July 23, 2025 • 33 mins
Since the pandemic, universities have focused attention on student mental health. In this episode, Rebecca Pope-Ruark and Lee Skallerup Bassette join us to discuss faculty and staff mental health and wellbeing.
Rebecca is the Director of Faculty Professional Development at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She has 17 years of experience teaching undergraduates and is a Certified Scrum Master and design thinking workshop facilitator, an ICF-certified coach, and the host of The Agile Academic podcast. Rebecca is the author of Unraveling Faculty Burnout: Pathways to Reckoning and Renewal and the coeditor of Redesigning Liberal Education: Innovative Design for a Twenty-First-Century Undergraduate Education. Lee is the Assistant Director of Digital Learning at Georgetown University and is a regular contributor to Inside Higher Ed, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and ProfHacker. She is also the editor of Affective Labor and Alt-AC Careers and co-hosts the All Things ADHD podcast. Rebecca and Lee are editors of: Of Many Minds: Neurodiversity and Mental Health Among University Faculty and Staff, which is scheduled for release later this summer.
A transcript of this episode and show notes may be found at http://teaforteaching.com.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Since the pandemic, universities have focused attention on student mental health. In this
episode, we shift the focus to faculty and staff mental health and wellbeing.
Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective
(00:23):
practices in teaching and learning. This podcast series is hosted by
John Kane, an economist... ...and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer...
...and features guests doing important research and advocacy work to make higher education more
inclusive and supportive of all learners. Our guests today are Rebecca Pope-Ruark and Lee
(00:50):
Skallerup Bassette. Rebecca is the Director of Faculty Professional Development at the Georgia
Institute of Technology. She has 17 years of experience teaching undergraduates and
is a Certified Scrum Master and design thinking workshop facilitator, an ICF-certified coach, and
the host of The Agile Academic podcast. Rebecca is the author of Unraveling Faculty Burnout:
(01:12):
Pathways to Reckoning and Renewal and the coeditor of Redesigning Liberal Education: Innovative
Design for a Twenty-First-Century Undergraduate Education. Lee is the Assistant Director of
Digital Learning at Georgetown University and is a regular contributor to Inside Higher Ed,
The Chronicle of Higher Education, and ProfHacker. She is also the editor of Affective Labor and
(01:33):
Alt-AC Careers and co-hosts the All Things ADHD podcast. Rebecca and Lee are editors of:
Of Many Minds (01:40):
Neurodiversity and Mental Health Among University Faculty and Staff,
which is scheduled for release later this summer. Welcome Lee and welcome back, Rebecca.
Thank you for having us. Yeah, thanks so much.
Our teas today are (01:51):
Rebecca, are you drinking tea today?
I am drinking a Starbucks iced black tea lemonade, and enjoying it quite a lot.
A good way to start the summer. And Lee?
This is a Mango Maui iced tea. Well, I made it into an iced tea, but this is a
Mango Maui herbal tea.Sounds interesting.
And Rebecca? I'm drinking English
(02:13):
tea time this afternoon, John.Very good. And I am drinking
an oolong tea today.So we invited you here today
to discuss Of Many Minds. Could you tell us a little bit about the origin story of the book?
Sure. I'll take that one. In 2020 through about 2022 I was working on a book on faculty burnout,
and that book came out in November of 2022 and as I was researching that book,
(02:36):
I was talking to a lot of people who had a lot of stories about their own wellbeing and their
own mental health and how that connected to the burnout stories that they were telling me. And it
was a big part of my journey as I was experiencing burnout as well. And we were going through a
period of time in the midst of COVID where, of course we were spending a lot of energy and a
lot of time thinking about student wellbeing, obviously. And we were starting to question,
(03:00):
what about faculty and staff wellbeing at the same time? So that led into some conversations
with some folks, and eventually hooking up with Lee and proposing this collection. It was
originally going to be stories and critiques, and by the time we started getting the stories and the
stories were just so powerful that we decided to just go with the first-person essays.
How did you select the essays for this book? We put out a call in our various social media
(03:24):
networks, spread the word. Again, it really helped Rebecca having a book out on burnout,
and myself having a podcast about having ADHD, so we were able to really spread the word about it,
and then really we just wanted to honor the authors of the stories. The selection process was
very much a labor of respect in terms of ensuring that the stories were told in such a way that was
(03:52):
authentic to the person telling it, and in a respectful way, and that were relevant for our
readers. To give an example, there's an essay that we kind of call a bonus essay at the end,
which is one of the few that gave advice. It was a little bit more student facing, but certainly
was advice that you could give to anyone, and we really thought it was important. And so even
(04:13):
though it didn't fit into buckets that we had set up to section off the book, we were like, this is
still an important piece, and this is an important perspective, and so we're going to find a way to
include it. And so it was really with the attitude of inclusivity as well that we wanted to be as
inclusive and expansive as possible when it came to the variety of voices that we published.
