Social media has connected kids like never before, but what they get in likes and shares, they lose in real, meaningful engagement with their peers and classmates. Lunch hours are spent hunched over smartphones, and after-school time means less sports and more Snapchat.
The adverse effects of this excessive screen time have significantly impacted students’ social- emotional health. Forty-one percent of teens with the highest social media usage struggle with mental health issues, and between 2010 and 2020, anxiety among adolescents skyrocketed by 106 percent.
At Spokane Public Schools (SPS), educators and administrators are reversing the side effects of social media by re-connecting with students through school-based extracurricular activities. Through its transformative Engage IRL (Engage in Real Life) initiative, the district is encouraging kids to get off their devices and onto the pickleball court, into the swimming pool, and outside in the fresh air. With more than 300 clubs and sports to choose from, SPS students are happier, healthier, and less likely to reach for their smartphones.
An innovative approach to student engagement
Even before the pandemic, SPS saw levels of engagement plummet among the student population, especially in school attendance rates, due in part to an increase in mental health issues caused by social media. Rebuilding classroom connections in the era of phone-based childhoods would require district leaders to think big.
“The question was not ‘How do we get kids off their phones?’ but ‘How do we get them engaged with each other more often?’” said Ryan Lancaster, executive director of communications for SPS. “Our intent was to get every kid, every day, involved in something positive outside the school day and extend that community learning past the classroom.”
To meet the district’s goal of creating a caring and connected community, in 2022, school leaders formed a workgroup of parents, community members, coaches, and teachers to take inventory of current extracurriculars at all district schools and identify gaps in meeting students’ diverse interests and hobbies.
Engaging with students was a top priority for workgroup members. “The students were excited to be heard,” explained Nikki Otero Lockwood, SPS board president. “A lot of them wanted an art club. They wanted to play board games and learn to knit. No matter their interests, what they really wanted was to be at school and be connected to others.”
Working with community partners and LaunchNW, an Innovia Foundation initiative focused on helping every child feel a sense of belonging, SPS launched Engage IRL–an ambitious push to turn students’ ideas for fun and fulfillment into real-life, engaging activities.
Over the past two years, Engage IRL has been the catalyst for increasing access and opportunities for K-12 students to participate in clubs, sports, arts activities, and other community events. From the Math is Cool Club and creative writing classes to wrestling and advanced martial arts, kids can find a full range of activities to join through the Elite IRL website. In addition, five engagement navigators in the district help connect families and students to engagement opportunities through individual IRL Plans and work with local organizations to expand programming.
“All day, every day, our navigators are working to break down barriers and tackle challenges to make sure nothing gets in the way of what kids want to be involved in and engaged in,” said Stephanie Splater, executive director of athletics and activities for SPS. “For example, when we didn’t have a coach for one of the schools in our middle school football program, our navigators mobilized for really good candidates in a short amount of time just from their personal outreach.”
In only two years, student engagement in extracurriculars has nearly doubled. Furthermore, according to Lancaster, since the Engage IRL launch, SPS hasn’t experienced a day where it dipped below 90 percent attendance.
“That’s an outlier in the past few years for us, for sure, and we think it’s because kids want to be at school. They want to be engaged and be part of all the cool things we’re doing. We’ve had a really great start to the 2024-2025 school year, and Engage IRL has played a huge role.”
Engage IRL also helped SPS weather student blowback when the district launched a new cell phone policy this year. The policy prohibits cell phone use in elementary and middle school and limits it to lunch and periods between classes for high school students. Because students were already building personal connections with classmates and teachers through Engage IRL, many easily handled social media withdrawal.
Creating opportunities for all kids
Key to Engage IRL’s success was ensuring partnerships and programs were centered in equity, allowing every child to participate regardless of ability, financial or transportation constraints, or language barriers.
Establishing a no-cut policy in athletics by creating additional JV and C teams ensured kids with a passion for sports, but not college-level skills, continued to compete on the court or field. Partnering with Special Olympics also helped SPS build new unified sports programs that gave children with disabilities a chance to play. And engagement navigators are assisting English language learners and their families in finding activities that help them connect with kids in their new country.
For Otero Lockwood, getting her daughter with autism connected to clubs after years of struggling to find school activities has been life-changing.
“There are barriers to finding community for some kids,” she shared. “We know kids with disabilities are more likely to be underemployed as adults and not as connected to the community. This is something we have the power to do that will have a lasting impact on the children we serve.”
Through Engage IRL, SPS has redefined student engagement by expanding access and opportunity to 6,000 students across 58 schools. In just two short years, the district has seen attendance increase, student wellness improve, and dependence on smartphones diminish. By continuing to listen to the needs of students and rallying the community to partner on out-of-school activities, Spokane Public Schools is successfully fostering the face-to-face connections every child needs to thrive.
Sean Duke, Washington State School Directors’ Association
Sean Duke is the communications officer for the Washington State School Directors’ Association, where he has served for over six years.
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When
borrowers default on their federal student loans, the U.S. Department
of Education (“Department of Education”) can collect the outstanding
balance through forced collections, including the offset of tax refunds
and Social Security benefits and the garnishment of wages. At the
beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Department of Education paused
collections on defaulted federal student loans.
This year, collections are set to resume and almost 6 million student
loan borrowers with loans in default will again be subject to the
Department of Education’s forced collection of their tax refunds, wages,
and Social Security benefits.
Among the borrowers who are likely to experience forced collections are
an estimated 452,000 borrowers ages 62 and older with defaulted loans
who are likely receiving Social Security benefits.
This
spotlight describes the circumstances and experiences of student loan
borrowers affected by the forced collection of Social Security benefits.
It also describes how forced collections can push older borrowers into
poverty, undermining the purpose of the Social Security program.
Key findings
The
number of Social Security beneficiaries experiencing forced collection
grew by more than 3,000 percent in fewer than 20 years; the count is
likely to grow as the age of student loan borrowers trends older.
Between 2001 and 2019, the number of Social Security beneficiaries
experiencing reduced benefits due to forced collection increased from
approximately 6,200 to 192,300. This exponential growth is likely driven
by older borrowers who make up an increasingly large share of the
federal student loan portfolio. The number of student loan borrowers
ages 62 and older increased by 59 percent from 1.7 million in 2017 to
2.7 million in 2023, compared to a 1 percent decline among borrowers
under the age of 62.
The total amount
of Social Security benefits the Department of Education collected
between 2001 and 2019 through the offset program increased from $16.2
million to $429.7 million. Despite the exponential increase in
collections from Social Security, the majority of money the Department
of Education has collected has been applied to interest and fees and has
not affected borrowers’ principal amount owed. Furthermore, between
2016 and 2019, the Department of the Treasury’s fees alone accounted for
nearly 10 percent of the average borrower’s lost Social Security
benefits.
More than one in three
Social Security recipients with student loans are reliant on Social
Security payments, meaning forced collections could significantly
imperil their financial well-being. Approximately 37 percent of the
1.3 million Social Security beneficiaries with student loans rely on
modest payments, an average monthly benefit of $1,523, for 90 percent of
their income. This population is particularly vulnerable to reduction
in their benefits especially if benefits are offset year-round. In 2019,
the average annual amount collected from individual beneficiaries was
$2,232 ($186 per month).
The physical well-being of half of Social Security beneficiaries with student loans in default may be at risk.
Half of Social Security beneficiaries with student loans in default and
collections skipped a doctor’s visit or did not obtain prescription
medication due to cost.
Existing minimum income protections fail to protect student loan borrowers with Social Security against financial hardship.
Currently, only $750 per month of Social Security income—an amount that
is $400 below the monthly poverty threshold for an individual and has
not been adjusted for inflation since 1996—is protected from forced
collections by statute. Even if the minimum protected income was
adjusted for inflation, beneficiaries would likely still experience
hardship, such as food insecurity and problems paying utility bills. A
higher threshold could protect borrowers against hardship more
effectively. The CFPB found that for 87 percent of student loan
borrowers who receive Social Security, their benefit amount is below 225
percent of the federal poverty level (FPL), an income level at which
people are as likely to experience material hardship as those with
incomes below the federal poverty level.
Large
shares of Social Security beneficiaries affected by forced collections
may be eligible for relief or outright loan cancellation, yet they are
unable to access these benefits, possibly due to insufficient
automation or borrowers’ cognitive and physical decline. As many as
eight in ten Social Security beneficiaries with loans in default may be
eligible to suspend or reduce forced collections due to financial
hardship. Moreover, one in five Social Security beneficiaries may be
eligible for discharge of their loans due to a disability. Yet these
individuals are not accessing such relief because the Department of
Education’s data matching process insufficiently identifies those who
may be eligible.
Taken together,
these findings suggest that the Department of Education’s forced
collections of Social Security benefits increasingly interfere with
Social Security’s longstanding purpose of protecting its beneficiaries
from poverty and financial instability.
Introduction
When
borrowers default on their federal student loans, the Department of
Education can collect the outstanding balance through forced
collections, including the offset of tax refunds and Social Security
benefits, and the garnishment of wages. At the beginning of the COVID-19
pandemic, the Department of Education paused collections on defaulted
federal student loans. This year, collections are set to resume and
almost 6 million student loan borrowers with loans in default will again
be subject to the Department of Education’s forced collection of their
tax refunds, wages, and Social Security benefits.
Among
the borrowers who are likely to experience the Department of
Education’s renewed forced collections are an estimated 452,000
borrowers with defaulted loans who are ages 62 and older and who are
likely receiving Social Security benefits.
Congress created the Social Security program in 1935 to provide a basic
level of income that protects insured workers and their families from
poverty due to situations including old age, widowhood, or disability.
The Social Security Administration calls the program “one of the most
successful anti-poverty programs in our nation’s history.”
In 2022, Social Security lifted over 29 million Americans from poverty,
including retirees, disabled adults, and their spouses and dependents.
Congress has recognized the importance of securing the value of Social
Security benefits and on several occasions has intervened to protect
them.
This
spotlight describes the circumstances and experiences of student loan
borrowers affected by the forced collection of their Social Security
benefits.
It also describes how the purpose of Social Security is being
increasingly undermined by the limited and deficient options the
Department of Education has to protect Social Security beneficiaries
from poverty and hardship.
The forced collection of Social Security benefits has increased exponentially.
Federal
student loans enter default after 270 days of missed payments and
transfer to the Department of Education’s default collections program
after 360 days. Borrowers with a loan in default face several
consequences: (1) their credit is negatively affected; (2) they lose
eligibility to receive federal student aid while their loans are in
default; (3) they are unable to change repayment plans and request
deferment and forbearance; and (4) they face forced collections of tax refunds, Social Security benefits, and wages among other payments.
To conduct its forced collections of federal payments like tax refunds
and Social Security benefits, the Department of Education relies on a
collection service run by the U.S. Department of the Treasury called the
Treasury Offset Program.
Between
2001 and 2019, the number of student loan borrowers facing forced
collection of their Social Security benefits increased from at least
6,200 to 192,300.
That is a more than 3,000 percent increase in fewer than 20 years. By
comparison, the number of borrowers facing forced collections of their
tax refunds increased by about 90 percent from 1.17 million to 2.22
million during the same period.
This exponential growth of Social Security offsets between 2001 and 2019 is likely driven by multiple factors including:
Older
borrowers accounted for an increasingly large share of the federal
student loan portfolio due to increasing average age of enrollment and
length of time in repayment. Data from the Department of Education
(which is only available since 2017), show that the number of student
loan borrowers ages 62 and older, increased 24 percent from 1.7 million
in 2017 to 2.1 million in 2019, compared to less than 1 percent among
borrowers under the age of 62.
A larger number of borrowers, especially older borrowers, had loans in default.
Data from the Department of Education show that the number of student
loan borrowers with a defaulted loan increased by 230 percent from 3.8
million in 2006 to 8.8 million in 2019. Compounding these trends is the fact that older borrowers are twice as likely to have a loan in default than younger borrowers.
