The Adaptive Power of Career Activism

For the past eleven months, we've been exploring the principles and practices of Career Fitness. When you take up that program, you are -- consciously or otherwise -- transforming yourself into the persona of a "career activist." You are acknowledging that you are a person of talent and that you are responsible for the direction and content of your career.

Why is that so important? Because as I explain in my new book, The Career Activist Republic, the American workplace has never been fraught with more danger than it is right now. Nor, on the other hand, has it been filled with more opportunity.

First, the danger. Those in the field of higher education are now facing two pressing threats:

• You are enduring "employment waterboarding." Even as the economy stabilizes and hiring is beginning to rise, jobs continue to drip, drip, drip out of the workplace. Employers may be recruiting new employees, but they're doing so for fewer jobs.
• You are engulfed by a "national warming of work." Thanks to the heat generated by constantly changing requirements, the duration of jobs is now shrinking. Most people want a permanent job, but the definition of permanent has now become impermanent.

These tectonic shifts in the workplace force all of us to rethink how we approach our career. In this rapidly evolving environment, for example, there is no time to coast. Managing your career is now a lot like riding a bicycle. You have to be moving forward -- expanding your knowledge, adding to your bank of contacts, developing ancillary skills and proactively setting goals -- or your career will come to a crashing halt.

If that's the danger, what's the opportunity? The same challenges that face higher education professionals in their careers also face those in every other profession, craft and trade. As a result, a growing number of Americans now realize that they must see themselves as a "work in progress." They are never done with their occupational development, their quest for new knowledge and skills in their field.

That demand is already crashing down onto community colleges and undergraduate and graduate institutions. Five years ago, there were 92 million adult Americans enrolled in educational programs. Today, that number is undoubtedly larger. Yes, academic budgets are under severe pressure. And certainly, traditional career paths in academia are morphing. But this intense demand for education and re-education among America's working adults all but ensures that there will be abundant employment opportunities for those who can and are willing to adapt.

That adaptation is at the heart of career activism. It recognizes our natural preference for what is familiar and expected, but bases our survival and prosperity on our ability to evolve. It is our instinctive capacity to see the world as it is and to reshape ourselves in a way that leverages that reality to our advantage. Career activism won't eliminate the hard times, but it will give you the capacity to overcome them.

It's been my pleasure to serve as an Author in Residence on HigherEdJobs over the past year. I hope you've enjoyed my blog posts, or at least that they've given you food for thought. And, please accept my very best wishes for a long and fulfilling career.

Thanks for reading,
Peter

Waiting for Superman or Godot?

It's not news to say that our educational system is at risk. The problem is that things are getting worse rather than better. The precariousness of the system is exacerbated by the reluctance at all levels of government to recognize the magnitude and consequences of this disease, to determine its causes, and to do the serious work needed to cure it. The paradox in the American educational system is that at its apex -- at the great American research universities -- we are the very best in the world, while we simultaneously are suffering, along with most of the Western post-industrial societies, from a deteriorating K-12 system that simply is not functioning in a way that will fulfill our society's needs in the 21^st century.

Education nourishes the health of every institution in our country, and its quality will have much to do with the longer-term health of those other institutions. If over half the nation's children are incapable of solving simple mathematical problems; are incapable of using our language appropriately; are incapable of understanding how to solve problems; are incapable of learning enough to make considered choices during elections that reflect their interests; are incapable of critical reasoning skills; then family, business, politics, and the health of individuals suffer -- and the society begins to deteriorate.

We can attribute some of this abysmal condition to the responses of states and the federal government to the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009. We can fool ourselves into believing that when the economy becomes robust once again, these problems will disappear. We can believe that excellence can be obtained without paying for it. We can delude ourselves into believing the old adage that "necessity is the mother of invention," and we'll come to grips and solve these educational problems when we truly have to. But, such beliefs are illusory. Surely mindless cuts in K-12 and higher education budgets that are part of general cost-saving measures in states facing severe budget shortfalls provide immediate and critical evidence of a lack of understanding of the central importance of education in our lives. But the origins or etiology of this multidimensional education mess goes back farther and has deeper roots than the recent financial tsunami. Identifying the causes for the broken educational system is no easier, and perhaps equally elusive, as finding cures for diseases like cancer, HIV/AIDS, and Parkinson's. Without any effort at completeness in understanding, which I'm sure we do not yet possess, here are a few factors that contribute to the multidimensional problem.

Consider first some symptoms rather than causes. Perhaps the most referenced symptom is the comparative performance of the United States youngsters versus those in other nations on math and science examinations at grade levels four and eight. American students consistently score far below Asian students of comparable age on mathematics and science achievement examinations. Within the last week, on December 7, 2010, the Program on International Student Assessment (PISA) of the OECD reported the results of tests in math, science, and reading taken by 15-year-old students in 65 countries. American students again did not distinguish themselves -- 30 countries, for example, had math scores higher than those of U.S. students. If there was any shocking finding it was that the Chinese students living in Shanghai, one of the most educationally and economically advanced cities in China to be sure, were included for the first time and essentially blew away the rest of the competition with scores that made the U.S. students look second-rate. The value of these test results is often questioned as a measure of rote learning rather than creative thinking. Some nations do, in fact, emphasize rote learning rather than the development of critical reasoning skills. At most American schools, it is unclear whether we emphasize either. While basic reading and quantitative skills are critically important foundations for the nation's need to fit its longer-term employment needs with skill levels of its population, teaching to the test rather than reforming what we teach and how we teach young students to think analytically and critically for themselves won't solve our national needs. Nonetheless, the PISA results represent a shot across the bow. We cannot simply dismiss them. The Chinese and other Asian societies are training millions of their young students in basic skills (including requiring English of every student); we are doing far less well, as are most of the European nations. Certain basic skills are necessary before worrying about creativity and innovation.

There are other disturbing symptomatic facts: Sixty-nine percent of United States public school students in fifth through eighth grade are taught mathematics by a teacher without a degree or certificate in mathematics... [And] ninety-three percent of United States public school students in fifth through eighth grade are taught the physical sciences by a teacher without a degree or certificate in the physical sciences; the U.S. now ranks 27^th among developed nations in the proportion of its students who earn bachelor's degrees in science or engineering; we rank 20^th among industrialized countries in high school completion rates, 16^th in college completion rates.¹ What flows from all of this? Forty-nine percent of adults in the United States do not know how long it takes for the Earth to revolve around the Sun. This level of ignorance, which has nothing to do with analytic ability, extends far beyond science and technology. Only about six in ten Americans can correctly identify Joe Biden as the nation's current vice president; atheists and agnostics demonstrate greater knowledge of the Bible's content than Catholics and Protestants. In short, the relatively low level of scientific, mathematical, and general literacy in the United States is alarming and it is not improving. In fact, these levels of knowledge are closely correlated with the educational achievement of those who occupy these classifications.

These are consequences of the disease we must fight, but we can't infer the causes of the disease from its consequences. Let me suggest several causes (leaving others to forthcoming postings), some of which have been studied for many years -- but which are not sufficiently incorporated into the public mind and social policy. The education disease is caused, in part, by the relative weights that Americans place on a set of personal values, of which scholarly achievement is not at the top of their hierarchy, except in some subgroups of the population -- for example, Asian Americans and Jewish Americans, as well as those who already occupy prestigious occupational and income positions in the United States.

James S. Coleman, the renowned sociologist, identified this problem in his 1961 book, The Adolescent Society. Despite the need for a greater emphasis on educational achievement, there was emerging an independent "society of adolescents," an adolescent culture in which educational achievement was less important than students' focus on cars, dates, sports, popular music, and other matters just as unrelated to schools. This was, and still is, reinforced by parents of these youngsters who spend more time at local football games than reading books and discussing them with their children, or for that matter, talking to them about art, music, or science. Add social networking, the use of new technology, and a few contemporary school inventions of extra-curricular activities and not too much has changed in the hierarchy of values since the 1950s. Star athletes, cheerleaders, and the most popular youngsters still represent "the leading crowd" at our elementary and high schools, rather than the nerds who are separated into special "gifted" classes and viewed as incomprehensible objects by most in the schools -- rather than the local heroes. The continuing ambivalence of Americans to expertise and the intellect, the periodic explosion of anti-intellectualism in our country, is testimony to the insufficient value placed on learning and the learned. Of course, we can all point to fantastic schools, some public and others private, where academic ability is honored and admired, but that is not the norm. We are fortunate that our nation is large enough that the absolute number of highly motivated, strongly educated youngsters continue to innovate and perform highly skilled jobs, but that gap between the number needed and the number we are educating -- particularly in the sciences, mathematics, and engineering -- is growing rapidly.

