Universities and academics working towards racial justice and inclusion education focus their efforts on closing ethnicity awarding gaps, a measure of systematic inequality in student outcomes.
While addressing these inequalities are essential, the concept of the awarding gap itself — particularly when it relates to race — carries problematic assumptions that undermine the broader efforts to address systemic inequities.
Before going forward, It is important to acknowledge that decolonisation is a controversial concept in its own right. I write from the perspective of UK HE, where decolonisation is a commonly used term. My perspective is therefore through the lens of the coloniser, not the colonised, and informed primarily by the legacy of historical British colonial activity. The issues may differ in the context of colonial expansion by other European powers.
Many contemporary global conflicts are colonial in nature, so I also recognised that for many these issues represent lived experience and ongoing trauma. However, the language of decolonisation is widespread in contemporary HE, so I use this term while acknowledging its limitations and tensions.
The awarding gap explained
The awarding gap measures the disparity in first class and upper second class degree outcomes, typically expressed as the percentage difference between the groups. For example, if 75 per cent of white students and only 60 per cent of Asian students earn a first or a 2:1, the Asian awarding gap is 15 per cent. In the UK the global majority awarding gap is widespread and stubbornly persistent. At sector level, there is a 18.5 per cent Black awarding gap and 5.7 per cent Asian awarding gap, and progress on the issue is notoriously slow.
The awarding gap can have a significant impact on student futures. If employers require at least a 2:1 then there will be an inevitable bias against Black and Asian graduates in the workplace. Inequity in undergraduate degree outcomes also restricts access to postgraduate education, reinforcing the loss of global majority talent. Addressing the awarding gap is therefore essential not only for equity of student outcomes, but also for increasing diversity within HE and the graduate workforce.
The colonial origins of awarding gap language
While the awarding gap metric is crucial for highlighting disparities, it is also fraught with issues. The terminology used to describe racial disparities in HE, such as “BAME” (Black, Asian, and minority ethnic), is highly contested. The UK government has abandoned “BAME” in favour of more nuanced categories, and HE should do the same. I prefer the term “global majority students,” following Rosemary Campbell-Stephens, but acknowledge that even this term may be problematic.
The racial categories used in HE such as “Black” and “Asian,” also have deeply problematic origins that many may be unaware of. These can be traced back to the groundbreaking work on biological classification of Carl Linneas, who as well as classifying plants and animals proposed “scientific” groupings of humans along racial lines. His 1735 work ‘Systema naturae’ classified humans into Europaeus albus (European white), Americanus rubescens (American reddish), Asiaticus fuscus (Asian tawny) and Africanus niger (African black). These were placed into a racial hierarchy, with “Africanus niger” at the bottom.
These groupings were accompanied with highly offensive descriptions; Africanus niger was described as “lazy … sly, sluggish,” while Asiaticus fucus were considered “stern, haughty, greedy.” These categories, based on pseudoscientific ideas of race, underpinned centuries of discrimination and oppression. Although modern genetics has debunked the notion of biological races, HE institutions continue to use similar categories, perpetuating a colonial mindset.
Contemporary issues with the awarding gap
The contemporary use of these terms also creates significant issues both practically and philosophically. For instance, the term “Asian” in the UK awarding gap context as defined by the Office for Students refers to UK-born or educated students of Asian heritage, not international students from Asia. This exclusion of international students from the awarding gap is justified by linking the metric to home undergraduate tuition fees, but it also reflects a colonial mindset where non-UK students’ outcomes are disregarded, despite their financial contributions.
Within home student data, crude categorisation also causes issues. For instance, Chinese students have higher outcomes than Pakistani and Bangladeshi students, yet they are all grouped under “Asian” in many HE metrics (although some institutions have started to disaggregate this data). Similarly, the term “white” encompasses diverse groups, including Gypsy, Roma, and Traveller communities, who are among the most excluded from education in the UK but are aggregated into “white”. These administrative categories erase the nuances and intersections of race, culture, and socio-economic background, which may compromise the effectiveness of interventions.
The grouping inherent in the awarding gap model often reinforces deficit thinking, where students from underrepresented racial groups are viewed as lacking in some way. The assumption is that global majority students are underperforming, but we should also question whether it is white students that are systematically over-rewarded by HE institutions. While the language shift from “attainment gap” to “awarding gap” is a step towards acknowledging institutional bias, much more needs to be done.
A 2021 analysis of UK Access and Participation Plans found that most interventions focused on student finance or study skills support, rather than examining institutional processes like assessment and grading. This approach perpetuates the idea that the problem lies with the students, not the institutions.
Decolonising the awarding gap
To address these issues, I propose six strategies for decolonising the awarding gap:
Be critical of the metric itself: We need to question the construction of the awarding gap metric, particularly its use of crude categories and hierarchical assumptions. The current framework oversimplifies the complexities of race and ethnicity, leading to ineffective solutions.
Disaggregate data: Institutions should disaggregate ethnicity data into the most nuanced categories possible while maintaining statistical validity. Intersectional analysis should be incorporated to capture the full scope of students’ experiences and identities.
Move beyond “gap gazing”: Simply identifying the gap is not enough. We need a qualitative understanding of why these gaps exist, grounded in the lived experiences of students. And more importantly to act with urgency, not to wait for more data.
Avoid deficit models: Interventions should focus on changing university processes, pedagogies, and assessment methods to be more inclusive for all students, rather than assuming that certain groups are inherently deficient.
Involve students: Students must be integral to efforts to address the awarding gap. Institutions should work “with” students, not “for” them, ensuring that their voices are central in both understanding the gap and designing solutions.
Engage senior leaders: Institutional leaders must take an active role in addressing the awarding gap. This work cannot be seen as a box-ticking exercise; it requires a deep understanding of the issues and a commitment to systemic change.
The awarding gap, as currently constructed, is a flawed and crude tool for addressing racial disparities in HE. Its colonial underpinnings and reliance on outdated racial categories reinforce the very inequalities we aim to dismantle. To make meaningful progress towards racial justice in education, we must critically engage with the metrics we use and adopt more nuanced, inclusive approaches.
Only by decolonising the awarding gap can we begin to address the deep-seated inequities in HE and create a more just educational system for all.
Welcome back. The HEPI blog is now up and running again on a daily basis, landing in your inbox at 6:30am. (The pieces we ran over the break are available here.) If you are not already subscribed, you can sign up at the bottom of this page.
Spaces are still open for our in-person Symposium with CBDU on Thursday 16th January: you can register here.
Today’s piece is by Jane Embley, Chief People Officer, Northumbria University and Professor Tom Lawson, Deputy Vice-Chancellor and Provost, Northumbria University.
The end of the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) pensions dispute in the summer of 2023 was the source of much relief in the sector. University employees in the scheme saw both their pension benefits restored to the levels they had been before the USS valuation of 2017 and a reduction in their contributions (from January 2024) from 9.8% to 6.1%. Employers could reverse the significant liabilities that had previously been skewing their financial statements and their contributions to USS were reduced from 21.6% to 14.5%. The Financial Times declared that ‘the cost to UK universities of providing pensions for employees is poised to fall by hundreds of millions of pounds after the sector’s main retirement plan swung into surplus after more than a decade of being in deficit’.
But for many institutions the great pensions crisis was not over: indeed it had only just begun. For at least 80 universities, USS is not their main pension scheme, because those that gained university status through the 1992 Higher Education Act are required to offer Teachers Pension Scheme (TPS) to their academic staff. This includes institutions like Northumbria University, which has significantly developed its research intensity over the last decade and seeks to compete with other research intensives. The disparity in the costs of TPS and USS means that competition is no longer on a level playing field.
Northumbria has more than 200 staff who are members of USS, but all of those have joined the university as existing members of that scheme. All other academic colleagues must be enrolled in TPS and cannot, at present, voluntarily become members of USS. Indeed those who join as members of USS also retain a right to be enrolled in TPS if they wish. Around 50 modern institutions employ some members of USS however the underlying requirement to make TPS available to university-employed academic staff is the same.
Since 2023 the cost of TPS to both employees and employers has significantly diverged from USS. While employers’ contributions to the two schemes tracked one another closely until October 2019, they then began to diverge radically when TPS employer contributions rose to 23.68% while USS was at 21.1%. But in April 2024 the gulf between the two schemes became a chasm – TPS contributions rose by 5% to 28.68% as USS employer contributions went down to 14.5%.
The difference in percentage terms is stark. But when you start to think about the financial cost for institutions it is all the more so. The pension cost (to employers) for a typical academic salary of £57,500 is £8,300 per annum for USS. For a TPS employee, it is £16,500. At an institutional level that means that for every 1000 staff earning this salary in TPS, the annual cost is £8.2 million greater than if those same employees were members of USS. For a professor earning £85,000 the difference is as much as £12,000 per full-time colleague. As Northumbria’s experience shows, these are additional costs being carried in one part of the sector for essentially the same staff.
The situation is compounded by the nature of TPS as a scheme. Unlike USS, employers have no say in how the TPS is run and have no levers to keep employer (and indeed employee) contributions down. This is simply a cost handed down to universities by the Treasury. But unlike schools, to which the Treasury through the Department for Education provides additional funding to cover TPS cost increases, universities receive no relief and simply have to absorb these costs into their already stretched budgets. And unlike schools in the independent sector, which were permitted to stop offering TPS to new staff, universities are obliged to continue to offer TPS – whatever alternatives they can develop for their staff.
The impact of this is extraordinary. It essentially means that in one part of the sector, it costs employers the same amount in on-costs to employ 503 staff as it costs to employ 1000 staff elsewhere. Quite apart from the burden this places on institutions, it is deeply anti-competitive.
What then is to be done? The path forward is beset by problems. Unless there is legislative change, modern universities will be required to continue to make TPS available to all academic colleagues and, it bears repeating, will continue to have no say at all in the running of the scheme.
Of course, one option is to do nothing, but the finances of the sector mean the status quo is extraordinarily difficult to justify. Doing nothing embeds an unfairness that makes the government’s stated priorities for university reform more difficult to achieve. To put it crudely, it costs more for some institutions than others to employ academic staff, and as that resource is derived (at least in part) from student fee income then those institutions will require more students to fund the salaries of staff. For every 1000 staff earning £57,500 it would require all of the fees from 859 additional UK undergraduate students just to fund the difference in employer pension contributions.