Due
to these factors, the total amount of Social Security benefits the
Department of Education collected between 2001 and 2019 through the
offset program increased annually from $16.2 million to $429.7 million
(when adjusted for inflation).
This increase occurred even though the average monthly amount the
Department of Education collected from individual beneficiaries was the
same for most years, at approximately $180 per month.
Figure 1: Number of Social Security beneficiaries and total amount collected for student loans (2001-2019)
Source: CFPB analysis of public data from U.S. Treasury’s Fiscal Data portal. Amounts are presented in 2024 dollars.
While the total collected from
Social Security benefits has increased exponentially, the majority of
money the Department of Education collected has not been applied to
borrowers’ principal amount owed. Specifically, nearly three-quarters of
the monies the Department of Education collects through offsets is
applied to interest and fees, and not towards paying down principal
balances.
Between 2016 and 2019, the U.S. Department of the Treasury charged the
Department of Education between $13.12 and $15.00 per Social Security
offset, or approximately between $157.44 and $180 for 12 months of
Social Security offsets per beneficiary with defaulted federal student
loans. As a matter of practice, the Department of Education often passes these fees on directly to borrowers.
Furthermore, these fees accounted for nearly 10 percent of the average
monthly borrower’s lost Social Security benefits which was $183 during
this time.
Interest and fees not only reduce beneficiaries’ monthly benefits, but
also prolong the period that beneficiaries are likely subject to forced
collections.
Forced collections are compromising Social Security beneficiaries’ financial well-being.
Forced
collection of Social Security benefits affects the financial well-being
of the most vulnerable borrowers and can exacerbate any financial and
health challenges they may already be experiencing. The CFPB’s analysis
of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) pooled data for
2018 to 2021 finds that Social Security beneficiaries with student
loans receive an average monthly benefit of $1,524.
The analysis also indicates that approximately 480,000 (37 percent) of
the 1.3 million beneficiaries with student loans rely on these modest
payments for 90 percent or more of their income,
thereby making them particularly vulnerable to reduction in their
benefits especially if benefits are offset year-round. In 2019, the
average annual amount collected from individual beneficiaries was $2,232
($186 per month).
A
recent survey from The Pew Charitable Trusts found that more than nine
in ten borrowers who reported experiencing wage garnishment or Social
Security payment offsets said that these penalties caused them financial
hardship.
Consequently, for many, their ability to meet their basic needs,
including access to healthcare, became more difficult. According to our
analysis of the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Household Economic and
Decision-making (SHED), half of Social Security beneficiaries with
defaulted student loans skipped a doctor’s visit and/or did not obtain
prescription medication due to cost.
Moreover, 36 percent of Social Security beneficiaries with loans in
delinquency or in collections report fair or poor health. Over half of
them have medical debt.
Figure 2: Selected financial experiences and hardships among subgroups of loan borrowers
Source: CFPB analysis of the Federal Reserve Board Survey of Household Economic and Decision-making (2019-2023).
Social Security recipients
subject to forced collection may not be able to access key public
benefits that could help them mitigate the loss of income. This is
because Social Security beneficiaries must list the unreduced amount of
their benefits prior to collections when applying for other means-tested
benefits programs such as Social Security Insurance (SSI), Supplemental
Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and the Medicare Savings Programs.
Consequently, beneficiaries subject to forced collections must report
an inflated income relative to what they are actually receiving. As a
result, these beneficiaries may be denied public benefits that provide
food, medical care, prescription drugs, and assistance with paying for
other daily living costs.
Consumers’
complaints submitted to the CFPB describe the hardship caused by forced
collections on borrowers reliant on Social Security benefits to pay for
essential expenses.
Consumers often explain their difficulty paying for such expenses as
rent and medical bills. In one complaint, a consumer noted that they
were having difficulty paying their rent since their Social Security
benefit usually went to paying that expense.
In another complaint, a caregiver described that the money was being
withheld from their mother’s Social Security, which was the only source
of income used to pay for their mother’s care at an assisted living
facility.
As forced collections threaten the housing security and health of
Social Security beneficiaries, they also create a financial burden on
non-borrowers who help address these hardships, including family members
and caregivers.
Existing minimum income protections fail to protect student loan borrowers with Social Security against financial hardship.
The
Debt Collection Improvement Act set a minimum floor of income below
which the federal government cannot offset Social Security benefits and
subsequent Treasury regulations established a cap on the percentage of
income above that floor.
Specifically, these statutory guardrails limit collections to 15
percent of Social Security benefits above $750. The minimum threshold
was established in 1996 and has not been updated since. As a result, the
amount protected by law alone does not adequately protect beneficiaries
from financial hardship and in fact no longer protects them from
falling below the federal poverty level (FPL). In 1996, $750 was nearly
$100 above the monthly poverty threshold for an individual.
Today that same protection is $400 below the threshold. If the
protected amount of $750 per month ($9,000 per year) set in 1996 was
adjusted for inflation, in 2024 dollars, it would total $1,450 per month
($17,400 per year).
Figure
3: Comparison of monthly FPL threshold with the current protected
amount established in 1996 and the amount that would be protected with
inflation adjustment
Source: Calculations by the CFPB. Notes: Inflation adjustments based on the consumer price index (CPI).
Even if the minimum protected
income of $750 is adjusted for inflation, beneficiaries will likely
still experience hardship as a result of their reduced benefits.
Consumers with incomes above the poverty line also commonly experience
material hardship. This suggests that a threshold that is higher than the poverty level will more effectively protect against hardship.
Indeed, in determining an income threshold for $0 payments under the
SAVE plan, the Department of Education researchers used material
hardship (defined as being unable to pay utility bills and reporting
food insecurity) as their primary metric, and found similar levels of
material hardship among those with incomes below the poverty line and
those with incomes up to 225 percent of the FPL.
Similarly, the CFPB’s analysis of a pooled sample of SIPP respondents
finds the same levels of material hardship for Social Security
beneficiaries with student loans with incomes below 100 percent of the
FPL and those with incomes up to 225 percent of the FPL.
The CFPB found that for 87 percent of student loan borrowers who
receive Social Security, their benefit amount is below 225 percent of
the FPL.
Accordingly, all of those borrowers would be removed from forced
collections if the Department of Education applied the same income
metrics it established under the SAVE program to an automatic hardship
exemption program.
Existing options for relief from forced collections fail to reach older borrowers.
Borrowers
with loans in default remain eligible for certain types of loan
cancellation and relief from forced collections. However, our analysis
suggests that these programs may not be reaching many eligible
consumers. When borrowers do not benefit from these programs, their
hardship includes, but is not limited to, unnecessary losses to their
Social Security benefits and negative credit reporting.
Borrowers who become disabled after reaching full retirement age may miss out on Total and Permanent Disability
The
Total and Permanent Disability (TPD) discharge program cancels federal
student loans and effectively stops all forced collections for disabled
borrowers who meet certain requirements. After recent revisions to the
program, this form of cancelation has become common for those borrowers
with Social Security who became disabled prior to full retirement age. In 2016, a GAO study documented the significant barriers to TPD that Social Security beneficiaries faced.
To address GAO’s concerns, the Department of Education in 2021 took a
series of mitigating actions, including entering into a data-matching
agreement with the Social Security Administration (SSA) to automate the
TPD eligibility determination and discharge process.
This process was expanded further with new final rules being
implemented July 1, 2023 that expanded the categories of borrowers
eligible for automatic TPD cancellation. In total, these changes successfully resulted in loan cancelations for approximately 570,000 borrowers.
However,
the automation and other regulatory changes did not significantly
change the application process for consumers who become disabled after
they reach full retirement age or who have already claimed the Social
Security retirement benefits. For these beneficiaries, because they are
already receiving retirement benefits, SSA does not need to determine
disability status. Likewise, SSA does not track disability status for
those individuals who become disabled after they start collecting their
Social Security retirement benefits.
Consequently,
SSA does not transfer information on disability to the Department of
Education once the beneficiary begins collecting Social Security
retirement.
These individuals therefore will not automatically get a TPD discharge
of their student loans, and they must be aware and physically and
mentally able to proactively apply for the discharge.
The
CFPB’s analysis of the Census survey data suggests that the population
that is excluded from the TPD automation process could be substantial.
More than one in five (22 percent) Social Security beneficiaries with
student loans are receiving retirement benefits and report a disability
such as a limitation with vision, hearing, mobility, or cognition.
People with dementia and other cognitive disabilities are among those
with the greatest risk of being excluded, since they are more likely to
be diagnosed after the age 70, which is the maximum age for claiming
retirement benefits.
These
limitations may also help explain why older borrowers are less likely
to rehabilitate their defaulted student loans. Specifically, 11 percent
of student loan borrowers ages 50 to 59 facing forced collections
successfully rehabilitated their loans, while only five percent of borrowers over the age of 75 do so.
Figure
4: Number of student loan borrowers ages 50 and older in forced
collection, borrowers who signed a rehabilitation agreement, and
borrowers who successfully rehabilitated a loan by selected age groups
Age Group
Number of Borrowers in Offset
Number of Borrowers Who Signed a Rehabilitation Agreement
Percent of Borrowers Who Signed a Rehabilitation Agreement
Number of Borrowers Successfully Rehabilitated
Percent of Borrowers who Successfully Rehabilitated
50 to 59
265,200
50,800
14%
38,400
11%
60 to 74
184,900
24,100
11%
18,500
8%
75 and older
15,800
1,000
6%
800
5%
Source: CFPB analysis of data provided by the Department of Education.
Shifting demographics of
student loan borrowers suggest that the current automation process may
become less effective to protect Social Security benefits from forced
collections as more and more older adults have student loan debt. The
fastest growing segment of student loan borrowers are adults ages 62 and
older. These individuals are generally eligible for retirement
benefits, not disability benefits, because they cannot receive both
classifications at the same time. Data from the Department of Education
reflect that the number of student loan borrowers ages 62 and older
increased by 59 percent from 1.7 million in 2017 to 2.7 million in 2023.
In comparison, the number of borrowers under the age of 62 remained
unchanged at 43 million in both years.
Furthermore, additional data provided to the CFPB by the Department of
Education show that nearly 90,000 borrowers ages 81 and older hold an
average amount of $29,000 in federal student loan debt, a substantial
amount despite facing an estimated average life expectancy of less than
nine years.
Existing exceptions to forced collections fail to protect many Social Security beneficiaries
In
addition to TPD discharge, the Department of Education offers reduction
or suspension of Social Security offset where borrowers demonstrate
financial hardship.
To show hardship, borrowers must provide documentation of their income
and expenses, which the Department of Education then uses to make its
determination.
Unlike the Debt Collection Improvement Act’s minimum protections, the
eligibility for hardship is based on a comparison of an individual’s
documented income and qualified expenses. If the borrower has eligible
monthly expenses that exceed or match their income, the Department of
Education then grants a financial hardship exemption.
The
CFPB’s analysis suggests that the vast majority of Social Security
beneficiaries with student loans would qualify for a hardship
protection. According to CFPB’s analysis of the Federal Reserve Board’s
SHED, eight in ten (82 percent) of Social Security beneficiaries with
student loans in default report that their expenses equal or exceed
their income.
Accordingly, these individuals would likely qualify for a full
suspension of forced collections. Yet the GAO found that in 2015 (when
the last data was available) less than ten percent of Social Security
beneficiaries with forced collections applied for a hardship exemption
or reduction of their offset.
A possible reason for the low uptake rate is that many beneficiaries or
their caregivers never learn about the hardship exemption or the
possibility of a reduction in the offset amount.
For those that do apply, only a fraction get relief. The GAO study
found that at the time of their initial offset, only about 20 percent of
Social Security beneficiaries ages 50 and older with forced collections
were approved for a financial hardship exemption or a reduction of the
offset amount if they applied.