In an even more important 1966 report, Equality of Educational Opportunity, Coleman found, contrary to his and others' expectations, that the social composition of the school, the quality of the facilities, and the quality of the teachers, were far less important factors in a student's educational achievement than were the influences of their families and the values that family members placed on educational success. This seems to still be true today -- as demonstrated in countless empirical studies of the process of social mobility through the educational system. The absence of adequate emphasis on families also comes to light in the recent, highly acclaimed documentary film by Davis Guggenheim, Waiting for Superman, which focuses on how the charismatic educator, Geoffrey Canada, takes Harlem youngsters, and with the right school facilities and a set of dedicated teachers, produces highly successful students who go on to college.

There is much to praise in Guggenheim's film: its critique of the public school system is largely on target; its harsh treatment of the teachers' unions is spot on in depicting their intransigence over 50 years to change; their resistance and unwillingness to abandon a tired trade union mentality in favor of a merit-based system of rewards and recognition for excellence in teaching. Yes, highly dedicated, remarkable teachers working in a nurturing environment with a limited number of students in each class, can change the lives of receptive youngsters forever. But by being mesmerized by the charismatic character of Canada, what Guggenheim failed to highlight and emphasize sufficiently (and most critics failed to note) was the extraordinary quality and devotion and sacrifices of the African American parents, especially mothers (often single mothers) who were fighting for the lives of their children. They were fighting -- often against great odds -- to give their children what they believed was the most precious gift they could give them -- a quality education that would free their children from the constraints of their neighborhoods and to expand their effective scopes and horizons so that their children would experience things that these dedicated parents could hardly imagine. This message was at the center of this film -- and the moving agony is palpable of most of those dedicated parents losing the lottery that would have opened the doors for their youngsters to one of the prized schools -- dashing, in the process, their sense of hope. Ironically, the key to changing educational outcomes lies not only in the schools, but also in our homes. It is distressing to see critics of parent's lack of effort in instilling the value of knowledge and education in their children get kicked in the face for their criticism. Until we can transform the relative value families place on educational achievement, efforts to reform the curricula and the types of teachers in the schools, while marginally making a difference, are not apt to do much to cure the larger educational maladies that we suffer from.

Another cause of our failures is, of course, the way we go about educating most of our children. No Child Left Behind type programs almost invariably emphasize how much information children have assimilated and whether they are able, even by rote learning and without real understanding, to solve a simple equation. Perhaps this is a necessary, but surely not a sufficient condition for a well-functioning educational system. Teaching to the test, whether it is for fourth grade math students, or advanced placement applicants to college, does not teach students how to think or challenge them about how one might go about solving a difficult problem. Can youngsters learn to ask questions for which there are no answers at the back of the book? Can they learn, by whatever methods they are capable of using, how to solve problems without relying on formulaic learning? Rewarding youngsters for the way they think about problems and how they go about solving them, rather than simply for getting a correct answer, needs to be more pervasive in our educational system. The process of inquiry is, in many ways, as important as the outcome. The distinction I'm trying to make can be illustrated in an often-told anecdote around Columbia University about the great American physicist, Isidor Isaac Rabi. The story has it that Rabi was visiting his mother's home in Brooklyn, celebrating Friday night Shabbat services, when he received a call from Stockholm. When he hung up the phone, he turned to his diminutive 90-year-old mother and said: "Ma Ma, I just received a call telling me that I had won the Nobel Prize in Physics." Rabi's mother looked him straight in the eye and with her Yiddish accent said: "Son, did you ask a good question?"

¹ As reported in Rising Above the Gathering Storm, Revisited: Rapidly Approaching Category 5, Washington, D.C.: The National Academies Press, 2010. The PISA results were reported in The New York Times on December 7, 2010.

A Resume for Employers or a Record for You?

Most of us see our resume or CV as a single-purpose document that details our employment and professional accomplishments. We use it to list our work experiences, our academic degrees and publications, and our occasional public presentation and service on special committees. Moreover, our only reason for doing so is to impress employers enough to open the door to an interview. In short, we think a resume is simply a tool for a job search.

Unfortunately, this focus on an external audience and a single role often lulls us into thinking that we need not keep our documentation up-to-date. Since we need it only when we're in transition and communicating with prospective employers, we can ignore it until such moments arrive. And, that's a mistake. The recitation of our history in the workplace is even more useful as a tool for career self-management.

For that reason, the Career Fitness System envisions a comprehensive and current work record as the key document in our career. This record has two roles, both of which are internally focused. They are:

• To serve as a virtual trophy case, a place where we can spotlight and celebrate our accomplishments. The record enables us to avoid the unreliable counsel and recognition of our supervisors by supplementing it with our own celebration of what we have done.

• To provide a means of self-evaluation and coaching. By using the record to review our own performance on a regular basis, we can determine what we are doing well and where we need to improve in order to continue our professional advancement.

Granted, this much more proactive use of our career record requires both self-discipline and self-insight. We have to be candid and honest with ourselves about what we have done well and what we should work on to improve. That can be a challenge, to be sure, but the reviews are personal and private, so there's no reason to be anything other than straightforward with ourselves.

It is true, of course, that we may, from time-to-time, lack the knowledge to understand or remediate a specific problem. Unlike with traditional performance appraisals, however, we don't have to rely on (or be subjected to) our supervisor for the assistance we need. We can select the individual or group that we want to help us. And no less important, the more genuine self-awareness provided by such a process ensures that we can accurately describe the issue that is troubling us.

Finally, by keeping our record up-to-date, we have all of the information we need to compose a powerful resume quickly. As a result, we can launch off on a job search without delay if we suddenly find ourselves in transition or we can tailor our resume more effectively if we find a new opportunity for which we would like to compete. And, in an era fraught with uncertainty and continuous change, such preparation is a key component of career success.

Thanks for reading,
Peter

The Unexamined Career…

The great thing about the Career Work-in and the various exercises it takes you through, is the thorough examination of one's career you end up with. Taking time to pause and become reflective about one's career prospects, goals, and direction is not something many feel they have the luxury to do. However, as Peter asks throughout Work Strong, do we really have the luxury NOT to take this time out and put in the effort to carefully examine our careers? 

For those seeking employment, whether currently employed or unemployed, the time it takes to work through the exercises in Work Strong should be seen as an investment in a healthier career. Taking time to be self-reflective about our careers means we will be more aware of our personality, interests, needs, and achievements.

Our personalities are fluid and change as we age and gain wisdom. It is unlikely you have the exact same personality you had when you first entered the job you currently hold. In fact, it might be that change in personality that has you wanting to move on.

As time moves along, we seek out new interests, or sometimes, new interests find us. I was not always interested in Social Media. However, about ten years ago I found forums, and soon after that weblogs, as great outlets for connecting with people about various interests. This desire to use new media to connect with others led me to a new interest and a career in Social Media.

How often have your job searches or the job searches of friends been spurred on by changing needs? Getting married? Divorced? New addition to the family, or are the kids finally moved out? All are events that change our needs and thusly, our careers may or may not need to change to meet those needs.

One thing I find very useful about reflecting upon my careers is discovering different achievements I have made. Often things go by as just routine parts of the job and are not necessarily marked with pomp and circumstance. Rediscovering these achievements will help you explain what you have to offer to your next employer and might even open up some forgotten doors.

I encourage job seekers and those considering a career change to stop and examine your career. Work Strong has many valuable exercises to help guide you along the process. You might be surprised by what you find.

Myths About Higher Education in the United States

By Jonathan R. Cole*

It's time to dispel four widespread myths about the quality of higher education in the United States. The first of these is that teachers at the elite institutions of higher learning don't give a damn about undergraduates and care less about teaching them, since all of their professional success depends on their research productivity. The supposed result is that even at places like Harvard, Williams, and the other distinguished Ivy League schools and their equivalents, students have unsatisfactory experiences in the classroom and resent being neglected by the faculty. The second myth is that academic tenure is nothing more than a protective shield against sanctions of poorly performing teachers and researchers. It should be abolished, say these critics, because it not only fails to protect the free inquiry of faculty members from inappropriate and abusive power both inside and outside the university. Tenure, they claim, is also expensive for universities; it's wasteful, and a boondoggle for unproductive and lazy faculty members. The abolition of academic tenure is essential, they assert, if we are to solve today's "crisis" in higher education.