Institutions can employ new colleagues via subsidiary companies in order to give themselves the freedom to offer more affordable pensions to new employees. But this approach has many potential pitfalls. It would not help to reduce the costs in relation to existing staff, so would be slow to have any impact, and in any case it remains unclear what the status of such employees is according to HESA – which could among other things impact the ability of individuals to make a contribution to future REF exercises with the attendant implications for future funding. Employment through a subsidiary, even with all terms and conditions being the same but being out of scope for recognition within the REF, is also likely to be a less attractive prospect for employees.
It seems likely that until solutions are found, many institutions might find themselves having to rethink their ability to participate in national collective pay bargaining. With higher pension costs and higher National Insurance contributions, it may be necessary, for now at least, for institutions to take control of salary increases to contain the total costs of employment. This is not an attractive option, but it is hard to think of any others that would be as swift and effective in containing cost increases, although of course it would come with its own industrial relations challenges.
Ultimately all institutions value their academic staff immensely and we want to provide access to attractive pension schemes. However, the lack of institutional control over which pension scheme can be offered, and the high, fixed nature of the employer contribution to TPS (which is not directly linked to any improvement in benefits for the individual) cannot be sustained. The timing of the current challenge could also not be worse. Institutions are grappling with a whole range of financial pressures, and as a consequence dealing with TPS remains in the ‘too hard’ box for many, not least because we genuinely cannot find the solutions without some form of intervention. But as the sustainability of institutions becomes all the more scrutinised, and as the sector needs to find financial efficiencies to address the concerns expressed by the Secretary of State for Education earlier in 2024, we do urgently need to find a way forward.
Obliging institutions to continue to offer TPS places greater financial constraints on precisely those universities that might do the most to widen access and give greater opportunity to those from disadvantaged backgrounds as per the government’s priorities. It is an obvious unfairness that some of students will go to institutions where it is substantially more expensive to employ staff than in other institutions that are more traditionally regarded as elite. The time is now to remove this inbuilt, and presumably unintended, unfairness and end the obligation upon modern universities to offer TPS. If that happens individual institutions and the sector as a whole can begin to chart a path to a more sustainable position in the future.
The last episode from HEDx’s Future Solutions conference features interim pro-vice-chancellor of teaching and learning at the University of Queensland Professor Kelly Mathews.
She joins Martin Betts to discuss a survey of over 8000 university students about how they use artificial intelligence.
She is followed by a panel that included deputy vice-chancellor (education and students) at the University of Technology Sydney Kylie Readman, deputy vice-chancellor (academic) at Deakin University Professor Lix Johnson, vice-chancellor of Western Sydney University George Williams, president of Torrens University Linda Brown of Torrens, and industry executive of higher education at Microsoft Katie Ford.
They call on universities to partner with students and the tech company eco-system. Is HE brave enough to get out of its lane?
The cost of college has been a hot topic for a while now, and even though some studies suggest the net cost of college has been falling post-COVID, it’s clear that sticker prices have not been.
And because the overwhelming majority of college and university students in the US attend public institutions, that’s a good place to start the discussion.
This is data from IPEDS, showing published cost about 530 public, four-year institutions that award the bachelor’s degree, excluding community colleges that have been creeping into that category over time. Each dot represents an institution, and the data are from 2009, 2016, and 2023 to show long-term trends. The dots are colored by geographic region.
The data are displayed four ways, from left to right and default to published Tuition and Fees: Resident, Nonresident, the premium nonresidents pay (in dollars), and the premium not residents pay (as a percentage of what residents pay.) You can change this to show just tuition or just fees by using the control at the top right.
You can also filter to a single state, if you wish, to get a sense of how that state things about tuition.
The green-shaded Highlight boxes at right will allow you to make either one institution, one region, or one state standout, without filtering the other data.
The data are displayed in a box-and-whisker format: The shaded boxes cover the middle 50% of the range, with the dividing line the 50th percentile. The rest of the data are mostly contained within the boundary created by the top bar and bottom bar, with outliers being shown above or below it. These are not enrollment weighted.
As always, I happy to hear what you got out of this. Leave a comment below or send me an email.
Dr. Martha Kenney knows your time is precious. She cares deeply about employee engagement, burnout prevention, work-life balance and career development amongst professional women. That’s why she works with women in medicine and beyond find work-life alignment. She helps women gain clarity on who you are, what you want in life, and what truly matters to you.
She’s also an Assistant Professor who researches mechanisms of chronic pain in young adults who are living with sickle cell disease. I’m delighted to share this conversation with Dr. Martha Kenney in this featured interview on The Social Academic.
Introducing Dr. Martha Kenney, time management expert, professor, coach, and mom
Jennifer: Hi everyone. Welcome back to The Social Academic, where I talk all about online presence for professors, researchers, and other people who have PhDs. I’m so excited to introduce you to my guest today, Dr. Martha Kenney. Martha, would you mind introducing yourself and letting people know a little bit about yourself?
Martha: Sure. Thank you so much for having me, Jennifer. It’s really a pleasure to be here.
I’m Martha. I’m a pediatric anesthesiologist, clinically by training. But, I spend the majority of my time doing research. My research is focused on understanding the mechanisms of chronic pain in young adults who are living with sickle cell disease. I also do research in other pain disparities area as well.
In addition to that, (as if that’s not enough), personally, I’m married with two young kids. So, I’m a really busy mom as well. I’m also a certified coach. I’m a certified executive career coach. I coach women primarily in academia around challenges related to work-life balance, time management, burnout management in general. Read Martha’s bio.
I’m also a behavior design consultant. I got some training in a certification through the Tiny Habits Academy, of which somebody hasn’t read that book by BJ Fogg, they should definitely check it out.
I work a lot with behavior management. How do we change our habits? How do we rewire our routines in a way that sets us up for success so we can be able to execute the goals that we actually have.
Jennifer: Ooh, that is so interesting. It sounds like you do it all.
How did you get into coaching? How did you decide that research, even though it was something that you love, that you wanted to do more than that? You wanted to work with people one-on-one as a coach as well.
Martha: That’s a great question. I got into coaching because of my experience in academia. I’m a physician scientist, clinically I did a very long training path. I finished everything in the fall of 2018 and took on my first position.
“Like most people who go into academia…I don’t wanna say we don’t put in thought into our first position, but I feel like we don’t know the questions we need to ask.
We’re not really prepared to take on our first position. Nobody actually sits you down and says, ‘These are the things you need to ask. These are the red flags that you need to look for.’”
Honestly, when you’ve been through a long training, whether it’s a PhD or an MD track, you’re just happy to have a job when you’re done. Like, yay, I have a job! You’re excited about that. All of this to say that the place that I started was not a good fit. It was not a good fit for many reasons.
Jennifer: Yeah.
Dr. Kenney’s success story with coaching as a former burnt-out academic
Martha: I had clarity on what I wanted to do, where I wanted my career to go.
The problem is that if you’re in an organization where there’s a values misalignment, no matter what you do, you can’t change the values and the mission of that organization.
And no matter what you do, you can’t. Unless you change your identity, which you can’t / which is hard to do, right? Because you are wired the way that you are, and you’re passionate about the things that you’re passionate about, so you can’t really change yourself also.
So what ends up happening is I see a lot of people kind of dwell in this organization.
There’s constant push and shove where there’s just misalignment between what you value, what’s important to you, and what the organization or the department considers to be important. That’s the situation I found myself in.
One of the ways to navigate around that is that someone recommended that I get a coach. I’m so grateful that I got a coach back in 2018 before coaching was sexy and hot. Right?
Jennifer: Right.
Martha: Through that experience, what I learned is that, so this is the way I kind of often explain it to women who approach me about working with me.
Let’s say you’re on this academic journey and you’re walking your path and you encounter a huge block. Imagine a huge boulder block that’s right on your path.
You feel stuck. Not only stuck, for some people, they can feel overwhelmed. It can even contribute to burnout in so many ways. And you don’t know how to navigate it.
There’s two options. One option is you’re like, “Okay, this is okay. This is not the best situation, but I’m just gonna work really hard. And you know, eventually this roadblock, whether it’s an individual, whether it’s a systematic thing, will get out of my way eventually ‘cause my hard work is gonna pay off.”
The reality is, your hard work is just chipping a few pieces off of that rock. So, what ends up happening is that you yourself are gonna suffer for it.
What coaching does is it opens your eyes into the alternative possibilities. It doesn’t take you away from your destination first. A coach can guide you to make sure that that is the right destination, that is the right path.
Perhaps your path is a different path that doesn’t have that roadblock. And that’s really not the path you’re supposed, you really should pursue.
In addition to that, you get clarity that that’s truly the path you need to navigate, then a coach acts as a bridge. And also almost like a flashlight and a lack of a better analogy to say, “Hey, have you noticed that corner is not being blocked?” You know, “How do you feel about going around this corner? It’ll get you to your destination. It might be a little bit windy, but it’ll get you there.” A coach acts like as a bridge between where you are now and where you wanna be in the future.
A good coach will help you realize that there are so many things within your control. You can’t control the boulder block, but you can definitely find the things you can control that helps you navigate around it so you can ultimately achieve your goal. That’s what my coach did for me. I was like, “Oh my gosh, this is like, amazing.”
One of my passions is really helping other people feel great about themselves and help them be successful in their endeavors. I’m like, “I wanna be a coach too!” I wanna give individuals the same feeling that I had cause without my coach I would’ve left academia to be honest.
Jennifer: Yeah
Martha: Through the help of my coach, I stayed the path. I learned to navigate around the path and really create a career that’s authentic to me. And also, find an institution that is aligned with my values and my goals as well.
Dr. Kenney’s coaching at Time Matters Today – Her take on work-life balance
Jennifer: Oh gosh. Thank you for being so open about that, because I feel like the vulnerability with which you shared that story, people are really gonna feel that, that people are gonna recognize themselves in a similar place or needing the kind of support that you received. So tell me about like, your coaching. How does it differ from like, the coaching that you had when you needed it?