Conclusion
As
hundreds of thousands of student loan borrowers with loans in default
face the resumption of forced collection of their Social Security
benefits, this spotlight shows that the forced collection of Social
Security benefits causes significant hardship among affected borrowers.
The spotlight also shows that the basic income protections aimed at
preventing poverty and hardship among affected borrowers have become
increasingly ineffective over time. While the Department of Education
has made some improvements to expand access to relief options,
especially for those who initially receive Social Security due to a
disability, these improvements are insufficient to protect older adults
from the forced collection of their Social Security benefits.
Taken
together, these findings suggest that forced collections of Social
Security benefits increasingly interfere with Social Security’s
longstanding purpose of protecting its beneficiaries from poverty and
financial instability. These findings also suggest that alternative
approaches are needed to address the harm that forced collections cause
on beneficiaries and to compensate for the declining effectiveness of
existing remedies. One potential solution may be found in the Debt
Collection Improvement Act, which provides that when forced collections
“interfere substantially with or defeat the purposes of the payment
certifying agency’s program” the head of an agency may request from the
Secretary of the Treasury an exemption from forced collections.
Given the data findings above, such a request for relief from the
Commissioner of the Social Security Administration on behalf of Social
Security beneficiaries who have defaulted student loans could be
justified. Unless the toll of forced collections on Social Security
beneficiaries is considered alongside the program’s stated goals, the
number of older adults facing these challenges is only set to grow.
Data and Methodology
To
develop this report, the CFPB relied primarily upon original analysis
of public-use data from the U.S. Census Bureau Survey of Income and
Program Participation (SIPP), the Federal Reserve Board Board’s Survey
of Household Economics and Decision-making (SHED), U.S. Department of
the Treasury, Fiscal Data portal, consumer complaints received by the
Bureau, and administrative data on borrowers in default provided by the
Department of Education. The report also leverages data and findings
from other reports, studies, and sources, and cites to these sources
accordingly. Readers should note that estimates drawn from survey data
are subject to measurement error resulting, among other things, from
reporting biases and question wording.
Survey of Income and Program Participation
The
Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) is a nationally
representative survey of U.S. households conducted by the U.S. Census
Bureau. The SIPP collects data from about 20,000 households (40,000
people) per wave. The survey captures a wide range of characteristics
and information about these households and their members. The CFPB
relied on a pooled sample of responses from 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021
waves for a total number of 17,607 responses from student loan borrowers
across all waves, including 920 respondents with student loans
receiving Social Security benefits. The CFPB’s analysis relied on the
public use data. To capture student loan debt, the survey asked to all
respondents (variable EOEDDEBT): Owed any money for student loans or
educational expenses in own name only during the reference period. To
capture receipt of Social Security benefits, the survey asked to all
respondents (variable ESSSANY): “Did … receive Social Security
benefits for himself/herself at any time during the reference period?”
To capture amount of Social Security benefits, the survey asked to all
respondents (variable TSSSAMT): “How much did … receive in Social
Security benefit payment in this month (1-12), prior to any deductions
for Medicare premiums?”
The
Federal Reserve Board’s Survey of Household Economics and
Decision-making (SHED) is an annual web-based survey of households. The
survey captures information about respondents’ financial situations. The
CFPB relied on a pooled sample of responses from 2019 through 2023
waves for a total number of 1,376 responses from student loan borrowers
in collection across all waves. The CFPB analysis relied on the public
use data. To capture default and collection, the survey asked all
respondents with student loans (variable SL6): “Are you behind on
payments or in collections for one or more of the student loans from
your own education?” To capture receipt of Social Security benefits, the
survey asked to all respondents (variable I0_c): “In the past 12
months, did you (and/or your spouse or partner) receive any income from
the following sources: Social Security (including old age and DI)?”
by Márton Demeter, Manuel Goyanes, Gergő Háló and Xin Xu
The dynamics of Chinese social sciences are shifting rapidly. As policies aim to balance domestic priorities with global integration, the interplay between China’s academic output and its international reception highlights critical challenges and opportunities. In a recent study published in Policy Reviews in Higher Education, we analyzed 8,962 publications by the top 500 most productive China-affiliated scholars in Economics, Education, and Political Science between 2016 and 2020.
Uneven impacts across disciplines
Our analysis reveals that most Chinese-authored works in these disciplines are published in Western-edited journals. Political Science publications often focus on China-specific topics, creating what may be interpreted as intellectual silos.
By contrast, Economics stands out for its significant global impact, with Chinese scholars’ publications frequently outpacing the citation rates of their Western peers. Meanwhile, Education and Political Science publications from China generally attract fewer citations compared to those from the U.S., U.K., and Germany.
Why does Economics perform so well? The field’s emphasis on data-driven, globally relevant research – addressing topics like economic policy, market dynamics, and financial crises – positions it effectively within international discourse. Substantial funding and resources further strengthen Economics’ visibility and impact.
In contrast, Education often highlights region-specific practices that may resonate less with a global audience, while Political Science is constrained by political sensitivities and limited opportunities for broad international collaboration.
Patterns of collaboration
Collaboration offers another perspective of Chinese academia’s strengths and limitations. Scholars in Economics and Education often engage in diverse partnerships, with strong connections to both Western and Asian institutions. In contrast, Political Science remains more insular, with most co-authorships occurring within mainland China. This inward focus may restrict the field’s integration into global academic conversations.
At an institutional level, hybrid collaborations – combining domestic and international partnerships – highlight China’s strategic approach to bridging local and global aspirations. However, the predominance of Western collaborators, particularly from the United States, underscores a continued reliance on established academic hubs.
The duality of “siloed internationalisation”
A significant finding of our study is the duality evident in Political Science research: while these publications often appear in international journals, their focus on China-specific issues reflects a form of “scientific nationalism”. This approach limits their global engagement, confining them to niche scholarly communities rather than positioning them as contributors to broader, international dialogues.
The “international in format but national in essence” approach underscores a broader challenge for Chinese academia. It must navigate the tension between adhering to global visibility standards while championing non-Western perspectives and priorities.
Policy and practical implications
Our findings also carry critical implications for policymakers, institutions, and global academic networks. For China, fostering more diverse collaborations – beyond traditional Western partners – can reduce overreliance on dominant paradigms and contribute to a more equitable global knowledge production system. Initiatives with an emphasis on partnerships with Asia-Pacific, Africa, and Eastern Europe, could play a key role in reshaping these dynamics.
We believe that, for the global academic community, greater inclusivity requires deliberate efforts to decenter Western paradigms. Platforms that ensure equitable participation and strategies to protect collaborations from geopolitical tensions are vital for sustaining open and impactful scientific exchange.
Looking forward
The field of Economics exemplifies how targeted investment and international integration can amplify visibility and impact. To replicate this success in Education and Political Science, expanding international collaboration and addressing thematic silos are essential. At the same time, global academic networks must also embrace diverse perspectives to ensure that voices from regions like China enrich rather than merely adapt to dominant discourses.
Importantly, in an era of geopolitical uncertainty, research can serve as a vital conduit for mutual understanding and collaboration. By prioritising equitable partnerships and sustaining global dialogue, we can work toward a more inclusive and, therefore, more resilient academic ecosystem.
Our study offers practical guidance for addressing the challenges of internationalization in Chinese social sciences, providing valuable tools for scholars, institutions, and policymakers working to advance global knowledge production.
For more details, explore our full paper:
Demeter, M, Goyanes, M. Háló, G and Xu, X (2024) ‘The Internationalisation of Chinese Social Sciences Research: Publication, Collaboration, and Citation Patterns in Economics, Education, and Political Science’ https://doi.org/10.1080/23322969.2024.2438240.
Márton Demeter is a Full Professor at the University of Public Service, Budapest at the Department of Social Communication, and he is the Head of Department for Science Strategy. He has extensively published on academic knowledge production in communication studies and beyond.
Manuel Goyanes serves as Associate Professor of Research Methods at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. His interdisciplinary work revolves around theoretically designing, and empirically testing, cutting-edge quantitative and qualitative methodological procedures to scientifically address challenging aspects of social science inquiry
Gergő Háló, an assistant professor at the National University of Public Service Budapest, specialises in socio-critical studies of geopolitical and gender inequalities in science, academic performance, research assessment frameworks, and higher education policies.
Xin Xu is a Departmental Lecturer in Higher/Tertiary Education at the Department of Education, University of Oxford, and the deputy director of the Centre for Skills, Knowledge, and Organisational Performance (SKOPE). Her research focuses on tertiary education and the research on research.
The following free social skills worksheets are designed to help children, people with learning disabilities, clients, and even adults to actively reflect on their skills in social situations.
The worksheets cover various scenarios and sub-skills, including:
Conversation starters
Listening skills
Personal space
Social problem-solving
Giving and receiving compliments
When printing, you might want to select “shrink to fit” to ensure an optimal output.
License and Terms of Use: All printables are provided for non-commercial personal and classroom use only, not for resale or distribution. All rights reserved.
Social Skills Worksheets
Designed by Chris
Conversation Starters Worksheet
Use this version for getting students to actively reflect on how to start a conversation and interact appropriately with others verbally.
Designed by Chris
Listening Skills Worksheet
Use this version to get students to think about active listening skills and brainstorm the best ways to respond to people when listening to them in order to absorb what they’re saying.
Designed by Chris
Personal Space Worksheet
Use this version to help people to understand how to give people personal space and maintain an appropriate distance in various social situations.
Designed by Chris
Social Problem Solving Worksheet
This version is ideal for helping people to deal with scenarios where someone may lose their temper. The scenarios discuss various appropriate ways to respond to potentially hairy situations.
Designed by Chris
Giving and Receiving Compliments
Use this piece to brainstorm ways to give and receive compliments in various situations. Students must sort between various potential responses to compliment and ways to give compliments.
Designed by Chris
Social Skills Checklist
This checklist gets students to reflect on social skills they’ve used in the past week, and then to think about their strengths and areas for improvement.
Thanks for checking out these worksheets. If you want to brainstorm different examples of social skills, read this blog post.
Dr. Chris Drew is the founder of the Helpful Professor. He holds a PhD in education and has published over 20 articles in scholarly journals. He is the former editor of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education. [Image Descriptor: Photo of Chris]
This year, FIRE launched the Free Speech Dispatch, a regular series covering new and continuing censorship trends and challenges around the world. Our goal is to help readers better understand the global context of free expression. The previousentries covered policing of online speech, assassination attempts on U.S. soil, and more. Want to make sure you don’t miss an update? Sign up for our newsletter.
One step forward, two steps back for Australia
(Mojahid Mottakin / Shutterstock.com)
Communications Minister Michelle Rowland confirmed there was “no pathway to legislate” the government’s controversial plans to require platforms to moderate “misinformation.” In other words, the legislation is effectively dead. The bill, which I covered in a previous Dispatch, defined misinformation as “reasonably verifiable as false, misleading, or deceptive” and “likely to cause or contribute to serious harm.” There are many free speech concerns that arise when the government grants itself the power to require moderation of speech it deems untrue.
But while Australia’s troubling misinformation legislation failed, another worrying bill sailed forward. Late last month, Australia passed the Social Media Minimum Age bill, legislation banning social media for children under the age of 16 that does not even allow for parent permission, despite the myriad threats it poses to free speech and privacy.
Australia isn’t the only country considering measures limiting youth access to social media. Here in the United States, the Kids Online Safety Act — which suffers from numerous First Amendment pitfalls — risks passage in Congress. Advocates and legislators have even pushed for bills similar to Australia’s that would wholesale stop American teens from accessing social media sites.
UK adds blasphemy to its mounting free speech woes
WATCH VIDEO: Free nations don’t have blasphemy laws. The UK needs to tread carefully.