Then there is the growing criticism that excessive concentration on research corrupts the values of the university and undermines commitments to teaching. Therefore, critics assert that if we are going to promote good teaching at our universities, we ought to separate the teaching and research missions into separate institutions. Among these critics, there is no appreciation, and at best reluctant, passing acknowledgment, that research discoveries made at our great universities have become the engine of innovation and change in the larger society. Nor is there appreciation that in our system of higher learning, the boundaries between teaching and research have become sharply attenuated.

Finally, the myth persists that the cost of education at the elite colleges represents nothing more than gauging a willing and poorly informed public -- and that the price charged by these elite colleges and universities simply is not matched by the quality of education their students receive. In four postings, I'll take up each of these myths and half-truths.

These familiar beliefs have most recently been reinforced in Mark C. Taylor's, Crisis on Campus, and in Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus' new book, Higher Education? How Colleges Are Wasting Our Money and Failing our Kids -- And What We Can Do About It. One should always be a bit skeptical of those claims of "crisis" in reference to higher education. By diagnosing the system as in crisis, these authors sound alarm bells that resonate with those who know little about colleges and universities, but ring hollow with those who systematically look at the facts about the current state of American higher education. Audiences love to read about crisis and the golden past -- language that sustains popular myths about the failures of higher learning, especially when "discovered" at our best universities and colleges. This misled audience often includes legislators and others who are looking to disinvest in the great universities and colleges in their states. Like all institutions that must adapt to a changing world, higher learning faces many challenges and threats to its values and its quality, but it surely is not in crisis.

Crisis or not, are the factual claims about undergraduate education true? The authors take anecdotes as hard evidence and fail to present better evidence that would falsify or question their central assertions of fact. Had they looked to superior, existing data, they might have reached different conclusions, or at least have made a more sophisticated argument about where and how the teaching of undergraduates at our preeminent colleges and universities is failing our society.

Consider first the myth that undergraduate students, especially at the Harvards, Stanfords, and Columbias of this world, receive poor educations and are extremely dissatisfied with the way they have been treated. One excellent source of evidence about the way students feel about their educational experience at these elite schools can be found in the survey that the Consortium on Financing Higher Education (COFHE) conducts every four years -- a questionnaire that asks seniors at 31 of the nation's most distinguished universities and colleges what they thought about various aspects of their college experience.^[1] These schools are all private institutions with very high sticker prices, if you fail to account for the incredible generous, need-based financial aid packages awarded to their students. Virtually all of them are ranked in the top 25 of the "best" national universities or liberal arts colleges assessed by U.S. News & World Report. In short, these are the Ivy League Schools plus some of the best large private universities in the nation, along with the better private liberal arts colleges.

As an example of the bareness of the undergraduate experience, Hacker and Dreifus quote one Harvard junior who notes: "We don't feel the professors are here for us... When we come to Harvard, we have to understand it's not for the education we get, but for the reputation its degree gives us." I'm afraid that such statements don't represent the overwhelming majority of those who graduate from Harvard and schools of similar quality. While there is no agreed upon metric for assessing the quality of teaching, individual anecdotes are not to be mistaken for facts; "for example" is not proof. Alternatively, we might best begin with large samples of students and their assessment of the academic aspects of their undergraduate experience.

The 2006 COFHE survey did just that. Here is what the students at these universities and colleges, including all of the elites that Hacker, Dreifus, and Taylor refer to, conclude about their experience. When asked about their satisfaction with their academic experience, fully 88 percent of the graduating seniors said that they were generally satisfied (48 percent) or very satisfied (40 percent). And what specifically were these students from 31 of the nation's best undergraduate schools most satisfied with? Over 90 percent said that they were either generally or very satisfied with the "quality of instruction" and an equally high proportion was very satisfied with "out of class faculty availability." They were also overwhelmingly satisfied with class size, with course availability, with interdisciplinary courses, and with the opportunity to participate in research with faculty. They made a special point of noting the value of study off campus or abroad programs. When they evaluated the quality of study in their major field of interest, roughly 80 to 90 percent of the students said they were generally or highly satisfied with the "helpfulness of faculty outside the classroom," "the availability of faculty outside the classroom," "the quality of instruction," and the "intellectual excitement" that they experienced.

Contrary to the mythology, the simple fact is that excellence in teaching and research are compatible and mutually reinforcing at these great universities and colleges. Of course, there are great researchers there who are embarrassingly poor teachers. But great researchers don't monopolize poor teaching. There are many poor researchers whom you wouldn't want to place in front of an eager group of students, either. At the great universities and colleges, it is very often the case, however, that the best researchers are also among the most brilliant lecturers or mentors of students. These are the producers of fresh ideas who are truly at the cutting edge of their disciplines and who can give their students a sense of excitement about scholarship at the research frontier. Even if the quality of education is not what defines the unique character of the most distinguished research universities, it influences the culture of the institutions and affects their ability to attract the best scientists and scholars.

To be sure, students were not enamored of all aspects of their undergraduate educational experience. While they overwhelmingly applauded the quality of their library services and computing facilities and resources, they were far less sanguine about career and psychological counseling, about their advising systems, the food services, and about the responsiveness of their college administrators. But these criticisms of administrative offices sharply contrast with their very positive views about the quality of their teachers and what they were being taught. While there is some variance in levels of satisfaction at the COFHE schools, for the most part, the levels of expressed satisfaction fall within a narrow band. The simple fact is that most undergraduates at the top private schools in the nation believe they have had a remarkable educational experience.^[2] Unfortunately, neither Hacker and Dreifus, nor Taylor, examine the "culture of complaint" at various universities and colleges. At some colleges, it is normatively appropriate to sing the praises of the place, perhaps beyond what they deserve; correlatively, at Harvard, it seems normatively expected that, if asked, you complain that research trumps teaching at the great university in Cambridge.

Finally, the belief that research-oriented faculty at the great universities assiduously avoid teaching undergraduates has never really been true at these universities and colleges, and it is even less so today than in the past half a century. Not only do many of the most able research faculty at the best universities and colleges enjoy and even prefer teaching their very smart undergraduates, but also more of them are doing it than in prior decades. With shrinking graduate Ph.D. programs at many of the great universities, more emphasis has been placed on undergraduate education and undergraduate teaching. The best evidence we have is that there is a modest positive correlation between student evaluations of their teachers and the quality of the research that those professors produce.

If the great universities and colleges have abandoned their interest and concern with undergraduate teaching, it certainly is news to them. The perpetuation of the myth that these very bright undergraduates get little more than the reputation of their schools for their tuition dollars is simply a socially constructed myth.

*Jonathan R. Cole's recent book, The Great American University: Its Rise To Preeminence, Its Indispensable National Role, Why It Must Be Protected (Public Affairs, 2010), expands on some of these themes.

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1. The response rate to these surveys is remarkably high (above 90 percent), thus reducing the possibilities of selection bias in the results obtained.
2. Since these were anonymous exit surveys of outgoing seniors, there would be little reason for students to distort their answers.

Plugging the Donut Hole

We humans are complicated beings. We have many wonderful attributes and, unfortunately, at least a couple that are less than wonderful. Among the latter are two that, in large measure, determine our success (or lack therefore) as academicians and educators: we are easily distracted and occasionally disorganized.

The negative impact of those two traits on an individual's academic credentialing and classroom or office performance has long been recognized in higher education. All of us understand that a lack of focus and useful structure will almost certainly degrade both our own acquisition of knowledge and the caliber of teaching or administrative support we provide to our students.

What's often not appreciated, however, is the impact those same two traits will have on the course and content of our career. If we are distracted or disorganized in its management -- if we do not attend to its care on a regular basis or if we care for it in a haphazard way -- we will likely experience the same dysfunction and diminished outcome, but in our employment. To put it more bluntly, if we let our career skills grow flabby, we are the perfect candidate for career cardiac arrest, or what most of us call unemployment.

Unfortunately, cultural mores and conventional wisdom make it easy to miss that fact. From our earliest days, we're counseled and taught that a college degree is the only necessary ticket to opportunity, and the higher the degree, the greater the potential for success. Whether you're on the faculty or staff, that parchment puts you on your way and keeps you progressing.

While that may have been the case prior to the Great Recession, however, it is clearly not so today. And, the evidence of this new normal is legion. There are now large numbers of Americans holding bachelor's and master's degrees and even Ph.D.s who are unemployed and unable to mount a successful job search. They have fallen through the "donut hole" in higher education.

Our institutions have taken them through a rigorous pedagogy in a branch of knowledge or an occupational field, and left them without a similar foundation in the skills and knowledge of career self-management. Our colleges and universities have made them experts in their chosen discipline and dilettantes in putting that knowledge to work.