Martha: So my coaching is really focused on work life balance, and I use that term because that’s what we’re familiar with. But I actually don’t believe in work-life balance.
Jennifer: Ooh.
Martha: To me it’s something that’s like, nonexistent, right?
Jennifer: Interesting.
Martha: ‘Cause the reality is life is an evolving process and there’s never gonna be a period where like you’re 50% work and 50% life.
And then also work is a compartment of the bigger compartment that is your identity in your life, right? It’s a bucket in your life. And so work should be a full expression of your identity and not like that this is life. This is you and this is work. You’re the same person in both spheres.
Work should really contribute to your personal fulfillment. And so really what I work with. The reality is I use that term ’cause that’s what people are familiar with.
Really what I do is help women really attain better work life alignment. And what does that mean? It means is that really gaining clarity on who you are, what you want in life, what truly matters to you.
Because oftentimes people come to me because they’re overcommitted, they’re overextended, they’re having challenges with time management.
People call me ‘a time management guru.’ I lead workshops. I can tell you all the steps you need to take. I can tell you how to plan your week. I can tell you what priority system you should use and so many things.
But the reality is if you don’t have clarity on what truly matters? If you think of your life as like a bucket, it’s gonna be filled with really meaningless things because you’re constantly going to pile things on without really passing through the judgment value. “Is this really important to me? Is it really worth my time?”
I help people really to, you know, get clarity on who they are, what truly matters to them, and then also who the people that they wanna serve. The people you wanna serve might be the people in your home. It might be the people in the work setting. And then really create goals and execute those goals around that. I believe that what my clients can tell you is that as a result, they have better clarity, more confidence in themselves. They’re able to really draw boundaries around their time and their energy.
People hear me say often over and over again: your time and your energy are finite resources. You can do anything, but you cannot do everything. And so you really have to take the cautious approach of really determining what is important to you and commit into that.
They find I don’t discover more time for them because I’m not God. There’s always gonna be 24 hours in a day. But what I do discover, what I help them do is with the 24 hours that they have, really being able to dedicate themselves to the things that truly matters. Giving them the boldness to say no to the things that don’t matter, and be released from the guilt that comes with that, especially for women in academia. And then also really develop tiny habits or behavioral steps that, okay, we’ve decided that this is the goal.
I can lead a time management workshop and talk about planning your week all you want. Then I’ll encounter people like, “Oh, I tried it, it worked really well for the first and second week, but then I’ve kind of slipped right back into my pattern.” Of course you did, because your pattern is a routine and it’s a habit. It’s an automated behavior. So how do we unwire that and really insert a more intentional and productive habit so that eventually it becomes automated? Eventually planning your week every Friday, at the end of the workday, or Monday morning, or whatever day or Sunday, becomes a routine habit that you do on a regular basis.
That’s my long-winded way of saying I help people manage their time. And feel good about how they use their time and their energy. And also modify their behaviors to be more intentional towards their goals.
Jennifer: That sounds so cool. Oh, you know, a question came up while you were chatting, when you were talking about tiny habits and behavior change. I’m curious, what is something that, like you had maybe a bad habit about that you have worked to improve using your methods?
Becoming more productive and finding a solution for bad habits
Martha: No, I mean, a great example is, so if we go back to my story, I started off of a 100% clinical position.
Jennifer: Mm.
Martha: I was in an environment where despite having a very clear plan, and even going into meetings with my leadership, with, you know, PowerPoint slides printed out and PDFs of my plan and what my research plan was, and having great collaborators who were really interested in me working with them, there’s still nobody wanted to invest in that. I was given literally no protected time.
One of the things that I realized was extremely important in all of us, this is common sense, is I needed to develop an automatic writing habit. The position I am in right now, I have protected nonclinical time dedicated to research. My research time at that time, the first three years of my career, was just free time. You know, when I’m not clinical. So it was my personal time, but I had two young kids. So I also wasn’t gonna try to kill myself to do this.
I developed a writing habit that allowed me to write, eventually write about 25 minutes every single day. And that 25 minutes was, regardless of whether I would go, I was going to the OR that particular day, or if it was a weekend. If it was a weekend, I woke up an hour earlier than my kids, would write for 25 minutes, they’re awake and I’m done.
And I kid you not, Jennifer, in six months on a full clinical load, I published three papers.
Jennifer: Wow!
Martha: Yeah. In the six month period, you know, one was a review paper, but two of them were original research papers.
Jennifer: Amazing!
Martha: Using retrospective data. This is with no protected time. And so I think oftentimes I say this and nobody really believes me. You actually don’t need as much time as you think to accomplish something.
Jennifer: Hmm.
Martha: Oftentimes the problem is our habits. Because the reality is even if I did not have that particular habit and had not developed it in that time period, right now I have 75% protected time, I could have this protected time and be very unproductive. Submit a paper, two papers in one year, despite having 75% protected time.
A lot of it has to do with our maladaptive habits and our not being intentional about building important habits. And so how I started this particular writing habit is I realized that whenever I would get up in the morning and get dressed before I would go to work, I would go downstairs to my office, and then I would actually end up, you know, checking my email before I would go to work. Well, no, there’s no ever any urgent email that I need to actually respond to.
So I created a tiny habit recipe. Any habit you want to develop, you wanna create a, an anchor moment, which is basically inserting that habit into a routine that you have. And my routine was I would turn on my computer in the morning.
And so what I said is that after I turn on my computer in the morning, and then here comes a tiny habit, I would write two sentences in a manuscript and I would have the particular manuscript that I’m working on. And then you also then wanna insert a celebration, which is, I think where BJ’s research really stands above some of the other habit books, because a lot of the habit books will teach you that you wanna give yourself a reward, but anything that you’re trying to wire in your brain, it needs to be instant gratification. And so he, you know, these emotions that create actually that desire to repeat a behavior and over and over again, behaviors guided by our emotions, right?
As soon as I would complete that, those two sentences, I’m a very affirming person. And what makes me feel good is to, you know, state positive affirmation statements. So I would say to myself, “I am an NIH funded researcher.” I was not, I was not close.
Jennifer: But you said it.
Martha: But I said it and it made me feel good!
Jennifer: I love that. So you got your two sentences, and then you’d have your positive affirmation.
Martha: Yes. Yes. It’s like an affirmation and a proclamation at the same time. Yeah. And so I said that it made me feel good. And eventually the two sentences like increased, you know, the two sentences would take me like less than five minutes, then it would increase to more.
Then I could crank out like a paragraph in 25 minutes. And I just kept doing that. Cause imagine this, you are writing in a paragraph in 25 minutes and writing 25 minutes a day. How long is it gonna take me to finish that manuscript?
Jennifer: Hmm. So you really created a recipe that ensured that you got your writing in at the start of the day, like kind of when you already had this habit of checking your email and you just switched that to writing the two sentences?
Jennifer: That’s so cool. That’s really interesting. One of the things that it seems like you are intentional about is who you work with, and that’s women. Is that, is that correct?
Martha: Yes.
Jennifer: Tell me a little bit about that decision and why you enjoyed working with women?
Martha: I got into coaching because of my personal experience. And as I started, before I became a coach, I started sharing my story. I was invited to different institutions to talk about, ’cause I, I did a lot of work around time management to folks talk about time management and career development for early career faculty at school, different universities.
And so, as I was telling, you know, given these workshops and given these talks, have all these conversations with women afterwards, and one of the things I realized was that my experience was not unique. Yes, it was unique to me, but there were so many women who had that same shared experience. And oftentimes when we’re going through some of these experiences, I haven’t really dived into some of the nitty gritty, you know, the gaslighting, the discrimination, all of the stuff that’s like in there, you know, the misogyny that kind of fueled a lot of this, right?
You think you’re alone and you suffer alone. And so as I started sharing my story, I realized that, “Oh gosh, there’s so many women that are experiencing this.”
And for me personally, I’m in a place where I love my academic career. I love being in academia, and I love being in academia because my mind is not wired to align with the traditional academic culture.
Jennifer: Hmm.
Martha: And by unwiring my mind and rethinking in a different way, it has helped me thrive. And it has helped me be successful in my career, and personally. And so, like, I really want other women to experience that joy because we’re seeing women leave medicine and academia at higher rates than men. And so, and for me, that’s extremely concerning.
Even though there’s more women in medical school, on the PhD path than ever before, we have such a leaky pipeline, extremely leaky. And so that’s why you see only 25% of full professors at schools of medicine across the country are females. You know, 25%, which is like utterly ridiculous. We make half. We’re 50% of the population. So, yeah. So, so I think that all of that is, is challenging. And I think that helping, that’s, you know, helping other women who have gone through the journey.
And I feel like when I speak to people or when I coach people, they feel there’s that level of trust because they feel like I’ve gone through that same experience as them. And I can offer, if anything, just a listening ear. And definitely as they open up to coaching, help them really transform their thinking and also their lives at the same time.
Recognizing burnout
Jennifer: One of the things that you mentioned was that after these workshops, women would come up to you and they, they’d have conversations about the things that they were experiencing, maybe how similar it was to what you talked about. What are some of the ways that women, academics especially, can recognize their burnout, recognize when maybe a change does need to happen?
Martha: Oh, that’s, that’s a great question.
Mental, physical exhaustion are like common signs of it. Disengagement from the workplace and from the things like your responsibilities and the things that even previously may have brought you some enjoyment no longer become like very enjoyable at all. Going to work with a sense of dread. You know, all of those things. And also like how your inter- how this, all of this feeds into your interactions with your family.
If you’re not happy at work, because as I mentioned, work should be a component of bringing you personal and professional fulfillment. And so if work is, if you’re not happy there, it really feeds into your personal fulfillment. It’s harder for you to be happy elsewhere. And it becomes obvious in what your kids may say, what your significant other may say as well.
I think that if people are experiencing this just exhaustion, this dread, this lack, this disengagement from work, even anxiety that’s attached to all of it, I think those are all signs that they really should reach out for help. There’s nothing wrong with asking for help. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with it. It makes you stronger, from my opinion.
Jennifer: I love that. So it sounds like the first step, if you’re listening to this and you are experiencing some of these feelings of burnout and exhaustion, your first step is to reach out for help. Can I ask, who, who do you recommend people reach out to? Is it a mental health professional? Is it a coach like yourself? What’s a good direction for someone to go?