(04:34):
To help frame our conversation, can you define neurodiversity for us?
No. So, neurodiversity is… there's some debate on it, and in the introduction to our book,
we tried to keep it as expansive as possible. And so we, for our purposes, included mental illness.
(04:56):
We included cognitive disabilities. We considered mental health and any kind of diagnosis, either
self diagnosed or officially diagnosed. So we have stories from bipolar, autism and ADHD, depression,
PTSD, anxiety. I know I'm missing some, it’s not an exhaustive list. We really wanted to
(05:23):
be as expansive as possible and inclusive as possible in our definition of neurodiversity.
Some people will say that mental health issues might not be considered a part of that, and it
is limited to things like ADHD, dyslexia, and even then, sometimes dyslexia isn't neurodiverse,
it's a learning disability. So again, there's a lot of debate,
(05:45):
and we just wanted to say that if your brain works a little different, be it on a social level,
on an emotional level, on a cognitive level, on all three levels, we want to hear your stories.
And that's where the title came from, too, the Of Many Minds piece. We feel like we focus so much on
the logical aspects of our minds, but there are so many other elements that we bring into our
workplaces and into our lives that we wanted to make sure those were represented well.
(06:08):
What are some of the most common types of mental health issues or mental illness that
faculty have been experiencing, whether at increased rates or being more willing
to vocalize the existence of mental health issues, which used to be much more hidden.
One of the things is that, particularly this book, brings up and Rebecca had previously published a
book on burnout and burnout stories, and what this particular book brought to light is in a
(06:34):
lot of cases, the depression, the burnout, the anxiety that the people who were telling their
stories eventually came to realize is that the reason they were depressed, the reason that they
were burned out, the reason that they were anxious was either because of a diagnosed or, very often,
undiagnosed condition, such as ADHD, such as bipolar, such as PTSD, such as ADHD. And so in
(07:00):
their efforts to try to mask, in their efforts to try and fit in, in their efforts to try and appear
normal, quote, unquote, normal, they were putting such stress on themselves that that led to other
conditions coming up, and it was very often the depression, the burnout, high levels of anxiety,
(07:20):
that led them to seek help, and that help led to the diagnoses very often.
Not that it wasn't a universal experience when the people tell these stories, some of them,
they knew the diagnosis and tried to push through anyways, because ableism is a hell of a drug. But
for the most part, for these stories, for those people who are neurodiverse in higher education,
(07:42):
a lot of the mental health issues stemmed from their attempts to mask whatever other neurodiverse
condition or conditions they happen to have.And a lot of people were finding out or starting
to think about themselves and the way they process things in different ways when they had
their children being diagnosed. They would talk about that being kind of the start of their story
(08:02):
or their journey, or students coming to them and then realizing that they have some of the similar
characteristics with the student accommodations, or could benefit from some of those accommodations
as well. So it really crosses the board, which is, again, why we wanted to have such a wide spectrum
of folks. We've got a variety of folks with different autism diagnoses as well as ADHD, CPTSD,
those kinds of things, OCD, a lot of acronyms…Yeah.
(08:24):
…but they were coming from this perspective of feeling like what's going on, what's happening,
and how do I process this? And it's those stigmas and that masking can be so exhausting that it can
lead to things like burnout. So having the diagnosis, or even a self diagnosis,
becomes a real turning point for many of our contributors who speak about their diagnosis
(08:44):
or the path to diagnosis, and what that allowed and unlocked for them after being diagnosed.
You started hinting at some of these things, but can you describe some of the challenges
facing neurodiverse faculty and faculty that are experiencing mental illness?
So I think the biggest issue a lot of folks with neurodivergence or mental illness in higher ed
face is really related to stigma. So it's not an internal issue, it's an external issue in a lot of
(09:08):
ways. So they're facing these preconceived notions about what an academic should be,
or what someone who works in higher education should quote, unquote, be, and they're coming
in as their authentic selves and feeling like they really can't be those authentic selves. So
they end up spending all that energy masking. They spend all that energy trying to hide who
they are and not participating in the ways that they want to, and often when they try to… we have
(09:31):
several stories in there that really talk about folks who really tried to do some advocacy work
around these issues, and were kind of shut down in different ways. So folks in higher
ed weren't really listening or weren't open to these conversations. I think a lot of faculty
have preconceived notions about what students bring accommodations in for and may have some
negative perceptions that way, and those translate into their perceptions, potentially, of colleagues
(09:53):
who exhibit some similar behaviors or mindsets.I think part of it is, and I write about this in
the conclusion, is how we understand professionalism, and there's stigma,
but then there's also stereotype, and there's this idea of professionalism. And it is incredible the
number of contributors who, due to stigma, described the ideal professor: white, older,
(10:20):
male, upper class, married, hetero, all of that kind of stuff. And so it's not just the people who
are neurodivergent who have this kind of idea and thus a stigma attached to them, it's also
our colleagues in higher education who have this idea of what an academic should look like, or how
they should behave, or how productive they should be, and what that productivity should look like.
