine learning about course design and integrity.MPR also quotes a student who says:
she and many other students live in fear of AI detection software.
“AI and its lack of dependability for detection of itself could be the difference between a degree and going home,” she said.
Nope. Please, please tell me I don’t need to go through all the reasons that’s absurd. Find me one single of case in which an AI detector alone sent a student home. One.
Two final bits.
The MPR story shares:
In the 2023-24 school year, the University of Minnesota found 188 students responsible of scholastic dishonesty because of AI use, reflecting about half of all confirmed cases of dishonesty on the Twin Cities campus.
Just noteworthy. Also, it is interesting that 188 were “responsible.” Considering how rare it is to be caught, and for formal processes to be initiated and upheld, 188 feels like a real number. Again, good for U of M.
The MPR article wraps up that Yang:
found his life in disarray. He said he would lose access to datasets essential for his dissertation and other projects he was working on with his U of M account, and was forced to leave research responsibilities to others at short notice. He fears how this will impact his academic career
Stating the obvious, like the University of Minnesota, I could not bring myself to trust Yang’s data. And I do actually hope that being kicked out of a university for cheating would impact his academic career.
And finally:
“Probably I should think to do something, selling potatoes on the streets or something else,” he said.
Dude has a PhD in economics from Utah State University. Selling potatoes on the streets. Come on.
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Writing Your Book for Minoritized Women Academics with Jane Jones, PhD
When you write a book, it’s lasting. It’s sharable. Your book is findable online which for professors that means you can help more people with your research, teaching, and the things you care about most. I’m delighted to share this featured interview with you.
Dr. Jane Joann Jones is a book coach for minoritized women professors. She left the tenure track 8 years ago to help you confidently write your book.
Jane says, “You’ve done this research. It’s really meaningful to you. And you wanna see it out in the world.” If you want a book, I want you to have a book! I hope this interview resonates with you.
Welcome to The Social Academic blog and podcast. We’re also on YouTube! I’m Jennifer van Alstyne (@HigherEdPR). Here we talk about managing your online presence as a professor. You can build skills to have a strong digital footprint to share your research and teaching online. And I’m here to help you.
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Meet Dr. Jane Jones
Jennifer: Welcome to The Social Academic. Today I’m talking with Dr. Jane Jones of Up In Consulting.
We’re gonna be talking about books. So, authors, please listen up. This one is for you. Dr. Jane Jones, would you please introduce yourself?
Jane: Sure. My name is Jane Jones. I am a New Yorker and I am a book writing coach. I came to book writing after I left my tenure track job. I was an Assistant Professor of Sociology. That’s where I have my PhD, in sociology.
I started out as a developmental editor and then transitioned into coaching. The business I have now is a book coaching business where I work with women in academia who are writing books in humanities and social sciences. I help them get those books done through a combination of developmental editing, coaching, and project management support.
Jennifer: I love that. Now, can I ask, what do you like most about coaching? Why do you like working with people on their books?
Jane: Oh my goodness, there are a lot of reasons actually. I really do love coaching.
One thing that stands out with the coaching side is how much academics already know, but have been socialized to believe they don’t know. Especially women.
Jennifer: Ooh. Especially women. Okay.
Jane: Especially women. Especially Black women, other women of color, They’ve been taught not to trust their own knowledge.
Jennifer: Mm.
Jane: And through coaching, a lot of what I focus on, is helping people realize that you already know a lot about your topic. You already have a lot of expertise. You don’t always have to defer to other scholars, to your dissertation advisor, especially when you’re writing your book. You no longer have to answer to your dissertation advisor. And that you have a lot of the skills already.
To be sure, there are a lot of things that we aren’t taught about publishing. There is a big hidden curriculum around book writing. And exposing that hidden curriculum is very important, while also reinforcing people’s trust in their own knowledge. Being able to do both of those two things at the same time, I think is the most important part of the coaching relationship for me.
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Jennifer: I love that because my next question was what are universities kind of not teaching you, right? What are universities not teaching, especially minoritized faculty, about writing books?
It sounds like people do have more knowledge than they’re able to process, maybe admit, or accept of themselves. Can you tell me a little bit more about that? Where is that difference between how much we know and how much we really need support?
Jane: I always joke that there’s no Publishing 101. There’s no Book Writing 101.That course is not taught in grad school. I mean, for that matter, Article Writing 101 isn’t either. Those aren’t taught in grad school.
Where people have a lot of knowledge is in their subject matter. In the data you have collected, all of the literature, you’ve read, how you make sense of the literature. People are experts there. You’ve spent your whole graduate career…Because I work with people at all stages of their career from Assistant Professor to Full Professor. You’ve accumulated so much data, number one. And you have so much knowledge. Right? So that is there.
But in terms of questions like, “Well, how is a book different than a dissertation?”
You know, “Structurally, what do I put in my book that wasn’t in the dissertation?”
Or, you know, “How do I create the through line in my book?”
You know, these really, kind of tactical questions about how do I actually do the writing of this type of manuscript? Which is different than an article, and is different than a grant proposal. They’ve never been taught that.
Even though they have all of the information, they don’t know how to get it on paper in a way that is going to be legible for our reader. That’s where the work happens. That’s what we do, and that’s what universities don’t teach people how to do.
Sometimes it’s because people just don’t know how to teach it. It’s kind of like, you write your book for yourself. For many people who write their first book, and if you’re a first book author watching this, if someone comes and asks you what you did, you might be like, “I don’t remember. I just got that done. I was on a tenure timeline, and I put my head down, and I wrote.” And maybe I had a book manuscript workshop. Or, you know, like, I had good friends, or a supportive mentor who read it and gave me feedback. And I wrote, got feedback, wrote, got feedback, and that was it. And then the book was done, right? That doesn’t mean you can then teach that process to somebody else.
So being able to be a little bit on the outside of the process as developmental editor, and with the other developmental editors, you know, who work in the program with me, being on the outside of that process and saying, you know, there are some common things. There are some things that all books have in common. And we’re gonna teach you how to implement and how to learn that craft, the things that are common about the craft of book writing.
We work with people across disciplines. We’re ‘discipline agnostic’ as we like to say. You know, from art historians to people who are more on the side of doing quantitative, big survey research, but writing books. We run the gamut. But even within that, there are things people have in common in their books and in their trials of writing, you know? The experiences they’re having, trying to make enough time to write the book, feeling imposter syndrome, not knowing what to do with feedback, being worried about approaching an acquisitions editor. You know, going back to the hidden curriculum, not knowing how to talk to an acquisitions editor and feeling very intimidated. Those are all things that we help them with that I think aren’t really being talked to them in other places.
People might be exchanging information informally. They’re like, “Oh, my friend published here. They said the editor is really nice.” Or, “They said the editor is really hands-on or not hands-on. So I have this informal knowledge, but I don’t know how to craft an email to an acquisitions editor. Or, strike up a conversation with them at a conference. And I feel very worried to do that.” You know, “I don’t know how to describe my book in one or two sentences so that I could talk to somebody about it at a conference and not spend 10 minutes talking about my book. Which, ultimately I will be, but I don’t have that sharp, quick summary.” Those are things that we help them with, because it could feel very disempowering when you don’t know how to do that.
Again, you have all this great information, but, if you don’t know how to talk to an acquisitions editor, how are you gonna have a book? If you don’t know how to craft a chapter, how are you gonna have a book.
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Jennifer: These are skills that professors can learn. These are skills that are learnable and that you can develop, but because they’re not taught by universities and the people who have experience in them maybe don’t know how to teach these skills, it is amazing that you and your team are there to support them. I’m so happy about that.
And I’m also happy that you work with minoritized faculty, with women. Why is that important to you?
Jane: It’s really important! I just want to go back to one thing, the people who have written books and don’t necessarily know how to teach it. I would add additionally, and kind of looping this into working with women and minoritized faculty is, like, they don’t often have the time to teach somebody elsehow to write a book.
It’s a time consuming process. A book is a multi-year process and people add mentoring like, “I’ll read a chapter for you and give you feedback.” But for someone to give them that structured support over time, faculty are having to publish themselves. They have to do their own service committees, they have their own families. Again, that doesn’t mean that they don’t offer help, but it means that they may not have the time or capacity to give that systematic type of help we do.
I think that’s especially pronounced for women and minoritized faculty because they often have an extra service load. They do more service. We know that statistically. They do more service. They’re doing more care-taking outside of work. Right?
There isn’t always that easy transmission of knowledge from a senior faculty member to a junior faculty member because they’re just as pressed as anybody else. And so are the junior faculty! And we don’t only work with junior faculty, but the majority of our clients are.
They have the same issues like extra service, students who want their mentorship because they’re the only Black person in the department. They’re only person who studies race. They’re the only person who does X research. So they have students who want their mentoring. And all of this creates extra commitments for them.
One thing that we focus on in coaching is helping people prioritize their books when there’s a lot of other things going on. Teaching that craft of writing, but also saying, like, “Hey, this book is really important to you for a lot of reasons. Like, professionally take a tenure promotion. But also because you’ve done this research, it’s really meaningful to you, and you wanna see it out in the world. How do we help you make sure that it stays top of mind?” What do we do to support people so that the book can stay top of mind.
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Jennifer: I love that. I feel like my work is really aligned with that actually, because I’m really helping professors and researchers talk about the research and the teaching that they do on online. That way more people can have conversations, so that they can have more collaboration, so that they can get more research funding.
But most of the people that I work with have a lot of anxiety talking about themselves. Do you find that your authors have anxiety talking about their books?
Jane: Yeah. (laughs) Yeah. Definitely. And I think that the work you’re doing is so important, ’cause, in my opinion, if you write a book, don’t you want people to read it?
Like, you want it out in the world. Like, you wanna be in conversation with other people. You want people to read it, but you also want to talk to people about it.
Jennifer: Right, yeah. Yeah. Even, the ability to have someone on your team, be that kind of support, not just when you start writing the book, but through the whole process. That’s such an amazing idea that we can’t necessarily get through a mentorship position at your university. Especially if no one is in your field. I love that that support system is there.
It also gives authors an opportunity to have someone that they can talk with about their book. Some of the authors that I work with, I ask, “Who do you talk about your book with?”
And their answer is, “No one. Once I stopped working with my editor, I don’t talk with my colleagues. I don’t talk with my family. I don’t talk with my friends. My book came out seven years ago and I never talk about it.”
That really strikes me as something that I think that, people who work with you, they’re talking about their book. And thinking about it in much larger ways. Because it’s really introspective, and being introspective is hard. I love that you help people with that process and actually understand their motivations for why they’re doing it, who they’re helping. It’s amazing.
Jane: Yeah. Thank you. I think that another part that’s really important is that my programs are group programs.
Jennifer: Ooh.
Jane: And that’s on purpose. Because like you said, it is very introspective. For some people, the solitude, the solitary work, they like it. They’re like, “I like writing solitary. I like being alone with my thoughts.” And that’s great.
Some people are like, “It’s isolating, and I don’t like it, and I feel very alone in the process.” Being with people who are at a similar stage as them, and when I say stage, I don’t mean career-wise, I mean stage of the book. Because people come in, and they’re all at a similar stage of writing, so they’re all kind of going through it together.
“I’m trying to figure out the overarching argument of this book,” or, “I’m writing two of my empirical chapters, the two of my body chapters.” There’s a feeling of, “We’re in it together.”
I spoke to a former client the other day, and she was in Elevate a year ago maybe, and she said, “Our Elevate group still meets on Mondays and Thursdays on Zoom, and we still write together.”
Jennifer: I love that.
Jane: I was like, “Oh, my goodness.” I didn’t even know that they did that. And she’s like, “We kept the time and whoever can make it comes on Mondays and Thursdays and we meet.” Just having that community of people who are in it with you and are like, “I’ve seen you from when you started this book and you weren’t sure what it was about. And now you’re here and we’re just seeing each other’s process and giving each other support that way.”
It’s just awesome because we don’t get a lot of that in academia. We have to be very intentional about cultivating it. It doesn’t just show up for us.
Being able to provide that space where you have peers so you can be like, “I tried that too, and this is what happened when I tried it. “You know, or, “I went through that experience and I came out and I was, like, ‘I did it, and you could do it too.’”
Jennifer: I did it and you can do it too. Just hearing those two sentences, they’re so short. But, it just makes such a difference, especially to the women and minoritized faculty that you most want to help.
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Jane: Yeah. I mean just seeing that. ‘Cause you get into it and you’re like, “I don’t know if I’m ever gonna be done with this book.” (Jane laughs). People definitely have that thought,
- “I don’t know if I’m gonna be able to finish this.”
- “I’ve been avoiding it.”
- “I haven’t been working on my book, because I’ve been scared.”
- “I got some feedback that put me into a tailspin.”
- “I became overwhelmed with other commitments and I feel some shame about it.
- “I feel so embarrassed.”
Jennifer: Hmm.
Jane: And reminding them that it happens. It’s disappointing that it happens, but it doesn’t mean something’s wrong with you. I was normalizing it and seeing when I did one-on-one, one thing that always happened was people would tell me something, I’d be like, “Oh, that’s really common.”
And they’d be like, “It is?”
And I’d be like, “Yeah, I have other clients who have experienced that.”
And they’re like, “They have?”
Jennifer: (Laughs). Yeah
Jane: So being able to put everyone in the group and be like, “Look, you’re all having this experience.” You are not uniquely incompetent in some way. This is something that happens to a lot of people. Just because we aren’t talking about it on Twitter, doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.
Jennifer: You know, I like when it is talked about on Twitter. I like when people talk about their struggles with writing on Twitter. Because I cheer them on. I’m like, “If you struggle with your writing, you get back to it, even if it’s a year later, two years later, 10 years later, I don’t care. Because I will remember that you were vulnerable and open about something you were going through. And I wanna cheer you on and I wanna hear about things when they’re not so good too.” So I really like vulnerability.
I love that people have a safe space to do that in your program. But I also encourage people, if you’re struggling with something, being open about it on social media can help spark new ideas, tools, and resources that you can use. But also new collaborations and ideas that could help spurn your research in another way. I mean, there’s just so much possibility besides hearing from other people, “Yes. I went through that too.” So yeah, I like that idea of being open about it.
Jane: Yeah, to be open about it! You know, it’s interesting. We gravitate to what is other people’s achievements and our failures, right? So, you finish a chapter and you’re like, “Yeah, but it’s not as good as I thought it would be.” Or, “Yeah, but it took me two months longer than I thought it would.” There’s always a diminishing.
Jennifer: Mm.
Jane: And convert on the flip side, they talk about other people who are like, “Well, that person finished their chapter so much faster than I did.” Or, “That person, you know, did this.” And it’s like, well, maybe they did. Maybe you don’t know the whole story. But it’s interesting, in our brains we kind of put everyone else as, “Well, they did it better or faster than I did. And when I did it, it was a mess.” And to coach around that and be like what is the story you are telling about your progress? And, is that story serving you? Because often it’s not. Saying, “I wrote my chapter, but…” And then using some type of diminishing, diminishing it in some way, how is that helping you?
Jennifer: Hmm.
Jane: Why would we emphasize that part of the story? What does it accomplish? It doesn’t accomplish anything besides making you feel like crap. It doesn’t accomplish anything. It doesn’t make you write faster. You can’t go back in time.(Jennifer laughs) You can’t go back in time and write the chapter faster.
Jennifer: Yeah, yeah.
Jane: So why would we talk about it so much? But we do, because sometimes we’re like, “Well, I don’t wanna seem arrogant.” Or, “It’s because I don’t believe that this is worthy of celebrating because it didn’t happen the exact way I wanted it to.” So where are the opportunities to kind of neutralize some of that language, so that people aren’t…
Jennifer: But you can find positives in it, right? Like, maybe that extra time gave you opportunity to realize something new. Maybe it was good that you didn’t write it as fast as you thought you might have been able to. There’s so much self-talk that can be negative that can be harmful for ourselves.
Jane: Yeah, there’s a lot of negative self-talk. Yeah.
Jennifer: Yeah. – I’ve definitely done that. I’m a creative writer and I’ve totally done that to my own. I didn’t write that fast enough or I didn’t write as much as so-and-so, yeah. It’s never helpful. It’s never helpful.
Jane: Yeah. Yeah. It’s like our running critic. And sometimes, it’s something my coach always says, “We can’t always get the critic to completely go away. We can put them in the backseat of the car, and be like, ‘You go back there. You’re not driving this car anymore. You’re not even in the back seat, but, like, the third row.’” (Jennifer laughs) You know, “We’re putting you back there. Like, I recognize that I may not be at a point where I can get rid of you, but I’m not going to give you authority over this ride. You don’t have the wheel. You’re back there.”
Jennifer: Still in the car, right? Can’t kick it out entirely. I mean, sometimes we can’t get control over it.
Jane: Still in the car. Like, you realize, you’re not wrong for having these thoughts. Like, they’re natural. And we’ve also been socialized to believe it’s not rigorous enough. It’s not fast enough. Publish or perish. There’s a lot of socialization at hand that is part of the reason why people have these thoughts.
As a coach it would be irresponsible for me to go in and just be like, “Oh no, you shouldn’t think any of this ever again.” Because as a sociologist, I know how strong the socialization is. As a coach I know that just makes you feel bad about having the thought. Then you feel bad because you didn’t write fast enough according to your standard. Then you feel bad that you’re judging yourself. And then you just feel doubly bad. So it’s like, “Okay, let’s just, like, take it back.”
Jennifer: Get out of that spiral.