Martha: Well, I think like the, probably the first most non-intimidating thing to do is to speak to a, a trusted peer or a colleague, right? Because oftentimes when people feel that overwhelmed like me in that situation, I, you know, I didn’t wanna speak to a stranger. I don’t even wanna speak to a mentor or have them judge me.
And so I reached out to a trusted friend. You know, I spoke to one of my, some of my physician colleagues, but also reaching out to like my personal friends outside of medicine who knew me really well was extremely helpful for them to act as a sounding board. And I think, I think as you begin to talk about your feelings, it will become obvious whether you need to also speak to a mental health provider.
Right now most universities also have free access to mental health providers for faculty members. And I would say take advantage of that. I absolutely did when I was at my lowest. It was just like one session and it was like a breath of fresh air. So definitely take advantage of that.
And then, you know, from there, I think coaching is really incredible guide that can really help you. And coaching obviously definitely can be paired with therapy because therapy is very different from coaching. If you need therapy to address underlying psychological or mental health issues, definitely pursue that. And then coaching can also kind of help really was like kind of the action steps.
Jennifer: So helpful. That’s great. I really appreciate you sharing those different options. And I like the one about talking with friends and people outside of academia too, how that can be helpful. So I appreciate that.
Jennifer: Now, this is a podcast that’s about online presence. And you’re a researcher, you’re a coach, you do, oh gosh, there’s one other thing you did that was recent. I can’t remember what it was. But with all of these things, how, how do you communicate? I mean, I imagine that your online presence has something to do with it, but tell me a little bit about what makes up your online presence and how you feel about it?
Martha: I feel like I’m in a more comfortable and great position with my online presence now. I think when I started, I just wanted to get, even, this was even before I had a coaching business.
Jennifer: Yeah.
Martha: I wanted to get my ideas out there. I’m somebody that I love to write, I love to journal. I’m very conceptual and very theory based, which is why I have a conceptual framework for my coaching. ’cause that is because I’m like that. I wanted to just get my ideas out there. And so I started off with just a blog and even I, I stopped writing my blog now, but like, I started off with a blog. It was great. Okay. I got my ideas out there. ’cause I felt like I had all this stuff inside. I’m like, I need to, I need to get it out.
Jennifer: I love that.
Martha: And I also then started exploring different social media platforms to just share my ideas. And I think for me, that was a search because, you know, my sister, who’s much, much younger than me, told me to go on Instagram because that’s her generation’s social media platform.
And I tried Instagram for about like, maybe six months or so. But I hated it. And there’s nothing wrong with Instagram. I would say as people are thinking about getting your ideas out there through social media, find the platform that is authentic to your personality.
Jennifer: Yes. I love that. Wait, wait. Before you go on, can I ask like, what helped you know that Instagram was definitely not for you? Because other people are listening to this being like, wait, I wanna delete my Instagram. So how did you know?
Martha: So no. Okay. So what I knew was like, when my sister was like, okay, you gotta create Reels, right? And you gotta figure out like what’s trending and et cetera. And I did a reel based on something that was trending and I put the video up for like, maybe two days and then I promptly deleted it because I watched a video and I was like, this is not you. Like this is just not you.
Jennifer: Yeah, yeah.
Martha: Like, this is so fake and it’s not you in any form.
Jennifer: Mm.
Martha: And I have to lean on my strengths and I need to find a platform that values good writing.
Jennifer: Yeah.
Martha: ‘Cause that is where I’m strong
Jennifer: I like that. I like that. So what platform did you end up really liking ‘cause of the writing component?
Martha: LinkedIn
Jennifer: LinkedIn
Martha: Yes. And so like, yeah, I mean, LinkedIn has been, I have, I, I think it’s been almost a year since I went all in on LinkedIn.
Jennifer: Yeah.
Martha: And, you know, I used to share posts like five days a week, but now I moved, I decreased it to three days a week just because I started a newsletter. And I wanna nurture my newsletter audience as well.
But what I love about LinkedIn is, I mean, sometimes I just put a selfie pick of myself. Like, a picture of me, like, sitting in front of my desk. That is my picture, you know, for like, my inter-LinkedIn. I think in the year that I’ve been on LinkedIn, I have done maybe two videos. I don’t have to do video. I’ve been able to really garner a, a nice engaged community without putting forward video content. ‘Cause I just don’t, that’s not where I lean and I don’t have that time also, or that capacity takes too much time as well. I find writing to be therapeutic for me.
And so whatever you do from a social media perspective, it has to be enjoyable. I enjoy writing these pieces, and so I find it to be fun.
And so LinkedIn rewards that, you know, it’s, people write great posts and people comment on it. People engage on it. They, their algorithm is like really based more on your content and not your images and flashy, they don’t even do hashtags. You know, that’s like, so that’s great.
So that fits for me. And, and for somebody else, they might be like more like the images side of things, which would be Instagram and more trendy or video, which would be TikTok, et cetera. So like, but I, you know, I just tell people, find, you know, experiments with different things and find what is authentic to your personality, where it’s not a burden for you to actually put yourself out there.
Jennifer: I have another question, which is actually about your LinkedIn newsletter. How did you decide that you wanted to go beyond writing posts and actually create a regular piece of content like a newsletter?
Martha: So I realized that when you write a post, sometimes some of the people that are following you, not everybody sees it. And so, and I was writing a lot like five days a week. So some people will miss like a, a certain post. And it also, I wanted to just build a better connection with the people who are following me. And so I started, it’s an email newsletter.
I actually, first, before I did an email newsletter, I created an email course, a five day email course for female faculty members who work in academia. And so I created the course and I got great feedback and I was like, oh, I just don’t wanna like people to finish a five day course. And then like, that’s it. I’m like, bye, you know, you’re not gonna work with me with coaching, then it’s okay, bye. You know, I wanna continue to nurture that. I wanna continue to share my ideas, share advice, and also just get feedback from them. Also insights to create more new content.
And so it was because of that, I created an email newsletter, which I’m having a blast investing time in. I love, with that people respond to some of the posts and I get emails from people, and I’m able to actually build relationships that are a little bit deeper.
Jennifer: Ooh, I like that. Deeper relationships.
Experience with negative social media reactions
Jennifer: I’m curious as a researcher and a coach, some of the professors that I talk with have fear or anxiety about them showing up as a coach online, even though it’s something that they care about and they do.
I think they’re a little worried about what their academic community might think about that. Have you experienced negative reactions sharing all of your identity on social media and being online?
Martha: I’ve gotten a lot of sarcastic comments.
Jennifer: Oh, sarcastic comments. Okay.
Martha: But I’m like, “Oh, so what?” Right? This is how I think about it. And this is what I tell other people. The reality is that each of us are multifaceted individuals. Right?
Jennifer: Right.
Martha: Oftentimes our role in our workplace is not gonna tap into every facet of your personality and what brings you joy. I’m now starting to do a teeny bit of coaching at my institution, but it’s not enough. It’s not like there’s a blog for me to write at my institution or a newsletter for me to generate. I wouldn’t want to do it because there would probably be all these rules attached to it anyways.
For me, this is an opportunity to really show a part of Martha and really feed a part of my identity and personality that’s not being fed in the academic setting.
This is just another part of who you are that you’re not necessarily able to display in the academic setting. Regardless of what you do, people will have something to say about it.
I think when I started showing up so heavily on LinkedIn, and I’ve written a couple posts about this where people started making comments thinking I’m preparing myself to quit medicine.
I’m like, no, I love my job. If you actually read my content, that’s what I’m writing about. How I got to the place where I love my job. And I love the department and the institution that I work at. I love my colleagues. This is me tapping into a creative aspect that I didn’t even know I had.
Since showing up on social media, I realized that, Oh, I am a creative person. I always thought as a science-y, brainy person, I had no creativity whatsoever. I was like, Oh, actually this is my creativity. There’s right in this stuff. It’s actually very fulfilling.
So people will say whatever they want at the end of the day. When you become an entrepreneur, whether it’s a coach or something, or it’s a consultant in academia, it does not fit in the mold in academia. It’s not part of the traditional academic culture. But the reality is also things are changing in academia. The most of the people who are going to have something to say about that are people who are kind of a little bit older or the older generation who aren’t even on social media anyways, much. You kind of just have to let go of that thought.
In addition to the sarcastic comments, I’ve also received like really encouraging comments. A I have people following me, reading me. Like, they never comment. They never ‘like,’ but I’ll meet them at a conference or I’ll see them somewhere and they’ll be like, “Oh, I love your content. I read this.” And I’m like, you’ve never liked a post, never commented. These are academic people. So you’ll actually also be surprised as well.
Jennifer: Oh, that is so familiar to me. Someone asked, “I’ve seen your social media post recently and I feel like you’re not getting a lot of likes?” And I’m like, “No, but I’m getting clients.” The professors that I work with email me and they say, “I saw your post and I wanna work with you,” but they’ve never followed me or liked, liked anything I’ve shared. That’s totally fine. People engage in the way that makes sense for them.
Martha: Yes.
How to connect and work with Dr. Kenney
Jennifer: Before we wrap up, I really want anyone who’s listening to know if you’re like a good fit to work together. Who are your ideal clients? Like who do you want to reach out to you, who are you excited to work with?
Martha: I’m excited to work with any woman in academia who’s like, “Okay, I love being a scientist. I love being an academic physician, but I don’t know how long I can do this for, because I’m burnt out, because I’m exhausted, I’m overwhelmed, but I just don’t know what my next steps are.”
Jennifer: Ooh.
Martha: Those are the kind of women I love to work with to help get clarity on your next steps. If you’re overwhelmed, struggling with time management, I’ll help you to define the boundaries or boundaries around your values and create better work life alignment.
At the moment, I’m not taking one-on-one clients because I just launched a group coaching program that’s gonna start in two weeks. Yes. Super excited! Most of my clients will probably be through the group coaching program. Another cohort will start in January.
Jennifer: So cool. If you’re listening to this, you can get on the waitlist for the January cohort.
Martha: Yes.
Jennifer: That is so exciting. Martha, thank you so much for talking with me today. Is there anything else you’d like to add before we wrap up?