Once again, the UK is making headlines — the bad kind. The reason this time? Late last month, Member of Parliament Tahir Ali called on UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer to lead “measures to prohibit the desecration of all religious texts and the prophets of the Abrahamic religions.”
There’s a term for that: a blasphemy law.
The UK’s relationship with free expression is currently in a free fall and the last thing it needs right now is more forms of expression to police. Blasphemy laws are often packaged and promoted in language about protecting the powerless but, as countlessrecentarrestsandprosecutionsmakeclear, are regularly wielded as a tool to preserve power, whether religious, political, or somewhere in between.
Ali’s advocacy of a blasphemy law is deeply wrong-headed, but he is far from the only one to think it might be a worthy venture. Last year, in response to a spate of Quran burning incidents, the United Nations Human Rights Council passed a resolution encouraging more countries to “address, prevent and prosecute acts and advocacy of religious hatred” — a nebulous concept prone to abuse — and months later, Denmark enacted such a law.
That wasn’t even the only blasphemy-related story to emerge this month out of the UK. In November, the Advertising Standards Authority banned comedian Fern Brady from using an advertisement for her stand-up tour that comically depicted Brady in place of the Virgin Mary in a riff on Alonso Cano’s 17th century painting, “St. Bernard and the Virgin.” In its decision, the ASA alleged that the image could cause “serious offence” to Christians, and directed her to avoid causing insult “on the grounds of religions” again.
An investigation from Legal Initiatives for Vietnam discovered a shockingly high 90% compliance rate from companies including Meta, Google, and TikTok in response to government requests for content moderation, often of material critical of the government. Meta even utilizes a secret list of Vietnamese officials its users aren’t allowed to criticize.
Pakistan appears to be the first country to block the relatively new social media platform Bluesky, but that’s no great surprise given Pakistan’s frequent internet censorship efforts.
A Citizen Lab report found that books “largely related to LGBTIQ, the occult, erotica, Christianity, and health and wellness” were the top items Amazon restricts shipments of to certain countries like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Troublingly, Amazon “uses varying error messages such as by conveying that an item is temporarily out of stock” rather than stating upfront that the books are not available due to local censorship rules.
If you’re in Kyrgyzstan, watch what you say on the internet. In late November, the country’s parliament approved a bill that will issue fines for online “insult and libel.”
Russian communications authority Roskomnadzor is reportedly beefing up its efforts to cut off foreign internet access — including VPNs — in regions including Chechnya as it’s “testing its own sovereign internet it can fully control.”
The Parliament of Malaysia passed a worrying Online Safety Bill handing over to authorities broad new power to combat “harmful” content on the internet, including the ability to search and seize material from service providers without a warrant. “Freedom of speech does exist,” Communications Minister Fahmi Fadzil said, “but we are also given power through Parliament to impose any necessary restrictions for the safety of the public.”
South Korea’s fleeting martial law decree threatened a free speech disaster
South Korea President Yoon Suk Yeol in 2023 (Gints Ivuskans / Shutterstock.com)
On Dec. 3, President Yoon Suk Yeol shocked the world by declaring martial law in South Korea under the guise of protecting “liberal democracy from the threat of overthrowing the regime . . . by anti-state forces active within the Republic of Korea.”
The decree banned, among other things, “fake news, public opinion manipulation, and false propaganda” as well as rallies and “all political activities.” All media would also be “subject to the control of the Martial Law Command.” Alleged violators of these and other provisions risked being “arrested, detained, and searched without a warrant.”
Hours later, Yoon reversed course in response to massive protests and a parliamentary veto.
Speech-related arrests and sentencing from Hong Kong to Brazil
“Righteous people live, villains must die.” Elsa Wu, the mother of a Hong Kong activist recently sentenced to four years in prison, was arrested “on suspicion of disorderly conduct” for holding a banner with this message outside of a courthouse in November.
Indian journalist Mohammed Zubair has been charged with “endangering sovereignty, unity and integrity of India” for criticizing, and posting video of, comments a well-known Hindu priest made about the Prophet Muhammad. “It’s a classic case of shooting the messenger,” one of Zubair’s colleagues said. “It’s a witch hunt.”
Shortly after Zubair’s arrest, and on a similar basis, Indian police raided the offices of the Association for Protection of Civil Rights on charges including “promoting enmity.” The raid was reportedly based on the group’s social media posts highlighting abuses against Muslims in India.
Thai human rights lawyer Arnon Nampa, already imprisoned on similar charges, was sentenced this month to another two years in prison “over a 2020 social media post in which he allegedly criticised the king’s authority.” In total, he will serve over 16 years in prison and is one of many Thai activists punished for insulting or criticizing the country’s monarchy. Additionally, three Thai activists were charged with “contempt of court” for protesting a 2022 ruling from the Constitutional Court about the prime minister’s term limit.
Dozens of protesters have been arrested after demonstrating against Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze’s announcement that Georgia will postpone its efforts to join the European Union until 2028.
A Brazilian court has issued its longest-ever sentence for racism — nearly nine years in prison — over a woman’s 2017 social media video about a Malawian child adopted by two white Brazilian celebrities. The woman, Day McCarthy, called the child a “monkey” in a video and complained that “fake people and suck-ups” criticize McCarthy, “who identifies as half Black,” for not having “blue eyes and straight hair and a beautiful nose” but compliment the child’s appearance. McCarthy now lives in France and it’s unclear if she will serve the sentence.
Iran releases two dissidents but expands cruel crackdown on forced veiling critics
Last week, a wide-ranging new law went into effect that will further punish women who transgress Iran’s deeply oppressive mandatory hijab laws. Punishments range from flogging to long prison terms to travel bans and even death for “nudity, indecency, unveiling and bad dressing” and related crimes.
But amidst this awful development, there were some bright spots. Iranian cartoonist Atena Farghadani was released after serving eight months in prison on charges of “propaganda against the state” and dissident rapper Toomaj Salehi was also released after being held for 753 days over his support of women’s rights protests in the country. At one point, Salehi had been sentenced to death before the ruling was overturned by Iran’s Supreme Court.
Tiananmen joke grounds ‘Family Guy’ episode from in-flight entertainment
WATCH VIDEO: In the first episode of the TV sitcom “Family Guy,” Peter Griffin briefly stands in front of the tanks at Tiananmen Square. (YouTube.com)
Hong Kong airline Cathay Pacific is the latest example of a corporation eager to comply with the Chinese government’s political sensibilities after a passenger complained about an in-flight Family Guy episode that jokingly referenced Tank Man and the Tiananmen Square.
“We emphasise that the content of the programme does not represent Cathay Pacific’s standpoint, and have immediately arranged to have the programme removed as soon as possible,” the airline wrote in a statement earlier this month. It remains unclear what, exactly, is the company’s “standpoint” on the Tiananmen Square killings.
Mostly, but not all, bad news in arts and media:
Bangladesh’s Press Information Department recalled the accreditation of 167 journalists in the country, a “broad and sweeping cancellation” that has “left the journalist community alarmed.”
Haiti’s telecommunications authority CONATEL suspended evening show Radio Mega after a wanted gang leader called into the show “claiming that he was offered a large bribe by a member of the ruling Presidential Transition Council to negotiate peace with the gangs.”
After a lengthy 14 years, broadcaster Luisito “Chito” Berjit Jr. was finally acquitted after a Filipino court found there was insufficient evidence to find him guilty of libel over his reporting about alleged government corruption.
A report this month from the Hong Kong Public Opinion Research Institute found that about two-thirds of respondents “perceived news outlets to have practiced self-censorship,” a record high result since the polling began in 1997.
French media regulatory authority Arcom reportedly fined a conservative TV station €100,000 for failure to uphold its “obligation of honesty and rigour in the presentation and processing of information” after it showed an image calling abortion the world’s leading cause of death during a Catholic program.
Kuwait has reportedly banned the release of “Wicked” within the country “amid reports that the film includes a gay character, which led to its prohibition.” The musical joins a long list of films, including “Barbie” and “Thor: Love and Thunder,” to face local bans over inclusions of LGBT themes or characters.
Belarusian authorities arrested seven reporters from an online independent news outlet for “supporting extremist activities.” The president of the Belarusian Association of Journalists said it “looks like the authorities have decided to arrest all journalists they suspect of being disloyal ahead of January’s presidential vote.”
If you expected to make it through this year without a censorship controversy from the divisive Australian Olympian break-dancer Raygun, think again. Her lawyers reportedly threatened legal action against the event space hosting comedian Steph Broadbridge’s show “Raygun: The Musical.” Broadbridge says Raygun’s lawyers “trademarked the poster used to advertise the musical” and “banned her from replicating the iconic kangaroo hop.”
Ideas for Your Online Presence Before, During, and After Your Talk or Presentation
The best time to share about your upcoming talk or presentation is before it happens. Some people find that their most engaged post on social media is announcing that you’ve submitted your abstract to speak (or your publication). People are excited by the possibility and what you care about. Telling your story of your upcoming speaking engagement is a great way to do that.
Sharing on social media can start early, but I don’t want you to think it’s the only way to help your online presence and the people coming to your talk. You’re going to explore many ideas today, but you don’t have to try all of them. I hope that there’s at least one idea that resonates with you and you’d feel comfortable trying it yourself.
Before your speaking engagement
When you submit an abstract for or are invited to speak
Add your website URL and social media handle to your bio. This will help people find you before, during, and after your presentation.
I’ve just submitted an abstract to speak at…
Announce that you’ve submitted – If you’ve been invited to speak, a good time to share on social media is when you’ve agreed or committed to that engagement. It’s great to add your social media handle and a link to your personal academic website if you have one, along with your bio. You might add that information to your CV.
Connect with people before you go
Once your talk is confirmed, you can add it to your website and you might take time to connect with your fellow panelists or event organizers before the event.
Conference Hashtag
If there is one, you can check out the conference hashtag and make plans with people who will also be at the event that you want to see, especially if you live in different cities or countries.
Business cards
If you have a business card, add your social media handle and website there is a good idea.
Share your talk on social media
When you’re sharing your talk on social media, people need more information than you expect. They need to know what your talk is about, when your talk is to know if they can attend, what the event is, and any link where they can learn more information. This is something you can share on any social media platform or across all your platforms.
Some professors hesitate to share their upcoming talk on Facebook where they may have a more personal audience, but these people are excited by what you care about when it comes to your research and how you choose to spend your energy. You might include , on all social media posts, any definition or story that helps people better understand why this talk or research matters to you.
Tag people or organizations that are related to your talk or event.
The conference hashtag can be added to your post about your talk but you can also add a hashtag that relates to the topic of what you are presenting on.
You can share the post about your talk before, during or after the event.
Create a graphic or infographic
If you create a graphic or share an image to go with your talk, a great resource is Writing image Descriptions on Accessible Social – which helps you create social media posts accessible for people with disabilities.
These are ideas are for your online presence and networking while a conference or event is happening.
Check out the conference hashtag, again
If you checked out the event hashtag, you might find that people weren’t using it. Once the event starts, you can start using the conference hashtag and check it out! See if there is a conversation you want to be part of, or an event you want to check out.
Be open about your online presence
The best thing you can do for your online presence while at an in person event, is to be open that you have a website or that you’re on social media.
Help people find and connect with you
You can make this easier for people by making a QR code that helps people go to your website, have this info on a business card, create a hand out with information or resource about your talk (that includes people need to your online presence) , or use an end slide in your presentation to help people connect with you after the event is over.
Resources to take home and share
When you create a resource like a handout or links /slides to share, that can go on your personal academic website. They can also be shared on social media using that conference hashtag to help people find this resource that you’ve already taken the time to gather.
Will this be recorded?
Ask if there is going to be a recording. Sometimes, there isn’t an official recording but you can ask if you can record yourself.