The Career Fitness regimen is designed to remediate that shortcoming. It provides both a foundation of proven principles and a superstructure of "best practices" that together comprise a comprehensive methodology for achieving and maintaining career success. It enables a person to be systematic, professional and conscientious in negotiating the challenges and tapping the opportunities of the modern workplace. In essence, it provides a pathway for becoming as expert in the direction of our career as we are in the development of our knowledge.

Thanks for reading,
Peter

What Academic Freedom Means for Your Career

What is academic freedom? Jonathan Cole discusses academic freedom in his book, The Great American University. Cole writes that the restrictions placed on the academic community after the events of 9/11 represented the greatest threat to our academic freedom since the Red Scare propagated by Sen. McCarthy in the 1950s.

In Jonathan's most recent Author in Residence blog post, he describes the nature of universities as Unsettling Institutions. Places that push the envelope on conventional thought and challenge people to view issues from a different perspective. Ideally, universities serve as research facilities for ideas and beliefs where they can be discussed and given a chance to thrive on their own merit, and not silenced because they are unpopular. However, just scan the headlines on a regular basis and you will see academic freedom coming under fire.

What does walking the line between acceptable safe speech and provocative speech mean for a professor's career? Have we recovered from our recent assault on academic freedom or are there still ideas that are too taboo to speak or teach? Have you been asked to not teach a particular subject or publish a particular article out of concern that it would reflect poorly on the university?

I leave you with this quote:

"By academic freedom I understand the right to search for truth and to publish and teach what one holds to be true. This right implies also a duty: one must not conceal any part of what one has recognized to be true. It is evident that any restriction on academic freedom acts in such a way as to hamper the dissemination of knowledge among the people and thereby impedes national judgment and action." -Albert Einstein

The American University needs to remain an arena for ideas and beliefs, no matter how unpopular, if our nation is to remain both free and innovative. Fear of repercussions impedes the development of new ideas and cutting edge research. I look forward to hearing your stories and thoughts on this issue, feel free to comment below or email me at robf@higheredjobs.com.

Universities as Unsettling Institutions

By Jonathan R. Cole*

In a brilliant, concise Report to the University of Chicago faculty in 1967, the Kalven Committee(i) concluded that "by design and by effect, [the university]... is the institution which creates discontent with the existing social arrangements and proposes new ones... a good university...will be unsettling." If a university's fundamental mission is to create and disseminate knowledge, how is it to foster those ambitions while preventing the natural tendency to suppress ideas that question existing knowledge and power relationships in the society? It does so by articulating, reinforcing, and defending itself against attacks on the core university values of academic freedom and free inquiry.

To many members of the educated public, academic freedom is nothing more than a protective shield that scholars and scientists hide behind to avoid criticism and censure for their offensive speech or research that challenges existing beliefs and dogma. And for that same public, academic tenure represents an inappropriate structural mechanism that protects radical thoughts or incompetence(ii). Such beliefs betray a gross misunderstanding of the history of efforts to suppress free inquiry at universities and colleges, and a lack of understanding of the conditions needed for the growth of knowledge.

Properly understood, academic freedom is as Louis Menand, the Harvard literary scholar, has said: "...the key legitimating concept of the entire [academic] enterprise." It is the mechanism that establishes control and authority over the critical decisions in the university. It places in the hands of highly trained, competent professors, who have met standards set by the disciplines, the power to create criteria for entrance into the profession, to establish what is valued as "high quality work," to determine hiring and promotion standards, to construct examinations, and to determine the content taught in classes run by those professors. Academic tenure, if properly accompanied by rigorous standards linked to promotion, is the final defense against the power of external authorities and those inside the university to purge ideas from the community that they find opprobrious. It should not be surprising therefore that during perilous times the effort to fire or censure faculty members at colleges and universities focuses on the non-tenured and adjunct faculty.

Great teachers challenge the biases of their students and colleagues. They present unsettling ideas and dare others to rebut them and to defend their own beliefs in a coherent and principled manner. The best of America's universities and colleges push and pull at the walls of orthodoxy and reject politically correct thinking. In this process, students and professors may sometimes feel intimidated, overwhelmed, and confused. But it is by working through this process that they learn to think better and more clearly for themselves. The goal of academic freedom is to establish an environment in which it is possible for the inquisitive mind to flourish.

If we are not to stifle the thoughts of those at universities and colleges who hold unpopular views, then we ought to embrace a number of important principles. The university cannot and should not attempt to decide what ideas or perspective are appropriate for the classroom. For one student, a professor's ideas may represent repugnant stereotypes or efforts at intimidation; for another, the same ideas may represent profound challenges to ostensibly settled issues. If we place fetters on the open marketplace of ideas, who is to be cast as the "Grand Inquisitor?" Furthermore, the university is not a place where we exclusively house or train the kind of scientist or scholar who advises the prince - those currently in control of government. Some will voluntarily do so, but it is not the point or the rationale of universities to furnish such advice, nor to have the thematic pursuits of inquiry in the university shaped by the interests of the prince.

Finally, no one speaks "for" the university. There is, in fact, no "university position" on essential matters of science and public affairs. The university does not decide which ideas are good and bad, which are right or wrong. That is up for constant debate and deliberation. For a president, provost, or Trustee to speak "for" the university only serves to stifle debate, alienate those whose views differ from those of the institution's leaders, and create a chilling effect on free discourse.

Unsettling by nature, university culture is also highly conservative. It demands evidence before accepting novel challenges to existing theories and methods. The university ought to be viewed in terms of a fundamental interdependence between the liberality of its intellectual life and the conservatism of its methodological demands. Because the university encourages discussion of even the most radical ideas, it must set its standards for establishing "facts" at a high level. We permit almost any idea to be put forward - but only because we demand arguments and evidence to back up the ideas we debate and because we set the bar of proof at such a high level. Those two components - tolerance for unsettling ideas and insistence on rigorous skepticism about all ideas - create an essential tension at the heart of American universities and colleges. They will not thrive without both components operating effectively and simultaneously. Other national systems of higher learning, like China's, will have to fully comprehend and internalize this necessary tension if their universities are to achieve true greatness.

___
i. The Committee was chaired by the great legal scholar, Harry Kalven, Jr. and included a distinguished set of faculty members, including Nobel Prize economist, George Stigler, and the distinguished African American history professor, John Hope Franklin.
ii. Would the public also hold similar views toward tenure for federal judges, and does the public understand why protection of federal judges from political influence is essential for the proper functioning of the federal judiciary?

* Jonathan R. Cole is the John Mitchell Mason Professor of the University and was Provost and Dean of Faculties at Columbia University from 1989 to 2003. A wider discussion of these issues can be found in The Great American University: Its Rise To Preeminence, Its Indispensable National Rose; Why It Must Be Protected (PublicAffairs, 2010)

Freedom: Just Another Word or a Way of Life?

There's been a lot of attention paid to freedom lately. Jonathan Franzen's new book with that title has made a big splash, of course. And, there's been much debate about the freedom of a group to place a mosque next to the 9/11 site in New York City and the freedom of a pastor to burn copies of the Koran.

But what exactly is freedom, anyway?

We live in a nation that fancies itself "the land of the free and the home of the brave," so I suppose all of us have at least a minimal understanding of the concept. What's often missing, however, is an equal level of understanding of how freedom happens.

You aren't free if you live in a free nation. Not really. You may enjoy the benefits of freedom in such a happy situation, but you aren't being free. You see, freedom is a noun achieved with a verb. In other words, you have to exercise your freedom in order truly to be free.

In a democracy, that means caring enough to vote, to participate in the governance of the nation. In a career, exercising one's freedom means caring enough to act on your own behalf, to participate in the governance of your career.

A recent poll by Time magazine found that over two-thirds of Americans don't think their fellow countrymen and women are meeting their citizenship responsibilities. Sadly, more than a few Americans are also falling short in meeting their obligation to their careers.

Becoming an Active Citizen of the Workplace

As you know if you've been following our journey through my book Work Strong, we can either be the master of our career or its victim. There are no other choices. And, the only way to take charge of your career is to acquire the skills and knowledge of effective career self-management. That expertise enables you to act on your own behalf and to do so in a way that serves your best interests.

I see that kind of "career activism" beginning to happen in the posts on the HigherEdJobs blog. People are asking their peers about this tack in the higher education field or that one, about working for a for-profit university or building a career around adjunct positions, for example. If we've learned anything at all in the aftermath of the Great Recession, it's that such individual initiative is the only form of renewable energy that we can count on today.