Jane: Yeah. Let’s get out of the spiral. And, it’s okay that you had that thought. It’s okay that you feel bad. We don’t want you to feel bad indefinitely.
Jennifer: Hmm. I like that. We don’t want you to feel bad indefinitely.
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Jennifer: Tell me more about Elevate. Who should join?
Jane: Everyone. I’m just kidding. (Jane and Jennifer laugh).
Jennifer: You said that people in the cohort are all in a similar place writing their book. When is it right to join your program Elevate?
Jane: Okay, so Elevate is a group editing and coaching program. We have a curriculum that we walk you through the
- craft of writing a book
- project management behind writing a book
- mindset issues behind writing a book.
So much of what slows us down is our own thoughts. Like, “I’m not ready to write this.” “I don’t know what decision to make.” “So and so said this about my chapter, so I’m going to feel bad about it and just ignore it.” “I’m gonna avoid. I don’t wanna look at the feedback, so I’m just gonna avoid it.”
Those are the three domains we work in the craft of writing, project management, and mindset. We do that through a curriculum. We have lessons the same way you would in any course. We have editorial feedback, so you submit your writing for feedback twice a month.
And we have a lot of mindset coaching that I coach people hard, (Jennifer laughs) which I think is what most Elevate alumni would say. Like, “Jane really coaches us. Like, she really pushes us.”
Jennifer: Right.
Jane: I push you in a way that not like, “Write your book faster, write your book faster,” but rather, “Let’s get to the bottom of why you’re having these feelings about your book. Let’s get to it and figure it out,” type of coaching.
Because we’re academics, we’re in our brains so much. When it gets into having emotions, we’re, like, “Oh, no, we’re rational. We can’t really think about that.”
I used to be that person too. Oh, no.(Jennifer laughs) I hate that, all that emotion stuff. That’s not gonna work for me. Well, I kind of need to confront it, because you and your book are gonna be together for a very long time.
Like you were saying, like, as you write it and then after you write it, it’s not going anywhere. You should figure out how to enjoy it. To find pleasure in the process of writing it and be excited about it.
It’s just like any other thing. You’re not gonna be excited about your book 24 hours a day, but you wanna get to a point where you’re more excited and motivated than you are demoralized and stressed.
Jennifer: Hmm, mm-hm.
Jane: In the program, we go 24 weeks. We go through those three themes one by one. People who join, all women, they’re normally at a stage in their book where they are figuring out the big overarching picture of the book and the structure of the book.
Some people come in and they haven’t written a lot yet. They have all of their data collected, most of their literature read. You might need to go back and collect a little bit more data, but, we want you to really be past that stage. Some people come in and they haven’t written a lot.
Some people come in and they’ve written a lot and they’re just like, “I’ve been writing and writing, but I still don’t have a really clear through line,” or, “I still don’t know my argument.” And that’s fine, because people’s processes are different. Some people like to get a lot of words on paper and then go back and kind of orient themselves.
We advocate you creating the foundation first and then building your house. (Jennifer laughs) So people normally come in when they want that support. What we do first is teach people how to write your book overview, how to write your book’s framework and then create an outline for the entire book. And then they start writing chapters.
Normally within the program you can come out with a couple of chapter drafts if you have the time to commit, and you will know what your book is about, how you’re going to write it. You know how it’s going to unfold over time. And then you get to work.
Jennifer: You have a plan in place. You have the mindset that you need to make that plan actually done, like, to get your book done. I love that.
Jane: Yeah, yeah.
Jennifer: Oh, if people want more support, you help them with that too. Like, beyond writing their book, is that correct?
Jane: We focus on books, but we have an alumni program for Elevate. We don’t expect anyone to write a book in six months. (Jennifer and Jane laugh). That is not what we do. We do not make pie in the sky promises.
We have an alumni program and people often come back and do the alumni program, which is another six months. There we really focus on more now you’ve done a lot of the deep work, the deep thinking in Elevate. Now we are helping you get a lot of words on paper. People are doing the writing and getting the body chapters, I call them ‘the empirical chapters.’ But I know people also have ‘theory chapters,’ so I don’t want anyone to be like, “What about the theory chapter?”
We focus on getting chapters done or revising because some people will take Elevate, go off for a little while and work independently, and then come back and be like, “I have a couple of chapters done.” And we’re like, “Great, let’s start revising them.”
Jennifer: I’m glad I asked you about that because I felt like there might be some people who are like, “Oh, I need a little bit more help than that. Is there an option?” I’m glad that there’s an alumni program that supports you with continuing that process. That’s amazing.
What else should people know or consider about Elevate? Because your new cohort is opening up again soon.
Jane: Yeah, so we accept people who are writing first, second, third books. I think initially when we ran the program, it was very much for people who were transforming dissertations into books. And we have gotten a substantial number of people who are writing second books, which are a different challenge because you don’t have that scaffolding of the dissertation. Even if your first book is dramatically different from the dissertation, which many are, the book is not a revised dissertation. It is like a caterpillar to butterfly.
But the second book just poses different challenges, and we support people who are writing their second book, their third book, because that foundational work of creating the overview, the framework, the outline, you need to do that every time. It’s not like you write the first book and you’re like, “Well I’m an expert on book writing now, so I don’t need any help.” That’s not how it works. (Jennifer laughs). And even experts get support.
So it’s not a matter that it’s a remedial type of program. That’s not what it is. It’s not, for, “Oh the people who don’t know how to write books.” No, it’s for people who wanna write books with supportive community, expert editorial feedback and coaching to help them write the book with less stress, a better support system, a clear foundation for the book. So that they can make progress with more ease.
Writing a book is a complicated thing. It should be because you’re dealing with complicated ideas and all sorts of interesting data. And it’s not easy. But there can be more clarity and momentum in the process than what there currently is for a lot of people.
Jennifer: I think that this is such a wonderful gift that you can give to yourself, especially if this is, like, your second, third, or fourth book. Like, why not make this time easier and better?
Jane: The majority of the people who work with us pay through their universities. We have a significant number of people, and some people pay out of pocket. We have people who are like, “I wanna make this investment because my book’s important to me and I don’t wanna twiddle my thumbs…”
Jennifer: (Laughs). Good. So if you are listening to this, if you’re watching us on YouTube or reading the blog, know that this is a program that’s there to support you and that you can pay for it out of pocket or you can request funds from your university. I hope that you sign up for the wait list.
Jane: You can apply for Elevate. The application is just an application. It’s not a commitment to join the program. We look at your application, because one thing about the program is that we wanna make sure that you’re a good fit for the program.
We also wanna make sure the program’s a good fit for you. If we think that you’re not at the right stage, if there’s something about your research that we feel that we can’t support you…For instance, we had someone who’s writing a memoir and we’re like, “We don’t really edit a lot of memoirs.” If we feel like the program is not a good fit for you, we will tell you because we only want people in it who can commit and who we can help.
That is the point of going in and applying and possibly talking to me about the process if you have a lot of questions, that we wanna make sure that it works for everyone. Because it’s a big commitment. And also, a book is a big deal. If you’re gonna get support, you wanna make sure you’re getting the right support at the right time.
Instagram Live about finding your book audience on social media
Jennifer: I love that. Thank you so much for joining me for this interview, and for everyone listening, I do wanna let you know that Jane and I did an Instagram Live where we talked about your book audience versus platform.
Thank you so much for watching this episode of The Social Academic! And thank you so much, Dr. Jane Jones, for joining me.
Jane: Thank you for having me. It was a pleasure.
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Jane Joann Jones is an academic book coach who helps minoritized scholars get the feedback & support they need to confidently write their books. Jane strives to be the coach she wished for when she was on the tenure track.
In her eight years as an editor and coach, Jane has successfully helped dozens of academic authors create and execute a writing plan and ultimately write their books, confidently. Her clients have published with presses including Oxford, Princeton, Bloomsbury, University of Chicago, Stanford, Duke, and UNC. Through her work, Jane has restored minoritized academics’ faith in their writing abilities and their place in the academic world.
When she’s not challenging the status quo in academia, you can find Jane sipping a craft bourbon, on the rocks, while experimenting with a new cooking recipe. She also enjoys visiting museums for only one hour, devouring cooking shows, and impromptu dance parties to the tunes of Lizzo and Queen Bey. If you happen to be strolling through her New York neighborhood, you might see her at Lucille’s, her local café, drinking an oat milk latté with a raspberry donut and a good book.
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LinkedIn for PhDs with Dr. Gertrude Nonterah of The Bold PhD
I’m anxious about how to start posting on LinkedIn. Or, I’ve never posted on LinkedIn before. Is this you?
Meet my featured interview guest, Dr. Gertrude Nonterah. She’s a LinkedIn expert, and host of The Bold PhD YouTube channel. This interview focuses on LinkedIn for PhDs and how opening up about Gertrude’s struggle finding a job with a PhD invited opportunity.
I’m Jennifer van Alstyne. Welcome to The Social Academic blog, podcast, and YouTube channel. I empower professors to feel confident when showing up online. Help more people know your name and your research when you build an online presence that works for you.
In this interview:
Meet Dr. Gertrude Nonterah
Jennifer: Hello, everyone. I am Jennifer van Alstyne and welcome to The Social Academic. I’m so excited to talk with you today about LinkedIn because my special featured interview guest, Dr. Gertrude Nonterah is amazing at LinkedIn. I mean literally the person that I recommend if you’re new to LinkedIn and you need to go follow someone to figure out what they’re doing and what’s working well. She’s the person.
Gertrude, Gee, I’m so excited for you to be here with me today. Would you mind introducing yourself to everyone?
Gertrude: Absolutely. Thank you. First of all, I want to say thank you, Jennifer, for inviting me for this show. I’ve known about your show for about two years now. And so just being here is such a privilege. I’m Gertrude Nonterah. You can call me Gee, because sometimes people would struggle to say Gertrude.
Let me start with The Bold PhD. Essentially, I finished my PhD in 2015. When I finished, I went straight into a postdoc. During this postdoc, I realized that income was low. I live in California. I started a side business. I started doing that and then somewhere along the line I lost my job as a postdoc.
When I lost my job as a postdoc, I thought it would take me a couple of months and then I’d find a new job. But instead it took a year and a half to find a new job because nothing I was doing was working. I was applying to jobs within academia, jobs outside academia. I was even applying for second postdocs. And nothing was opening up.
The job ended in May of 2018 because of funding cuts or funding running out. I didn’t get another role until I was offered the role in December of 2019. So I wouldn’t start another role until 2020. That 18-month period was such a growing time, a difficult time. When I landed that faculty position, and later when I moved on into medical communications, I really wanted to chat about the emotions around you know being a jobless PhD.
Right? You’ve been told to go to school. You’ve been told to get all this education. And yet you’re applying for jobs and nothing is working, right? How do you navigate that?
Once I began to talk about that, and especially on LinkedIn, people began to resonate. And people would reach out to me and say, “I’m going through the exact same thing.” Like, “I can’t believe that this is happening to me.”
Gertrude: That’s how The Bold PhD was then born. I realized that there was a need for people to kind of talk about that. It’s sort of like a shameful topic to say that you have all this education and you don’t have a job. Right? I mean what did you do wrong? And so as I began to talk about I began to build that community. And it’s just taken off from there.
Jennifer: Oh, I love that so much. What I love the most is that you said that you really wanted to talk about the emotions that you had experienced, that other people might be going through now. My fiancé went through that. Many of my friends went through that same experience of joblessness as a PhD. And really struggling to communicate what you need and also your emotions about everything. Because certainly they felt embarrassed. They felt alone. They felt isolated.
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Jennifer: I love that emotions was something that really inspired you to start talking about that. What was it like to be open about that and have so many people resonate with it and respond?
Gertrude: Yes. When I started talking about this and especially when I started talking about transitioning from academia into industry, and also the emotional side of it…People have been transitioning from academia to industry for a really long time. Right? That’s not the new thing.
The thing that I brought to it was actually talking about the mental state. Your mental state, and the emotions, and the financials. What people don’t usually talk about: the kind of difficulty they go through when they have financial stress.
People began to direct message [DM] me. People left comments. At first it was a little overwhelming because I didn’t know it was going to open the floodgates of like people…Literally, I would receive maybe a hundred comments on a post. Or, maybe one day I would get like 20 different DMs of people asking me questions: “Well how did you do this?” “How did you navigate that?”
In the beginning it was kind of overwhelming. But now I’ve realized that this was something that needed to be talked about. I’m glad that I started that conversation. Maybe I didn’t start the conversation, but I was bold enough, hence the name The Bold PhD, to begin actually talking about it. And putting myself out there.
The thing is, when you do that you’re also vulnerable. Right? I am quite a private person. I’m an introvert. There are lots of things I keep to myself. But I think that there are certain things that if nobody ever talks about, it never gets talked about, and people continue to suffer in silence. I didn’t want that to continue.
Gertrude: I wanted people to realize there are people that will finish a PhD and will not find a job. And yes, you will go through some days where you’re crying, and you’re weepy, and you’re upset. And yes, I went through this. It’s not fun to put yourself out there and say you were good. Because there are also people like I know from my childhood and from my days back in school who follow me, and you know they’re gonna see that. Like you don’t always want people from home to see that, but they’re people that see that.
But I realize that 1. a lot of people don’t care as much as you think they care. Right?
Jennifer and Gertrude laugh.
And 2. the people that care actually resonate with that message. And they need your help. And they will seek out your help.
So that’s how it’s been. I was afraid at first, but you know, I realized there was something that needed to be talked about.
Jennifer: That’s so powerful. And you did start that conversation for all those people who are reaching out to you for the first time. It’s probably the first time anyone invited a conversation for them. I really am so impressed with your ability not just to be open about yourself, but to respond and actually engage with people who have questions about it.
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Jennifer: LinkedIn sounds like it was so important for you. LinkedIn sounds like where you really built your platform in terms of your personal brand. Why did you get on LinkedIn? And, why should others be on LinkedIn too?
Gertrude: That’s right. Great question, Jennifer. At first, I wasn’t a LinkedIn person. Like, I would have jumped on Instagram. I was on Instagram and Facebook when Facebook was like a big thing. And I was on YouTube for a little while. The Bold PhD is actually on YouTube too.
I think the reason why I jumped on LinkedIn, and the reason I still write on LinkedIn is because currently LinkedIn has unbeatable reach when you compare it to all the other platforms.
It’s kind of slowed down a little bit. I do see changes with the algorithm. But for the most part, I think that LinkedIn is quite fair with putting your content in front of the right eyes, especially if you already have people interacting with your content.
The way that LinkedIn is different from other platforms is: For instance, me and Jennifer are connected. If she posts something and I go and I like it and I comment on it, there’s a likelihood that people in my network that are not connected with Jennifer are going to see that comment. They’re going to see that.
Gertrude: Or, even, I could share that piece of content. Sharing, you can do anywhere, but specifically liking and commenting on a post. And by doing so my community, or the people that are connected to me, could find out about Jennifer and be like, “Oh, that’s somebody I really want to connect with. Let me connect with her.”
And no other social media platform is doing this currently. All the platforms are really based on, ‘we’re going to show your content to a few people and if they like it then we’ll show it to more people.’ And that’s how YouTube, and TikTok, and Instagram all work. But LinkedIn is kind of like that, but you also have the added benefit of you could discover people just from people in your network interacting with other people. That was the 1st thing.
The 2nd thing was, I had gone to a conference and somebody had mentioned that doing video on LinkedIn was like a big thing. I tried to do video on LinkedIn. I didn’t like it very much because still in my mind, LinkedIn wasn’t a video platform. I didn’t ever stick with that. But I did notice that people were writing on LinkedIn and doing well. And I’m a writer. I do this. I work in medical communications. I was like, “Okay, let me just pull my strength and do that.”
I’m still a little self-conscious of doing video on LinkedIn even though I do video on YouTube.
Jennifer: That’s so funny.
Gertrude: I don’t know why. I don’t know why there’s a disconnect.
Jennifer: Yeah, that’s so interesting. It’s like, you could even use the same video on LinkedIn. But it still feels like separate platforms. That’s okay! That’s really interesting to hear.
Gertrude: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. I would say that those two things.
When I noticed that people were also getting attention on LinkedIn with their writing, I said, “Okay, let me try this.” And I tried. And it’s worked. And I’m really grateful.
Another thing about LinkedIn that I want to fill in there before your next question, Jennifer. There is a stat out there that only about 1-2% of people on LinkedIn actually create any content on a weekly basis. Not even on a daily basis.
When you intentionally create content 5 times a week, 3 times a week, you are actually part of a percentage of 1% that is producing regular content. That can really put your personal brand, if you’re trying to build that for your career, on steroids. Really. I mean I don’t know everything. But it really can skyrockets who you reach.
Jennifer: Yeah, people even just like a couple of years ago were often surprised when they asked me, “What’s your biggest platform?”
And I was like, “Oh, it’s LinkedIn.
They’d be like, “Wait, what? Do you post on LinkedIn?”
And I didn’t. I actually wasn’t really posting all that much. But I was connecting with a lot of people and having conversations over messages.
So there are different ways to interact with the platform, but a lot of people just aren’t even sure if LinkedIn is for academics. For people who are leaving grad school and looking for their next job, yeah, they’re like, “Okay, I need it for a job.” But it’s not the same as needing it for networking, personal growth, for personal connections, which all can also be found on LinkedIn.