Martha: Thank you so much for having me as well.
One of the things that I would love to add is the fact that oftentimes I think in academia, we don’t like to do a lot of these introspective, what we call soul searching things.
I’m still relatively early career about to go to mid-career. I’ve been struck by the number of senior women, five, 10, even 20 years ahead of me career-wise, who have come to me for coaching.
They have come because they never took that time to really get clarity on their values. They were like, “You know what? I went on the ladder. I got to this particular position and realized that the last 10 years, the last five years I’ve just been going through the motions and I’m so unfulfilled. I’m so unhappy, I don’t even know what my next steps are.”
Time is such a precious thing. And so the person who is gonna value your time and your energy the most is you and your loved ones. Taking that time to really get clarity on what you want.
What do I want?
What truly matters to me?
Who am I here to serve?
What are their problems?
How can I be of help? What solutions can I provide to them?
Am I really walking on the path that I truly desire?
Taking that time is so precious and it’ll make such a world of a difference for you so you don’t look back as a 90 year-old with tons of regret about what if.
Jennifer: Aww, Dr. Martha Kenney, I have loved this conversation.
How can people get in touch with you, connect with you on social media after this ends?
Dr. Martha Kenney is a board-certified pediatrician and pediatric anesthesiologist who completed undergraduate education at Brown University followed by medical school, residency, and fellowship training at Johns Hopkins University. She is currently an Assistant Professor at Duke University where she leads the Pain Equity and Disparities Lab. Her research is focused on pain in people living with sickle cell disease and marginalized communities and is supported by a 5-year K award from the National Institutes of Health. She also holds several prominent leadership positions, including guest editor for the Journal of Pain, member of the professional development & education committee and co-chair of Diversity, Inclusion & Anti-racism SIG for the US Association for the Study of Pain, member of the National Pain Advocacy Center’s Science & Policy Advisory Council.
Outside of teaching medicine and conducting research, Dr. Kenney is a certified professional life coach and certified behavioral design consultant with a deep-seated passion for employee engagement, burnout prevention, work-life balance and career development amongst professional women. She is particularly passionate about working with young female professionals and entrepreneurs. She is a sought out speaker and has spoken at prominent universities and national conferences and facilitated workshops.
Dr. Kenney is married with two young kid. In addition to coaching business, she and her husband own a commercial print shop based in Durham, NC. She loves to read, journal, and serve and support members of her community and church.
New research from CUPA-HR has found that median pay increases for most higher education employees in 2023-24 continued the upward trend seen last year (and exceeded the inflation rate for the first time since 2019-20). However, the findings also show that most higher ed employees are still being paid less than they were in 2019-20 in inflation-adjusted dollars.
The largest gap between pre-pandemic inflation-adjusted salaries and current salaries is for tenure-track faculty (earning 9.7% less), followed by non-tenure-track teaching faculty (earning 8.2% less). The smallest gap is for staff (earning only 0.3% less).
Other key findings from an analysis of CUPA-HR’s higher ed workforce salary survey data from 2016-17 to 2023-24 include:
Non-tenure-track teaching faculty received their highest raise in the past eight years.
Staff (generally non-exempt employees) received the highest increase in pay in comparison to other employee types. This was true last year as well.
Tenure-track faculty continued to receive the lowest pay increases (and were the only group of employees whose raise did not surpass inflation).
Across higher ed, employees are still being paid less than they were in 2019-20 (pre-pandemic) in inflation-adjusted dollars. Tenure-track faculty are the group with the largest gap between median salaries in 2019-20 adjusted to 2023-24 dollars and actual median salaries in 2023-24, earning 9.7% less. This is followed by non-tenure-track teaching faculty (earning 8.2% less). The smallest gap is for staff (earning only 0.3% less).
High inflation has only exacerbated the gaps in pay increases faculty (particularly tenure-track faculty) experience in relation to other higher ed employees. Further, even though most higher ed employee groups received raises that beat inflation in 2023-24, these raises did not reverse the erosion of higher ed employee purchasing power that has been occurring since 2019-20.
CUPA-HR is the recognized authority on compensation surveys for higher education, with its workforce surveys designed by higher ed HR professionals for higher ed HR professionals and other campus leaders.
If you believe you can extract strategy from prior activities, I have something for you to try to make sense of here. This is a long compilation of tuition and fees at America’s Flagship and Land Grant institutions. If you are not quite sure about the distinction between those two types of institutions, you might want to read this first. TLDR: Land Grants were created by an act of congress, and for this purpose, flagships are whoever I say they are. There doesn’t seem to be a clear definition.
Further, for this visualization, I’ve only selected the first group of Land Grants, funded by the Morrill Act of 1862. They tend to be the arch rival of the Flagship, unless, of course, they’re the same institution.
Anyway, today I’m looking at tuition, something you’d think would be pretty simple. But there are at least four ways to measure this: Tuition, of course, but also tuition and required fees, and both are different for residents and nonresidents. Additionally, you can use those variables to create all sorts of interesting variables, like the gap between residents and nonresidents, the ratio of that gap to resident tuition, or even several ways to look at the role “required fees” change the tuition equation. All would be–in a perfect world–driven by strategy. I’m not sure I’d agree that such is the case.
Take a look and see if you agree.
There are five views here, each getting a little more complex. I know people are afraid to interact with these visualizations, but I promise you can’t break anything. So click away.
The first view (using the tabs across the top) compares state resident full-time, first-time, undergraduate tuition and required fees (yellow) to those for nonresidents (red bar). The black line shows the gap ratio. For instance, if resident tuition is $10,000 and nonresident tuition is $30,000, the gap is $20,000, and that is 2x the resident rate. The view defaults to the University of Michigan, but don’t cheat yourself: Us the filter at top left to pick any other school. If you’ve read this blog before, you know why Penn State is showing strange data. It’s not you, it’s IPEDS, so don’t ask.)
The second tab shows four data points explicitly, and more implicitly. This view starts with the University of Montana, but the control lets you change that. On top is resident tuition (purple) and resident tuition and fees (yellow). Notice how the gap between the two varies, suggesting the role of fees in the total cost of attendance. The bottom shows those figures for nonresidents.
The third view looks a little crazy. Choose a value to display at top left, and the visualization will rank all 77 institutions from highest to lowest. Use the control at top right to highlight an institution to put it in a national context. Hover over the dots for details in a popup box. If you want to look at a smaller set of institutions, you can do that, too, using the filters right above the chart. The fourth view is the exact same, but shows the actual values, rather than the rank. As always, hover for details.
Finally, the fifth view is a custom scatter plot: Choose the variable you want on the x-axis and the variable to plot it against on the y-axis. Then use the filters to limit the included institutions. As always, let me know what you find that’s interesting.
While the ongoing turnover crisis impacts all of higher ed, supervisors are among the hardest hit. In our recent study, The CUPA-HR 2023 Higher Education Employee Retention Survey, supervisors say they’re grappling with overwork and added responsibilities (especially when their staff members take other jobs), while struggling to maintain morale.
Supervisor retention is especially critical in a time of turnover, as these are the employees we rely on most to preserve institutional knowledge and provide continuity amid transition. But our research shows that many supervisors are not getting the kinds of institutional support they need. By empowering managers to make decisions on behalf of their staff, institutions make it less likely that their supervisors will seek employment opportunities elsewhere.
The Supervisor’s Perspective
Taking a closer look at the data, it’s clear that supervisors are overworked and under-resourced. Seven in ten work more hours than what is expected of full-time employees at their institution. Nearly double the percentage of supervisors versus non-supervisors agree that it is normal to work weekends and that they cannot complete their job duties working only their institution’s normal full-time hours.
Supervisors are also facing challenges unique to their leadership roles. Filling vacant positions and maintaining the morale of their staff are their chief worries:
Strategies for Supervisor Retention
Given the pressures supervisors are under, what can institutions do to ensure that their top talent won’t seek other employment? While common retention incentives like increased pay and recognition are crucial, supervisors need improved institutional support.
Our data show that supervisors are in need of the following:
When supervisors are empowered in these ways, they are less likely to be among the 56 percent of employees who say they’re at least somewhat likely to search for a new job in the coming year.
In Maxwell’s mathematical formulation of electromagnetism, he defined light as a propagating electromagnetic wave created by the interaction of its electric and magnetic fields
While Einstein in his General Theory of Relativity defined the forces associated with gravity in terms of a geometric curvature or spatial displacement in space-time caused by its energy density.
Additionally, he showed that it was directed along the radius of the curvature in the two-dimensional plane that was parallel to it.
Therefore, to explain how Maxwells equations can be defined in terms of a space-time environment one must show how both the observable and mathematical properties of an electromagnetic: such as why its wave properties are created by the interaction of its electric and magnetic fields and why polarized light has a perpendicular orientation in terms of the geometry of space time.
Additionally, one must also show why its electrical and magnetic components are in phase, it’s the only form of energy that can move at the speed of light along with the defining the reason why it always appears as a photon when observed or interacts with its environment in terms of that same geometry.
As was just mentioned gravity’s force vector is along the radius of one of dimensional plains of three-dimensional space. However, that does not mean the other two plains of three-dimensional space cannot contribute to energy content of space.
The fact that light is polarized supports that assumption because it allows one to understand the mechanism responsible for its perpendicular orientation in terms light waves moving on the different dimensional plains that are perpendicular to each other.
However, one ALSO allow one to explain both the observations and Maxwell equations in terms of the dimensional prosperity of space if one assumes the electrical and magnetic are components of light are propagated by spatial displacements created by an energy wave moving on the surface of one of those two-dimensional plains.
(This assumption is supported by Einstein suggestion that spatial displacements in one of the three-dimensional plains of three-dimensional space is responsible for gravitational energy.
One can understand the mechanism responsible by using the analogy of how a wave on the two-dimensional surface of water causes a point on that surface to become displaced or rise above or below the equilibrium point that existed before the wave was present.
The science of wave mechanics tells us a force would be developed by those displacements which would result in the elevated and depressed portions of the water moving towards or becoming “attracted” to each other and the surface of the water.