There's another factor to this dynamic, however, that we should also recognize. I address it in the final three exercises of the Career Fitness regimen:
· Work with winners
· Stretch your soul
· Pace yourself.

The common thread that runs through those three activities is an acceptance of the fragility of our freedom. Though guaranteed in our nation's founding documents, it is not invulnerable or inevitable. Therefore, we must protect our freedom by working only for employers that respect our talent, by sharing our talent with our community and our planet, and by calibrating the use of our talent for a lengthy (and satisfying) career. Taking those three steps is as much a part of building a healthy career as attaining an advanced degree or being published in your field.

Thanks for reading,
Peter

Unleash the Leader Within

Exercises III and IV of the Career Work-In involve exercising your skills and increasing your flexibility -- your range of motion allowing you to cover more job descriptions. One of the strategies used to increase your flexibility is unleashing your inner leader. Even in turbulent times, hiring managers are looking for leaders to fill the positions they have. The same rings true in higher education as hiring committees search for the best candidates -- the leaders in the pack will be selected first.

Being a leader in higher education is more than holding department or committee chairmanships. It is about being the go-to person in a particular field, being reliable and a proactive problem solver. One way to go about being a leader in your field is to let people outside your department know what you are doing. Something as simple as starting a blog about your discipline where you discuss issues, news/research, and how you are bringing this alive in your work will gain you attention. Do you have instructional strategies that are particularly effective? Share them. Do you have a different take on a topic than is commonly held? Share it. There are professors who use their blogs as test areas for future research and papers.

A way to be viewed as a leader in higher education is by being the go-to person for comments and ideas. Many colleges and universities have media inquiry links on their websites for members of the media to find experts who are willing to give interviews or opinions to the press. Get yourself on that list. Finally, be a proactive problem solver. If your university or department is running into issues that require creative solutions, share your opinion and work through the problems.

No matter if you are currently in-between positions or sitting as a tenured professor, your career can benefit by establishing yourself as a leader. Like Weddle mentions in his book, Work Strong, "...we all have the DNA to become a leader, to infuse our approach to employment with a commitment to serving others, to imbue the purpose of our work with a more inclusive, more impactive vision." Put yourself out there and others will take note of your leadership.

All of Our Eggs in Too Few Baskets?

America's premier research universities are the gears turning our nation's economic engine. Dotted across the landscape of America are great institutions where professors, fellows, and students are working to better our lives. Universities, both public and private, are responsible for researching and developing many of the technological advances we have experienced in the past 75 years. These advancements are not cheap; research and development facilities are expensive investments. As a result, those institutions with greater financial support are able to continue to drive innovation better than those who are lacking in great endowments.

In The Great American University, Cole writes that large endowments are one of the essential components to a great institution (1). As with many things in our society, success breeds success, and likewise a large endowment is associated with perceived quality. Right now, our nation's universities are seeing the greatest disparity between endowments than ever before. The top dozen or so universities have endowment holdings that far exceed the remaining 400 research universities combined (2). When you separate out the public and private institutions, the disparity among the top dozen is even greater with privates such as Harvard and Yale out-pacing public schools such as University of Michigan and University of Texas easily. Competition for resources is fierce and this disparity in endowment size gives a few institutions a great advantage. The fruit of the collective research labor from the top universities is great, and Cole mentions many of those achievements throughout his book. However, what happens when we shrink the number of successful research universities from several hundred to just a few dozen, or worse, just the current top ten?

This brings to light the question: are we placing too much money and resources into too few institutions? What happens when we realize we have lost a lot of great talent to foreign institutions who are willing to throw big dollars at research and development? To shrink our nation's ability to innovate and drive technological advances is committing economic suicide. Forcing people to leave the country to conduct research or dissuading future researchers from even entering these fields is not a sound long-term plan for our nation's success. What measures, if any, do you think should be taken by the top universities to lessen this disparity of wealth?

1. Page 113, The Great American University.
2. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/04/education/04endowment.html
3. 2008 Endowment numbers, comparing private vs public universities: http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2008/04/20/education/edlife/20080420_EDULIFE_PRINCETON_GRAPHIC.html

America's Great Universities and How We Live Our Lives

America's research universities represent 65 percent of the top 100 and 80 percent of the top 20 universities in the world. Their faculty members dominate the receipt of Nobel Prizes; their scientists and scholars produce discoveries and scholarship that receive the lion's share of citations in the published literature. American universities have become the engine of our national prosperity, and will become of even greater importance for the nation as the 21^st century moves on. Why, then, are they so underappreciated and poorly understood by legislative leaders and even by much of the educated public?

When most Americans think about our great universities, they don't think that lasers, FM radio, magnetic resonance imaging, bar codes, the algorithm for Google, the fetal monitor, the nicotine patch, the discovery of the insulin gene, the origin of computers, improved weather forecasting, cures for childhood leukemia, the pap smear, scientific agriculture, Viagra, public opinion surveys, the concept of the self-fulfilling prophecy, our understanding of foreign cultures, had their origins at our great research universities.

While high quality undergraduate education is essential to our universities' mission, and improving graduation rates is critical for the nation, it is not the transmission of knowledge that defines our greatness. It is the production of new knowledge that distinguishes American universities.

How have we in only 75 years come to dominate higher learning in the world - and become perhaps the only American industry with a favorable balance of trade? In my book I discuss how a set of values and structures evolved through interactions between universities and the larger society. Core values included: a strong belief in meritocracy, an incessant questioning of claims to fact and truth, free and open communication of ideas, free inquiry and academic freedom, and a peer review system to assess quality. Additionally, our universities' commitment to a high level of autonomy from government control, a willingness to welcome exceptionally talented people from anywhere in the world, a set of enlightened early leaders, and a vast infusion of taxpayer dollars by the federal government after World War II, were ingredients needed for preeminence.

The economic payoff can be seen in a few statistics produced by Stanford University and the University of California system. Stanford reports that its faculty members, students, and alumni have founded more than 2,400 companies, including Cisco Systems, Google, and Hewlett-Packard. In 2008, they generated $255 billion in total revenue for the "Silicon Valley 150." - equivalent to one of the top 40 economies in the world. Spending roughly $5 billion per year on research, the University of California and has been instrumental in the growth of the biotechnology, information technology, and telecommunications industries. Yet, the California state legislature seems determined to spend more on its prisons than on higher education, and seems truly ignorant of the fact that it is far more difficult to recreate world class universities once destroyed than to maintain their excellence once achieved. In short, to paraphrase Walt Kelley's wonderful cartoon character, Pogo, "The enemy is us."

* Jonathan R. Cole is the John Mitchell Mason Professor of the University and was from 1989 to 2003 the Provost and Dean of Faculties at Columbia University. His recently published The Great American University: Its Rise To Preeminence, Its Indispensable National Rose; Why It Must Be Protected (PublicAffairs, 2010)

Introduction to Our Fall 2010 Author in Residence, Jonathan R. Cole

On Monday, our Fall 2010 Author in Residence will begin to post about issues in higher education that arise from his book, The Great American University. Jonathan Cole is best known for his fourteen years (1989-2003) as Columbia's provost, holding the position for the second-longest tenure in the university's 250-year history. During his career in higher education, which includes having the role of dean of faculties and vice president for the arts and sciences at Columbia, he has gained great insight into the important role the university plays in American culture.

The themes from his book that are planned for discussion are: the crucial role a strong university system plays to national prosperity and security, the role of universities in bringing social issues and discourse to the forefront, the future of government/industry/university partnerships, and how best to move forward from the anti-intellectualism of the 2000's and position U.S. universities for continued global pre-eminence.

These are serious topics that impact the careers of all in higher education, and we look forward to reading what you have to say about these topics.

In the meantime, here is a portion of what The Economist magazine had to say about The Great American University.

The real dangers facing America's most important universities
Jan 7th 2010
From The Economist print edition

WHAT do the following have in common: the bar code, congestion charging, the cervical Pap smear and the internet? All emerged from work done at America's pre-eminent research universities. The central contention of Jonathan Cole's book is that these mighty institutions are "creative machines unlike any other that we have known in our history." They stand at the centre of America's intellectual and technological global leadership, but are now under threat as never before.

Professor Cole has worked all his life at one of these institutions, Columbia, where he was provost for 14 years from 1989 until 2003. His book is really three, each a magisterial work. First, he sets out an admirably comprehensive history of how America's great universities came into being. Then, he trawls for examples of the enriching inventiveness of these institutions, listing the extraordinary range of innovations in technology and in thinking that have sprung from their research. Finally, he outlines the forces that threaten America's research universities.

Read more at http://www.economist.com/printedition (subscription required).