One of the things that I really love about LinkedIn is that your LinkedIn post lasts for a long time. If you send a tweet, if you share an Instagram post, it’s gonna last for a day. Maybe even less, especially on Twitter. But with LinkedIn, people can log in a week, two weeks later, and if they don’t have a lot of connections, your post is still probably going to show up at the top of their feed. So you can reach people, not only more people, but reach those people for a longer period of time than your other social media posts.
I really love Gertrude’s suggestion of posting regularly. Even if it’s just once a week you’re doing more than what 99% LinkedIn users? That would be amazing and really life-changing for people.
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Jennifer: You said you liked writing on LinkedIn. You didn’t really like playing around with the video content on there. But you have YouTube.
How do you decide what kind of content to create? And how do you make that decision? Are there things that you’re just like I really don’t like that and I’ve put it aside?
Gertrude: Yeah. I think most of my content has come from questions people ask me. I’m very, very conscious of that. Of course you can create content that’s popular and stuff. But I truly do try to focus about 80% of my content on questions people ask me.
Jennifer: 80%? That’s a lot.
Gertrude: I would say that.
Jennifer: I love how audience driven that is. When someone has a question, you’re like, “What kind of content can I create from this?” That’s amazing.
Gertrude: Yes. Anytime anybody asks me a question on YouTube, on LinkedIn, even on TikTok, I take that question and I create content out of it. Just this morning on TikTok…The Bold PhD is on TikTok, we just hit 1,000 followers.
Jennifer: Yay! Jennifer claps.
Gertrude: On TikTok, I just answered some of these questions because they were asking me about how did I get into medical communications. On TikTok, you can just click on the question and you can answer it with another TikTok. Essentially, that became a post I put on TikTok. And also on my Instagram Reels. Two things with just one piece of content. But most of the time I’m just really looking at that.
I always love the questions. When somebody sends me a DM and asks me a question, I usually will tell them, “You know what, I’ll answer your question. I’m going to answer it as a post because if you have this question at least 100 other people have the same question. So I’m going to create a piece of content out of it. And you will benefit from it and other people are also going to benefit from it.” I’ve done that both with LinkedIn and YouTube and it has served me very, very well.
Gertrude: There is something to be said for audience driven content where, yes, you can definitely do your own. You can, for those of you if you’re like me and you’re writing out like pretty old school, well not old school. But you would do SEO research for content ideas from other content creators that are working. Or, you could even do that on any platform really. If content is working for somebody, then you try to copy it in some way or mimic it. And I think that the reason why sometimes my content does well, not all the time, but it generally it does well is that I’m taking specific questions people ask. I’m posing the question. And I’m giving an answer.
Sometimes I don’t know the answer to the question, and I may invite others to say, you know, this is how I feel about it. But how do others feel about it? And that then generates a lot of conversation on a post. And then it becomes another you know somebody who will leave a comment and that triggers another idea.
It’s really like a machine of, “I’m gonna look, I’m gonna read.” I read every comment. I read every question. I mean, sometimes I don’t react. Or, I may not respond to it. But I read everything. And usually those are my inspiration for creating content.
Jennifer: Wow. That is honestly inspiring for me. I feel like I get asked a lot of questions. And, I do occasionally create content around it. But the content that I’m creating, I feel like sometimes it takes too long to actually stop the other things that I had planned and focus on that. I love that you’re just gonna get on TikTok, you’re going to get on Instagram Reels, and you’re gonna answer those questions.
And you collect questions to answer again later. I’m gonna start doing some of that because I think it’s such a wonderful idea.
Especially for academics, professors and grad students who are leaving academia. They want to still be able to have conversations about the things that they care about, the research that they care about. And also, what they’re doing next. I think that that is an amazing way for them to generate those ideas. Having people ask them questions and like actually answering them.
Gertrude: Yeah! If you want to take that even further, especially for people that maybe you offer a service and so you create contents around this one niche subject. Well, you could go find your colleagues within that same space and look at the questions people are asking them also. Because likely people in your audience have those questions. It’s not something I’ve actively done, but that’s also another idea I always give to people if you don’t have the audience yet to start commenting or asking you questions.
Like I said earlier on how I started, it was that I wanted to talk about some of the things that I had gone through because I was jobless. So I started from my personal experiences and then that led to people beginning to follow me. Then as they began to follow me, they began to ask questions. I began to answer their questions. And a lot of the time when I’m answering the questions I’m still pulling a lot from my personal experiences and from things I’ve read. And for experiences I’ve had or something somebody told me. You do end up still serving them based on whatever your niche is. But I always find that the better content creators in any industry are always very queued into what their audience, or the people listening to them, are asking them. Then they give them back content that meets that need.
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Jennifer: I love that. You do a lot of different forms of content. But you definitely talked about how video felt comfortable for you on YouTube, and not on LinkedIn.
Why do you like creating YouTube content? What is it about YouTube, I mean you have The Bold PhD channel, I think you also have a personal channel if I’m correct. So what is it about YouTube and video that you enjoy?
Gertrude: Yeah, I literally wrote to my channel this morning: “I do too much.” I need to like curb that, right?
Jennifer: Yeah.
Gertrude: I was applying for a job and somebody said, “Wow, you’re doing a lot of things at once. Are you sure you want a job?”
Jennifer laughs.
Gertrude: That was hilarious.
The reason I like video content is because of the personal touch it adds to responding to people’s questions. When you write, we get to read what you’ve written but we don’t get your facial expressions. We don’t get to know you.
I feel both video and podcasting are a great way for people to get to know you. They hear your voice. They see your face.
Gertrude: I met somebody once who had started watching me, watching my videos. And we met at a coffee shop here in San Diego. And they’re like, “You’re just like you are on video.”
And I’m like, “I’m not any different.”
Jennifer laughs and nods.
Gertrude: For me, authenticity is important. Connecting is important.
Another thing that’s important with YouTube, is that YouTube is a search engine. If you do very well with number one, responding to what your audience wants, and number two making sure that it’s optimized for the search engine.
That content could live for a long time. There are videos I created 5, 6 years ago that I get comments on. And I’m like, “I don’t know what I said in that video.” This is like on my personal channel. I don’t even know what I said in that video. I don’t even care about that subject anymore.
Jennifer and Gertrude laugh.
Gertrude: But somebody just left me a comment on it.
Jennifer: Because they’re finding it for the first time. Because they’ve searched for it in Google and your video shows up.
Gertrude: And the video showed up, exactly. It’s taking advantage of that.
Because of that, I’ve had people that have
- They followed me for years
- They bought my products
- They’ve invited me to speak because they see me and they hear me and they’re like I would love to interact with this person.
For me, it’s that authenticity connection and also taking advantage of an already built and very robust search engine.
Jennifer: I love it. People don’t always realize that social media platforms are search engines. Twitter is a search engine. YouTube is a search engine. LinkedIn is my favorite search engine, to be honest. Especially for academics who are looking for other people in your field.
You can literally search the keyword for whatever your research topic is, and find other people around the world who are doing similar work. If it’s on their profile, you can find them. And that’s something so many people don’t realize.
Jennifer: When I say get on LinkedIn, I really mean it because you can find real people like you.
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Jennifer: I want to hear a little bit about your LinkedIn course, because you do have a product to help people be on LinkedIn.
This is something that’s so important especially as Twitter for many people feels really uncertain right now. They’re not sure if they want to stay for political reasons. They’re not sure if they want to stay for security reasons. And they’re trying to figure out where to go next.
I know LinkedIn is an excellent answer for them, but some people need help. So please tell me about your LinkedIn course.
Gertrude: Absolutely. When I started seeing success with LinkedIn, and this year I spoke at 16 events. And those 16 events, each and every one of them have come from people saying, “Oh, I connected with you on LinkedIn.” I think about 90% was like, “I connected with you on LinkedIn.” “Oh. I watched your YouTube video.” Usually it’s like one or the other. And I was like, wow, that’s powerful.
And not just that, but I’ve had opportunities to coach other people. I don’t do a lot of that, but I’ve had opportunity. People reach out to say, “Hey, can you coach me?”
People have reached out to me with jobs. Let me tell you why that’s significant. Earlier on, I mentioned how I struggled for a year and a half. And I still get emotional about it because like that time was a really difficult time in my life. And finances were not so great. I have a child who needed health insurance, and I didn’t have health insurance. So it really is an emotional topic for me.
I remember somebody reaching out to me and saying, “I want to give you a job.” To go from struggling to find a job for a year and a half to somebody reaching out to me: not to interview me. I was confused. I’m like, “Oh, you want to interview me?”
“No, no, we want to give you a job.”
Gertrude: Then I had a friend of mine who I connected with on LinkedIn later on, I would find out that we went to the same PhD program but he had graduated a few years ahead of me. A recruiter reached out to me about a job that was not even being advertised yet, and they said, “You know, this person raved about you.” And so through my connections, I got this opportunity to interview for a great job at a great academic institution. No way would these people look at me if somebody hadn’t talked about me and raved about me. I ended up turning down that job, but I was really sorry to turn down that job because I had just been offered another one.
But those two things: like having somebody go ahead of me and recommend me for such an amazing role at a great institution. Having somebody want to offer me a job. That sold me on the platform. That sold me.
You know, the speaking, everything else was great. But building my personal brand has been a life change that took me from struggling to find health insurance for my child who severely needed it, to people offering me jobs.
Because of that, I built this course on how people can build a personal brand and leverage their personal brand to open up opportunities for them, The Branded Scholar Bootcamp.
A lot of us don’t use LinkedIn unless we’re looking for a job. I noticed that when a lot of the layoffs started happening, people would post, “I’ve been laid off.” I would go and try to support that comment and all that, but before that happens to you, you could be building a personal brand so that when something like that happens to you, you could immediately have people who are clamoring to say, “I want you.”
Because of that I built the course called The Branded Scholar Bootcamp, teaching you step-by-step how to set up and build a personal brand on LinkedIn. And how to create content in a systematic way. How to be consistent. How to build your speaker page if you want to speak and have people invite you to speak for them. I laid out step-by-step how I’ve used LinkedIn and how others can use LinkedIn to build a personal brand that attracts opportunities to them.
Jennifer: Oh, I love that so much. And for some of you listening right now, you’re like, “Jennifer, don’t you have a LinkedIn course?” Let me tell you it is nothing like this one. My LinkedIn course is really for professors who just want a LinkedIn profile. They want to know how to put their academic life on their LinkedIn profile. And they really aren’t looking to post. They’re not necessarily looking to network on LinkedIn. So that’s what my course helps with. And you can see it’s wildly different from this one.
The Branded Scholar Bootcamp is all about making connections and making real relationships that can help you, not just with your job search but with other areas of your life. I mean this sounds like it’s really world opening and that’s why I wanted you to know about it.
Gertrude: Thank you so much, Jennifer. I really appreciate that. People can check that out.
Jennifer: Yeah! Be sure to check it out.
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Jennifer: It has been so amazing to talk with you about LinkedIn, to talk with you about YouTube, and all of the amazing things you’re doing to help people. I mean you’re changing the world. And I love it.
Do you have anything else you’d like to add before we wrap up? This has been such a fun conversation for me.
Gertrude: Absolutely. It’s been such a great conversation. I just wanted to say that if you’re not building a personal brand, it all started on LinkedIn for me. And I know that people may have their feelings about LinkedIn. And definitely you can use LinkedIn.
But even if you don’t use LinkedIn, there are other platforms out there where you can build a personal brand.
I’m very, very pro building a personal brand for your academic career because nothing is certain in the world that we live in today. You never know where your next opportunity is going to come from.
Building a personal brand is literally currency you can cash out at some point in your career.
Gertrude: Don’t hesitate to build a personal brand even if all you do is post once a week on Instagram, or post once a week on LinkedIn about your academic career, or about you know maybe you’re transitioning out of academia and you want to talk about that, or you know you’re talking about your research, or teaching in the classroom.
Whatever it is, build a personal brand before you need it. Because trust me, at some point you may need it.
Even if you never need it, the opportunities it opens up for you are just unmatched. And I highly recommend that you do build your personal brand. Thank you, Jennifer, for giving me the opportunity to talk about that.
Jennifer: This has been so inspiring. I really think that people are gonna go make their LinkedIn profile after talking to you because this has been eye-opening. I hope that lots of people find your interview helpful. Thanks so much for coming on The Social Academic!
Gertrude: Thank you so much, Jennifer. Thank you.
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Dr. Gertrude Nonterah is a medical communications professional. She graduated from Lewis Katz Temple University School of Medicine with a Ph.D. in Microbiology and Immunology in 2015.
She is the host of The Bold PhD YouTube channel which helps graduate students and PhDs prepare for and navigate the career market outside academia.
Join The Branded Scholar Bootcamp.
Interviews LinkedIn Social Media How To’s The Social Academic
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Author Linda Moore on Attribution, a Novel about a PhD Student
When PhD student, Cate Adamson finds an unknown painting in her university’s basement, she journeys to Spain to uncover the mystery. An impoverished duke, misogynist advisor, and intrigue in the archives. Attribution is the perfect gift for the academic in your life!
Linda Moore, author of Attribution, joins me in this featured interview. We talk about her book and how to get comfortable talking about your book too.
I’ve you’ve ever felt anxious about talking about your book, this is a great interview for you!
Start with this short video, that goes behind-the-scenes on women’s experiences in the academy. This video is fire, please share it with your friends.
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Listen to How to Talk About Your Book with Author of Attribution Linda Moore:
Watch the full video interview, recorded live, on YouTube.
Jennifer: Hello everyone, my name is Jennifer van Alstyne. And welcome to The Social Academic on YouTube. I’m here today with author Linda Moore we’re talking about her amazing book, Attribution, which is about a PhD student named Cate.
Linda, would you mind introducing yourself?
Linda: Hi, everyone. I’m Linda Moore. I spent more than a few years collecting degrees from various universities and I’m so excited to talk to people in the academic community.
Jennifer: Today we’re talking about your book, Attribution, which is on the 2022 Gift Guide for Academics. And I’ve put it on the Gift Guide because it is such a fun story. I think that you’re really going to relate to the protagonist Cate who is a PhD student in art history. Can you tell us a little bit about Cate?
Linda: Cate Adamson is a complex character, young, 23. She’s suffering from the challenges of the drowning death of her younger brother, only sibling, and her blue-collar parents who are back in Michigan. She had to drop out of her program at University of Michigan to do a lot of help around her family’s home. And then finally decided the only way that she could really help them was to move forward and prove to them that a daughter could have a future as well.
She goes off to New York and there she meets her nemesis faculty advisor who won’t approve any of her dissertation topics. And she is assigned to do the ugly job of inventorying the art in the basement of the university. She has found a hidden painting in an old chest that isn’t on the inventory list and decides that it could be a Golden Age masterpiece from about 400 years ago in the era of Philip IV in Spain.
During the holidays, she takes the canvas to Spain and looks for experts. And I’ll leave it there because I don’t want to give off any spoilers about where the book goes.
Jennifer: Cate’s journey is so much fun and her struggles as a graduate student I think are so relatable for the people that are on my blog who are going to read Attribution.
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Watch the video interview on YouTube.
Jennifer: When it comes to Cate’s journey and her struggle as a grad student, she’s up against an advisor who isn’t appreciating the research that she is bringing to the table. And she wants to study women.
What is it about women artists that makes Cate’s journey so difficult?
Linda: Well, it’s interesting and shocking actually how little women have been highlighted in the history of art.
The famous Janson History of Art book that we were all assigned in history of Art 101 or even in High School AP History of Art it is still the go-to book. The initial edition had no women artist, none.
I mean we’re talking from cave art days of the Neanderthals to Contemporary Art. It didn’t have Georgia O’Keefe. It didn’t have Mary Cassatt. It didn’t have Frida Kahlo. It took until the 70s when the Women’s Movement was really coming more alive for Janson’s son, who did a rewrite of one of the editions, to begin adding women.
I thought, ‘Okay well that was 50 years ago.’ However, if you look at the collections…
The piece on the cover which is a nude by Velázquez held in The National Gallery of London. And I read that The National Gallery of London only had 15% of its collection was women artists.
Jennifer: Wow.
Linda: And I’m shocked. And I thought, oh well, the Brits. You know, but honestly, The Met in New York has…are you ready? 7% of its collection are women artists.
Jennifer gasps: That’s even worse!
Read this open-access article on Diversity of artists in major U.S. museums.
Linda: Yes. And that’s with a lot of distinguished women being on the board and being in the curatorial staff. So I think there is now a resurgence of a movement to correct these things. And with that is coming a lot of women who are extraordinary like Artemisia Gentileschi who was the artist that we know a lot about because she was raped by her painting tutor in the 1500s in Italy. And that is all that trial was documented in the courts. So we have a lot of information. Many paintings of hers are now being reattributed to her because of the fact that you know people didn’t believe such good works could have been done by a woman so they would attribute them to some contemporary man. She has had numerous exhibitions there’s a lot of exciting work going on to try to rewrite the history of women in art.
Jennifer: I love that it sounds like it really inspired some of the circumstances in your book.
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Jennifer: One thing that I really love is that I can tell your passion for art. Tell me a little bit about your background in art.
Linda: Well I am a political science major as an undergraduate with a minor in Spanish and anthropology. I really became excited about art when I went to Madrid with the education abroad program of the University of California. A wonderful program that has grown so much since I was in it and I continue to be a big supporter of that program.
I discovered art. My grandmother was a painter, but the kind of art I was able to see in Europe. To be able to study Spanish art in the Prado, Italian art in the Prado, and see the real paintings, not slides in the darkened lecture hall. I was just blown away, very excited.