Similarly, an energy wave on the “surface” on one of the two spatial dimensions that are perpendicular to the axis of gravitational forces would cause a point on that “surface” to become displaced or rise above and below the equilibrium point that existed before the wave was present.
Therefore, classical wave mechanics, if extrapolated to the properties of two of the three spatial dimensions of our universe that are perpendicular the one responsible for gravity tells us a force will be developed by the differential displacements of energy wave which will result in its elevated and depressed portions moving towards or become “attracted” to each other as the wave moves through space.
This would define the causality of the attractive electrical fields associated with an electromagnetic wave in terms of a force caused by the alternating displacements of a wave moving with respect to time on a “surface” of the two spatial dimensions which are perpendicular to the axis of gravitational forces.
However, it also provides a classical mechanism for understanding why similar electrical fields repel each other. This is because observations of waves show there is a direct relationship between the magnitude of a displacement in its “surface” to the magnitude of the force resisting that displacement.
Similarly, the magnitude of multiple displacements in a “surface” of a two-dimensional plain in space-time will be greater than that caused by a single one. Therefore, they will repel each other because the magnitude of the force resisting the displacement will be greater than it would be for a single one.
One can also derive the magnetic component of an electromagnetic wave in terms of the horizontal force developed along the axis that is perpendicular to the displacement caused by its peaks and troughs associated with the electric fields.
This would be analogous to how the perpendicular displacement of a mountain generates a horizontal force on the surface of the earth, which pulls matter horizontally towards the apex of that displacement.
This also explain why the electrical and magnetic fields of an electromagnetic wave are in phase or maximum at the same time in terms of the geometric properties of space time defined by Einstein
However, it also provides an explanation for why electromagnetic waves can transmit energy through space at the speed of light.
The observations and the science of wave mechanics tell us waves move energy through water, causing it to move in a circular motion therefore it does not actually travel with waves. In other words, waves transmit energy, not water, across the ocean and if not obstructed by anything, they have the potential to travel across an entire ocean basin.
Similarly, an electromagnetic wave will cause the geometry of space time to move in a circular motion and therefore the geometric components of space Einstein associated with mass do not move with respect to its velocity vector. Additionally, if not obstructed by anything, they have the potential to travel across an entire universe to the velocity of light.
As was just shown the speed of a wave on water is defined in part by the rate at which its particles interact.
Therefore, the speed of light would depend on the rate at which the electrical and magnetic components interact.
Therefore, its velocity is constant in free space with no obstacles to its motion because the rate at which its electrical and magnetic components interact is constant.
However, to understand how and why an electromagnetic wave evolves into photon one must connect its evolution to that environment.
One can accomplish this by using the science of wave mechanics and the properties of space-time as define by Einstein.
For example, an electromagnetic wave is observed to move continuously through space and time unless it is prevented from doing so by someone or something interacting with it. This would result in its energy being confined to three-dimensional space. The science of wave mechanics tells us the three-dimensional “walls” of this confinement will result in its energy being reflected back on itself thereby creating a resonant or standing wave in three-dimensional space. This would cause its wave energy to be concentrated at the point in space were a particle would be found.
Additionally, wave mechanics also tells us the energy of a resonant system, such as a standing wave can only take on the discrete or quantized values associated with its fundamental or a harmonic of its fundamental frequency.
This explains why an electromagnetic wave if it is prevented from moving through space-time either by being observed or encountering an object is reduced or “Collapses” to a form a standing wave that would define the quantized energy Quantum Mechanics associates with a particle.
However, this also provides a Classical mechanism in terms of Einstein theories for defining one of the core principals Quantum Mechanics in that when field properties light and all other forms of energy are prevented from moving through space either by being observed or encountering an object that energy will become quantized in the form of a particle.
This shows how one can define all of the mathematical of Maxwells equation in terms of the physical properties of space time
Jane CoomberSewell started her website in graduate school, now it’s time for a re-design
Meet Jane CoomberSewell, PhD in this featured interview. She’s been a business owner throughout graduate school. Jane recently completed her PhD in Media and Culture Studies, researching English entertainer Joyce Grenfell.
Jane’s website has always been helpful. Now as an independent researcher, her website has needed to change over time. That’s what this interview focuses on: how personal website can change over time to meet your needs.
I’m Jennifer van Alstyne. Welcome to The Social Academic blog, where I share articles and interviews on managing your online presence in Higher Education.
Whether you’re just creating your website, or need to re-design your outdated website, I hope this interview helps you. Jane and I talk about
Jennifer: Hello everyone. I am Jennifer van Alstyne. Welcome to the 1st featured interview of 2022. Today. I’m here with Dr. Jane CoomberSewell. We’re going to be talking about how a website can change over time.
Dr. Jane CoomberSewell created her website when she was in graduate school. And it’s been a journey to figure out exactly what belongs on the website, if the website is going to work long term. Now some changes are being planned, they’re ready to be made. So I thought this is a great subject to share with you.
Jane, it’s great to talk with you today. Would you mind introducing yourself?
Jane: I’m Jane. In the networking world in the United Kingdom, I’m now being referred to as Doctor Word Nerd. I run a business with my wife which has two parallel streams. Which is one of the reasons why the website is now websites. Joyce is an autism advocate and specialist.
Jane’s website was originally shared with Joyce. Now they will each have their own website.
Joyce’s one of the few people in the United Kingdom who is qualified to mentor autistic people who is herself autistic. While we’ve worked both work words, I am very much moving from
Proofreading
Editing
Student support
more and more into being a family and company historian and biographer. Because companies have life cycles and stories to tell just as much as individual’s do.
Jennifer: That’s right. And websites because they help us tell those stories to a wider number of people, it needs to be changed and updated with time as our needs change. And as the things that we want to share with those people change as well. So I’m really glad that we’re getting to talk today.
Can I ask, what was your graduate background and what did you do your PhD in?
Jane:So my, my PhD, it comes under media and cultural studies. But very broadly. It was a 4.5 year–cause I started off part-time and then went full time–adventure into the life of a lady called Joyce Grenfell who is a British entertainer. And really considering her as a sociopolitical commentator, hence the history side of it. And a feminist.
Was she a feminist? The answer being probably only with the small ‘f.’
But really looking at the power-knowledge dynamics that she explores in all her sketches which she wrote herself. Now I’m trying to turn that into a book for normal people.
Jennifer: You want to write a book about that for a general audience it sounds like?
Jane: Yeah. There’s 2 books at the moment. One is something that be useful to undergraduates, sort of a different spin on feminism. Feminism moves away a bit more from theory into lived feminism.
And then hopefully something very much more for the general readership.
I am the only person currently that has ever looked at Grenfell academically. There’s been journalistic approaches and there’s a very good biography by her goddaughter who is also a journalist. But that more general approach I think hasn’t been done yet.
Jennifer: Fascinating. Well, thanks for sharing that with me about your research.
Can I ask, is that something that shows up on your website?
Jane is working toward launching a new version of her personal website
Joyce: It is. I suppose there’s been 3, no 2.5 versions of the website so far. There was the one that we launched at the very beginning of my grad school days.
It was fine. Actually, when you look at my website or our websites, they don’t look very much different at all. The colors are the same. The logos haven’t changed.
We’ve updated the photos cause because you get fat, you get thin, you get fat, you get thin.
[The websites] They’ve become a lot more focused I think.
The 2nd version, which was launched about 18 months ago was about giving us a lot more on control our end. It’s when I started blogging.
I have a love-love-bit-of-hate relationship with blogging. In that I would love to spend more time doing it. And I think I could make it better work better than I am. But you just keep rethinking how you blog all the time.
I think that’s my big thing, not just with the blogging, but with websites is that it’s not something static. With the 1st version of the website, the major mistake we made was it was static. It didn’t change it. Didn’t have a blog element. And I may be looked at it once every couple of years. And I sent off a note to our web designer. She would charge me £15 to change 2 words on a page.
The way it is, or the way version 2.5 is that all the actual text and layout I can control myself. It’s only when we want to do more technically advanced things like changing pictures and adding new drop downs that I have to contact my designer for. And that’s the level I’m comfortable with.
Jennifer: And you like, you like being able to do some of those things.
Can I ask, did you work with a designer on version 1 of the website?
Jane: Yes and no. Accessibility was always important to us. I come from a disability services background. That’s what I did when I was a civil servant. For most of the times the civil service disparity employment advisor. I was always aware of making things accessible in terms of scaling font and it still looking good.
We had a young designer to do our logo for us. And I love our logo. Would I change it? Probably not. I might tweak it a little bit, but I don’t think I’d actually change it.
But all the text I’ve always written. Partly because I’m quite…Okay. Yeah, let’s be honest…quite arrogant about my use of English language.
Search engine optimization for academic websites
Jane: That has its downside. Because of course, search engine optimization (SEO) wise, I dislike…balancing got to get 5 versions of the keyword into the box pick-it-up vs. flow. I find that a tricky balance. And getting all your metatags right. I find all those things I find quite tricky. So sometimes I will get a bit of help on that side of it.
Jennifer: For some of our readers, they might not know what SEO is. SEO stands for search engine optimization. It’s something that people with websites do in order to help more visitors actually find their page. There are specific keywords or phrases that you might go search for on Google.
If those phrases or keywords match up with the phrases or keywords on Jane’s website, for instance, it will help you find her website.
Jane is saying that it’s difficult to balance the number of keywords she puts into the copy she writes for her website and actually writing it. I think that’s something that many people with websites struggle with.
If you’re brand new to websites, this is your very first website, you might not be doing so much SEO work as Jane is. But you do want to have keywords, like your name in there.
Being able to put your name on your website is so important for helping people find it.
Jennifer: Thanks, Jane. I appreciate you bringing that up.
Jane: I think there’s also something really important about keywords in that. Often the keywords we end up having to use to get found and not words we’re comfortable with.
My wife’s previous business was that she ran a telecoms billing platform. She wanted her website to say ‘value.’ Okay, but people don’t type into Google value. They type in ‘cheap.’ So she had to change this whole page…to ‘cheap’ to get her SEO to work, which is not the image she wanted to portray. But it’s what she needed to get people to then come and have that conversation with her.
Jennifer: Yeah. I think with academics in particular, keywords might even be a little bit easier than that because they’re looking for a really specific audience. So if your research is on a specific type of microbiology, for instance and you include that phrase in there, it’s pretty likely to, you know, show up in Google.