Out of Whack in the New Normal

A recent article by Michael Luo in The New York Times described the plight of 99ers, those who have been unemployed for 99 weeks or more in this terrible recession. One of the people he profiled in his piece was Alexandra Jarrin, "a late-in-life college graduate and onetime business school student who owes $92,000, as she put it, for 'an education which is basically worthless.'"

The same statement is likely being made by at least some in the field of higher education. They invested the time and effort to earn academic credentials that don't seem to qualify them for the kinds of openings they had been led to expect in the academy. They're well educated with seemingly no place to go.

Luo's article concludes that 99ers are apt to become 129ers or more if the nation doesn't begin to create new jobs. While there is undoubtedly some truth to that statement, it is incomplete. As noted in Bloomberg Businessweek, there are -- at this very moment -- some 2.6 million unfilled positions in the U.S. These aren't stimulus money construction jobs; they're largely vacancies in professional fields.

What's keeping them open? Economists describe the problem as a mismatch in skills. A less esoteric but more accurate description is that the demand for talent is out of whack with its supply.

While there may be a mismatch between available candidate skills and the requirements for a given position in a given location, there is almost never such a mismatch on a national basis. The converse of that statement is also true. While there may be a mismatch between available jobs in a given location and a given individual's skills, there is almost never such a mismatch on a national basis (unless the individual's skills are obsolete).

Now, don't get me wrong. I know that there aren't as many tenured positions or even as many non-tenure track opportunities as there used to be. I also am very respectful of how unsettling it can be to have to move from where you want to live to where you have to live in order to work. Nevertheless, the fact remains that there are millions of jobs available right now and at least some of those positions are in higher education. They may not be in your home town or offer the kinds of salary and security you would like, but they are genuine opportunities for employment.

Economists are calling this situation the "new normal." Whether we like it or not -- and please don't shoot the messenger -- today's reality presents us with a choice: we can remain true to our original goals and desires and wait for the old normal to return, or we can accept that the workplace has changed and adjust to its altered dynamics.

For those who choose to follow the latter course, Exercises III and IV in the Career Fitness System will help you accomplish the necessary adjustment. They involve:

• Developing all of your muscle groups -- those ancillary skills that can reinforce and extend your primary area of expertise

and

• Increasing your flexibility and range of motion -- your willingness and ability to accept other than old normal working arrangements.
  

Yes, of course, it would be better if everything had worked out exactly as we had expected in the job market. And certainly, it would be better if everything had lined up in the most beneficial way possible for our careers. But, the new normal didn't. That doesn't make it a disaster. That just makes it abnormal ... and only for awhile.

Thanks for reading,
Peter

Be a Well-Connected Islander

Remember text adventure games? Some of the earliest computer games were choose-your-own-adventure style textual games, where you read the storyline and made choices, hoping the options you selected led you down the path of survival and not into a lurking Grue. Networking is a lot like these games, especially one particular game, Survival Island. The point of that game is to survive as an islander making your island and community stronger by networking with other surrounding islanders for food and necessities. If you are successful in your relationship building, and balance out the give and take of trade, you will survive and thrive. Fail in cultivating those relationships and you will find yourself struggling to make ends meet.

To have a career in academe, you will certainly be faced with the need to establish and maintain a network. To be involved in higher education today means having a presence on the web. For some people, this is a pleasant reality and they have taken proactive steps in this area, creating a LinkedIn profile or even starting a personal blog or website to highlight their work and achievements. Others are more reluctant to set sail into the digital ocean and build their island's network.

If you are concerned that building your network takes too much time or effort, don't be. The time and energy put into initial set-up is payed out in full later on. If you think LinkedIn and other professional networking sites are just for job seekers, think again. Your profiles act as passive networking tools. They serve as a place to organize your work history, achievements, publications, and projects. These online web presences are working 24/7 to enhance your career or job search.

If you are a job seeker, the benefits are even more immediately notable. College and university human resource personnel sift through online accounts and profiles like the My HigherEdJobs accounts and LinkedIn profiles to find job seekers. Search committees will "informally" narrow down a group of finalists to the final few by seeing what the different candidates are doing online. Some skeptics may say, "If I have nothing online, they can't see something that might hurt my candidacy." Those people would be mistaken, because not saying anything says a lot about how you perceive yourself and your achievements. Schools are looking for engaging and creative professionals. Show them that you are the person they are seeking, and that they should call you in for the final round of interviews.

Your online network, be it on Facebook, LinkedIn, Ning, or Blogger, should be connecting you to other people who are in the same field as you (or field you are looking to enter). Your profile or account should always be projecting to the world the online version of your 2-minute elevator speech. Clearly stating who you are, what role in higher education you are looking to be involved in, what your accomplishments are, and how to contact you. Simple as that.

Nothing more is needed in this online venue, but also not less than those basics. Like in the game, if you reach out to other islanders around you and successfully cultivate relationships, you will survive and thrive. It is fine to be an islander, just be a well-connected islander.

"Networking is not about hunting. It is about farming. It's about cultivating relationships." - Dr. Ivan Misner, NY bestselling author & founder of BNI

Don’t Wish Upon a Star, Make Yourself One

Lillian Gish never earned a master's degree or a Ph.D., but she was a consummate artist in her field.

Gish began her career in 1912 in silent movies. Acting in such films as The Birth of a Nation and The Scarlet Letter, she demonstrated a peerless expertise in nonverbal communications. Her ability to touch an audience without words made her one of America's most beloved actresses, and then all of a sudden, the field of acting changed forever. The technology of sound was introduced.

Many of Gish's fellow actors were unable or unwilling to adjust, but she did. She acquired the skills and knowledge required for excellence in speaking parts and combined that new competence with her foundational training in acting. Her flexibility and willingness to learn enabled her to act for 50 more years and earned her a Special Academy Award "For superlative artistry and for distinguished contribution to the progress of motion pictures."

Gish's experience is a wonderful illustration of what it takes to succeed in today's ever-changing world of work. In fields as different as medicine and higher education, logistics and publishing, we are seeing transformative developments as radical as the shift from silent movies to sound, black and white to color, realism to animation and galaxies far, far away. The truth, however hard it may be to accept, is that change is now permeating every corner of the workplace.

The only way to survive, let alone prosper, in such a constantly shifting environment is to be a lifelong student in one's field and to be a lifelong networker among one's peers. In the Career Fitness System, those two activities are the first two of the seven regular exercises a person must practice to build a healthy and rewarding career:

· Exercise I: Pump Up Your Circulatory System recognizes that your expertise in your field is the very heart of your career. If you don't constantly push yourself to extend and enrich that knowledge, your expertise will atrophy and your ability to compete for employment will decline.

· Exercise II: Strengthen Your Circulatory System acknowledges the limitations of your personal awareness and access. If you don't build up and maintain supportive contacts in your field, you will likely miss out on opportunities for which you are qualified and be overlooked for others.

Both of these two activities can be accomplished in many different ways, so each of the exercises in the Career Fitness System involves four steps. Some people elect to do all four, while others pick and choose those that seem best for them. The key, however, is to ensure that you're performing each of the exercises in some way and doing so on a regular basis. That may not win you an Academy Award, but it will make you are a star who's widely recognized in your field. And, as Lillian Gish proved, there's no better security than that.

Thanks for reading,
Peter

P.S. My new book, The Career Activist Republic, has just hit bookstore shelves. You'll find it at Amazon.com and in many bookstores around the country. I'll quote one description: "The most innovative and exhilarating examination of the American workplace since The Free Agent Nation, and one that makes more sense!". I hope you'll take a look at it.

The Right Coach for the Right Player

In this portion of our syllabus, we are exploring the chapter on "Building a Healthy Career Everyday." Like with any activity, one needs to learn and practice new techniques in order to become a stronger player. This applies to actors and athletes, chief executives and crew chiefs, physicians and professors alike. Everybody needs to practice, and with that comes a need for coaching. Some of us are able to coach ourselves, find trusted mentors and seek out professional development resources on our own. Others, on the other hand, need some assistance from a career counselor or coach.

Peter Weddle, author of Work Strong, mentions the importance of finding the right coach to help you succeed in developing a healthier career. Peter also lists some ways to find good coaches and the organizations they belong to. I thought I would provide some links to those organizations and people that specialize in coaching professionals.

The Association of Career Professionals. They have local affiliates that you may use to find a person near you.

Career Directors International is a group that can assist in everything from resume writing to interview coaching.

The Career Management Alliance helps bring together coaches and professionals by ensuring their member career coaches meet the best standards.