(10:45):
And one of the ones that has stayed with me is one of the essays was about someone who was denied
promotion because they didn't socialize enough with the department, and so they were like, “We're
not sure if you're really invested and a part of this community,” and this was somebody whose
neurodivergent condition absolutely exhausted them at the end of the day of socializing with
(11:10):
students, socializing with colleagues in the hallways, doing everything they needed to do,
which they understood. It wasn't really masking, but it was just like this takes up so much of my
energy that there is literally nothing left for me to be able to go out afterwards. And they describe
the process of going home, turning off all the lights, and just being and being able to recharge,
(11:30):
but that… it's not even an accommodation. It's just like we expect you, like a good colleague,
a professional colleague looks like somebody who comes out for dinner and drinks with people
at least once a week and comes to all of the after hours activities that we do. So we've
all internalized this idea of what a productive professional looks like in higher education, and
(11:56):
any sort of deviation from that is… the case that I’ve given is probably one of the more severe,
was punished. And that adds to the stress, and that adds to the feelings of alienation, and that
adds to depression and anxiety and burnout.And we're living in somewhat interesting times,
going back to the pandemic, the rise of faculty burnout, as we've talked about earlier,
(12:21):
and we're in an environment where there's not a lot of support at the federal level,
for a higher education in general, in fact, it's being outright attacked in many ways.
Might all of that help create an environment where perhaps anxiety, stress, and depression
might be normalized, as well as with the rise of contingent faculty, where many, many faculty
(12:42):
members are trying to do many more things than ever before, than in earlier periods when we
had a larger proportion of tenured faculty with perhaps fewer demands placed on their time.
Yeah, I think there are a couple of things going on there. I think that we've got pandemic, we've
got racial injustice, we've got AI, then we've got the White House right now, it’s what else could
blow up? Don't put that out there in the universe, but it has been kind of a collective trauma for
(13:06):
years for everyone. And if you're spending a lot of energy fighting stigma, fighting stereotype,
masking, you don't have a lot of energy left for fighting the good fight in a lot of ways,
so you have to take care of yourself as well. So I think we are in a high anxiety…. obviously,
we haven't seen the statistics yet, but we can estimate that things like burnout and anxiety and
(13:28):
depression are probably going to go through the roof right now for a lot of people, and there's
a lot of anxiety attached to that. And then you factor in other differences, and it becomes even
more stressful. So how do they do that? And we can factor in the workload level of folks who
are tenured, non-tenure track, adjunct. There's a lot of neoliberal sentiment in the way we look at
(13:49):
higher education these days, and how we perform in education these days, what is measured, and
I think that becomes really challenging for folks who have different cognitive processing or another
issue that might help in other ways to alleviate some of that anxiety. It's difficult to figure out
how to get your way in and out of that anxiety.Yeah, and this was probably one of the hardest
parts, is how to conclude this book. What kind of advice should we give? And it varies as like:
(14:14):
dismantle ableism? remove stigma? It's all very high level structural issues,
as you said, have better federal support for mental health treatment. There was just a… I
think it was ProPublica did it, but I just saw that insurance companies are willfully
making it more difficult to access mental health services, to keep the costs down. So it really
(14:36):
is these individual stories within a much larger societal system that is working very hard against,
not just neurodiverse folks, like at this point, it's everyone. A friend of mine used to put it
that the neurodiverse and the disabled folk are the canary in the coal mine, that if it's
hitting us, it's going to hit the rest of y'all soon. In terms of being able to say, “uhhh,
(14:59):
it's hopeless,” because it's not, and if it was hopeless, then we wouldn't take the time and the
effort and the energy to edit a book like this, that there's power in sharing people's stories.
There's power in gathering folks together around these kinds of stories, to start conversations
within your academic unit, within your center, within your team, around these kinds of issues
(15:24):
to be able to then start addressing them, where we might not be able to dismantle systemic ableism,
but we certainly can make it better for the handful of individuals that we have direct impact
on, and you hope that that grows from there.Yeah, and those first-person perspectives are so
important in this case. The stories are just so powerful that you really just have to sit
(15:49):
with them and really think about, how have you participated in this process or in this social
structure, and what do we do in higher education to be the open system and the place where everyone
is welcome? There's a lot of characteristics of higher education that fit very well for
neurodivergent folks, but there are also just large scale ableism and sexism and things like
(16:10):
that can cause these huge gaps in participation. So there's some big challenges there, but we're
hoping that this is one step in getting people to kind of really understand from a first-person
perspective what other people's lives are like in our disciplines that are in our industry,
and move from there into conversation.I think a lot about higher education’s initiatives
(16:31):
to promote things like inclusive teaching, inclusive pedagogy, and Universal Design for
Learning, and other ways to establish inclusive environments for a wide variety of students.