Stay connected once you’re gone
Connect with people you meet or you like and admire on social media, while at the conference. Helps others be more likely to learn about you.
It’s okay if you don’t do any of that too
I have never had time for any of that at conferences, personally. In person events can be overwhelming for me as an introvert. Because of that, I don’t have the brain capacity to remember things like take a photo, much less record some videos.
Anything I just talked about – some of those things can be prepped in advance others you don’t have to do live (you can do afterward)
Next are ideas you can do after your presentation or talk is over.
After your talk is over
Record your talk
Whether there was a recording of your talk or not, you could always record your talk and slides using zoom, then post the video to your website or social media. There are options to share the full version of your talk, if you like to. You can just share the title slide, or full text version of the talk, or even the full slides.
Connect with people when you’re back at home
If you didn’t connect with people during the event, sometimes connecting AFTER the event is easier. You can look at the conference hashtag. Look through the business cards you collected. See the conference program and look at the bios to see who is on social media.
Create and/or share resources
If you didn’t have resources to share at your talk, if there are things you want people to know after the fact, you can create a graphic or handout that is shareable on social media or a page on your website.
Celebrate other people
While you can post about your own talk, you can also post about your panel and thank the conference and event organizers. If you want to participate in the conference community but not want to talk about your own talk, you can celebrate others instead. It’s a great opportunity for PIs to celebrate their lab members or grad students who are at the event. There are so many ways to celebrate people instead of yourself, if that feels comfortable or more exciting for you.
These don’t have to be professional shots. A messy desk shot or photo of you working on your slides or going over your notes on the plane. Something that feels quick or easy to you.
Take pictures during the event
Snap a photo of things you see, people you meet, friends you catch up with. Ask someone to take photos of you while you’re speaking or pose at the conference.
You could record a video of your talk
This can be before, during, or after the event.
You can record a video about your talk
Record a short video introducing your talk and the main takeaways. This video is especially for people who couldn’t be there live for your presentation.
Record some b-roll
If you like video, record b-roll video. Take a sip of coffee, getting ready to speak, short travel clips, video of fellow panelists or friends. These might be put into a longer video or Instagram reel.
But these might feel like too much – so even though they are fun ideas, don’t be stressed if you do none of them.
Ideas for Your Online Presence Before, During, and After Your Talk or Presentation
The best time to share about your upcoming talk or presentation is before it happens. Some people find that their most engaged post on social media is announcing that you’ve submitted your abstract to speak (or your publication). People are excited by the possibility and what you care about. Telling your story of your upcoming speaking engagement is a great way to do that.
Sharing on social media can start early, but I don’t want you to think it’s the only way to help your online presence and the people coming to your talk. You’re going to explore many ideas today, but you don’t have to try all of them. I hope that there’s at least one idea that resonates with you and you’d feel comfortable trying it yourself.
When you submit an abstract for or are invited to speak
Add your website URL and social media handle to your bio. This will help people find you before, during, and after your presentation.
I’ve just submitted an abstract to speak at…
Announce that you’ve submitted – If you’ve been invited to speak, a good time to share on social media is when you’ve agreed or committed to that engagement. It’s great to add your social media handle and a link to your personal academic website if you have one, along with your bio. You might add that information to your CV.
Connect with people before you go
Once your talk is confirmed, you can add it to your website and you might take time to connect with your fellow panelists or event organizers before the event.
Conference Hashtag
If there is one, you can check out the conference hashtag and make plans with people who will also be at the event that you want to see, especially if you live in different cities or countries.
Business cards
If you have a business card, add your social media handle and website there is a good idea.
Share your talk on social media
When you’re sharing your talk on social media, people need more information than you expect. They need to know what your talk is about, when your talk is to know if they can attend, what the event is, and any link where they can learn more information. This is something you can share on any social media platform or across all your platforms.
Some professors hesitate to share their upcoming talk on Facebook where they may have a more personal audience, but these people are excited by what you care about when it comes to your research and how you choose to spend your energy. You might include , on all social media posts, any definition or story that helps people better understand why this talk or research matters to you.
Tag people or organizations that are related to your talk or event.
The conference hashtag can be added to your post about your talk but you can also add a hashtag that relates to the topic of what you are presenting on.
You can share the post about your talk before, during or after the event.
Create a graphic or infographic
If you create a graphic or share an image to go with your talk, a great resource is Writing image Descriptions on Accessible Social – which helps you create social media posts accessible for people with disabilities.
The next ideas are for things you can do while the event is happening.
Check out the conference hashtag, again
If you checked out the event hashtag, you might find that people weren’t using it. Once the event starts, you can start using the conference hashtag and check it out! See if there is a conversation you want to be part of, or an event you want to check out.
Be open about your online presence
The best thing you can do for your online presence while at an in person event, is to be open that you have a website or that you’re on social media.
Help people find and connect with you
You can make this easier for people by making a QR code that helps people go to your website, have this info on a business card, create a hand out with information or resource about your talk (that includes people need to your online presence) , or use an end slide in your presentation to help people connect with you after the event is over.
Resources to take home and share
When you create a resource like a handout or links /slides to share, that can go on your personal academic website. They can also be shared on social media using that conference hashtag to help people find this resource that you’ve already taken the time to gather.
Will this be recorded?
Ask if there is going to be a recording. Sometimes, there isn’t an official recording but you can ask if you can record yourself.
Stay connected once you’re gone
Connect with people you meet or you like and admire on social media, while at the conference. Helps others be more likely to learn about you.
It’s okay if you don’t do any of that too
I have never had time for any of that at conferences, personally. In person events can be overwhelming for me as an introvert. Because of that, I don’t have the brain capacity to remember things like take a photo, much less record some videos.
Anything I just talked about – some of those things can be prepped in advance others you don’t have to do live (you can do afterward)
Next are ideas you can do after your presentation or talk is over.
Whether there was a recording of your talk or not, you could always record your talk and slides using zoom, then post the video to your website or social media. There are options to share the full version of your talk, if you like to. You can just share the title slide, or full text version of the talk, or even the full slides.
Connect with people when you’re back at home
If you didn’t connect with people during the event, sometimes connecting AFTER the event is easier. You can look at the conference hashtag. Look through the business cards you collected. See the conference program and look at the bios to see who is on social media.
Create and/or share resources
If you didn’t have resources to share at your talk, if there are things you want people to know after the fact, you can create a graphic or handout that is shareable on social media or a page on your website.
Celebrate other people
While you can post about your own talk, you can also post about your panel and thank the conference and event organizers. If you want to participate in the conference community but not want to talk about your own talk, you can celebrate others instead. It’s a great opportunity for PIs to celebrate their lab members or grad students who are at the event. There are so many ways to celebrate people instead of yourself, if that feels comfortable or more exciting for you.
These don’t have to be professional shots. A messy desk shot or photo of you working on your slides or going over your notes on the plane. Something that feels quick or easy to you.
Take pictures during the event
Snap a photo of things you see, people you meet, friends you catch up with. Ask someone to take photos of you while you’re speaking or pose at the conference.
You could record a video of your talk
This can be before, during, or after the event.
You can record a video about your talk
Record a short video introducing your talk and the main takeaways. This video is especially for people who couldn’t be there live for your presentation.
Record some b-roll
If you like video, record b-roll video. Take a sip of coffee, getting ready to speak, short travel clips, video of fellow panelists or friends. These might be put into a longer video or Instagram reel.
But these might feel like too much – so even though they are fun ideas, don’t be stressed if you do none of them.
Dr. Andrea Rexilius joins me on The Social Academic to talk about her new edited anthology, We Can See Into Another Place: Mile-High Writers on Social Justice (The Bookies Press and Bower House 2024). This innovative, multi-genre anthology brings together writers and faculty from the Mile-High MFA Program at Regis University in Colorado.
In this featured interview, Dr. Andrea Rexilius joins me to talk about social justice, radical imagination, and the power of storytelling. Read Andrea’s bio.
In this interview
Meet Andrea
Jennifer: Hello everyone. Welcome to The Social Academic. This is Jennifer van Alstyne and we are right after Election Day [USA]. So there are a lot of feelings and emotions out there. And even though this episode isn’t gonna air for a little while, the topic we are talking about today is social justice.
Andrea: Sure. Thank you Jennifer. Good to see you. I am a professor and writer living in Denver, Colorado, teaching at Regis University in the Mile-High MFA and Creative Writing Program. I think that’s all I’ll say.
Jennifer: Great. I’m curious because you’ve reached out to me about this episode and I’m wondering what prompted this anthology? What made you decide to bring together these faculty, these writers from the Mile-High program together into one collection?
Andrea: Well, they’re such interesting writers. They’re varied in terms of their genre, their aesthetic, which is also representative of the program that they were all teaching in. But a lot of them, there’s about 20, 21 of them in the anthology, and they don’t all always overlap. So I wanted to kind of, since they’re all part of that same conversation, teaching similar students working with the Mile-High MFA program at various times over the last nine years. I just wanted to put them a little bit more in conversation with each other, especially some of them that hadn’t crossed paths before, just to celebrate all of them together and share their work with, I think some of them probably looked each other up, but just to share their work with one another and with the public, with everybody else, because there’s just tremendous writing coming from all of them.
Jennifer: Yeah, the collection was tremendous and emotional and almost fraught with language that really pulls you in.
I’m curious, the anthology brings together a lot of genres, like multi-genre anthology. What made anthology and book the right format for sharing these stories?
Andrea: Yeah, I think in terms of anthology, it was kind of unusual to gather a kind of multi-genre format for an anthology. They’re traditionally fiction or their creative nonfiction or their poetry. A lot of writers only maybe read in one of those genres. A lot readers only read in one of those genres. We also have a graphic narrative, a comic strip in here. We have some playwriting.
And so all of those different ways of kind of conveying ideas seemed interesting to gather into one publication and to sort of begin to maybe break down some of those barriers across genre. There’s more and more interest in hybrid writing and reading hybrid materials, but something that actually celebrates genre distinctions and also genre overlap seems like an important thing to sort of add to the literary conversation.
Jennifer: I felt like your essay at the start, the introduction was so powerful in terms of shaping, the openness and the hope and the tenuousness that writers can achieve through storytelling. I found myself transported into each one of those writer’s forms. It felt like I was jumping from poetry to play to that, the graphic one, it was just overwhelming in the sense that I hadn’t really considered so many voices on this subject in the genre-bending kind of format. It was a different kind of experience to me compared to other things that I’ve read about social justice that I’ve watched about social justice this year. And it felt more powerful because of that. Like the collective of voices and the difference in genre made it more meaningful and impactful for me.
Did you find that when you were putting together, the different sections, and the layout for the book?
Andrea: Yeah, absolutely. It was really interesting because initially what kind of bound the writers together was their overlapping relationship with the MFA program. But I also just wanted to create an artifact of that kind of archive. All of those voices that were part of that community at the Mile-High, which is still continuing on, but that’s the first nine years of it. And I didn’t have the theme so much in mind when I first started gathering things. I wasn’t sure, is this something I’m just going to make as a kind of PDF that I make available to the community? Or, am I going to try to seek out a publisher, and put it into the larger world?
Pretty early on I had begun gathering some things and in the process of gathering them, I started shopping around some local presses in the Colorado area to see if it might be something they’d be interested in. And as sort of a long answer to what you asked me. But as I was shifting into, “Okay, it’s actually gonna be published by a press, it’s going to be a book that is available to anybody. It’s not just sort of in-house community. I started noticing patterns in the early submissions. And that’s where the theme began to develop from.
Also, seeing like how some of the poems communicated with the fiction, just the little overlaps and detail that were coming in were really interesting. That’s how the [Young Adult] interview got in there as well. ‘Cause there were so many writers, like Stephen Dunn’s piece, Addie Tsai’s piece, Lori Ostlund’s piece, where they’re talking about experiences in high school or as young adults and how writing impacted them, why they became writers and avid readers, and what their experiences to were with reading. They weren’t always delightful.