I never stopped loving art. I spent some time in other careers, became a hospital administrator, did different things. And then decided that I really wanted to open an art gallery. I focused my art gallery on the art of the southern cone of South America, not something we see very much in California, or even in the United States.
I was inspired by that because I’d gotten my master’s degree from Stanford and Latin American studies with a specialization in politics. But I realized I could teach a lot more about Latin America and what was going on through the artist’s eyes from that part of the world. I can remember even the days where I had to bring a map of South America to the gallery and share with the staff where was Uruguay, even Argentina. I mean our knowledge of the geography of South America is quite bad.
Jennifer: I understand. I’m from Peru and people ask me where that is all the time.
Linda: Oh yeah, and politics of Peru right now…we could have a whole conversation about that.
Jennifer: Yes, absolutely.
Linda: But in any case I really enjoyed the way that art, and being involved with the artists, and understanding their world, their history, their current challenges…that art embodies all of it. And I enjoy that so much. I was always learning. Still, always learning all the time in so many areas.
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Jennifer: Well, the first time we met was at an art show. You told me pretty immediately about Attribution. It was maybe the first time that an author had been so open and so generous with the creation that they had made. I loved it and I was so excited to read it.
I heard about Cate’s journey and I was like I’m gonna read that book. And Attribution really did touch me. You’re so comfortable talking about your book that when I saw you again at Warwick’s for your reading I was like ‘Oh my gosh, not only is she comfortable talking about her book in person, she’s letting people know that she’s sharing it on Instagram in Reels, on social media.’ That is difficult for so many people. It’s scary and anxiety provoking.
What’s it like to talk about your book?
Linda: Having been an art gallery owner, it was quite easy for me to talk about other people’s art. I’m for the first time talking about my own art, right? So there it is [Linda holds up the book]. I have it, you know, all over the place here. That’s marketing 101. Let people remember the name of the book, Attribution.
I finally had a talk with myself and I said, “Okay, if you were making the most fabulous chocolate chip cookies in the world. And people raved about them and told you how good they were, you would have no trouble at all saying, ‘Jen have some of my chocolate chip cookies they’re really really good.’ And that feels quite natural to say right?”
I convinced myself I worked really hard on this book for a long time, and I worked to make sure that backs were correct, that every single word was spelled right. I’m sure there are still a few errors but we sure made an effort. And the cover, everything about it. I felt it was a competent quality book, just like my chocolate chip cookies.
And I would say, “Please try my book, I think I’m offering you something you’ll enjoy, something I’m proud of.” And I always end with saying, “Let me know what you think, because I am interested to hear from readers.” And hopefully the next book will be even better.
But I can’t say that there aren’t moments when I think the other person must be thinking, “Oh my god, there she goes about that book again.”
[Jennifer laughs.]
Linda: So I try to at least moderate a bit who my audience is and hold back so I don’t end up losing all my invitations.
[Jennifer laughs:] Oh, thank you for saying that too. Because you know, I think people are anxious about having that reaction. And you’re someone who’s doing this quite often. You are talking about your book. You are being open about it. And people aren’t snubbing you. People aren’t like, “Oh my gosh, there’s Linda, let me run the other way.” No.
They’re talking about your book. They’re at your readings. They’re helping share it with their friends. And I think that that is something that the power of connection can really create.
I just want to share some comments with you from the live chat: “Have some of my chocolate chip cookies, yes, I love it.”
Attribution is on the 2022 Gift Guide for Academics. We do recommend that you buy it for yourself, buy another copy for a friend. Honestly, I loved reading this book. So I highly recommend it.
Linda: Well it is easy to talk about something that you personally enjoyed.
Inviting conversation about your book
Linda: I love really to hear other people talk about [the book], which you can only make that happen by first talking about it yourself.
I went to quite a few little presentations about marketing books. And you know this whole world was all new learning for me. I learned that in spite of all the social media, and all the things, which I know Jen you’re very dedicated to it. And I too am. Is that still, word of mouth is that big source of how people find their way to a book.
But how do you get word of mouth going? I mean you can only know the hundred people on my Christmas card list, right? That’s easy to get to. All that you know my relatives, and their neighbors. And you know but ultimately your circle kind of starts to slow down because we can only all know so many people personally. To begin to reach beyond that does mean to keep the conversation going.
I do think of it like a conversation instead of a sales pitch, because you know for some people my book is not right. It’s not their thing. And I’ve spent more than a few sessions in Barnes and Nobles and other bookstores, and the first question I ask people is, “Do you read novels?”
And if they say, “No, actually I read biographies of sports figures,” I go okay. And then I might convert to a conversation of who their favorite team of this or that is, because I don’t think they’re probably going to be a reader for my book. But sometimes, and I used to say this in the gallery, “If you can’t make a sale, make a friend.” So, I try to make a friend. Then I might find out that his sister would really enjoy the book, but maybe he wouldn’t.
Jennifer: Exactly.
Linda: Word of mouth is ultimately there, but it all begins with putting yourself out there in a variety of ways, including social media. And physically showing up, and being willing to to raise your flag and say, “Hey, I’m an author.”
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Jennifer: Tell me a little bit more about social media. I know that you’re on Instagram and Facebook. Tell me about why you decided to join social media.
Linda: I was already on social media, mostly Facebook, a little bit Instagram. I had a Twitter account which now…
No one look for me on Twitter because, “I’m sorry Elon, I am not a friend or a fan in any way.”
I don’t want to be part of something that, I don’t know if I even have a word for it but it certainly isn’t a dialogue with people. And it’s not it’s not my world.
I will say Facebook we love to love it and hate it all at the same time. I know a lot of people have left, but I initially got on there and was traveling a lot before COVID over the last 10 years.
Facebook is such a great way to share with people: here’s where I am, here’s you know what I’m looking at this morning in some beautiful place. And a reminder of all these people’s birthdays and things I would never in a million years remember that. Just to reach out to friends. It takes so little effort to do it, that I really do appreciate it.
I have found great joy and looking at my friend’s grandkids photos and where they’re traveling. And learning about what they’re reading, sometimes I find my way to really interesting stories.
Since I’ve been writing stories on my Linda Moore Author page, and Facebook, and Instagram, about these women artists who’ve been forgotten. I post pictures of paintings that are in the book. And also photos of places in the book. But it leads to a lot of interesting conversations. Especially during COVID, when we were also isolated. It was really nice to connect with people in a safe way. And that continues.
I have met just such amazing people. It blows me away when I get a note from New Zealand or somewhere that someone’s read the book. Now how could that happen any other way?
Instagram, the Reels, was not my world. But I will tell you, my daughter-in-law, who had 25,000 followers for, are you ready? For the dog. His name is Ravioli, if you want to be his friend. My daughter-in-law encouraged me to do Reels. And I have had some fun with it. I mean the ones of me doing exercise, which you know gets a lot of attention mostly because I’m so not fit it seems to be a hit.
Linda: It gets attention because they’re so sweet. I went home immediately after your reading when you mentioned your Reel to Eye of the Tiger. I watched it and I was like this should be viral! Everyone should see this Reel, it’s amazing. I loved it.
Linda: Oh good, put it out there, Jen. But it does allow you to share a different dimension of yourself. And it could be you hitting a golf ball and missing five times, I don’t know. But it’s just a way to show that you have many layers.
People suffer from stereotypes of lawyers, and doctors, and professors. And I think that an opportunity to show you with that pet that you love, or with the house you’re trying to renovate, or you know whatever else is going on in your life. Because it makes you relatable as a person, as a human being. Even if you’re teaching students, to share that dimension of yourself I think is a really wonderful way to connect with the world.
Jennifer: Thank you for sharing that. Just from the live comments, Dr. Jennifer Polk says, “I appreciate Linda sharing about having fun taking risks on social media. I’ve not done that so much. Reels scare me.” I think that’s true for so many people.
What was it like asking for some help with Instagram? Your daughter-in-law is helping you with those Reels. Most people are anxious to ask for help or guidance in any way. What was that experience like for you?
Linda: Well, I would say in general about everything in your life, nobody knows everything. So asking for help is a very human quality whether it’s you know making those chocolate chip cookies, or ending up trying to figure out how the heck do I do a Reel? And my daughter-in-law will tell you that I am not a good student of Instagram.
I’m still trying to figure it out. I had not wanted to ask her because I knew she was really good at it. And just like you were saying, I was reluctant because it seems like an imposition. But she came to me. We struck a deal where she wanted some of my airline miles that had piled up when I went nowhere during COVID, to go to a friend’s wedding. I traded her miles for making me Reels.
Jennifer: I love it.
Linda: Then she decided she wanted to go with me on some of these book tours to Seattle, and other places. It was really fun to have her along, and be partners in this. She was doing some of the filming so I learned more of her artistic approach to production of these things.
Now I do a few little videos of my own and I’ll send them to her. You can take a look at those. I don’t think they’re Academy Award-quality, frankly. She does a great job especially. The ones I do are not nearly as good…She’s taught me a lot.
But you know what? There’s a lot out there where you can learn. You can just Google it. You don’t have to necessarily put yourself in front of people. But for people who are close to young people, to make a friend and maybe offer something in order to get some help. I think that young people are very happy to help.
The guy who cuts my hair taught me how to do the first Reel I ever did.
Jennifer: Really?
Linda: Yeah, it’s on there. You can see him, he’s trying to do my hair and he says behind me, I’m filming right? And he says behind me, “Oh, we’re gonna need a miracle here.”
And I go, “Oh no!” It’s so simple really. All I had to do was hold the camera.
I think that it’s also great to connect with young people. I envy faculty and others who have the opportunity to be around young people as they get older. And to understand their world and make yourself vulnerable to be the one that’s the student and they’re the teacher and change roles. I think that’s healthy. If that’s a motivator of why you might want to do this to understand their world better. I think that’s maybe an easy call.
Jennifer: Attribution is such a fun read. I encourage you to pick up a copy of Attribution by author Linda Moore. It’s on the 2022 Gift Guide for Academics because it’s about a PhD student named Cate who really has a journey to find herself, to find her power, to find what she wants for the world. I just loved this book and I know that you are going to love it too.
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Jennifer: Linda, tell me have you had any struggles or anxieties yourself about marketing the book? I mean it sounds like Instagram was something that was new to you but it sounds like you really approached it with some fun. Was there something that you did struggle with though?
Linda: Well I think like this kind of thing, Jennifer, doing podcasts and radio interviews are even more difficult. Because I’m a visual person. An interview is kind of almost more anxiety.
Jennifer: Oh, that’s interesting.
Linda: Now I’ve sort of been through the trial by fire learning method. I have learned a few things. Number one, don’t be boring. That goes for Instagram and Facebook and all of that.
Try to find something interesting. If you’re not educating, then entertain, or both. Both is best, where people can learn something but it’s also extremely entertaining and enjoyable. Because no one goes there because they have to. I think that most important to just be yourself. Like you’re sitting with a conversation and try to just like we’re having coffee, Jen. And not worry.
I was on a panel recently at a bookstore Book Passage in the Bay Area. The moderator had sent us some questions ahead, like we might have questions like this. But I’ve done enough of these to know that nothing ever goes like the plan, right? So you have to be flexible.
There was another panelist, this is a super Highly Educated person, and she had written out all the answers to her questions. She was ready to read them like it was a lecture or presentation. I explained to her that I thought it would not necessarily go that way. She couldn’t depend on her answers. I could see that was a real change in her thinking. Because in the moment, she would be frustrated that she wasn’t getting through the assignment, right? But there is no assignment. It’s a conversation that needs to be very flexible if it’s going to be real and authentic.
Jennifer: So being adaptable. And it sounds like you can prepare, but you can’t prepare for everything. And being able to have that conversation and be interested in the spontaneity that the conversation might go in is really important.
Linda: Absolutely.
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Jennifer: Well thank you Linda, so much for coming on and telling us more about what your approach to book marketing is. And how you really are connecting with people, individual people, to help share your book. I think that it makes such a difference.
I could see the passion of the people who were in your audience at Warwick’s book shop here in Southern California. They were really interested not only in what you were saying, but why you were saying it. I think that your story and Cate’s story in Attribution, which is again on the 2022 Gift Guide for Academics, pick up a copy…is so interesting. It’s something that people find memorable.
Linda: Thank you, Jen. Also let me say to those reading, you can reach me on my website. And please, email me. I answer all the emails. If you have a particular question or something that we didn’t touch on that would interest you, I’m very happy to hear from you by email.
Jennifer: Thank you so much for reading! Linda, thank you so much for joining me.
Our last interview of the year goes live next week. Don’t miss it.
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Linda Moore is an author, traveler, and a recovering gallery owner. She studied art history at the Prado while a student at the University of Madrid and earned degrees from the University of California and Stanford. Her gallery featured contemporary artists and she has published award-winning exhibition catalogs. Her writing has appeared in art journals and anthologies. She has looked at art on all continents and visited over 100 countries She resides with her book-collecting husband in California. Her debut novel Attribution about an art historian who finds a hidden masterpiece, is available wherever books are sold.
Check out the 2022 Gift Guide for Academics.
Instagram Interviews Share Your Research Social Media How To’s The Social Academic
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Podcasting with Allanté Whitmore, PhD of Blk + In Grad School
Have you thought about starting a podcast?
@BlkInGradSchool Allanté Whitmore, PhD started the Blk + In Grad School podcast on her phone, a podcast created to encourage and inspire people of color in grad school. It’s since grown to over 160 episodes with a new season on the way.
Discover Allanté’s journey as a podcast producer and host. It’s all in this featured interview on The Social Academic blog.
Meet Allanté
Jennifer: Hi, everyone. This is Jennifer van Alstyne. Welcome to The Social Academic featured interview series.
Today, I’m speaking with Dr. Allanté Whitmore. We’re gonna be talking about podcasting, which is something a lot of you have been interested in. I’m excited for you to be here today.
Would you please introduce yourself? Just let everyone know who you are?
Allanté: Absolutely. Jennifer, thank you so much for having me on the podcast. We’ve been internet buddies for years now which is kind of amazing. So excited to be here.
So hi, everybody, my name’s Allanté Whitmore, PhD. I recently completed a joint PhD in Civil Engineering and Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University where I studied autonomous vehicle policy research.
On the weekends, and in the wee hours of the night, I built a podcast and community called Blk + In Grad School. There I chronicle my experience as a black woman pursuing a PhD in Engineering. I also interview other graduate students and early career professionals about their graduate experience. With the whole hope of
- Motivating
- Inspiring
- Providing tips and tricks
- Mindset shifts
for graduate students to get through their journey.
Jennifer: Oh, I love that. What a good podcast topic. It’s also gonna help so many people. It’s one of those things that those resources are gonna be valuable to people again and again for years to come.
I’m not a big podcast listener, but I love the episode that you did about decorating your apartment on a grad school budget. I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, so many good tips. And I’m a big thrift storer. I really enjoyed that.
I love that you interview a lot of black women and really give them a platform to share their stories and their advice.
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Jennifer: What inspired you to start a podcast?
Allanté: Yeah, absolutely. Honestly, my own experience through grad school.
Prior to going to Carnegie Mellon, I finished my master’s at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. And I did undergrad at North Carolina Agricultural Technical State University which is a historically black college [HBCU].
The transition between my undergraduate experience and grad school was very jarring.
A lot of people maybe assumed because I moved from an HBCU to a predominantly white institution…the academic rigor was the same.
It was the social pieces and some of that kind of hidden curriculum around how one navigates themselves as a graduate student that I really wasn’t knowledgeable about.
I really stumbled through my 1st graduate school experience. I didn’t know I was supposed to show up to Friday coffee to connect with my professors. I wasn’t really involved or engaged in a way that was beneficial to me as someone who’s aspiring a profession and career.
When I left, I finished my master’s, I went and worked in Detroit at the McNair Scholars Program at Wayne State University. I led that program. If you’re not familiar with McNair Scholars, it’s a program that helps 1st generation low income students go to graduate school. There, I got all this professional training around grad school readiness and retention in graduate school.
Coupled with my own experience in my professional training, I just felt when I decided to go back to graduate school…There was so much I wished someone told me that had nothing to do with the technical or academic skills we need to be successful. I think a lot of us have that already.
It’s just like, oh yeah
- You’re supposed to go to Friday coffee.
- This is how you manage a meeting with your advisor.
- Here’s how you kind of work through those stickier situations where we may not have a safe space to ask those questions at our university.
That is how Blk + In Grad School started. The whole idea was what I wish someone told me. The research I wish I had when I started back in 2012.
Jennifer: Oh, I love that. It sounds like what you went through in your experiences helped inspire you to create this beneficial resource for everyone who is going through it now. And who may be advising students who are also going through this journey.
You said earlier, ‘hidden curriculum.’ In grad school, especially if you’re not from an academic family, if your parents aren’t PhDs. Especially if you’re from a low income household…There are these kinds of hidden curriculum things that no one’s gonna tell you unless someone like you creates resources around it. I love that you’re welcoming that community and starting that conversation for so many people across the country.
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Jennifer: Now how did you get started podcasting? A lot of people are like, ‘Oh yeah, I wanna have a podcast.’ But what was the process for you like when you were getting started and hitting the ground running?
Allanté: Oh yeah, absolutely. Now, I would not recommend my path [laughs].
Jennifer: That’s good to know too.
Allanté: This was 5 years ago. Okay? When you could start things on your phone. I swear y’all, for those listening, I literally grabbed my phone and put the mic as close to my mouth. If you go back to like the first 10 episodes they’re terrible because it’s literally me on my blow up mattress because I didn’t have a bed yet. I had just moved to Pennsylvania.