It’s definitely harder when you’re looking at a keyword that’s as general as ‘value’ or ‘cheap,’ because there’s only one word. It can make a really big difference in the types of visitors you get.
My recommendation for anyone reading is try to be really specific when you’re thinking about the keywords that are going on your website.
Remember, you’re looking for a specific audience. In this case, you may not be needing money that’s tied to that. Maybe you’re just looking for readers for your publication. So there’s lots of options for keywords.
Jane: Yeah. Yeah. That’s true. And it’s very industry specific. You really have to think through a strategy. Which is why it’s useful to use a designer sometimes.
It’s time to update an old or outdated personal website
Jennifer: Tell me more about what your old website was like. It sounds like you really didn’t like that you couldn’t do update yourself. And that you had to pay for updates. What else didn’t you like about it?
Jane: I think it was mainly just the staticness of it. It was very difficult and expensive to keep it current as you know. Obviously when you start a business, especially now, you can’t start a business without a website.
But in those first 2 years–I mean, I think businesses are always evolving and changing–but in those first 2 years, that’s probably when they move most.
Therefore, if you’ve constantly got to be sending information to somebody else to tweak your content…
The layout was very current, which meant of course, it very quickly became very dated because just like clothes, just like hairstyles–there’s style, and then there’s fashion.
Jennifer: Hm.
Jane: Because I don’t do the graphic aspect of it, I find it very difficult to pinpoint what that is. But it’s things like a Hermès scarf is always stylish. There are other things that are very fashionable for a very short period of time.
I think there are elements of website design, which I hope we’re getting now, which is much more about a classic style. While still being able to bolt on [things like] on Joyce’s site, she’s got the live transcription so that she can vlog rather than blog which connects in with the fact that she’s dyslexic. When she vlogs it will transcribe it live. Speaking as somebody who does audio transcription, it’s good. It’s still not as good as me sitting there and doing it for her will ever be, but it’s a lot quicker than me doing it. Cause it does it live.
Jennifer: So live transcription is one of the ways in which your separate websites revisioned the blog that you were, you were both working.
Jane: Yes.
Jennifer: So you still blog. And [Joyce] vlogs.
Jane: Yes. Well, she’s learning to vlog.
How you blog on your personal website may change
Jane: It’s one of those things like the blogging. I always feel that I’ve got more to learn and I could always do more of it.
And as a writer there’s a great discipline in blogging because it keeps you writing and it keeps the ideas flowing.
Jennifer: Right.
Jane: Often, I don’t know about you, but the ideas always come at the most inconvenient moment, you know? When you’re in the car I can’t really scribble an idea down. And then unless you have something like Otter AI on your phone so you can give yourself a quick note, the idea has gone.
Jennifer: I feel like I have a lot of blog ideas. I keep a list of them on my computer. And then I have time to write a lot of them. [Laughs]. That’s my problem.
Jane: When we first relaunched a new [website], we were religious. One of us blogged every single Monday. But we’ve been so busy. I’ve been so busy writing books. I haven’t had the emotional energy, I think, to blog as well.
Jennifer: That’s interesting. Can you tell me a little more about that? What do you mean by emotional energy to blog?
Jane: There are lots of different approaches to blogging, aren’t there? You can be your intellectual expert, or you can be a raconteur. Cause it’s all about engaging with your particular audience.
Because particularly when I’m doing the family biographies, people are telling me things. It’s not supposed to be a therapeutic thing, but often it becomes therapeutic. Often people will tell us things–cause Joyce does the interviewing and I do the writing–very personal and perhaps stuff they haven’t talked about for years.
So I want my blogs to be quite open to. And I often reflect on something that has happened during the week. If I have been very busy writing, I perhaps haven’t had time to process that myself.
I don’t feel I can blog about it until there’s a little bit of distance.
I think the last blog I did was about the phrase ‘self care.’ I really struggle with the phrase ‘self care.’ I think being middle-aged and British…And anything foregrounded with self gets linked just to words like ‘selfish,’ which is not how I feel about it but it’s kind of like a kick reaction. It took me ages to write that blog because I had to kind of balance it out.
And I think if you blog from the heart, which is what I try and do because I want our customers to know us because we feel very strongly that integrity is something that is impossible to attain, but must be your strongest goal. Sometimes those blogs take a lot of emotional energy.
When I used to copywrite blogs for another company, you know, I can churn out 500 words on why certain photocopiers are the best on the market. Really I can probably do that in about half an hour.
And the other thing I find quite time consuming when I’m blogging is sourcing the illustrations. Cause I always try and put in a couple of irrelevant illustrations.
And I think it was you or somebody in the same meeting we met at who told me about Unsplash.
Jennifer: Yeah!
Jane: And that has made that a lot easier, but actually again, we’re back to keywords. Finding the right keywords to get the image you want…
Jennifer: It can be difficult [chuckles].
Have a personal website you can control
Jane: It’s a constant learning thing, isn’t it? I think that’s that’s the biggest message is if you can always have an element of your website that you control. Even if it’s not the techie stuff. Because it’s an absolutely live document. You will never finish your website.
Jennifer: That’s right. That’s what I teach all of my [website design] clients. The process that I worked through with them, you know, we go through an intensive planning process for their websites to figure out what they actually need.
Then we sit down and we create the copy for the website or they do it on their own. Once that copy is placed, I actually teach them how to
update pages on our website
add new pages
navigate the backend so that they can find what they’re looking for
And they get a recording of that so that they can do it themselves afterwards.
I actually don’t do long-term management for websites that kind of nickel and diming that you were talking about changing two words for £15 pounds, I don’t do that. I want to help as many people as possible. That means that I can’t manage websites long-term.
I really need the academics that I work with to be able to do some of that work themselves. So I think that’s really important having some of that control yourself.
It sounds like it’s making a really big difference for you on your website.
Jane and Joyce used to share a website, now they’ll each have their own
Jane: I also find it much easier to help Joyce. So what we’ve done now is we’ve separated [our websites]. I’ve retained CoomberSewell.co.uk.
We’ve done little things so some of the pages mirror each other totally. And others, obviously her autism pages are a lot more detailed than mine. My pages is like a condensed version on autism, but it links to her website.
So silly things like I know for a fact at the moment because I’ve spent more time on her website than mine, her price list for proofreading as much more up to date than the one on my website, but I’m the one who does the proofreading!
In fact I’ve got a list of jobs to do at the weekend. And it’s this knowing that I was going to talk to you. That led to #6, being “Update price list.”
Do this when preparing to update your old or outdated personal website
Jennifer: It’s good to actually create a list like you’re doing right now. Like what are the things that I need to change on my website?
If you are approaching a website update project, I do recommend make a list of all the things that you
don’t like about your website
do like about your website
things that you need to change.
Then once you have that list, go ahead and schedule it in your agenda.
Maybe you don’t have time to accomplish all the things on your list right away, but if you space it out over time, you’re going to get those updates made.
You don’t want to wait 1-2 years between updates on your website. Things get outdated more quickly than you think.
Jane: And that is very, very true. I also think it’s good to have an honest friend. A really honest friend. I had a very amusing phone call today, a video call actually. My longest term friend, we’ve known each other since I was 5 months old, contacted me today on video call.
She’s just about to launch a professional photography website. The one thing that she’s not good at is photos of herself.
And whilst, perhaps that was a little over blunt, it did help her choose the pictures that she was going to choose. And acknowledge the fact that it’s only going to be a holding picture till she can get some new ones done.
Jennifer: Yeah. That’s important. And having that honesty and that rapport with you, it helped her move forward in her thinking of it.
Jane: I think particularly on the visual side. And on the text side, because I mean, as a proofreader, there’s one rule that I have. It’s just proofread to proofread thyself. Because it is almost impossible when you’ve written something and edited it and re-edited it…
I mean, you know, where I’ve been sort of trying to convert my, my thesis into a book, I am aghast at the mistakes have slipped through as I’ve put it to bed for 6 months and then come back to it.
Really, did I say that? Was I on said drugs at the time?
Jennifer: [Laughter]. And you’re a professional, you’re a proofreader.
Jane: It’s the hardest thing in the world to proofread your own work.
Jennifer: That’s so true.
Jane: So having a trusted friend who is good at being straight, but also kind is really, really important.
I think in business, we get very hooked up on should I be paying for this? Should I be paying for that? 99.9% of the time, I would say, Yes. But occasionally it’s okay, especially if it’s just a quick check to ask a friend for a favor because this guarantee there’s a bit of skills barter that can go on.
Jennifer: I think so. That I explain it to my clients is that your friend, they love you and they care about you. They’re actually going to be reading and examining your website with greater depth than your average visitor.
They’re going to stay on it longer.
They’re going to read into it more, try to understand it more so that they can talk with you about it. And that’s more than your average website visitor is doing.
If your friend is telling you that something’s
Confusing
Distracting
That it shouldn’t be there
well that’s something that you should listen to because other people aren’t even going to give you as much time or attention as a friend is. So it’s worth listening to what they have to say.
You don’t have to, you don’t have to respond to it. You know, you don’t have to do it, but getting that opinion is so helpful.
Do it while you remember (or write it down so you don’t forget)
Jane: And I think, I think also we’ve talked about planning and making sure we prioritize, but I think there’s also some times merit in striking while the iron is hot as well.
I mean a year ago you said to me, “Jane, you need to make more of the fact that your ‘bilingual.’” Do you remember this conversation? It was, it was a, it was a comment about my proofreading, the fact that I’m being of Canadian heritage, that I can proofread in
Canadian English
American English
English English
You said you need to make that much clearer on your website and you should blog about it. I still haven’t done it because I didn’t do it in that moment. And if I had done, it would have been very much more impactful.
I am going to get round to it. I am going to blog on it, but I don’t think it will be as good a blog as if I’d done it within 24 hours.
Jennifer: Oh, I don’t know that that’s the case. It’s possible that even that you’re thinking about it for the last year is going to add even just one sentence to that blog that is emotionally in a better space now than it would have been then.
So you never know that. I think it’s totally going to be awesome when you do it now.