Jennifer: Yeah.
Andrea: So that started to kind of naturally grow out of the process of gathering those submissions.
Jennifer: I’m curious, who do you feel should really read this book? Who should go out and buy a copy or buy it for someone that they know or love?
Andrea: I mean, on the day that we’re recording this, I would say everybody should go read this book. I mean there’s many different representations and iterations of what we mean by social justice in the book, you know? It speaks to social economic stuff. It’s speaking to race relations, all kinds of different power dynamics speaking to neurological difference, the environments. It’s just a wide swath of what we think about when we are collectively, socially trying to enact justice for ourselves and our daily lives. But it also, like, the thing that I think about when I come to social justice is the idea of ‘radical imagination.’ And the idea that the mind, the interior, I quote Emily Dickinson at the beginning of the book, I love, I’m a poet, so I’m always referencing her, but she has a line, ‘The brain is wider than the sky.’ So this idea that like the mental space, the interior space is larger than this external world. It can imagine anything.
So when it feels like something, when possibilities are shutting down, I think the most powerful thing you can do is just remember that you have your own imagination. You can envision a different way forward. You can still be disappointed. You know we still have all of our emotions in relation to these things, but being able to maintain and hang onto that hope and awareness that like it’s always yours. It’s always in you. You always have that power of the interior and the mind to think differently than what the external world might be kind of crushing you into thinking and feeling and being.
Jennifer: Ooh, that was powerful. I needed to hear that too. I’m like crying. I’m like, what do I have tissues near me? And I don’t. But what I really gravitated toward from what you said is the word, ‘hope.’ Like the imagination can create hope. It can create futures that we haven’t experienced or thought of. It can be world opening. How do you hope this book can inform or provide an entrance into some kind of change or transformation?
Andrea: Yeah, that’s a good question. I mean, I’m gonna quote a couple things and then talk about the final section of the book.
Jennifer: I love that
Andrea: My frameworks at Emily Dickinson again, “I dwell in possibility” because I think so much of diminishment of hope is feeling that the possibilities are becoming fewer and fewer. But again, that idea of radical imagination, if we can imagine something different than what we are being told must happen, or that there’s this kind of non-linearity, there’s always a possibility for something to shift or to swerve. And the more we think toward that possibility, I think the more empowered we stay.
And then this Toni Morrison quote was so important in thinking about putting together this book. She says, “Don’t let anybody convince you this is the world is, and therefore must be, it must be the way it ought to be.” That speaks similarly, I think to the Emily Dickinson piece about possibility that nothing has to be any particular way. Sometimes it’s that particular way.
But knowing that we still have so much inside of us that can speak out, that can share our experiences, that can voice things that the dissent from the powers that be, I mean, hopefully we retain that powers. I mean, people go underground, they make zines. We get the word out in whatever way we need to. And right now there’s this book, the last section, we move into questions for the reader that kind of bring you into this state of reflection and get you in touch with your own ideas and imagination.
So, what would you like to give voice to? How do you survive and thrive when everything feels like it is on fire? That’s a great question for today.
Jennifer: Today’s the day for that one. Woo.
Andrea: And probably in the coming days and first of the year, that’ll be a great one to speak to. What is your hope for re-imagining of our societal and cultural future? What actions would help us move individually and or collectively toward that re-imagined future? So finding ways to bring those spaces, those radical imagination and those imaginings into external action, to starting small, making it grow larger, finding people to share your voice with who, who have similar thoughts and feelings, putting it in a book form, reading something where other people speak to that.
Jennifer: A lot of professors, faculty members are listening to this podcast. And I’m curious, is this a book that would fit well in like a classroom discussion? Is this something that can or should be taught?
Andrea: Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I think it would be great for high school, for college or book clubs for all kinds of reading groups because they’re part of the multi-genre aspect too. There’s something in it for everybody. If you’re not super into reading essays, there’s a comic. If you don’t love poetry, there’s short stories. If you aren’t into any of that, there are some interviews with why young adults, authors at the end.
There’s places for you to do your own thinking and writing and responding to whatever was in the book. It’s meant to be engaging in that way, to invite people to participate in the conversation of the book, and to add their own voice if they think something’s missing from it, if there’s something, that they wanna add, all of those openings are are there. And it would be great.
I think too, just thinking about in a classroom setting, thinking about how the different genres and pieces in here speak to these topics as well. What unique things happen formally in short story or poetry or essay. So yeah, thanks for asking that.
Jennifer: Now, as editor, maybe you don’t have like favorites, but I’m curious if you have one or two pieces you could share with us that especially faculty members might find a spark, or something that really draws them in.
Andrea: Yeah, I mean, you mentioned Steven Dunn and I think his piece in here is just absolutely brilliant. And he is speaking about his experiences in English class and then feeling left out of that conversation, feeling like it’s a conversation just for white people. He’s only reading stories written by white authors and is being told that his voice is incorrect, that he needs to correct his grammar, his way of being, his way of speaking. And I think that’s another thing like that this book demonstrates to some extent, through the genre, but also part of what we were all trying to do in the program together with students was just let every let people know like, you can be who you are.
So in order to be a good writer, you have to speak, you have to get in touch with what, who you actually are and what you actually want to say. And that’s when the writing becomes the most powerful. You shouldn’t be trying to conform your voice to anybody else’s. And I hear that in Steven’s piece and Addie Tsai’s piece.
There’s a lot of interesting reflecting in a lot of the pieces too: David Heska, Wanbli Weiden is writing this essay about his grandmother who was in a Native American boarding school that are infamous for, cultural obliteration and all kinds of horrific things. And she has this nostalgia for the boarding school.
He’s kind of reckoning with that, and sort of wondering why, answering why she might have that nostalgia in really interesting, complicated ways. And the ending of that piece I think really speaks to that reckoning with his grandmother’s state of mind and why she might have had that nostalgia and what other of nostalgia she had. I don’t wanna spoil the ending, but that’s one of my favorites because it.
Jennifer: I loved that piece.
Andrea: Yeah.
Jennifer: I’d be happy if you’d be open to reading something. That sounds great.
Andrea: I’ll read maybe a little bit from Steven’s piece that I was talking about. More beige. All right. I dunno what happens. Okay. It’s a snow day here. I usually am wearing bright colors, but I’m engaged. So this book to, or the piece from Steve Dunn, it’s from a book that he is working on called Travel With Nas, and he is co-writing it with a bunch of his friends and family members, which is, so it’s a collaborative project. He recently published another book, Tannery Bay, which he co-wrote with Katie Jean Shinkle. So that idea of sort of conversational collaborative writing comes through in his work in general too.
Jennifer: I love that.
Andrea: This is Intro / An Excerpt from Travel with Nas by Steven Dunn.
“I grew up in a small town in West Virginia: Kimball (population 500). I read a lot before going to middle school, but outside of textbooks and newspapers, I read only one book from the ages of 12-21. I’m a novelist now, a Creative Writing professor, and I write book reviews.
Reading only one book was partly an institutional fault, and partly my fault:
Partly my fault because I cared more about math painting and maps.
Partly an institutional fault because of poverty. And we were assigned only one little funky ass book throughout middle and high school, The Old Man and The Sea. We watched Of Mice and Men,Grapes of Wrath and Little Women. I hated English classes because they were mostly about correcting our language by prescribing us with ways to speak. We learned that the generations of language we celebrated in, cried in, analyzed with and joked in was wrong. And the books were about white people and white problems and white triumphs and white hopes and white dreams. So I was like, ‘Fuck English and literature and all that white bullshit.’ I was right and I was wrong.
I was wrong about English and literature because of course Black people have been writing literature about us, I just didn’t know shit about it, And them white folks ain’t care enough to teach it. I was right because I was listening to rap. And I was wrong because I was listening to rap.”
—Steven Dunn
Jennifer: Oh, Steven Dunn’s words are so powerful. I love that he’s interested in collective writing and also that he posts about the writing that he does on Facebook. So even if you’re not, the book’s not out yet, but like, I feel like I know a little bit more about Nas and about his process of writing it because he’s open to sharing it.
Online presence as an author
Jennifer: Actually, that kind of brings me into my next question. I’m curious about your online presence as an author. What’s it like to be a faculty member and a writer, and just like a person who your personality is like quite vivacious in the sense that it’s so memorable. How do you craft all of that online and show kind of your personality when you are in online spaces?
Andrea: Oh, wow. That’s a great question. I’m pretty introverted. Pretty like, I feel like it’s hard to know how that comes across. But I think of my social media, the way I curate it, because we’re all sort of curating it to some extent. I’m trying to maybe express my academic self on there, posting about books, about readings, sharing events with students, trying to kind of build that community with the MFA students and everybody in the Front Range, bringing different communities that I’m part of together. I’m teaching at Lighthouse Writer’s Workshop, a community creative writing place, and also at a Regis University. So sort of colliding some of those folks at times. And then I have my sort of like more artsy poetic life where I am doing some volunteer classes at this farm in Lafayette [Colorado] that some of my friends run.
Jennifer: Really?
Andrea: They have a little, they have a farm share. It’s called Community Farm
Jennifer: That’s so cool.
Andrea: And there’s an art lab. So I had a former student of mine donated a bunch of arts supplies, and so it’s just overfilling with art supplies. So I’ve been hosting like collage and mask making parties there.
Jennifer: Ugh, that’s amazing. Mask making parties. I’m so jealous. So Dr. Rexilius and I know each other from Naropa University at the Jack Kerouac School back when I was in my MFA program. So I’m so excited we’re having this conversation now, but I am super jealous of these art classes. That sounds so fun. And I love What I see from you on social media is a lot of your artistic side. Like I remember your moth costume, your masks. Like I love seeing that part of who you are in online spaces for sure. What about as an author, we talked about like what you do for your community.
Andrea: Right. Right.
Jennifer: What’s it like talking about yourself as an author online? That one’s really fun [Andrea holds a mask to her face].
Andrea: Talking about myself as an author, I probably should do more of that because I tend to keep my process pretty low key. I don’t share about my writing process as much. I share more about the end result. I might share more about my creative process. I share more of the kind of masks and art making that I’m doing visual art making.
Jennifer: Yeah.
Andrea: But if I have something finished published, then I tend, I’ll share that.
Jennifer: Nice.
Andrea: Yeah. But I like to keep my process a little bit more to myself because I like to have it untouched by other opinions.
Jennifer: Oh, I’m so glad you shared that. That’s a really nice perspective. It’s not so much as private as protecting it almost.
Andrea: Yeah.
Jennifer: Like protecting your process. That’s beautiful. Oh, thank you for sharing that with me. I’m curious, is there anything you really dislike about social media or about being online?
Andrea: I don’t like social media.
Jennifer: You don’t like it at all? That’s totally fine.
Andrea: When you asked, I was like, ‘oh!’ I just panicked. I was like, do I have a presence? I do because I’m the Director of this program, I have a presence to be online for that. I do have different sort of pages that I manage. So different hats that I put on. I post more of the artsy personal stuff on my own page. That’s me. But it also, part of me is that community aspect. And then I have some program specific pages where, it’s maybe a little more professional or like posting, sharing work by the authors, in this collection sharing student work. As much as I know if people tell me about it, but it’s fine.
Jennifer: That’s always part of the process.
Andrea: Yeah. I don’t wanna… I try not to spend a lot of time scrolling on social media.
Jennifer: Yeah.
Andrea: But yeah, I guess I like, the part of it that I do like is it does connect so many aspects of my world over the years that otherwise would have, many of them I think would have, disappeared from my life entirely. Like friendships in high school, things like that. And it is really nice to sort of just see what people are up to. Even if I’m somebody that I was best friends with when I was 16 or something just to see, get a glimpse of their life.