I maybe did a little bit of light editing on my computer. But it was literally stream of consciousness. That’s how I started Blk + In Grad School.
Then I upgraded to my computer. The next 20 episodes are me huffing into the computer.
Then I finally invested in a mic and the quality improved.
I started to invest in editing and started to think about crafting stories.
I started interviewing people around the 20th episode as well. I was like, “Oh, this could be really good to bring in more perspectives, more experiences.” It was a very organic growth that happened from the start.
I would not recommend starting with your phone anymore. We have really great inexpensive mics that you can get started.
Jennifer: That’s so cool that it really was this project and you’re like, ‘I’m gonna do it. Even if it’s on my blow up mattress with my phone in my hand. I’m going to create this.’
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Allanté: Oh gosh. Another transparency moment for me: I actually hate writing. Right? [Jennifer laughs.]
I’m an engineer. I’m an engineer through and through where I wrote quite literally what was exactly needed to get this PhD. And technical writing is way different than creative writing. I definitely feel more comfortable writing for research.
In my life prior to being in graduate school, I’ve done a number of entrepreneurial pursuits. One of them was a blog. Hated it.
Tried vlogging, hated it. I wasn’t able to keep up with it.
And so what I love about podcasting is that I was able to be consistent. It was low pressure for me as someone who’s kind of on the go. Even now, I just left the gym. I have a hat on. Like, Jennifer looks beautiful. Eyebrows done, lipstick. I put lipgloss on and got here. And podcasting takes that pressure away from me.
Jennifer: It does.
Allanté: Yeah, so I can create consistently. And I’m not really worried about the visual…I love podcasts. I kind of started to realize the power of podcasting and having someone in your ears. And the intimate moment of listening to someone else’s thoughts or hearing their perspective.
It just felt like a very natural fit because I had tried other forms. They weren’t really for me. And in this one, I was able to make stick.
Jennifer: Yeah. So your podcast listener yourself. And you tried blogging and didn’t enjoy it.
I really like the things you said about how it allowed you to really be consistent. That is so important when we’re creating something new. When we’re creating this kind of new project that is going to take an unknown amount of time.
Really, when we’re starting out, that idea of consistency is something that a lot of people don’t think about.
And when professors tend to approach me and they’re like, ‘I wanna start a blog. You know, I’m excited about this.” And I talk with them a little bit about some of the things that go into it. And how much work they might have to do in order to get things up and running. And they’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, I had no idea.’
Finding a budget for a podcast editor
Jennifer: Was there anything that was really surprising about the podcasting process that you learned once you kind of got into it?
Allanté: In my 2nd year of my program, I moved into a cheaper apartment because I really was enjoying Blk + In Grad School. I knew I needed to be able to put a little money towards it. As a grad student I was earning nothing. But I was like, ‘Okay, I can now carve out $100-$200 a month toward an editor.’ That was the 1st thing I invested in to take that off my plate.
It’s very time consuming and I’m grateful to my [podcast] editor who’s like one of my best friends, Stephanie. I’m also very fortunate to have a best friend who is an editor, right?
Jennifer: That’s wonderful.
Allanté: Yes! I’m very grateful for her. I told her, ‘Hey, I’m doing this project. Here’s what I can afford right now.’ And as Blk + In Grad School grew, I was able to do some increases in her pay. She was also a very supportive person.
You can look in at Fiverr, you can look in at Upwork. You can do a bunch of things to delegate if you know there’s a piece of the process that you simply don’t wanna do. Or, that you don’t have the time to do.
Editing was the piece that I think I very quickly realized this is a time suck for me. That it would actually harm or decrease my productivity or consistency if I’m the person responsible for editing.
Jennifer: That is so smart. It’s really nice that you figured out the piece of that puzzle where if you send this off and get some help with it, that’s what’s gonna allow you to actually produce more. And put more energy, the kind of energy you want into this project.
I love that you chose to change your lifestyle in order to actually put more energy into this and more finances too.
A lot of people don’t realize that some money may have to go into the kind of upkeep or creation of a project like this. I really appreciate your transparency with that.
Allanté: Absolutely.
How starting a podcast has impacted Allanté‘s life
Jennifer: Now, you must have made that decision because it was impacting you in some greater way.
I’m curious, what kind of impact has the podcast had on your life? Or, your online community?
Allanté: So many amazing things have come from Blk + In Grad School. I genuinely was just creating something I wish existed. Right?
From that I have had speaking engagements at universities across the country, which is really exciting. Especially during the pandemic, I was able to do a lot since it was virtual.
Jennifer: That’s great!
Allanté: Yeah, it blew my mind. Right?
I’ve done campaigns. I’ve dabbled in the influencer space as a result of Blk + In Grad School, representing the graduate lifestyle to an extent.
Jennifer: Oooh.
Allanté: It’s very interesting.
I don’t fully take on the identity of an ‘influencer.’ It feels awkward. But the reality is that it’s a stream of income that has been helpful.
Especially when I was finishing up my PhD in the last like year or so. It was really like, ‘Okay, this is actually bringing in income,’ sponsorships.
Lastly, my community. In 2019, I started The Scholar Circle. It’s a community for folks in grad school. It’s an accountability and coworking community. We meet 3 times a week for a total of roughly 8 hours over those 3 sessions. We work together. We get things done.
In the membership community, there are a host of resources to help you through your graduate journey. That also became a piece that I didn’t anticipate growing. I will also be honest, that was very hard to grow. That took time. And even still, it takes time to readjust and attract new people. That is a task, but it’s a labor of love.
All of these different things have kind of cropped up.
There’s just like so many different kinds of new streams of income that helped me support the podcast so I didn’t have to be the one putting the money into it.
Jennifer: Oh, that’s amazing. So, you’ve created streams of income that are associated with the content that you create, this podcast. And that helps you support the creation of the podcast.
Allanté: That’s right.
Jennifer: If The Scholar Circle, that kind of co-working and accountability sounds great to you, check that out.
Jennifer: One thing that I love about your Instagram and your online presence is that community feel is really there as well. When you’re talking about how you are picking up some sponsored and campaigns for some influencer type things that makes total sense to me. Because the audience that is already following you, the people that are connected with you, they wanna see more content about grad school.
They wanna see more of that lifestyle and what you were going through as well. I love that you were a great representative for them and that companies were able to work with you for that kind of thing.
Allanté: Yeah, thank you. I mean that totally came left field. [Jennifer laughs.] And it’s still so funny nowadays because I realize it is a lucrative option. And recognizing that Blk + In Grad School is also very niche.
There’s a really interesting balancing act that happens there. It’s been very helpful. It’s like, ‘Okay, now I actually have a substantial amount of money I can support. Now I can get more resources. I can now pay someone to help me with The Scholar Circle.
So it all goes back into serving the community. I’m grateful for it.
But I also don’t wanna start spamming the community, right? So there’s like a balance.
Jennifer: Yeah, right.
Allanté: Exactly.
Jennifer: There is a balance. And I’ve never seen anything that looks even remotely like SPAM from your accounts.
Allanté: Yeah. [Laughs.]
Jennifer: You’re always so thoughtful with the content that you share. And actually you’re a great example when I’m talking to other grad students about what they might wanna post on Instagram. I often direct them to your account. I say, “There’s all sorts of things you can do. You can help people. You can talk about your own experiences. And this isn’t a great example for you to check out.”
So I love your Instagram. And oh my gosh, spammy? Definitely not [laughs].
Allanté: That makes me feel better.
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Allanté: I started that the Grad School Success Summit the 1st year of the podcast. That was the event I used to help attract people to Blk + In Grad School.
Not just current grad students, but also other folks in the academic content creation space. That’s how I think I first reached out to you, Jennifer, was to be a speaker.
Jennifer: That’s right. That’s totally right.
Allanté: Yeah. It was really a way for me to kind of tap into the community of content creators who we are supporting the same community.
But then also let new people know ‘Hey, there’s this resource available. You know, it might vibe with you.’ If not, I always share a bunch of other resources that might be a better fit.
This year was the 5th Summit which blows my mind.
Jennifer: Wow! 5 years. I mean that’s really amazing.
Allanté: Thank you. It blows my mind. That is definitely the staple event I have every single year. It’s always helpful in building my email list. That’s my main email list building activity for the year. I really enjoy it.
Those 3 days are intense but really, really fun.
Jennifer: They’re fun. It sounds like it’s something that helps build your list. That helps more people learn about Blk + In Grad School and The Scholar Circle.
How does it help the community? What is the Grad School Success Summit? And who should go to it?
Allanté: I think everyone has the academic skills. I’m really not super concerned with folks having the academic skills. I think if you got into grad school, you’ve got them.
But it’s the social bit. It’s the financial wellness. It’s the emotional wellness. Physical wellness. Creating a personal brand. Right? Building community. All of those other pieces of the grad school experience that universities don’t feel fully responsible for.
I feel like we try our best to create an environment where you can get some tips. You can get some information. Some resources and motivation around any of those topics so you’re a more well rounded graduate student. Not just a brain, you know, doing research day in and day out. And doing homework. And doing readings.
So helping grad students think about what do they want their year to look like? Beyond their academic goals. And how they’re gonna take care of themselves to carry them out is really the impetus behind the Summit.
Jennifer: I love that.
Is there somewhere people can watch the replays if they missed this year’s Summit?
Allanté: So yeah! You can totally watch the replays at GradSchoolSummit.com. That’s for the most recent year, the 2022 Grad School Success Summit.
If you wanna watch any year before that so 2021-2018, they replays are all available on my YouTube.
Jennifer: Excellent! Great.
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Jennifer: Well I’d love to hear what you’re up to now. Congratulations on finishing your PhD.
Allanté: Thank you.
Jennifer: I know that you’re in a new job. So I’d love to hear a little about it.
Allanté: Yeah, absolutely.
So, I have left academia. That was honestly so stressful to actually admit on the internet. I don’t know why.
I just feel like there’s this assumption, even my own inner feeling that we’re supposed to go onto a tenure track position.
I had a really great opportunity at a national energy security organization. We look at transportation policy as it relates to reducing our dependence on oil. I am now the Director of the Autonomous Vehicle Policy Research Center there.
Jennifer: Exciting!
Allanté: It’s really exciting! Yeah! It’s really exciting work. I get to do exactly what I’ve always wanted to do, which is stand between technical folks (so automakers in this particular expertise I’ve built) and policy makers to communicate what’s happening on that side. See what’s happening with policy. To help create policy. And my emphasis on equity informed policies, so how do we make sure that things are good for everybody.
Jennifer: So that they’re accessible.
Allanté: Yeah, yeah. It’s exciting.
Jennifer: I love that! Now, since you were kind of anxious about talking about it online, what kind of reaction did you get to announcing you were leaving academia?
Allanté: All resounding ‘Good for you’s [laughs].
Jennifer: Yay! [Claps.] So if you’re also leaving academia, or thinking about it, it is okay to talk about online. A lot of people are gonna cheer you on.
Allanté: Yeah, that’s right. That’s right.
There are some folks who were like, “Oh, I think you would have made a great professor.” And it doesn’t mean that part of my life is absolutely not an option, right? But yeah.
Mostly we get it. It’s hard out here.
Finishing grad school after the peak of the pandemic, so the academic job market was something I just wasn’t really in a place to even do at the time. I was like, ‘I just wanna figure things out if I need to. But I’m very [emphasis] happy with my position.
Jennifer: It sounds like you’re exactly where you wanna be. Right in that place with policy and the automakers themselves. So that’s so cool.
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Jennifer: One thing that I wanted to be sure to ask you about is what is your favorite social media platform? You do have a big online presence. You’ve got multiple websites. You’ve got your Instagram, your YouTube. Which is your favorite?
Allanté: TikTok! [Laughs.] Where I’m not at.
[Jennifer: laughing loudly] That’s so funny! Why do you like TikTok so much?
Allanté: I love TikTok. I have a very irreverent sense of humor and I feel like TikTok is full of all of the, like, just wild and kind of wacky stuff. I thoroughly enjoy that.
Jennifer: It fits your personality.
Allanté: Yeah, yeah. There’s things on there. I’d create a page…But I enjoy consuming TikTok. I haven’t gotten to where I wanna contribute too much.
Jennifer: Well you’re a creator in a lot of different areas. You don’t need to create on every platform. Especially the ones you enjoy consuming the most. [Allanté nods her head.]
That’s really fun to hear about when you have so many social media platforms.
Keeping her online presence updated
Jennifer: How do you manage all of that? Like you have multiple websites. You got the social media. That’s a lot to keep track of.
I have a pretty good system with the podcast. Right now, the podcast isn’t on YouTube. I only have like the Summit on YouTube. When I first started, I did a couple of webinars. So they’re there.
My YouTube is pretty tame. That keeps it very manageable for me where I’m only adding 6 new videos a year for those 3 days that we have the Summit.
Jennifer: Nice.
Allanté: Now as far as the websites, everything from the podcast goes to the website. Once I create a podcast episode through my podcast provider, I then link everything: the show notes, all of that. I’m pretty much just repurposing all of that written content and putting it into a blog post on the website. That keeps it very easy to maintain and pretty low maintenance.
Now the social media piece, that’s where probably the bulk of my content creation energy goes. Because you have to create things all the time.
I more recently took a break because I was writing my dissertation. Honestly, so much life has happened since I finished my PhD. Even like us recording is getting me back into the groove of content creation.
Jennifer: Right.
Allanté: What that looked like before was, ‘Okay, I have this episode that’s gonna go out. I only need 2 more pieces of content around the post with the podcast every week. So that’s kind of how I managed it and kept it very low maintenance for me. Like, I can create 2 more pieces of content.
Jennifer: It sounds like you have a good system.
Allanté: Yeah, I do. Thanks.
Jennifer: I like that your system is all based around the podcast. And figuring out what needs to be shared, where it needs to be shared, and when. Right? That’s the multiple posts part. But it sounds like you have a system in place.
I love that you took a break during your dissertation. And even afterwards. Taking a break from social media is so important, especially for our mental health and well-being. It’s great that you shared that as well.
Need a break from social media? I have an blog post to help.
A tip for starting your new content project
Jennifer: Now, is there anything else that you’d like to add that you wanna be sure to talk about during this interview? I’m having so much fun.
Allanté: I know! Me too.
Only thing I’d say, for anyone who is starting out. The advice I give everyone, and this is what I did when I started the podcast…
Before you go live, create 5-10 pieces of content.
Jennifer: Oooh. Why?
Allanté: 1: you’re practicing the consistency of creating the content and making it a part of your schedule. Even if that means you’re sitting and bashing it. It’s like, ‘Okay, this is how long it takes me to make 5-10 episodes. Or 5-10 videos. 5-10 blog posts, whatever.
Then you can schedule those anchor pieces of content over those 10 weeks, 5 weeks, what have you. If it’s every other week, now you’ve got 20 weeks worth of content if it’s biweekly that you’re producing content.
You get to kind of mess up too. Those very 1st episodes, I don’t listen to. Because they’re not great! But, I got to figure out so much with those first few episodes. Then I could reassess and create some direction. And decide if I like it.
I think all of those bits are really important, 1: with building an audience, and 2: figuring out what works for you and your flow. And making sure you can stay committed to something you said you were going to do.
Jennifer: You have to like it. Right? It’s a big project. It takes a lot of energy and maybe even some finances if you want to get into it. So liking it is important [laughs].
And I’m glad you had a topic you were passionate about. And that you put all this energy into. Because you created something amazing.
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Jennifer: What is next for Blk + In Grad School? Will there be a new season?
Allanté: Yeah! Literally, I recorded an episode yesterday. It’s so exciting. I definitely wanna hit 200 episodes. We’re at 165 right now. So I know the goal right now is okay, hit 200. And then we will reassess again.
[Allanté and Jennifer laugh.]
Allanté: But I’m definitely wanting to serve the community. I’m open to what that looks like. I think there might be time for a new voice. There might be time for a different approach. I’m really open to what’s needed from me.
And also balancing my life post-grad school. Right? My time is different. I actually travel a lot for work. Figuring that out has been really interesting.
Jennifer: You’ve changed your lifestyle to work with this podcast. And now you’re even maybe changing the podcast to fit with your lifestyle. And what the community is hoping for in the future.
Thank you so much for talking with me today. Dr. Allanté Whitmore, this has been a joy! We’ve been internet buddies for a few years now.
Allanté: Yeah!
Jennifer: I’ve been involved with the Grad School Success Summit. And so I’m so excited that you came on The Social Academic today.
Allanté: Oh, so happy to be here, Jennifer! Like literally means the world to me.
And make sure you link your session from the Summit in the show notes.
Jennifer: Oh! Good idea. I wouldn’t have even thought of that. But I did talk about social media and how to talk about yourself online in grad school. So I’ll link that below as well. Thanks so much!
Allanté: Thank you.
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Prefer to watch videos? Subscribe on YouTube.Bio for Dr. Allanté Whitmore
Allanté Whitmore, PhD (@BlkInGradSchool) is a proud Detroit native. She earned her bachelors in biological engineering at North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University, and her masters’ in biological and agricultural engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She earned a joint PhD in Civil Engineering and Engineering and Public Policy from Carnegie Mellon University in 2022.