Jane: Interestingly though, I have remembered to use the phrase when I’ve been talking to people.
Jennifer: Wonderful.
Jane: And I think I’ve pretty much got every American PhD student at my university now sending me their theses for proofreading.
Jennifer: I love that. I love that. I remember that conversation so well, and you were telling me about all the amazing things you were doing. And I was like, oh, I just read your website and it didn’t say that. Like, that was so awesome how you have a skill that really is going to help people that are English language speakers bet the proofreading that they need.
I also think that the way that you go about updating your website to meet your needs is so awesome. It sounds like version 1 and version 2 were both joint websites. And now version 2.5 is like separating that a little bit.
But what it does is it gives you each more space. So it’s like your website is growing. It’s like your needs are growing, your website’s growing and all of that copy, all of the things that you know, can be updated, hey–everything gets updated with time. That makes sense.
Jane: I think it also provides a lot of clarity. We were trying to be all things to all people. And although we work together and our sides of the business compliment each other. They’re not the same.
Joyce, certainly couldn’t do what I do. I know, I don’t have the patience, I think, to do what she does.
At the moment, they’re very similar. I’ve done a way updates, but I think over time as she grows the vlogging side of it…I’m teaching her how to edit. It’s going to be hysterical cause she’s even more of a Luddite than I am…And as I continue to blog, I think it will give me the room.
How Jane shared her thesis and publications on her personal website
Jane: One of the other things I did based off the conversation you had with me is that I changed one of the pages entirely. You said to me earlier, I’ve just remembered this, you know, is your thesis on your website?
Well, I took a sidebar. And that now has every journal article every, every time I’ve contributed to a podcast. It’s all on there. There’s a publication sidebar. So you don’t even have to go to a separate page for it.
If you’re interested in having me write a biography for you. You can get a sample of my writing by clicking on the sidebar. It was actually me being tight because I didn’t want to pay to have another page created. Actually it works really well.
Jennifer: Well I love that innovation can cause you to adapt. It sounds like you didn’t want to pay for another page so you needed to find another solution and that creative solution ended up working out for you.
That’s what websites are all about: experimenting to see what’s going to work well for you long term. And if it doesn’t, well, that’s something that needs to be changed.
I think that adapting with your website, making room for it to grow, it’s not going to happen all at once.
Jane: Right.
Your website will change, and that’s a good thing
Jennifer: You’ve had now 2.5 versions of this website, and you can still see it changing in the future. So for anyone who’s reading this interview, I definitely want to let you know that your website, it’s probably is going to grow or change over time.
Even if he just have a simple 1-page website that has your bio and a photo on it. Those elements are going to change. Your bio will be updated over time. Your photo. You’re going to want to change that over time so that it looks like you.
I think that being open to that is such a great quality to have when you’re building a website. And when you’re approaching a big update.
Jane, I just want to thank you so much for your candor in talking about how that website change has been for you.
What’s it like to work with multiple designers on your website over the years?
Jennifer: I want to ask a little bit more about what it’s like to work with someone since you worked with, it sounds like multiple designers on your website.
Jane: Two, yeah. So we had our original website designer. There were some design elements that came from other people, but as such, we had our original website designer and then we’ve got our current website designer.
And I think there’s something really important to say about I current website designer, not so much about his technical skills as a designer, although they’re very strong. It’s about personality matching. You know, particularly for, for joy as an autistic.
Choosing a website designer
Her technical skills are very different from mine. Actually, they’re great, but she worries about them. And so we needed a designer who got how you talk to this person on the spectrum. Because actually once you’ve met one person on the spectrum, you’ve met one person on spectrum.
A lot of the problems with our previous version is that I’m not convinced our previous designer was quite on particularly Joyce’s wavelength.
From that point of view, I would encourage people that if you feel like somebody is talking a load of jargon and your constantly running to catch up, they’re possibly not the right designer for you.
Jennifer: Oooh, that’s so important. So picking a designer is not just about budget. It’s not just about location or what their portfolio is. It’s also about how they get along with you and how well you communicate with each other.
Jane: I mean after all. I think we both know that you can go and buy a product. You could go buy website product. Most of my Canadian and American friends tend to use SquareSpace. If they’re building it from scratch and over here, it will be something like GoDaddy. But ultimately if you’re going to invest in that tailored service…People buy people. They don’t buy a product. They buy people. So get to know your designer.
I am fortunate in that our designer is the partner of a friend of ours. And he will come and train Joyce in exchange for a handmade pizza. But, from that point of view, it is worth spending the time not just getting quotes, not just finding out what particular language they’re skilled in, or design they’re skilled in…
You know, have a coffee with them if you can in these days of masks. Take your time. It might not be a big investments in dollars or pounds, but it’s a big investment in terms of your business. Or your future in terms of the academic reputation that you want.
So take your time. Yes, you can change later on. Because we’ve been talking about keeping the websites updated, constantly.
But actually, if you’re going to move that whole relationship to another designer, it is a bit of a hassle. You know, getting them to shift domain names from one host to another, it’s not a big job, but it is a hasley job. So take your time picking your person.
Jennifer: Oh, well, wonderful advice. You know, meeting someone in advance can make a whole difference in how you understand them. Seeing their facial expressions, seeing how they respond to questions or how they ask questions of you can make a big difference for people’s comfort levels.
Thank you so much for sharing that with me.
Jane’s new article on Sara Paretsky’s Guardian Angel
Jennifer: Speaking of academic reputation, you were telling me about a new article that you have out about your favorite lockdown read. Tell me a little bit more about that.
Jane: Oh, that was wonderful. I think that again is something I’ve learned about academia this year. I’ve written or half written or even sent off terribly intellectually worthy articles. And they tend to fall over.
I’m often always telling my students, don’t overcomplicate things. Go with your first instinct. Build on your first instinct. If you’ve made the right choices, it will flow.
I just happened to see this call for paper and I drafted out this article in about 40 minutes.
Jennifer: Pretty quickly.
Jane: It didn’t even have a single edit on it. Because it was passionate. I’m probably underselling my skills here because that’s what I do.
It’s a piece in the South Central Review. They did a lockdown special. I think they chose 25 articles in the end. They ask people to write on their favorite lockdown re-read. I chose a book by Sara Paretsky.
Jane: To be honest, I could have chosen any book by Sara Paretsky because I love them all. It was a joy to write, and I think that’s what comes through in the reading of it.
My major message from it was about independent researchers. I find Paretsky a very brave writer. She’s always gone with the flow and she’s changed publishers when she’s needed to. If she believes in something, she goes for it. Even if people tell her not to.
And I think to be an independent researcher, which is what I am, and to an extent what you are…
Jennifer: That’s right.
Jane: …is a brave place to be. And I think academia needs to take us a little bit more seriously. Because actually for us to stick our necks out with no institution backing us, with no access to other funding. You know, there used to be this attitude and I think there still is this attitude that if you’re not sponsored, you can’t be any good. But actually I think it’s the other way round. I think if, if you survive without an institution backing you or without permanent post, you are brave. You actually you’re showing your metal.
I was self-funded through my PhD. You don’t set out to spend £25,000+ unless you’re sure you can produce the goods or at least you’re brave enough to find out.
I think that was my big message in this article is academic world, you’ve really got to stop underestimating and putting barriers in the way of us independent researchers.
I’m doing a piece of research next week which I feel rushed on because it’s the last piece I was able to get ethical approval on before I finished my PhD.
I have more options in the arts than my wife does in the sciences because there are publications who will take me without being without ethical approval as long as I’ve gone through my own kind of ethical quality assurance.
But stop putting barriers in the way of us independents, because we’ve got plenty to say. Because we’re independent. Sometimes we can do things that you can’t.
Jennifer: I think that academia does need to listen up to independent researchers and where they’re at because so many PhD students that are graduating these days will end up as independent researchers in some way or another.
There are not enough teaching positions to go around at the university level. And the adjunctification of the university is prolific. And it’s and it’s not changing. It’s not going to go down. I mean, I hope it does, but that’s not what the trends are saying.
We do need to have more conversations like this. We do need to talk about things like open access and journals accepting independent researchers and appreciating the contributions that they make unfunded, frankly.
I’m so glad that this kind of lockdown reread inspired you to just kind of jump into a new article and get it out into the world.
Which book did you choose by the way?
Jane: I chose Guardian Angel (1992).As I say, I could have chosen any. There was another one I didn’t choose because I realized the specific remit was what’s your favorite re-read? I could have chosen one of the others.
But I realized it was my favorite purely because I’d won my copy in competition.
And bless her, Sara Paretsky had posted to me herself. And being daft enough bless her—sorry, Sara—to leave her home address on the envelope.
Which I promise you faithfully, Sara I’m not going to come and stalk you. But I do still have the old envelope and it is very carefully preserved.
Jennifer: That’s sweet. It meant a lot to you. And that’s why you felt so strongly about the book.
Well, the people who ran the organization or the competition for that book are like, “Yes! Our competition really inspired someone to love this book.”
Jane: I really hope. Yes, I really hope so.
Jennifer: Well, Jane, thank you so much for our conversation today. I have really loved talking with you about your website and how it’s changed throughout the years.
Is there anything else that you’d like to add before we wrap up?
Jane: No. I think I would just, just underline: your website is never finished and that’s okay.
Jennifer: Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for joining us today, Jane! We’ll see you again in 2022. Bye, bye.
Jane: Lovely. Thank you for inviting me, you take good care.
Having had a previous incarnation as a Civil Servant and public sector manager, Jane CoomberSewell(@JaneCoSe) is an independent researcher/biographer based in Kent, South East England. Jane completed her Doctorate in 2020, with a thesis re-examining the socio-political contributions of monologuist and entertainer Joyce Grenfell. Jane’s research interests include reception theory and female-led detective fiction.
Jane is an advocate for change in the way independent researchers are viewed by the establishment, believing that those who succeed in publication without the support of a University may be some of the strongest researchers in their field, certainly in terms of determination. When not working on one of the several biographies and other research projects she has under way at the moment, Jane can be found walking with her wife Joyce, an autism advocate or working in the garden to progress the couple’s drive for self-sufficiency. This may or may not include having lively conversations with her chickens about the history podcasts she plays to them.