Jennifer: I saw a childhood friend of mine who I haven’t talked to in, oh my gosh, a couple decades maybe, just had a child. And I was so touched for her, like we don’t talk, but it still felt meaningful to me. So you don’t like social media and you have actually a strong online presence compared to a lot of faculty members because you’re wanting to be part of that community and wanting to bring together communities as well. That’s really interesting.
Andrea: Yeah, I always think if I didn’t have this job, I would leave Facebook, but I’m still there.
Jennifer: Oh, that’s interesting. Yeah. You’re still there. That’s true. Well, you gotta have somewhere to share your masks.
Andrea: That’s right. Yeah. I might keep it just to share the masks. I say I would leave, but I probably just share weirder things.
Jennifer: Right, a little bit leaning more into your personality. Exactly.
Jennifer: Now academics who I’d say don’t consider themselves writers are listening to this, and I want them to go out and buy your book. I’m also curious, like if they are interested in leaning into more social justice lenses or social justice audiences, even for their writing. Is there somewhere you recommend they start? Maybe if this is their first time leaning into that area? I’d say they’re academics who maybe don’t consider themselves writers, even though they do quite a bit of writing.
Andrea: Well, there’s lots of amazing literary conferences of all sizes and topics and themes. There’s a couple of things that I would note. Like in Denver, there’s a really great conference that The Word Storytelling, A Sanctuary runs. They have a conference called Margins. And so it’s an audience primarily of people of color who are writers. Talking about all types of different things. Some of that overlaps social justice. And I think that idea, radical imagination too, is this sort of holding equally everybody’s voice and making space for everybody’s voice to be heard. And maybe even making more space for the voices that are typically more marginalized. So that place would be a good place to start. There’s also a website called Writing the Other that is for writers and thinking about the publishing industry and how to, thinking about representation, appropriation, those kinds of issues, and how to navigate those as writers which I think also relates writers, academics, social justice, kind of entwines with all of those things. And then looking at this anthology has so many amazing authors in it. You can read any of them. Read interviews by them. They’re on podcasts. They’re doing online interviews. They have amazing things to say creatively, critically, academically. So there’s 20 people right there who have your back and can, who are also really open and friendly and up for answering questions. I shouldn’t speak for all of them, but reach out, see if they’re willing to engage. They definitely do a lot of them do classroom visits. They are used to sort of doing interviews and podcasts and things like that too.
Jennifer: Oh, that is so cool. I want everyone to go out and get your copy of We Can See Into Another Place. This is an important anthology, especially for academics like you. Oh, it made big difference when I read it, and I hope it does for you as well. Andrea, is there anything else that you’d like to touch on, talk about before we wrap up today?
Andrea: I think we got everything. Thank you so much for having me. It was really lovely to see you again and have this conversation with you.
Jennifer: Oh, I’m so excited to share your book with everyone and to feature you on The Social Academic. Thank you so much.
Dr. Andrea Rexilius is the author of Sister Urn (Sidebrow, 2019), New Organism: Essais (Letter Machine, 2014), Half of What They Carried Flew Away (Letter Machine, 2012), and To Be Human Is To Be A Conversation (Rescue Press, 2011), as well as the chapbooks, Séance (Coconut Books, 2014), To Be Human (Horseless Press, 2010), and Afterworld (above/ground press, 2020).
She earned an MFA in Poetry from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2005), and a PhD in Literature & Creative Writing from the University of Denver (2010). Andrea is the program director for Regis University’s Mile-High MFA in Creative Writing. She also teaches in the Poetry Collective at Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver, Colorado.
Introducing Dr. Monica Cox, professor and change maker for equity in the workplace
Jennifer: I’m so excited to feature Dr. Monica Cox, a professor, author, and change maker. Monica, thanks so much for coming today to talk about your new book Never Defeated: Nine Lessons from the Workplace Front Lines. I wanted to be sure to get that right.
Monica: It’s okay. That’s fine. It’s very long. So you did a great job. Thank you. So great to be here and to meet you in person, kind of.
Jennifer: Yeah. I know we’ve been connected on social media for a while and I’ve been following your amazing work, but I’m so excited to introduce you to The Social Academic community. Would you mind telling people a little bit about yourself?
Monica: Sure, sure. So I am of course Dr. Monica Cox. I am an academic and a professor, an engineering education professor. I’m also a former administrator and I am an entrepreneur who is the CEO and founder of STEMinent, LLC, which offers a variety of offerings that have an umbrella of helping people to emerge whole and bold and strong in the workplace, or whichever environment they so choose. So that’s me in a nutshell.
Jennifer: Bold and strong. I love it. I love it.
Monica: Yeah, thank you.
Writing Never Defeated
Jennifer: Tell me, What prompted you to write Never Defeated? This is such a powerful book. What, what made you know that it had to be out in the world?
Monica: Okay, so there’s the business answer and then there’s kind of the other heart related answer.
Jennifer: Yeah.
Monica: So I would say from a business perspective, I have a Stop Playing Diversity brand, which is based on just my commitment to authentic diversity, equity, and inclusion. And the quick part of that story is that when I was hired in my most recent organization, I told them not to hire me if they were playing diversity. And of course, they didn’t know what that meant. But over time I realized that a lot of the things that I needed to be successful in that workplace as a black woman administrator just, they weren’t there. And I decided to trademark Stop Playing Diversity, and that meant that I wanted to have guides coaching the business arm, and I wanted to write a series of books. So Never Defeated is one of the books that I’m gonna write as part of the Stop Playing Diversity brand and the trademark for the business. Amazing. So, like I said, that’s the business part.
Monica: The personal part is that I went through hell at work. It was a mess. And there’s a quote in the book where I talk about a blueprint and I wished I had a blueprint before I started this experience. But I always said, sometimes you have to be the blueprint. And as I was learning and documenting what was going on, I would look at tweets and kind of just record the tweets. And I wrote essays based on the things that were resonating with people on social media. So that is the heart part of this, where it’s my story where it also is informed from the voices of people who’ve gone through situations very similar to mine. And as you know about social media, there was also the upheaval with Twitter/X. And I thought, if it goes away, what about all of that information, all of those conversations. And this book is kind of the way for me to almost take ownership, to take back some of the valuable conversations and resources that came out of a really good time for me on social media. That was the long story.
Jennifer: Ohh! And a beautiful one that really touched my heart. So I hear what you mean when you say the heart side of, of your reasons for writing this very important book. Never Defeated is so powerful because it reads as authentic, it reads like you’re talking to me. And I think that’s what made me pick it up and not put it down until I finished.
Monica: Thank you.
Jennifer: I mean, I was like walking around the house with it, trying to make sure that I got all of these words in because, you know, sometimes when we see things on Twitter, it does make a meaningful difference in our lives. But seeing all of it at once, like being able to read your words, it just, it was, it was quite meaningful for me. I really appreciated it. Yeah.
Monica: Thank you. And I’ll say something really quickly about it, even this morning, my husband was telling me that someone was reading it and the words were powerful. So I thank you for this. It is still kind of difficult for me to process all of it because I’m also healing as I share what I’ve talked about. So it’s not easy for me to just be like, let me read this every day now. No, that was my life and I lived it. And it was just a moment. And there’s just an element about that that I wanna put about the book too, where it felt like I was sharing a piece of myself and it’s just that it’s all compact, but that was really my life with the death of, you know, my parents and so many real things that have impacted me. So, so even now I feel a little emotional talking about it because it was that real to me as a person.
Jennifer: Oh, I hear you. I hear you. And I really appreciate that maybe despite the emotional weight of writing the book and sharing, like you, you still put it out there in the world and you still write your tweets, even though, I mean, I, I guess I wonder, is there some fear when you’re talking about, you know, things that happen that are maybe not talked about in the room, like, but like you are saying it on Twitter. And so I’m wondering what are your feelings about that? Was it different when you were writing the book?
Monica: So, when I talk about the tweets, this seems very spiritual and some people may not get this, but I will, I will be asleep. And when I wake up I hear like, it’s almost like the words come to me. And so I’m writing them because it’s like, this is what I’m supposed to say for the day. And sometimes it’s punchy, but it is almost like you, you and I talking right now. I just know that there’s a thought that has formed. And so that’s what that is. I don’t feel the fear. When I write things that are so truthful because it is just as clear as to me that that’s what I’m supposed to say.
Jennifer: It’s like already formed in your mind when you’re going to say, I get that. ’cause it’s a poet. That’s how I write poetry. It’s not how I write social media posts, but it is how I write poetry. And so I really, I hear you when you say like, the feelings that, like, that happens when you’re writing it in your head and then it’s out there and you’re like, but I’ve already, it’s already there. It, it exists.
Monica: Exactly. And sometimes I’ll even, I have my phone next to me and I’ll write something as a note. And so that’s something too, like I’ll wake up at 3:00 AM and that’s one thing, the part about the book is that I had a book consultant, a developmental kind of editor.
Jennifer: Wonderful.
Monica: Thank you. And at first I was not going to write stories. Hmm. The first draft was very much practical, and that was it. And she pushed me to include more of myself in the book. And I did not think that I was ready to do that because there are some stories people didn’t know about. And I knew that I would be very vulnerable sharing, for example, how I contacted the president of my university when there were things happening after the murder of George Floyd. And you know, kind of what happened, like I’m whistle blowing on myself. To say, this is what I did with other people during this time. And one thing that people have really complimented me on, and I was very careful about is making sure that I, I was very truthful with my stories without naming names.
Jennifer: Yes.
Monica: So if people do not know where I work, you would not know. And my developmental editor, even by the time she looked at it, she’s like, I don’t even know where you work. So I realized that that’s an immense skill to be able to tell so much. And I do that on social media as well. So, so much without fully telling you what’s up.
Jennifer: Yeah.
Monica: And that also is something I would say that I have to tread carefully with from a legal perspective. Yeah. Because I was so involved in a legal case for three years where I had to decide, am I going to remove myself completely from social media? Am I not going to write? Am I gonna shut down my voice? Or am I going to figure out how to still share my truths without incriminating myself without telling too much? It was, it is a slippery slope to do this work. And I’ll say it’s very strategic, very deliberate. And I hope that’s what you see even as I’m like teetering right there. But nah, I, I know how to say it.
Jennifer: I’m curious when you say that you really had, you approached a point in which you had to make a decision whether to remove yourself from social media or to stay, what helped you make that decision?
Monica: Well, it’s the motivation for me actually being on social media. Once I was an administrator, I said it in my book that it was kind of like an archive for me, but I got to a point in my organization where it became very dangerous for me to be there because of the lack of equity work that they were doing. But also I could tell that I was being set up to be this scapegoat. And I wasn’t going to be that person, I was going to fight. So I had an attorney who I worked with at the time, and two of the things that he mentioned about social media usage is that it’s archived. And I mean, it’s an archived record, of course, of what happens. And he said, you have to tell the truth. Like in, in a court of law, it would be like the timestamps and is what you’re saying true. So I used it very strategically and I always said, because it literally got to a point where I was being harassed because of some stuff. I said, if anything, God forbid ever happened to me, then my husband, maybe my legal team, the people around me could look at what I wrote on social media and have that as evidence of what I was going through. So I was hiding in plain sight.
Jennifer: Yeah.
Monica: And people didn’t understand. What, why does she do this every day? Because I want people to know what happened on say, you know, Monday, February 17th. You know, people would say, “Oh, it’s too much. Why would a department chair do that?” Because I was concerned.
Jennnifer: People tend to have fear when it comes to social media, but you actually found some protection in it in the sense that it was a documented record.
Monica: Absolutely.
Jennifer: I’m wondering, for listeners who may be experiencing something similar on their university campuses, what kind of documentation do you recommend that they practice?