Allanté’s research focused on uncovering the environmental and social implications of autonomous vehicle technology. She used computer modeling to test different ways in which shared autonomous vehicles and shuttles might be used in public transit systems, with the aims of improving transit access and equity in public transit systems and reducing the transportation sector’s contribution to emissions. Allanté is now the Director of autonomous vehicle policy research at a transportation policy research organization. She continues to create knowledge to inform future policy on shared mobility that ensures physical and environmentally equitable access to transportation.
In her free time, Allanté hosts a podcast, Blk + In Grad School where she chronicles her experience getting her PhD, providing encouragement and tools for women and people of color to successfully navigate the graduate-education journey.
Connect with Allanté on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok @BlkInGradSchool.
Find more resources for graduate students on The Social Academic blog.
Interviews Online Presence How To’s Resources for Grad Students The Social Academic
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What Are Informational Interviews? With Jennifer Polk, PhD
Informational interviews can help your journey from PhD to Life
Jennifer Polk, PhD has been helping PhDs get clear on their career path since 2013. You may have read her articles on University Affairs, Inside Higher Ed, and The Chronicle of Higher Education. If you’re on #AcademicTwitter, you’ve seen her tweets @FromPhDtoLife.
Jen is an expert at helping grad students and people with doctorates confidently market themselves for the jobs they actually want.
What are informational interviews? And, how can they help your transition from academia? It’s all in this interview with career coach, Dr. Jennifer Polk.
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Jennifer: It’s Jennifer van Alstyne. I’m here with Dr. Jennifer Polk. And we’re going to be talking about informational interviews today. You might recognize Jennifer from a live conversation that we had last year about networking.
Dr. Jennifer Polk, I’m so excited that you’re here to talk with me. Would you mind introducing yourself for everyone?
Jen: Sure, yeah. Thanks for having me!
So feel free to call me Jen, everyone. Dr. Polk if you want to be formal, but Jen is perfectly fine.
The short version is that I help PhDs get clear on their career path so they can confidently market themselves for jobs they actually want. Typically, that means outside of academia. But I’ve worked with everyone, on all the things.
I have a PhD myself in history. I got that 10 years ago. These days, I’m self-employed. And it’s cool. It’s good work to be able to help people figure out what’s next, and get there. It’s very empowering.
Jennifer: That’s great! Thanks for sharing that with me.
Now, I know that it’s really hard to kind of imagine what life might be like outside of the academy for many professors who’ve been in for a long time. But also for graduate students who are going through and really trying to figure out what their next steps are. It’s something that’s affecting everyone, no matter where you are in your academic career.
There may be a good opportunity for you outside of academia. Jen is someone that can help with that.
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Prefer to watch videos? Subscribe on YouTube.Jennifer: There’s a way that people can learn more about jobs outside of academia, and that’s through informational interviews. That’s kind of a jargon-y word. What is an informational interview?
Jen: That was a great prompt. Yes, check marks to all of what you said. Totally.
Informational interviews. If you haven’t heard this term before, it might sound very strange. It’s not very eloquent, right? But just know that it is a super common term. Even if you haven’t come across it before, it’s really common. It’s not just corporate. It’s common everywhere.
All it means is having a conversation with somebody who works in a job, a field, for an employer, or who has in the past that interests you. The specifics of that conversation depends on what you want to learn.
This is a learning experience. Sometimes people get the idea that this form of networking–yeah, an informational interview like it is a form of networking–but it’s not really about you. In fact, it is not about you pitching your services or you asking for a job. It’s a learning experience.
I want to emphasize that it is a community building experience. Do you want to be in community with this person and people like them?That’s a short answer to what [an informational interview] is. Just conversating with somebody else.
Jennifer: I love that. I think that so many people have a fear or anxiety about informational interviews. Maybe that’s because they don’t know what it is. It sounds like an info interview is a conversation you have with someone to learn more about their job, or their field. And learn more about them to see if they’re someone that you want to stay connected with, or maybe you want to do a job like that. Or, maybe you don’t. And that’s good information too. Thank you so much for clearing up that definition for everyone.
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Jennifer: What advice do you have for those people who are feeling really anxious, or scared, or nervous about approaching an informational interview?
Jen: First off, what you described, Jennifer, is really common. If you are feeling that, welcome. You’re in really excellent company. I’ve been there, and so many of my clients, and the PhDs that interact with grad students, PhDs, all of the above have experienced that. It’s totally normal, common.
Those feelings can be what prevent folks from taking the leap into doing informational interviews. You’re in really good company there.
I’m not answering a question directly, but I will say that once folks start doing informational interviews, it’s like a light goes off. Everything changes. It’s really incredible. I think there’s so many different reasons for that. But I really encourage you to do it. Just take one step at a time. This is not the only way to do it. This is not like the way that is necessarily going to be right for you. But for example, it could be that you decide to do one informational interview with a person that you already know and trust.
Jennifer: Oooh.
Jen: Maybe they’re from your personal life, or family, or you worked with them years ago. So you don’t sort of already know everything about them in terms of their career, and their job, but you know there’s some level of comfort and trust. You say, “Okay.” Maybe you send them a text, or an email, Facebook message, whatever it is:
“Hey, can we have a chat about your job? Because I’m thinking about what I want to do next, and I’m confused about what some options are. You work as a project manager. That’s something that intrigues me. Can we just have a convo so I can learn more about that?”
This is relatively low stakes. That first step is important. Then you take another step after that. Right? This doesn’t have to be this big overwhelming kind of campaign that you go on. Just do it once. Send that one email, send that one message. That’s the first step.
Jennifer: So just sending that first message, and maybe reaching out to someone who you already know, who you’re already familiar with. That can be a really good idea for people who are feeling uncomfortable, or nervous, or anxious about that process. I love that idea, and I think that that would make it so much less anxiety provoking for me. Like, “Oh, you know, I do have people that I could reach out to about that kind of thing. I can have a conversation with that friend that I haven’t talked to in a few years.” I’m sure they wouldn’t be upset to hear about it. If they don’t have time, that’s okay! But I can reach out. That’s pretty low stakes for me, so I really like that.
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Jennifer: When people are reaching out for the first time, is there something that holds them back from actually reaching out? Is there something that’s like preventing them from doing that step?
Jen: Yeah, to generalize, I think that folks can get in their heads. Shocking, right? Of course [sarcastically]. And they worry about things that are just way too many steps in the future.
I always like to remind myself, and you know sometimes others is appropriate: that is a later problem. So, first off, don’t get in your head too much.
I think what you said, that if they don’t respond, if they don’t have time, that’s not personal. That’s also a really important reminder. You can send the email. Whether they respond or not is not necessarily about you. Maybe they never checked LinkedIn. Maybe their parent just died. Maybe they don’t have any child care in a pandemic. You don’t know what’s going on, right?
Jennifer: Yeah.
Jen: You know, decide not to take it personally. I will say that when you send that first message, your job is not done until you’ve sent the follow-up. I think that’s really, really important advice.
My inbox is a mess, always. You know, direct messages [DMs] on Twitter or LinkedIn, there’s no kind of way to like Mark As Read, or file it into different folders. These things are just messy by nature. Not everyone is really skilled at managing their inbox. So, your job is not done until you’ve followed up. If you need to.
Jennifer: That is such great advice. You know, I did this kind of workshop at the beginning of the pandemic that was all about How to Stay Connected During Social Distancing. During that workshop I taught people that you have to assume that people are busy, or that they’re too swamped with things in their own life to hear you the first time.
That follow-up is not just a courtesy for them, but for yourself, because you do want to be heard. Right? Otherwise, you probably wouldn’t have reached out in the first place. Sending that follow-up is a good thing to do for yourself as well as the people who are around you.
And assuming that people might not have time, or that their schedules might change, is going to set you up for not being disappointed. Just expect something to come up. And then if it does, you can be flexible with it. This is kind of a low stakes thing for you. You’re reaching out, and it’s okay if they’re too busy on the other end. Most of the time, they’ll tell you if they have the capacity to do so.
Jen Polk, photo by Nadalie Bardowell Jennifer: One thing that I want to be sure to ask about is can an informational interview help you get a job? Does that get me a job if I do those? What is the correlation between informational interviews and careers?
Jen: That’s a great question. So how are these two things connected? I already said don’t think of an informational interview as a way for you to ask for a job or pitch yourself to an employer. But it does happen.
The outcome of informational interviews are unknown at the outset. And I have heard the stories. These are true stories that sometimes happen to folks where they do an informational interview and all of a sudden the person that they’re interviewing says
- “Hey, you wanna join the team?”
- “There’s an open position I think you’d be great for.”
- “Hold up, something is coming through. I’ll message you when that happens.”
This absolutely does happen. That can happen in your first informational interview, or your 150th. Purposefully, that’s a big number, I know. So, it definitely does happen.
I would say you can be open to that. But that is probably not gonna happen to you. Especially, I would say, if you’re switching sectors potentially.
Jennifer: Okay.
Jen: That doesn’t mean there’s no connection. Learning really is important. Learning is important for you so that you
- Can make better decisions about what you want
- Have more of the information about what this job title is all about
- What is this job ad actually mean when it’s translated through an actual person who’s doing it
Is this employer actually toxic? Based on the job ad, you’re not sure, you know. The learning piece is really important for you to make good decisions.
The learning piece also helps you craft stronger application materials because you get a sense from communicating interacting with that person more about
- What that employer cares about
- What that field is actually really about
- What kind of stories they find compelling
You can write better cover letters, you can write better resumes, and application materials. These are kind of indirect connections.
A lot of the time when folks are thinking surface level, they will think, “Well, my informational interviews did not lead to a job.”
Yes, they didn’t lead to a job directly. But then when you asked, what was the value of informational interviews?
- “Oh, well I learned that there was a whole field I never heard about.”
- “This new company that you know was doing exactly what I wanted.”
- “There was this this job title that I thought was totally something different, but actually was exactly what I was looking for.”
Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So indirect, very important.
They are very self-affirming for a lot of people. They boost the confidence of people doing informational interviews. I’m not promising that, but that really is often an outcome, an unanticipated bonus. It is confidence boosting for a lot of people. It is affirming to have somebody give you some of their time, to give you advice. That is a gift, right? It’s a nice thing that they respect you. They take you seriously. They want to help you. That’s nice.
Am I making sense? Like it’s good. And that helps your job search.
Jennifer: Oh, yeah. I think that that confidence thing is something.
If you’re one of those people who’s nervous or anxious about it, and you know that not only doing this can help you
- With your career
- Make better decisions
- Network
- Meet more people
- Boost your confidence by practicing more and reaching out to more people that you admire
I mean that, that’s great. That is some incentive to actually try an informational interview if you’ve maybe been on the fence. So, I love that.
Jen: Yeah, now you’ve got this new person kind of on your team.
Jennifer: I love that idea, having someone on your team was kind of true. The more I learn about someone, the more I want to root for them. The more I want to cheer them on. If I’m gonna sit there and talk with someone for half an hour in a way that’s helping them, I’m also feeling like I have a little bit of a stake in their outcome. Like I want them to do well.
If you’re feeling that anxiety, remember that that’s someone who’s trying to help you, who kind of wants to be on your team. You can let them by reaching out. I love that.
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Jennifer: How do you find people to do informational interviews with? How can people get started? I know you said that you can reach out to a friend or a family member, but what about people you don’t know?
Jen: Yeah, all of the above. Really everywhere. Some examples are in-person conferences. These as someone put it to me on Twitter today, “organic conversations.” So, after the panel, in the hallway. Right, totally cool.
So from your professional life:
- People that you’ve worked with in the past
- Other professors in your department
- Other grad students that you know have already graduated and gone off to work in industry
- Anybody that you’ve interacted with professionally over the years is fair game
- Social media.
LinkedIn is kind of an obvious one. It’s a great one. These people can be total strangers, but I think it’s really helpful in terms of actually making the connection, and by that I mean like actually having the conversation, and not just sending the message. It’s helpful if there is some sort of connection already there (i.e. you have a person in common, you went to the same undergraduate institution).
Twitter. People you follow, people that follow you back, are you communicating in the same thread? All of the above really matters.
You can also just find people randomly online. Somebody was
- On a YouTube channel
- Participated in a podcast
- Wrote a blog post that you admire
I did that for one of the folks I did an informational interview with 10 years ago: a woman who wrote a blog post about AltAc career transitions. I looked her up. She was in Toronto. I’m in Toronto. She had an English PhD. I’m a history PhD. I was like well, there’s some connections there. So, I sent her an email. And not so far into the future we met in person.
Jennifer: I love that!
Jennifer: I have a question. You said something a while back zero, to your first interview, to like 150 interviews. How many info interviews have you done?
Jen: Oh, boy. I don’t know.
Jennifer: [Laughs.] It’s a big number.
Jen: Well, I probably haven’t done that many. And, not all of the conversations I’ve had that are informational interview-like were seen in that light at the time, if that makes sense.
Jennifer: Even though it was doing the actions of informational interviews, it wasn’t necessarily considered an informational interview at the time.
Jen: Yeah. Informational interview is a form of networking, but it’s a form of networking where you as the person doing the interviewing–doesn’t always happen this way in reality–but all you need to do is prepare a list of questions and ask.
In that way, there is less kind of back and forth versus ‘networking more proper,’ if I can make that distinction, which is really meant to be a real true back and forth where both parties are sharing.
I am not suggesting that in an informational interview situation you’re not being helpful, and there’s no back and forth. Just, if you’re feeling nervous about it, remember all you need to do is go in as a researcher with a list of questions. I say that to hopefully take the pressure off.
So why did I say 150?
Jennifer: Yeah.
Jen: There was a reason I picked that number. A client that I had last year, over the summer and fall, now it’s the summer again, so about a year ago. She did 150 informational interviews. She told me this subsequently. And that was a choice that she made. You know, there’s reasons why that suited her personality, why that suited her job search, we could talk more about that. The opportunities that she pursued came directly out of that and not out of her applying to jobs. So the jobs that she ended up getting, she took a couple of part-time contracts with startups and small organizations…
Jennifer: Wow.
Jen: Those came directly out of informational interviews. And never did she apply formally for a position.
Jennifer: That’s amazing.
Jen: Now, that is one example. There are many, many examples. But that is one true real life example.
Jennifer: Oh, that’s great. 150 interviews helped that particular person because it matched their personality to do a lot of them. And it helped them find the career path that they were interested in. So that’s very cool.
What if you’re like, “Oh my god, 150 is nowhere near what I’m capable of. I can do like five informational interviews?”
Jen: Yeah, I think five is a great number.
Let me talk about my process when I advise PhDs on the job search. And when I say PhDs I mean people that have a PhD, people that don’t have a PhD but sort of you know relate, grad students, all of the above.
The process that I would recommend is first to kind of get right in your mind about what is going on. So I call that Prep.
And then you go into Focus. And this Focus section is you want to focus on yourself. That’s basically self-reflection, right? What do you want? What do you need? What do you have already?
Then, the third step is Identify. Identify some possibilities. That’s when you do research. A big part of that research is probably going to be informational interviews. But that’s not the only type of research you’re doing.
If you have limited capacity for informational interviews, at least right now, you can really emphasize the other types of research. But you’re going to do it strategically. You’re going to get your mind right. You’re going to focus on yourself.
And then you’re gonna say, okay, based on what I’ve learned about myself, what are the types of jobs that I want to do some research on by reading
- Job ads
- Company websites
- Blogs
- Listening to podcasts
To learn more about whether these things would align with what I know about myself.
Jennifer: Right.
Jen: Then you’d be very selective, “Okay, so it seems like project management is a role that is really going to suit me. Or, instructional designer.” Let’s say, “Those are the two that I’m really thinking. I haven’t really talked to anybody yet about them.”
Then, “Okay, let me go and talk to five people. Maybe three for one, and two for the other. And see you know, if I’m on the right track.” And maybe you are. Maybe you’re not, right? Maybe you need to pivot a bit. Maybe you decide, “Well, it’s not instructional designer. It’s more educational developer I’m going for, which is slightly different.”
Maybe at that point you decide you want to do more informational interviews. But the first five were really helpful in narrowing and pivoting. Does that make sense?
Jennifer: That makes so much sense. I absolutely love that. It sounds like having that process, having that kind of approach really helps people who are going through this.
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Jennifer: Can you tell me a little bit more about your program? I’m sure people who are listening want to hear about it because it might be right for them.
Jen: Yeah, thanks for asking. Let me finish the steps here. So yeah: Prep, Focus, Identify. Right? That’s where you really want to narrow down like, “Okay, this is what I’m going for.” So this person has decided on educational developer, right?
Then step four is Market. I use that term purposefully: Market to employers. That’s when you want to write your resume and worry about your LinkedIn profile, or not, depending on your job search.
Jennifer: I bet some people are really surprised right now. They’re like, “I thought I needed my resume first.”
Jen: No.
Jennifer: People, you really need this program because this is telling you that you might be putting your energy into the wrong places at the wrong time. Oh, I love that, Jen.
Jen: Yeah, exactly. Thank you for saying that. So, do those things last, folks.
Jennifer: Wow, yeah.
Jen: Don’t skip the earlier stuff. That’s what I found. That’s why I built it this way.
So what is my program? So I have a PhD Career Clarity program. This is a paid program. It’s 12 months access. That doesn’t mean that it takes 12 months, but you’ve got 12 months because you know everyone’s life is different. And job searches can take time depending on you.
It’s basically an online course, self-paced. You go at the pace you want. It’ll take you through all of those four steps from “I don’t know if I even I’m ready to job search or want to,” all the way to interviewing for positions.
But let me say, if you’re thinking about it, or you’re not even yet thinking about it but you’re curious, I do have a free training for PhDs.