There are even coaches for those on the front side of their career, those trying to take the final step of leaving graduate school to enter the professional world. The Dissertation Coach, Allison Miller, is a nationally known professional who helps those in higher education make that final step happen.

As you can see, there are lots of resources available to those needing that helping hand in finding the right path. As any sports fan will tell you, there is no substitute for the difference a great coach can make on a team's performance. The same rings true for your professional career too.

The 7 Facets of a Healthy Career

Career Fitness is based on a controversial idea. Its core tenant is that a healthy career depends upon seven facets of activity, not one. It acknowledges that in today's highly competitive and increasingly unpredictable job market, survival -- let alone prosperity -- requires that we attend to more than our expertise in our occupational field.

You can see ample proof of this concept's validity by simply looking around. There are countless numbers of well educated men and women who accepted the claim by academic institutions that a college degree -- or better yet, a graduate diploma -- would ensure their career success. They devoted themselves to that one objective, and today, they're out on the bricks looking for work.

They've made a fine start -- professional competence is the heart of a healthy career -- but they need to do more. They must, for example, "strengthen the circulatory system" of their career. Their network of contacts both in their field and in the broader workplace keeps their name and capabilities in circulation. The traditional term for this activity, of course, is networking, but networking is "notworking" if all one does is chatter away on a LinkedIn discussion group.

Research among employers clearly indicates that they continue to rely as much on traditional face-to-face interactions as they do on the virtual ones found online. In other words, the only way to strengthen your career's circulatory system is to get out of the house or office and into those venues where you can actually meet those who are online, as well as those who aren't.

Then, you have to practice the Golden Rule of Networking. It's as simple as it is powerful -- you have to give in order to get. If you want someone to be helpful to you, you must first be helpful to them. You have to share your contacts and knowledge of the job market with others if you would like them to share that information with you.

Good networking, then, is not a one-off proposition or a transactional experience. It begins with making connections to others, to be sure, but ultimately it involves establishing familiarity and trust. Those are the pillars of a sound professional relationship, and such relationships are the only network you can rely on to serve your best interests.

As this example makes clear, there's more to this one facet of strengthening a career's circulatory system than may at first be apparent. It requires both a knowledge of what's entailed and the skills to execute the appropriate actions in an appropriate way. That's why my regimen for Career Fitness covers four steps in each of its seven facets. The more of those facets you work on and the more constructive your actions in each, the better your prospects for finding a great job and, no less important, hanging onto it.

Thanks for reading,
Peter

Finding Your Niche Market

On our LinkedIn group, HigherEdJobs, there has been a great amount of discussion on a thread regarding an article, "New Rules of the Game." In short, this article, also by Peter Weddle, brings up the issue of how we go about marketing ourselves to potential employers, and what are some ways we can go about making ourselves stand out amongst the competition. Peter suggests in the article, like in Work Strong, that people need to do some tough introspection. Where the discussion has gone on LinkedIn is about what it means to market one's self.

One of the things we are learning how to do better by following along Peter's path in Work Strong is to market ourselves better and to prepare for our next position months, if not years, before finding it. Many people on the thread believe that marketing=lying or in some way deceiving others into buying into a product that they don't really need or want. In this case the product is you. 

Marketing is not lying or deceiving, it is presentation and preparation. The next chapters in the book are going to help us prepare ourselves for market. The definition of marketing is the promotion, distribution, and selling of goods or services. We are all promoting and distributing our services as professionals in higher education either as administrators, staff, or faculty. Finding a niche or method of self-promotion that is creative to help stand out of the crowd is not dishonest, but rather good marketing.

Those in academia may have traditionally thought they were above having to promote themselves. Perhaps at one time that was true -- that merely having a couple of great references, a published work, and the doctorate in hand were enough. I think of another group of people who are not traditionally thought of as self-promoters or marketing mavens, the Amish.

The Amish people have done a great job of marketing their way of life, their goods and services, in a way that is competitive and honest. My grandparents were in need of a new garage at their home in eastern Ohio. After shopping around, they found that an outfit of Amish builders were the best combination of price, craftsmanship, and customer service they could find. This is not the traditional picture I had of the Amish people, yet seems perfectly fitting that they would be great builders. That group found a niche to market their strengths while still maintaining their way of life. Those of us in higher education can do the same.

Why shouldn't people in all fields of work seek to find a special way to market themselves? Why not take honest stock of your abilities and achievements and find positions that are better suited to those skills? You can then use those new positions to angle toward your future career goals.  There is nothing wrong with being strategic.

Call Your Calling

According to Peter Weddle in his book, Work Strong, the challenges and pressures of modern life make it hard for people to listen to their calling. Some never make the effort, feeling work and happiness are incompatible. Others deny their calling and follow the path others have chosen for them. Other people rush so quickly into a career that when their interests change later on, they feel stuck.

Hopefully, you've found the career you were meant to be in and are vigorously pursuing it. But, if not, how do you find it? Weddle suggests a number of exercises you can try, and even offers a mathematical equation to calculate happiness at work (Happiness at Work = Engagement + Relevance + Choice).

Weddle's exercises can help get you thinking. But, the answers will likely take time. If you're able to sit down and analytically think through what you want to do next with your career, great. But, if not, don't despair. You may just need to let these questions marinate inside you for awhile as you go through your day-to-day activities.

Can Professors be Strategic in Their Careers?

Over the past 14 years with HigherEdJobs, I have had the privilege of working with the amazing people who help young men and women further their lives at our institutions of higher education.  I could not have asked for a more fulfilling career.  I know faculty members believe strongly in the value of the work that they do -- educating students, furthering knowledge, and contributing to the greater good.  Passion is often an ingredient to what makes them do what they do.

In this section of Work Strong, the practical formulation and documentation of a plan becomes front and center in the discussion. I believe the strategic nature of the process and formality of the career fitness program suggested is absolutely necessary.  The need to dispassionately review the plan is imperative as well.  However, as I was reading through it, I found myself wondering if many faculty members can be strategic enough to first establish a plan and then dispassionate in truly evaluating it?  If passion is what fuels your career choice, can strategy play a role in the plan and, if so, can that passion be set aside in revising and measuring the success of that plan?

I also found myself thinking about a good friend, who I shall refer to as Preston.  Preston made a very specific career choice in choosing a career in the fine arts over a career in the hard sciences.  He is extremely talented, committed, honest with himself and we all knew (and still know) that he can do whatever he sets his mind to.  Along the way, Preston realized a career in teaching college students his fine arts skills was what motivated him.  As always, he set his mind to it and achieved the goal.  However, as many people learn in the fine arts, Preston's plan to acquire an elite teaching position was not given to him right after graduation.  He then decided to create his own opportunity, creating a position for himself by working for two schools, which has led to some benefits and a solid step in his career plan.  To me, seizing this opportunity is what we all can emulate from Preston's experience.  The plan did not go as designed.  Don't give up.  Revise the plan.  Ph.D.s do not come with Best Buy warranties -- they come with the opportunities that you can help create.

Can you be strategic and create opportunities in what you do today, and can they lead you further along in your career plans?  What are some of the best opportunities you have created for yourself in your career?

Making Plans That Make Sense

So much of what happens in careers these days seems to be the result of outside forces beyond our control. We are buffeted by layoffs or by constraints on hiring or even by the elimination of entire departments. If career paths even exist anymore, they are more like switchback trails than the steady way forward that characterized the past.

In the midst of all of that turbulence, making career plans often feels like a hopeless exercise. Who can predict the future well enough to know what goals make sense, let alone how best to accomplish them? Many of us, for example, have set our sights on earning an advanced degree that will prepare us to assume certain positions in academia or the private sector, but by the time we are graduated, those opportunities have all but disappeared. It's an experience only Bernie Madoff could dream up.

And yet, a career plan may well be the only form of security we have today. However, it's not the plan itself, but the process involved in establishing and using it that protects us. Developing a Career Fitness Plan, in particular, is not solely about setting and accomplishing goals; it is also the way we infuse our direction setting with the two new realities of the modern world of work.

• First, change is the new normal in the workplace. A Career Fitness Plan acknowledges that reality by having us develop not one, but two goals: one that focuses on something we can accomplish in our current job, and a second that points us toward the next job we would like (or should expect) to have. Whether it's in our current department or a different one, our current institution or a different one, our current employment status (e.g., adjunct, tenured) or a different one, that change will almost certainly occur. Why? Because escalating budget constraints, shifting student (and parent) expectations and preferences, and new regulatory pressures--just to name a few--are forcing it.
• Second, change is now continuous in the workplace. A Career Fitness Plan also establishes a developmental or bridge goal that prepares us to make the changes we have envisioned in our first two goals. Because self-development typically takes time to complete, however, we can adjust its scope and content, as necessary, to ensure our progress continues. In effect, we accomplish our objective not by aiming for a single bulls-eye, but instead, by aiming for an ever-tightening progression of bulls-eyes that advance us to where we want to be. A central feature of the plan, therefore, is regular self-assessment. Every quarter, we must review our status to determine if we are sticking to our plan and, equally as important, if that plan is achieving the change we want and need.