Monica: Well, I would say social media could be good, but you don’t even have to use your real name. You know, so some type of pseudonym or something. And I mean, of course if it ever came to the point where people needed to know that was you, you could say it was you. But that’s one way that you can use it. Another way. I mean, it’s email. When I was a department chair, I used to think about this all the time. There are some like basics. When you have a meeting with someone, you wanna make sure that things are clear. So you can send an email afterward. One of the things that people need to be careful of is having conversations on the phone, because that’s not really documentation.
Jennifer: Right.
Monica: You need it to be written. You need the summary to be written. And one thing that I even learned through my organization is that I would send things and people would not respond. But when it was time for me to compile information, you know, I could have, you know, five examples for of like, when I did contact people, like, “Hey, I told you I was in distress on this date. I told you that I was having this issue with an employee.” And I think that’s going to be one of the big things that we do strategically moving forward to protect ourselves, particularly in an anti-DEI age. People are going to avoid, they’re going to want to walk that fine line, but if we are in distress, we need to put that out there in writing that this is unacceptable. I am being treated this way and this is how I move forward. And I think one other quick thing I’ll say, the reason this is, this is very vital is because I’ve also learned through my experience that the policies are not in place to protect certain issues like microaggressions. There is no law against someone microaggressing you. There is no law in place against workplace bullying. So when you are experiencing situations that make you feel that your life is in danger, or in the case of, I don’t know if you saw Dr. Bonnie, Dr. Antoinette Bonnie, her full name is Candia-Bailey, she ended her life. You know, we need to tell our stories in ways that sometimes are cries for help, but are sometimes those records after we have left an organization to say, this is what happened on this day. This is my voice. These are the people who knew, you know, et cetera. Sorry I went off. That was long, but.
Jennifer: No, Thank you for sharing that much about all this. I, and I think that I have wanted to ask this kind of question before, sometimes I’ve had guests on my show that have experienced some bullying on social media and other things. I know I had Dr. Carlotta Berry, who came and talked about it. But you’ve been through the kind of legal battle and something that’s public. And you’ve written about it in ways that I feel like people will really hear what you’re saying and it, they’ll take it in and they’ll start practicing some of those things themselves. Like, I want to help inspire change with this conversation. And so I really appreciate you being open and authentic about that.
Social media presence and growth, How it’s changed for academics
Jennnifer: Now, when I think about your time on social media, like it’s been so impactful for your thinking and, and your thought leadership and what you share with people. But how has it changed over time? Like, you’ve been on social media for a while, right?
Monica: I have. I think Twitter was documented. I think I started in 2010. So how has it changed? I think people are actually talking, which is funny to me. You know, academics were not talking back in the day. I think there’s still some fields where people just kind of post their accolades, but now people are having more conversations. I also think when it comes to marginalized communities, people are bold, bolder about talking about the issues that are going on in their personal lives. So they’re showing more of themselves. They’re also talking about problems that they experience. I see a lot more political statements.
Jennifer: Yes.
Monica: You know, even religious statements, displeasure with things. And I wonder if it’s like the younger generation that’s coming in, but I feel they just have less fear when it comes to displaying themselves. And just talking about. I’m southern and you know, I come from this more subdued, maybe cultural environment. But I mean, there are people who drop in their pics in tight dresses. They’re kissing up on folks, you know, they’re just like grown and sexy. And I think we need to see people who are just beautiful in every form, who are thoughtful and funny. And so that’s what I see. I see people who are human more and not afraid to be human. And that’s good.
Jennifer: Hmm. What about for yourself? Do you feel like you’ve leaned more into that over time? Or have you always shown up and been authentic?
Monica: You know what? I think that all of this connects back to our disciplines because I said I’m an academic. And so as an academic in a STEM discipline, it’s got its own culture. Engineering has its own culture. I’m in engineering education. So that’s got its own culture. So it’s like nested cultures. And I would say my culture is very, very, very conservative in how they move. And this was like the running joke of me on social media where everybody would say like, “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe Monica said this. Like, is she off?” And one of my friends even said in my community, she said she didn’t wanna look at my social media because she’s like, she’s gonna get fired for saying stuff.
Jennifer: She was scared for you.
Monica: That’s what she said. And that also speaks to that culture. So how have I changed? I have gotten out of the fear of my community and I have connected so much broader, like my platform, I think across all of my social media. And I probably have repetitive followers as well. But it’s about 75,000 people.
Jennnifer: Wow.
Monica: And you know, I started with a handful.. And the noise of my community is so quiet, it’s so quiet now in terms of what they think, because I see the impact of my work. I see the feedback that I get, like people who are leaving careers because of a book, because of a tweet, people who are sharing their stories because of things that I’ve said. And I’ll even give this as like a testimonial. I knew that. I know there’s something to it. I started a newsletter on LinkedIn in December, and I only have maybe like 13 editions. ’cause it’s biweekly. And I am up to, I wanna say like 8,500 subscribers right now.
Jennifer: Wow. Back from December. Since December!?
Monica: And I had maybe 700 in the first day. So there is something that is happening that is bigger than what I am. So that’s it. It’s the boldness, it’s the, I don’t care what my academic community says about me, because I know that what’s happening is more impactful and bigger than what’s in their box.
The Accomplice Academy with Dr. Monica
Jennifer: Hm. Ooh. Tell me a little bit about the Accomplice Academy. I wanna make sure that people who are listening can join if they’re a good fit for it.
Monica: Absolutely. So it is a really intimate group right now of people who want to be equity accomplices. And what I mean by that is people who we have, we focus on three areas. One is, I talk about like the level of risk. You know, as an accomplice, you’re gonna understand that what you’re doing is high risk. And so I engage through a subscription service, a monthly subscription service, where we talk about what it’s like to take those risks and how people can do this and protect themselves in the process. The second area that’s kind of connected back to being an accomplice is like looking at the level of change. And so I really focus on systemic change. So if you are in an organization, how are we making sure that we are offering sustainable solutions for people to remain safe and for equity to be real? And the third part is really having people focus on others instead of themselves. Many times when you see people who are allies, you know, they’ll, some of them will wear it like a banner and be like, “I’m an ally, I’m an ally. Come to me!” But I often tell people, you’re not an ally if I don’t say that you’re an ally. And it’s this space where sometimes as an accomplice, we do the work and people don’t even know that we do the work. But that’s what it means to do it. And I, I brought up the example in the book about, you know, going to the president of the University, of my university and saying, this is what’s happening in our organization. Please look at these statements from our engineering students. Look at the statements from our engineering faculty and staff, and take that into consideration when you hire the next leader of this organization. So, like I said, even though I shared what I did at the time, it wasn’t that people knew it. And as I told you, my developmental editor was like, you need to share stories. And I was like, okay, I’m finally gonna tell people that I was an equity accomplice in my institution at a very dangerous level, at a pretty high level. And I knew that the consequences could have been a lot worse if the leader was not committed to racial equity. That was a lot. So those examples, that’s what The Accomplice Academy is. It’s like doing the work and having the support to talk about it in a safe space. And I would say a couple of my most active people, one is an LGBTQ plus advocate who is a burnout coach, and another is a professor in a state where they have anti-DEI laws now. And you know, we really talk about this, what does this look like in your roles as a coach or as faculty. So thank you for mentioning that.
Jennifer: That is amazing. It sounds like a group where real change can happen, not just change within ourselves, but change in our communities. That sounds so cool. Thank you. Oh, I’m curious, since we were just talking about being a good accomplice and, and how being an ally is really about making sure that other people feel that we’re good allies, not just ourselves. What’s one way that we could be better accomplices or allies on social media?
Monica: Man, there are a lot of ways. I think one is like amplifying statements that I think are very courageous. You know, so if there is someone who is saying something that the world needs to hear, and if they could be, you know, criticized for it, or if they’re in a vulnerable position by saying that, I think that the very public way that we show support sends messages to organizations that we are aligned with that person. Another is actually putting real content out. You know, being brave, being courageous and saying, you know, this is what systemic change looks like. Or here are some examples. So, so tips. You know, I think social media is a wonderful place to educate. And if we have handbooks, if we have resources that have helped us, if we have contacts, you know, other books, this is the prime place for audiences to see how to do the work really well. So sharing is another piece, but I think being authentic, like once you’re there, and I feel like this gets to like the risk part, but once you are on there, it’s about being that consistent voice so people know that you are trustworthy, that they can rely on you, that you are that person who is for the cause. And so consistency. I feel like that’s an internal thing, you know, for you to, for someone to be courageous, there’s a difference between the theory and action of it. And that’s what I mean. Like my inner circle of accomplices is so small right now because anyone can post just a good statement. But it’s the translation of that statement into action, under pressure that shows me if you are really an accomplice, because it can come with negative impacts on your livelihood.
Jennifer: Yeah.
Monica: And that can include a job. Maybe you lose an opportunity because you’re too dogmatic or because you know, you’ve said something that is really pushing the envelope. But from a business perspective, I often tell people, anyone who reads what you present and they’re turned off wasn’t someone you probably needed to connect to in the first place, because you are gonna have a lot more issues down the road. And that’s what I say even about doing equity work. You know, if someone’s like, “Oh, can you tone it down? Can you do whatever,” guess what? I’m not the consultant for you. Go to the one who’s going to help you to clear things and make sure everything is measured in your organization because that’s what you’re looking for. You’re not really ready for the accomplice level. That’s the work that I’m proposing.
Jennifer: Ooh, that’s really helpful. And I think it also helps people know whether they should join the Accomplice Academy. Like, are you, are you really ready to, to do the work and to take action in your organization? Oh, that’s fascinating. Absolutely. Oh, I love that. Okay. Well, I wanna show the book again.
Monica: You know, just, I’m also an author. I write fiction. Yes. I have one that’s dropping this week.
Jennifer: I’m gonna get it. I’ll say I love romance books. I do.
Monica: Thank you. Thank you. Because you know what, that’s a taboo. So we can talk about that.
You know, we talk about authenticity, people like, what are you doing? Are you out there writing smut? What’s happening? And I’m like, my people love each other. Okay. They love, they love on each other. They love each other. So I will say that, and the thing that I will also mention is that I put social justice things in my book as well. So even in the one that’s coming up, and I’ll say this really quickly. My protagonist did not earn tenure, but she was involved in a domestic abuse situation. And we have an issue where she goes to Alabama and because of their laws, she can’t be an unwed mother and keep her job.
Jennnifer: Oh wow.
Monica: Yeah, with STEM students because of donors. And so that sounds very familiar. The arranged marriage part of my romance is when, spoiler alert, her principal boss doesn’t want to lose this amazing teacher. And so, they kind of like each other anyway.
Jennifer: Oh, That sounds great.
Monica: It’s this whole social justice thing that’s embedded in romance and how they have to move forward. So I’m just putting that teaser out there to say, it’s not just smut, although you get it, but it’s the lessons behind how women of color have to move professionally and personally to be successful and to be whole, bold and strong. Same thing.
Jennifer: I so appreciate that. As a survivor of domestic violence, myself, I found love. I found romance. Like I can’t wait to read this book. It’s, it’s, yeah, it’s on my reading list. I’m very excited. Okay.
Monica F. Cox, Ph.D., is an unstoppable force who has made it her mission to disrupt and trailblaze her way through the world. Her unapologetic approach to life has made her a change agent and leader who is unafraid to make people uncomfortable. Despite facing personal and professional adversity, Monica was raised by her educator parents to persist and pursue her dreams.
As a 2020 Fellow of the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE), Distinguished Professor of Engineering, and former department chair at The Ohio State University, Dr. Cox is no stranger to conflict. Her unwavering dedication to advocating for people and women of color has transformed the fabric of her department and the larger organization.
Dr. Cox’s research focuses on the infusion of equity in STEM education and the empirical exploration of women of color in the workplace. With over 130 publications, a presidential award for research, and approximately $20 million in led and collaborated multidisciplinary projects, she is a true expert in her field.
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