Jennifer: If you’re even thinking that you know a program like that might be helpful for you, want to get that group coaching in then be sure to sign up because that free workshop is going to give you more information about it. And it’s going to tell you some of those myths that might be holding you back from really getting clarity on your career, what you want to do next.
This is your life, right? This is important. It’s a big decision to figure out what kind of path you want to go down. This is a great program that can help you get there. I can vouch for that because my fiancé needed this program to help and figure out his next steps. He’s been in it for months now, and found it really helpful.
So I encourage you to sign up for that free workshop.
Jennifer: What’s a really good informational interview question that I should add to that list?
Jen: Kind of taking a step back from your question: what to ask you can Google the stuff and get lots of different lists. There’s value in that. Take a quick scan of what people say.
But ultimately, you want to go through: what do you actually want to learn from this person? What do you want to learn from them right now? Really do that introspection to decide what is most important.
Why do I say that? I had a client a couple of years back. He came to me and had already done a bunch of informational interviews, probably a dozen or two of them. And it just wasn’t working.
I was surprised, but it turned out, and this was his insight, that he’d done informational interviews because that was a task that had been suggested to him as a thing that he needed to do. So he went out and did it, but he never actually really cared about the people and the career paths that he was learning about.
He didn’t care, right? So it was really just a road exercise for him. Aha, okay. Once he determined, “Well actually, I really am interested in this. And this person is really cool because…” That like additional energy and interest, then the informational interviews just were totally mind expanding.
What is a good question to ask in informational interviews? It really is going to depend, classic academic answer, on what you really want to know.
Sometimes folks, I think there’s a real skill in asking questions. You might not be as skilled at it yet as you can become to be.
One tip is that sometimes you might think, “Well, I’ll just ask this person what their salary is.” But you’re like, that’s kind of inappropriate, but I want to know what I can expect to make. Aha, well then that’s the question you want to ask.
Instead of asking the person how much money do you make? Or, how much money did you make when you first entered this field? Which is the first question a lot of folks think to ask, what do you actually want to know:
- How much money could I expect to make?
- What is a reasonable range for somebody with my background in experience pivoting into this role?
Jennifer: That is a great question. Making it about yourself really helps take that kind of pressure off someone to talk about their own salary.
Jen: Exactly.
Jennifer: They may open up about it anyway. They may be totally fine talking about financial things. But putting the onus on you, making it about yourself, seems so much nicer. I like that. I’d feel much more comfortable with that.
Jen: A similar piece of advice to that is sometimes you think, well let me ask this person about something specific to them. Or, specific to their team, or employer. When actually what you really want to know is the trends in that sector or field in general. Does that make sense?
Jennifer: It does.
Jen: Right. I mean maybe you do want to know about that company specifically, but typically you probably don’t.
- So instead of: What are the parental leave provisions on your team?
- What you really want to know is: What are the parental leave trends that you’re seeing in this industry in general?
Jen: Oh that is some next level thinking. My fiancé has been doing informational interviews and learning from all these people. He’s definitely getting some great insights. But thinking about the trends, thinking about how it’s affecting more than just the individual, is a bigger approach. Wow.
We’re all researchers, right? We’ve all done that in our work. But researching your field, researching what you want to do next, is not something that people are always thinking about putting energy into. But it can really pay off. I just love that informational interviews can really help people experience some of that excitement, be warned about some toxic workplaces, I mean get the information that they need to actually make decisions for themselves. So that’s my favorite thing about it.
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Jennifer: Is there anything else you’d like to add about informational interviews before we wrap up?
Jen: Let me repeat something I said earlier. That this is a real sticking point for a lot of folks. That they get stuck. And even folks in my program.
In the program, it’s a self-paced online course, but I’ve got regular live small group meetings over Zoom. Sometimes folks come and I ask, have you done informational interviews yet? It’s like, “No, not yet. I’ve skipped ahead.” It’s like, “Thank you. Well let’s talk about that.” Right? Don’t skip this stage. There’s different approaches, different strategies for every specific person, of course. And we can talk about that.
I think: Just do it. You can talk about why and how, et cetera. But ultimately, just do some.
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Jennifer: Yeah! And if you do it, you can build some confidence. You can do some networking. You can really get comfortable talking about yourself, and asking people questions. You can get better at asking questions. There sounds like so many benefits, it’s kind of like well you definitely should be doing this. But also you’re gonna benefit from it too.
Thank you so much for talking with me today about all of this. Everyone who’s listening, be sure to sign up for that free workshop from Jen. You don’t want to miss that.
Jen, how can people get in touch with you?
Jen: Yeah, awesome.
So, I spent way too much time on Twitter. If you’re on Twitter, I’m there. My handle is @FromPhDToLife.
That’s also my website FromPhDToLife.com.
You can find me on LinkedIn at Jennifer Polk, PhD. I’m happy to get messages there.
I’ve also got a Facebook page From PhD to Life.
And you can email me [email protected]. I’m happy to get your messages. And follow up if I ignore you.
Jennifer: That’s right, follow up! Be sure to follow up.
Well thank you so much for listening to this interview. Be sure to like this interview. And subscribe to The Social Academic so you don’t miss the next one. Jen, thank you so much for joining me!
Jen: Yeah, you’re welcome. It’s always fun to chat. I’ll be back in a year or two, right? No pressure!
Jennifer: That’s right! [Laughs.]
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Jennifer Polk, PhD, is a career coach and educator. She regularly facilitates professional development workshops and delivers presentations for students and postdocs. Her University Affairs blog was a three-time gold winner from the Canadian Online Publishing Awards. Jen’s essays have also appeared in Inside Higher Ed, the Chronicle of Higher Education, the Globe and Mail, Academic Matters, as well as in three books.
More recently, she was an expert panelist for the 2021 Canadian Council of Academies report, Degrees of Success, on the challenges PhDs face transitioning to employment. In addition, Jen currently serves on the board of directors for CAGS, the Canadian Association for Graduate Studies. She earned her PhD in history from the University of Toronto. Find Jen online at From PhD to Life.
Check out her free job search training for PhDs thinking about leaving academia.
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Racism in Education in New Jersey with Walter D. Greason, PhD
Professor Walter Greason is back with a new in-depth interview
We’re talking about racism in education. This conversation dives into the history of racism in New Jersey. Topics that come up include the January 6th insurrection, the Supreme Court, and how things are affected today.
Walter D. Greason, PhD is Professor and Chair of the History Department at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He is author of 6 books including Industrial Segregation (2018) and Cities Imagined: The African Diaspora in Media and History (2018). His digital humanities projects, The Wakanda Syllabus and The Racial Violence Syllabus reached millions of people, and was translated into 7 languages.
P.S. Black Panther fans, this interview has some exciting tidbits about the upcoming Wakanda Forever movie! Don’t miss it.
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Jennifer: Hi, everyone. This is Jennifer Van Alstyne on The Social Academic.
Today, I’m talking with Dr. Walter Greason, who has joined us before. He’s back to talk about racism and education in New Jersey. Professor Greason, would you please introduce yourself?
Walter: Thank you so much, Jennifer. It’s an honor to be here.
Again, Walter Greason. I am a former Dean, Department Chair, 1st African American serving those roles at Monmouth University in New Jersey where we met. And so this is just a tremendous joy for me. [Jennifer graduated from Monmouth U with a BA in English in 2013.]
I’m currently a full Professor and Chair of the History Department at Macalester College in Minnesota. Which is kind of like being in charge of the Honor School [at Monmouth], but the entire campus is the honor school. So it’s been really amazing so far.
Jennifer: Oh, I love that.
It’s a reflection of the change in national politics
Jennifer: Now, today you reached out because you specifically wanted to talk about racism in education in New Jersey. And I know you’re in a new place right now, but this is a topic that you spent your career researching. That you’ve written about in Suburban Erasure: How the Suburbs Ended the Civil Rights Movement in New Jersey (2012).
I’m curious, why is this topic so important to you?
Walter: Right now it’s a reflection of the change in the national politics. That New Jersey is extraordinary place. A brilliant governor, outstanding state legislature, many of my friends currently doing amazing work to make New Jersey an even better place to live.
However in parts and pockets of the state, there are people who are extraordinarily dangerous. And I’ve seen reports in multiple news outlets about the funders in New Jersey who made things like the January 6th insurrection possible. Who throughout the last five or six years have done everything they could to sabotage the society from being an inclusive and free place.
And so now after this January 6th hearings, people are becoming more aware that there is a dangerous white nationalist threat in the United States.
But I still find that folks are underestimating it. And they’re missing the danger, particularly within our school systems.
Jennifer: Ooh. Okay. So people are already missing some of the danger that is out there and that’s because they’re not aware of it, it sounds like.
So, why is this conversation going to help them? Right? Most of the people who are listening to this are going to be professors, people who are doing research. People who are in the process of deciding what their research subject is if they’re in graduate school.
So what kind of message can we share with them that will help them understand why this is important to them?
Walter: So for folks who are going into Higher Education or really Education at any phase of their career, to understand the way the institutions operate. To understand the ways that bias still prevails in hiring, promotion, retention decisions. This is tremendously significant.
And that piece of the institutional, the governance of the school systems, of our institutions of Higher Ed. The barrier that I’ve seen most commonly, not just at Monmouth, but at many institutions is that there are committed leaders at the top of the institution. There are committed leaders at the grassroots, at the teacher’s levels, where they’re doing face to face work with students and families.
But often in the intermediate tiers: assistant principals, principals, assistant and associate superintendents, people who operationalize a lot of strategic vision…There’s enormous hostility against commitments to equity. And so it’s this middle level of administrative leadership that slows down and derails so much of the work. And frankly, underwrites and expands the ways that people can come and attack school boards.
Or, the ways that they can go out on social media and build white nationalist networks where they’re attacking parents, where they’re attacking families, where they’re attacking teachers who are attempting to make schools more equitable for everyone.
And so that’s the danger I live with every day. That’s the danger I see hour-by-hour creeping in multiple contexts. And, again, not even just in New Jersey, I mean, places like Ohio. I was just down in Alabama. There are so many places where the organized institutional commitment to injustice is winning.
And until we actually take stands together as faculty and really organize just as rigorously, we will lose these battles to try and make better school systems, better institutions for young people and for families everywhere.
Jennifer: Oh, thank you for sharing that with me.
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Jennifer: Now, actually I wanted to talk with you about this specifically because last year in a conversation with Dr. Nicole Pulliam and Nikole Hannah-Jones at Monmouth University, they talked about how “NJ towns often resist real education integration.” And that’s something that you also discuss in your book, Suburban Erasure.
Can you tell me more about the history of racism in New Jersey?
Walter: Absolutely. And, I mean, this is something that has a lot of data behind it [laugh]. But New Jersey history as a field really tended to focus on either the American Revolution or the Civil War, or to a lesser extent, World War II. There is very little attention to the social history of New Jersey. And so I’m very proud that the work I’ve done for the last 15, 20 years has changed that.
There’s a lot of attention now to history of immigrants, histories of black people, histories of lesbian, gay, transgender populations. That the openness to learn about different perspectives in our past has really grown. So that’s one of the pieces of my career I’m most proud of.
And you mentioned something that at Monmouth University there’s so many good things that I was lucky to be a part of. But the founding of the Social Justice Academy over the last two years…writing the proposal, winning the grant, getting the funding to be able to bring people like Nikole Hannah-Jones, hiring Nicole Pulliam as the Program Director for the Academy. These are things that are at the absolute top shelf of my life. I’m so proud of everything that goes on with the Academy.
That is pointing to the kinds of barriers that continue to exist.
And I think #1, people don’t understand how segregation persisted in the North after the Civil War. That they tend to even see slavery as a Southern phenomenon. They see Jim Crow segregation as a Southern phenomenon. And that’s not the case at all.
That segregation dominated the North through the 1800s while slavery was thriving. And it ultimately became the template by which the South said, ‘Oh, we can do what the North does and just keep everyone separate from each other.’ And so that in entrenched segregation, particularly with the Plessy v. Ferguson decision in 1896.
And even when you saw Brown challenge that and say, no, “with all deliberate speed,” we must desegregate [Brown v. Board of Education].
The movement was called [Massive Resistance], basically a white nationalist movement led by the White Citizens’ Council to resist nonviolently and politically any attempt to integrate schools or public institutions. And so this effort goes on for 60 Years. Like you go into the Obama administration and there are still people fighting to keep segregation and expand segregation.
It reshapes the Supreme Court.
It basically makes it possible in places like New Jersey that the worst feature that could be possible: all of the organizations that were dedicated to civil rights, and integration, and equal opportunity were dismantled after Brown [v. Board of Education].
So places that we look at old ironsides is the Bordentown Manual Training Institute, was serving African American and immigrant communities to get people trained to succeed in a modern economy–We closed it in 1956 and said, ‘No, this is no longer going to be a part of what we do in our state.’
We fired thousands of black and immigrant professionals and said, “No, they will have to learn to comply within white institutions that had created all the problems to begin with.’
So when we talk about desegregation and integration, we have a really poor grasp of how we dismantle the institutions that made the chance for integration possible.
And then we preserved all the institutions that had maintained segregation.
And then we’re surprised 50, 60 years later that so little has changed. It’s that we didn’t embrace the kinds of organizations and institutions that would have led to more equity and more inclusion.
And that meant firing lots of really qualified even overqualified people within the educational system, especially, that could have made a much stronger society overall.
Jennifer: Wow. That is very new to me. All of this information is something I may have heard you talk about before, but hearing it all together…hearing it all at once makes me see how important this was. And how lacking my own education in history in America was.
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Jennifer: Now, how does this affect education in New Jersey today?
Walter: So in 2013 and 2016, Rutgers and UCLA issued new reports that talked about how they had created in a apartheid system. That the state of New Jersey had created an apartheid education system where schools that were majority white or Asian had very few less than 5% black or Latino populations. And in a similar way, schools that were a majority black or Latino had less than 5% whiter Asian populations.
And so we had these parallel tracks within the state where municipalities essentially partnered with the real estate industry to decide where there would be high quality education. And where there would be an education that really did not prepare students to be competitive for college and for future careers.
And so that track, when that report comes out, it shocks everyone. But for anyone who had studied the way that these institutions evolved over the previous 40 years, the only inevitable outcome was that you were gonna have disparate educational gaps
Jennifer: Right.
Walter: And as a result, lifelong employment gaps, lifelong healthcare gaps, lifelong wealth gaps, and we’re not providing fair and equal opportunity to achieve and succeed in life to people of different backgrounds based on their race.
And then, when it’s not based on their race, it’s based on their zip code. Which is even more pernicious because we allow that within the market system to say that some people should get less opportunities than others based on their income, based on their education. But it’s all deeply tied to these structures about race and ethnicity.
Jennifer: Tell me more about that in terms of zip code, and real estate, and education. That seems much more closely tied together than people often expect. How does real estate and where people live affect education?
Walter: So a state like New Jersey, and many Northern and Midwestern states, education is tied to human municipality.
This is very different than places in the far West or in the South where it’s often state funded. Here in Minnesota, all counties received the same funding for education. And so, there’s remarkably high quality. And there’s still disparities, but nowhere near as extreme as what we see in a place like New Jersey, or Connecticut, or Delaware, or Virginia. These places really struggle trying to actually serve the people who have the greatest need.
And there’s a reward structure for that. There are businesses that make more money because they target very affluent particular towns, or sections of counties.
Yeah, just in Monmouth [County], around where we met, you can look at Rumson, and Deal, and Fairhaven and you see these extraordinary school systems. How do you even say a place like Middletown, doing really well
But if you go down the street to Asbury Park, if you go into parts of Red Bank, if you certainly go into the Freehold Regional System and look at what happens to Freehold borough…There are just places where people turn against majority Black and Latino populations and are angry when they get quality opportunities.
And so my students did a lot of research on this, going back into the early 2000s, where they were interviewing folks who were going out to find homes, to find apartments and talking to real estate professionals. And they’re steering folks to different communities based on their appearance. And this is a common practice.
The National Association of Realtors had to apologize just two or three years ago for ongoing systemic discriminatory practices.
And so opening the door for people to understand–And thankfully I am working with Governor Murphy on this problem–how do we actually commit to open up doors of opportunity for all people and then break down the systems of financial incentives for skilled professionals to kind of maintain segregation and inequality. Those are the things that I’m looking forward to the 2nd half of this year and into next year. We have the ability to open the door for everyone to have a fair chance to find success in economic stability.
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Jennifer: So what can people do if this is all of a sudden an issue that they’re hearing about learning about and wanting to learn more about…And to take action…
What’s something that they can do in their local communities? Let’s say maybe a teacher in New Jersey.
Walter: So first and foremost, I would say Google the term Massive Resistance. This is the phrase that I was trying to put my finger on a few minutes ago. But this is where the state of Virginia decided after the Brown decision is they were gonna commit every resource to making sure that desegregation didn’t happen.
And we tend to look at it and be like, oh, they lost in court. And eventually they decided to comply. Absolutely not. That through the early 1980s into the mid 1990s, town-by-town, county-by-county, state-by-state, people continued to push back. To deny equal opportunity to all people.
And ultimately they win that fight. By the time we get to 2014 and you’re seeing the reversal of the Voting Rights Act. And you’re seeing the increasing waves over the last decade of abandoning the idea of equal justice for all people…That’s exactly what we’re seeing play out in the 2016, the 2020 election, now in the 22 congressional election.