Making plans in a topsy-turvy environment is nonsensical, if those plans are predicated on an expectation of orderly progress. If we assume that change will occur, however, and then we proactively plan for it, we can significantly reduce both its discomfort and its potential peril.

Thanks for reading,
Peter

Putting Our Thoughts Into Action

This month we find ourselves entering the third module of Peter Weddle's career fitness program, "Warm Up Your Career Fitness Plan: How to Stay True to Your Calling." This module invites the reader to develop a plan to improve their career fitness. This is the pivotal point in the book where we transition from passive self-reflection to becoming career activists with firm goals to get our careers pointed in the right direction.

Previously in this course, we have defined what working in modern America looks like and what it means to be a professional in higher education. We reflected upon our career happiness and evaluated our "career fitness" using the tools that Peter has created and shared in this book. We have sought out to determine who is in control of our career. Are we the ones standing at the helm steering our careers into favored waters? Or, are there outside forces that have control, blowing us off course? Most recently we have started to investigate who we are, what our Natural talents are, and what would make us happiest at work.

Having achieved all of that, we are now left with the daunting task of setting goals. The object is to make meaningful goals that won't be discarded, as Peter puts it, like New Year's resolutions, but carried on and integrated into our daily work.

These three goal cycles that are discussed in chapter 6 of Work Strong each have their own purpose. The first one is based on Achievements, the second one is focused on Advancement, and the third and final one is about Development.

As these goal cycles apply to careers in higher education, I felt the first one had the most universal feel to it. The first goal cycle is focused on achieving something near-term (6-12 months) that will be immediately enjoyed and have a positive impact on your current job. If the 21^st century version of loyalty to one's employer is to perform at optimum levels at all times, a professor working in academia could view such loyalty to be expressed in terms of volume of published work, as that adds to an institution's prestige.

The old adage, publish or perish, can be the driving motivator to create your first goal. A goal to publish their work within the next 6-12 months and apply for a new grant. One way to accomplish this goal would be to develop a new system for organizing their research and thoughts, so when it comes time to publish an article, everything is laid out orderly and they can focus on just writing. Once successful at achieving this goal, a person will not only feel better about themselves, but also add something to their CV to help them prepare for the next goal, Advancement.

Read on in chapter 6 of Work Strong and share your thoughts about this system of career goal setting and how you might use this system. Please share your story about a system of goal setting that works for you.

Is Roy Hobbs the new Charles Kingsfield?

We have sure been blogging a lot about finding your natural this spring. It's easy to see why I have been having thoughts of Roy Hobbs, the iconic baseball figure played by Robert Redford in the 1980s movie, The Natural. Sports dramas are known for romanticized versions of careers (comedies often poke fun at the minor league experiences), but do movies about professors do the same? (Take a look at this Washington Post article or this Movie Mom's similar piece for ideas).

To me, John Houseman's character, Professor Charles Kingsfield, has always been The Natural of faculty members. He is smart, dedicated, honest, and unbiased. He taught the best students and was proud of it. Every first year law student for several generations knew this professor... and most avoided him. Does this professor still exist?

I couldn't agree more with the premise that a healthy career is one where you align your job with your natural (your calling), which is presented in the fourth syllabus section. The Career De-Stress Test that is outlined in this section is a great way for a faculty or staff member to think how well they are following their calling. Not only can this process help you re-evaluate your career fitness, I think it can also provide you some insight into an academic career path that is not as linear as it once was.

Whether being a faculty member was your first or subsequent career choice, it is important to test whether you are truly following your calling. The faculty career is not as ubiquitous as it was in Professor Kingsfield's heyday. In addition, cultural and familial priorities have changed. With the addition of online education and the growth of the non-traditional students, the needs of the academic community to deliver quality educational experiences has led to a variety of careers for our faculty members. The likelihood of coming from your graduate program into your one school academic career stop is very rare nowadays.

I suspect that the next generations of academic careers are going to look a bit more like Roy Hobbs' career than Charles Kingsfield's. You might recall that Hobbs' path to finding his natural was derailed a decade or more. Like Hobbs, future faculty members may be slower to realize their natural.

Tell us what you think...

Do faculty career paths look the same as they did 10 years ago?

Do you feel like you have realized your natural?

Is your job aligned with your calling?

Get to Know Your Talent

The common understanding of talent limits it to exceptional people who engage in exceptional activities. According to this view, only a very few individuals have talent, and their talent is expressed in only the most rarified of fields and feats. People of talent are professional athletes, entertainers and artists. An opera singer at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City has talent, while the best an educator or administrator can be is good at their job. Talent, Americans are taught and told, isn't something the masses have nor is it really talented to be an exceptional performer in unexceptional occupations.

Even Google, allegedly one of the world's most democratic search engines, mirrors this bias. Type the word "talented" into its search box, and the first ten results range from Susan Boyle and Britain's Got Talent to the National Research Center for the Gifted and Talented. Perform the same search with Microsoft's Bing and the results are different but not different in kind. They include the Talented Mr. Ripley and TalentEd, a site "dedicated to the provision of material about the education of the gifted and talented."

The dictionary, thankfully, takes a more pluralistic view of talent. It defines the word as "the natural endowments of a person" and an endowment as "a natural gift, ability or quality." There is no qualifier limiting talent to extraordinary people or to extraordinary endeavors. The term is not reserved for the infallible and famous or even for the in-your-face and infamous. Quite the contrary, talent is a natural characteristic of the human species and is expressed in the full range of its idiosyncratic interests and occupations.

Talent, however, is not a skill. It is an individual's capacity for excellence. Because it is an endowed gift, I call it your Natural in Work Strong. However, in order to perform in the world of work, talent must be educated and trained in a profession, craft or trade. If a person's talent is athleticism, for example, they must acquire the knowledge and practice the skills of baseball before they can earn a living as a professional ball player. And the same is true in education, administration and every other field.

A person's talent is also versatile-it can be trained to excel in multiple career fields-but it is not a universal donor. People can acquire the knowledge and skills of a field that does not align with their talent. They may, for example, learn how to be an investment banker, when their talent is actually the ability to help others learn. They could excel as an educator or a corporate trainer, but they will never be more than a competent investment banker. They may even make a lot of money on Wall Street, but they will never be satisfied or fulfilled in their work.

That situation occurs most frequently when people fail to figure out their talent. They assume they know their gift because they've done well in a certain subject in school or because someone has told them they would be a success in this or that field. They've never taken the time or made the effort, however, to do the spade work on their own. To dig down deep into themselves and discover what it is that they love to do and do best.

That's why it's so important to take the Career De-Stress Test. It's a way to pinpoint your talent or confirm that you already have. And only that sure knowledge can support the development of a healthy and rewarding career.

Thanks for reading,
Peter

Workplace Bullies

Do you work with a workplace bully? I've had to work with a few in my career. I once had a co-worker who apparently didn't get the memo that it is inappropriate to swear at university committee meetings. I had a boss who was hopelessly unqualified for her job, realized it, and took her anger out on me. And, I once worked for someone who yelled at employees for carrying too much change in their pockets (after all, coins can be so loud!).

Working with, or worse, for a workplace bully can be incredibly stressful. When you combine issues of power, personal finances, unpredictability and inter-personal conflict, you get a potent recipe. So, how should you deal with these situations? Peter Weddle, in his book Work Strong, recommends you simply deny these workplace bullies your talent. But, even Weddle admits that quitting your job, and your paycheck, is easier said than done.

How did I handle my workplace bullies? For the curser in the story above, he was eventually let go from the university. The one who was in over her head was switched to a lower position, one she probably should have been assigned to in the first place. Both give me hope that there is such a thing as workplace karma -- that workplace bullies ultimately become the victims of their own behavior. The boss who hated coins? Well, in that case I followed Weddle's advice and quit.

One of the few positives of dealing with workplace bullies is that, after you live through them, they tend to make great stories. And this has me thinking. Chances are you've had to deal with a workplace bully at some point in your career. If you have, I encourage you to enter a comment below, share your experience and, more importantly, how you dealt with it.