It’s what sparked the riot in on January 6th was this idea that this is a white Christian nation and that any anyone that doesn’t fit that parameter, especially those who challenge patriarchy, and want to kind of guarantee women’s equal rights, that they are equal citizens, and deserve something like abortion protections and equal healthcare access.
That’s the battle where some people’s like, ‘No, we are going to dictate that that’s not going to happen. And then we’re gonna cut off the legal basis for it.”
And Clarence Thomas’s recent decision concurrence, he spells out all the rights that he wants the Supreme Court to repeal. And it’s largely all of these principles that are reinforced by the January 6th insurrection. Not surprisingly, his wife is having to testify before the January 6th committee because of her organizing in funding for those events.
But no one on the opposite side of these issues, no one pressing for civil rights, and women’s rights, and immigrant’s rights, for recognition of equal treatment of the LGBTQ community…there is not the same level of organization. Things are fractured. People undercut each other. People feel defensive about giving up space so that they can give voice to other people who share their same agenda.
Until folks who are pressing for equal justice come together and get on the same page, these issues will never gain traction. You’ll never be able to defend the rights of all people and guarantee equity for every person to find their American dream.
Jennifer: You talked about the importance of organizing before. And I think you just talked about it again, the importance of coming together when you have similar interests.
Now, what can that look like? What kind of organizational structure is that? How can people connect with each other? Where can people go to find that community?
Walter: So, there’s extraordinary model. I’m fortunate because I do the work, I know a few.
In Princeton, [New Jersey] there is an organization called Not In Our Town that meets every week and they discuss books. They discuss movies. They listen to music together. They share great food and they actually talk about how do they stand up for justice in that community? And Princeton is an elite place. That Route 1 corridor between New Brunswick and Princeton, that is a place where there is a ton of resources. And they have a long history of cutting people out and not getting access to them.
We need something like that along the Route 36 corridor [laughs]. You know, going out from Middletown down to Point Pleasant, like that’s another area where there’s not that same type of engagement.
I know there are folks who are doing work in the arts community in Belmar. There is an Asbury Park book collective that actually does a lot of great work across the state.
I mean, up in Newark, there’s just long tradition of battling against discrimination. That’s very important. We need more of that in Camden. We need more of that in Atlantic city.
But most of all, I’ve been really pleased to see in places like Union County and Morristown, places that are really affluent, more and more people trying to raise these questions and engage these topics.
And it’s not just about doing just a book club, or doing just a cooking society, cooking circle. You can do all of these good things, but raise the difficult issues. And look at the policies.
Attend the school board meetings, not to shout at the people who serve, but to talk with them about the solutions that they may not be aware of.
Work that I was just doing in Freehold was about participatory budgeting as a model that comes out of Brazil, where local people get to choose the budget priorities on an annual basis. They don’t just leave it to the town council to decide how tax money is spent.
Jennifer: Wow.
Walter: And so there are all number of ways. You know, I work on things like universal basic income here in Saint Paul, [Minnesota] where folks who are really struggling, who are facing disabilities, or are out of work can get additional supplemental income just so they don’t fall behind and get further into debt.
Big ones are ideas that go into like a job guarantee at the state or the federal level so that everybody who can work can find the work they want and go out there. We desperately need this right now.
There’s a lot of fights I have with central bankers about inflationary pressures. And should we go into recession? What will that do to the country in the next 6 to 10 months?
So doing things differently than we’ve done them in the last 40 to 50 years is uniform in my commitment. I’m big on the side of economics and teaching folks how to read business news and actually engage in new business creation.
For young people, especially for folks who are 15 to 25, folks following the example of what you’re doing with this show. There is so much to do, and we need people to do it differently than was done in the past.
Those are the kinds of things, if anyone’s interested, they can hit my website where I give out ideas every day in business models and funding so that folks can get underway.
Jennifer: That’s great: WalterDGreason.com
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Jennifer: Now Walter, you have almost 33,000 Twitter followers [@WalterDGreason]. That’s a lot of people who are potentially listening when you tweet about racism in education.
What kinds of responses do you typically get to your tweets?
Walter: Wow. So it’s varied a lot.
Jennifer: Yeah!
Walter: So that account has been up now for 10 years. I can’t believe that account is 10 years old now. Early on, you know, there’s just not a lot of acceptance of academic content on social media.
And so that’s another area where I feel tremendously proud that the kinds of models of providing quality graphics to advertise academic content. To emphasize doing things like podcasts and online shows…That these things were just not part of the social media community 2012, 2013, 2014.
Jennifer: Right.
Walter: And then we started to gain traction. Like we started to really change things. And so for me, it was the Racial Violence Syllabus in 2017.
I think I was already in the tens of thousands of followers. But since then, the engagement is just off the chart.
And so by 2017, now you saw a turning point. You know, my profession as a historian embraced social media really aggressively and thousands of well known scholars joined social media and began to promote their books, began to talk about speaking tours.
Yeah, probably the biggest one is Nikole Hannah-Jones (@NHannahJones), and the work with The 1619 Project.
But Ibram X. Kendi’s (@DrIbram) up there too in How to Be an Antiracist (2019).
These are all folks that kind of were little pups [laughs] and so I had them come up and believe in the vision. And come on board, and it’s been extraordinary to see the success across so many different platforms. And the revolution in publishing in media that came from it.
So yeah, it’s nice. You know, 30,000 followers for an academic is no joke.
Everywhere I’ve taught, whether it is Monmouth, or Drexel, any of these places, Macalester. You know, there’s just an impact where I’m guaranteed to reach 40 to 70 million people with viral impact. And again, for academic content, that’s kind of unheard of.
Most academics in my field, you know, there’s, they’re satisfied if they get 20-25 people to know anything about what they’re talking about.
Jennifer: Right.
Walter: And so I also have to mention the Wakanda stuff was tremendous. And so being able to bring a spotlight to other colleagues. And then to expand the kinds of audiences who engage in these discussions.
You know, there’s a lot of folks who like to attack the idea of being woke. But being aware and having a good vocabulary to communicate effectively about difficult topics. That’s something everybody should have. And then really should not avoid acquiring those skills.
I don’t care if you call it woke, or informed, or discerning. There’s any number of phrases and adjectives we can use to describe it. But the skill set to communicate clearly and find new solutions together, that’s essential. That’s the core of what freedom is. And so, you know, I’m just very proud that we can turn social media into a platform that does that. And not just a platform for disinformation and manipulation for people to just fuel hate and anger.
Jennifer: Now, when it comes to the tweets that you have about your research, there are always going to be people who hate. Or, who very much dislike what you have to say.
When you get those negative reactions, what’s that like for you?
Walter: So I came up in the internet before there were like pictures [laughs]. And so, you know, I was building webpages, and joining list serves, and being on discussion boards when it was so much worse.
[Laughs.] It was so much worse.
I don’t even know if people use this phrase anymore, but there were these things called flame wars where, you know, you would just get into it and try to burn up whoever was disagreeing with you. And shame, them cow them, dox them into submission and drive them from the platform.
I remember being in a lot of those fights in the mid to late 90s and learning that it’s a waste of time going after and trying to destroy people who disagree with you.
And so I typically have a rule, you know, when someone says something snarky, off color, or aggressive…I’ll indulge it, you know, for a message or two. But inevitably I turn to it as an educator and say, well, you clearly haven’t seen X, Y, and Z. Here are some places to continue to kind of learn about what you’re asking about. And then if you take a look at these things, we can kind of continue the discussion.
But I do find, I get bombarded with bot accounts. And that was something I wasn’t prepared for when it really started to happen a lot. And so these are bot accounts that have 0 to 200 followers that are also all bot accounts. And they’re automated. And they repeat their content. And they just spam the communication channel hoping to waste your time and energy. And eventually I just came to the places once I’m able to determine that it’s a bot account. If it’s a network of bots. I just block them and keep moving [laughs].
Cause there are too many people who are sincere and honest about trying to participate in discourse and, and have good conversations that deserve my time.
Not, not these [bot accounts]. And it’s not just from one country or another it’s there are any number of bad actors out there that have learned how to build bots that are designed to disrupt really productive work.
Jennifer: Okay. So that’s really interesting. You have experienced a lot of flame wars, is that what you called it?
Walter: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
Jennifer: So you’ve experienced a lot more direct and kind of like ongoing conversations about that in the past. So you don’t really engage in those conversations now.
But you do respond, it sounds like, if someone does leave a comment or a question. You don’t just ignore it if it’s a negative comment or question.
Walter: No, if it’s an actual person. Yeah. If its an actual person, and one just disagrees, I want there to be a constructive way that they can move forward.
I do put a limit on it. That’s like it can go back and forth three or four times, but you’re not gonna take me away from doing the work that brought me to this place.
Jennifer: Right. Oh, well, thank you for sharing that with me.
A lot of the professors that I work with, you know, they’re really anxious about posting anything at all. They’re scared that someone will report them to their university, or that they’ll get death threats, or that they’ll get doxed and actually have cops or SWAT come into their home.
Because of that fear, it really stops them from speaking out. But you’ve been speaking out and you’ve been talking on Twitter for a long time. And it sounds like even though you do get negative comments, you do respond to those and you do engage in those conversations because occasionally they can be helpful or learning experiences. Is that right?
Walter: Oh, yes. Oh yes, no. It’s funny. I just saw a cartoonist, very conservative cartoonist, that I met years ago on Facebook. And he’s become radicalized. He says, and then writes, and draws a lot of really poisonous kinds of stuff.
Jennifer: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
Walter: But I still stay in touch. I still tell him, you know, like try to moderate this. You’re not accomplishing the thing that you might think you are.
But ultimately, I find with these folks, particularly in that kind of, you know, Trump MAGA circle is, they’re in a lot of pain. They’re very deeply hurt and sad. And they try to then inflict that sadness and injury on other people around them.
And when I can mostly face-to-face honest, honestly, kind of giving them a way to look at their own humanity–could be through their family members, it could be through friends of theirs–but it gets them to kind of be more introspective.
And that slows down the vitriol. I’m not gonna say it wipes it away or completely reverses the issues that they raise. But shutting them down and casting ’em aside, that’s not always the best way.
There are folks, yeah, you can’t. They are dangerous. And then you need to report them to the police and the FBI. And protect yourself from them.
But it’s even with that mob on January 6th that, you know, you had several hundred out of 10,000 that were really dangerous that needed to be arrested, needed to be convicted, needed to be sent to jail for some time. But there were a lot of folks who were there that looked at what was going on, didn’t like what they saw and backed away and had to kind of reevaluate like, ‘How did this happen?’
And those are the folks that will confront me. And they’re doing it in a way where they’re trying to kind of reconcile, ‘Okay. How do I get back into a conversation that is civil? I don’t want to be a part of something that’s about attacking police and destroying government buildings.’
It’s also hard from the left. There are a lot of folks on the left who feel like I’m way too conservative. That I’m not really ready to burn everything down to make freedom happen for people.
And so, you know, like trying to bring people together in a broad middle where they can see a way to make progress together. That’s a really tough position. That’s a time where lots of folks don’t want to be in the middle because you can get attacked from both sides. But again, I’ve been doing it for 30, 40 years now.
I’m committed to Dr. King’s vision, but I am open to Malcolm X’s methods. [Laughs.]
I pull in a lot of different tools to go after what I think will make all of us better people tomorrow.
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Jennifer: Now you’ve collaborated with people in kind of every sector in government, in local government, in the media. You collaborated with people on what Wakanda, and all of these things.
What do you get out of collaborating with so many different people? Not just people in Higher Education.
Walter: Yeah. I’ve had a long time to think about that and coming to Macalester helped me get a little bit more perspective on that experience.
I’m not just historian. I’ve PhD in history. I’ve studied history for decades. But I also have a lot of literary analysis skills. I have a strong background as a philosopher. I’ve worked in Africana studies, worked in diplomacy, in peace and justice work. Having that kind of multidisciplinary background working–working in a prosecutor’s office as a high school student. Even growing up on a farm and being a carpenter as like my first real job. Those things challenge me to bridge connections.
And I say almost on a daily basis now, I hear from people who think whatever their approach is the only approach, and it’s the best answer. And I never believe that any of the tools that I bring to the table are the only way, or the best way. I always come in with what I hope is great humility to learn from people what tools they have. And then try to see and understand from their perspective how we can move forward while also providing them with resources that maybe they had never encountered before.
And so I used to do a freshman seminar at Monmouth University on ‘why do we have so many different departments at the college?’ And you know, you have 70 majors at a regional university, you know, to serve everybody and help them choose the thing that they feel like they can be good at and succeed in. But that’s 70 different sets of solutions to any kind of social problems that we’re trying to solve out in the real world. And that’s just the big umbrella. Like you break each of those departments, they have 15 or 20 different methodologies within each department. So you’ve got 1,500 different ways of going after solutions at a school like Monmouth.
Imagine when you go to Rutgers, and that system. And how much they’re offering on a daily basis about different ways to go about building a better world. And then you go to Penn State or Michigan and, you know, it’s ridiculous, the amount of solutions we have.
And we need to have more respect and deference for each other so that we find good answers together.
That you know, we’re not just assuming our way is the only way to go about it.
Jennifer: Wow. Oh, I have just loved this conversation. And I’m so glad that you came back to talk with me again. For anyone who’s listening, be sure to check out that first featured interview with Walter. We talk more about his tweets going viral, the Wakanda Syllabus, all sorts of things that you don’t wanna miss.
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever comes out November 11, 2022
Jennifer: Now, Walter, the Black Panther: Wakanda Forever trailer just came out yesterday, I believe. And I remember we talked about Black Panther and your Wakanda Syllabus during our last interview. Are you excited for the new movie?
Walter: Oh, of course. Of course. You know, so I spent a long time working on just the idea that a movie could possibly be made. So it’s a dream. I was teaching Black Panther comics in my classes back in 2002, 2003. Working on drafts of content for the movie.
When I saw the ancestral plane in the first film, I literally cried in the theater. Like it is still one of the great moments of my life to see that something that was so important to me made it onto a Hollywood screen.
And now I’m seeing this sequel and knowing, you know, I knew before the movie came out, there would be a sequel. I was like, this is gonna be too intense. People are gonna wanna see more.
Jennifer: Yes.
Walter: But it’s not just the sequel of the Black Panther. It’s so many other shows. It’s the HBO Lovecraft Country. It’s the way that the Westworld series has evolved. There’s so much good Afrofuturistic content that is out and available now. And so much more to come that’s still in production.
I just saw the Jordan Peel movie, [Nope] just this past weekend. These are things that just couldn’t exist when I was younger, that I was so happy to see emerge.
But yeah, the trailer to come out at San Diego ComicCon. And to see the audience, they had an African dance performance on stage to introduce the section of the program where they brought it out.
Yeah, the change in the sequel because of Chadwick Boseman’s passing is that it’s titled Black Panther, but the more prominent subtitle is Wakanda Forever.
And I said this in the first movie, it’s like, you come for the Black Panther, but you’re gonna stay for the Dora Milaje. Like this entire cast of people who just transformed the way we tell stories. And we imagine what a superhero narrative is about. And there’s so much more layered into the way this sequel’s gonna be done.
So a character named Namor, who was one of Marvel’s earliest characters has been kind of redesigned as a Chicano superhero using Incan and Mayan kinds of expressions in the way it’s costume is designed and the society that he represents.
And I don’t wanna give away too much in the movie, but this movie is really about sadness and loss. And so it’s a way to kind of process the grief of the loyalty of Chadwick Boseman, but it’s gonna be much larger than that.
There’s a devastation to the way that this conflict plays out that is gonna set up a 3rd movie. And the 3rd movie is then gonna lead into the final two Avengers movies over the next 3 years and it’ll make the Thanos conflict, the infinity stone saga, look very, very small in comparison.
And so if anybody has seen the Loki series on Disney+, or the What If series. Those two things are tremendously important.
And I know there’s a lot of folks who are very disappointed that the T’Challa character was not recast for this movie to kind of bring in more audience and honor Bozeman by just not letting the character disappear.
I do think there’s gonna be a surprise at the end of this sequel about the nature of T’Challa character. And so knowing the way the story works, knowing the way the writers work, and then the designers…I definitely think it’s gonna be a different vibe completely from the 1st movie. But it will be something that will be unforgettable. And people will be talking about it for the next 2 years.
Jennifer: Oh, that’s great. Wow. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever comes out November 11, 2022. I’m really excited for it.
And I’m also gonna include the link to that trailer below.
Walter: Yes, please.
Jennifer: Because you should definitely check it out.
Jennifer: Walter, thank you so much for joining me for this interview. Is there anything you’d like to add before we wrap up?
Walter: Oh, this is tremendous. Your work is spectacular. You don’t know. I am so happy to see it every day.
I would say to you specifically tag me every time you have something [Laughter]. So I make sure I am letting everybody know about it.
Your work is so good.
Jennifer: Well, thank you so much for that!
And just on the topic of grief and loss, I do wanna let everyone listening know that my last interview with Dr. Chinasa Elue was focused on grief and loss, especially in these last couple of years during the pandemic. So I want to encourage you to check that out if it’s something that you’ve been experiencing. Your students I’m sure have been experiencing this as well.
Alright, thank you, Walter! I really appreciate it.
Walter: Jennifer, you’re the best. Thank you again.
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Dr. Walter Greason is the leading academic expert on Black and Indigenous historic preservation as well as Afrofuturism and the Black Speculative Arts Movement. He is a professor of history and chairs the Department of History at Macalester College, one of the best liberal arts colleges in the world.
Connect with Walter on Twitter @WalterDGreason