But what are some of the ways that we can improve the environment for our diverse faculty,
our neurodiverse faculty, our faculty experiencing mental illness, to really think about inclusion in
(16:57):
this other space, and not just around students.I think one of the ways is to be able to talk
about removing stigma. We probably all experienced this during the pandemic or even afterwards,
and maybe even still now, where it's like, “make sure you're taking your breaks, make sure you're
taking your time off,” but then when you do, you're made to feel bad about it. And so, again,
(17:20):
one of the stories talked about they had to take a medical leave due to mental health struggles,
and nobody talked to them, nobody offered meal trains for them, and they were contrasting their
experience with their colleague who had to take a leave because they had cancer, and that this
was kind of acceptable, but it was just really stark. And again, it's a very stark example of
(17:45):
ways that we treat mental health differently than physical health, very often, that if you
get really sick in a way that we recognize, there is a community that forms around you,
if you get sick in a way that is not recognizable… and Rebecca, you talk about this too, around how
(18:07):
so much of our professional identity is around our brains. When something goes wrong with your brain,
it almost feels like, well, we don't want to catch that, right? or we don't want to deal with that
or we don't want to deal with that reality and confront that reality. So that's one of the ways,
is that it is just treat it like any other illness, as you would treat it for faculty. Now,
(18:31):
the flip side of that is that some places don't treat physical illness very well and make you feel
bad if you take any sort of sick leave, parental leave, any of that kind of stuff. But the other
way is, for me, is just having open conversations in ways where, when thinking through, how do you
work best? And again, at least tenured faculty and tenured faculty tend to have a lot of flexibility
(18:54):
in their schedule. I prefer to teach in the afternoons and evenings because it takes me two
hours to get started in the morning, or I can't teach in the evenings because I'm so burned out
from the day no matter what, that seven o'clock at night is a problem. We think of universal
design. How are we expected to participate in meetings? My podcast co-host, she always says,
(19:16):
“I can either look like I'm paying attention in a meeting, or I can actually be paying attention
in a meeting, because the process of looking like I'm paying attention in the meeting takes all of
my cognitive energy, and therefore I actually have retained absolutely nothing of what was
discussed in this meeting.” So again, having those conversations, asking the questions,
(19:36):
not jumping to assumptions around. “Oh well, they're not listening because they're staring out
the window or doodling,” or they can't come to the social events or any of these kinds of things, so
that there aren't these assumptions that are made, but instead open conversations that are had.
One of our contributors talks about trying to get mental health and neurodiversity included
(19:58):
in the inclusion work that was happening on their campus, and really trying to be
an advocate for that, getting on all the DEI committees that this person could get onto,
trying to form kind of an autism community employee research group at their institution,
and really just being kind of fought for that. He was fighting for it, but he was getting a
lot of pushback, that it was very difficult for people to think about inclusion in that sense.
(20:22):
So we need to broaden what we're thinking when we think about inclusion, to make sure that we are
including difference of all sorts, which includes mental health and neurodiversity as well.
And as you noted, a lot of people have been diagnosed later in life with being
on the spectrum or with ADHD or other issues. Is that something, perhaps, they should share
(20:42):
with a colleague, so that their colleagues can better understand why they don't fit in,
combined with more institutional support, perhaps, for just general training on neurodiversity,
because as faculty learn more about the behavior of individuals who are on the spectrum or who have
ADHD, it might make it a lot easier for removing some of that stigma, maybe.
(21:04):
Maybe, well, and that's always the danger. We know, and again, through the stories,
there are, as you said, institutions that were very resistant to these kinds of things. There
are other institutions and colleagues who were very accepting, but often even talking about it
didn't help, because the people on the other side of the conversation were not interested
(21:28):
in having a conversation, were not receptive to these things. So I think that that is “yes,
talk about it,” but be careful. Again, there's this idea of protecting yourself,
where you probably know your institution, your department, your units’ politics best
and if disclosure is something that might be, at best, ignored and at worst, punished,
(21:53):
because that is always the risk. It's particularly for contingent, particularly for staff, and even
we had tenured folks where it got so bad that they gave up their tenured positions. As an individual,
yes, it feels so good to get the diagnosis, but then the acceptance more broadly of that
diagnosis is not always a wonderful experience, unfortunately, and that's why I think it's that
(22:17):
being open to have conversations and listening and unpacking those biases that you have,
and those stigmas, those are the important things. So if somebody does come and say,
“I just got an ADHD diagnosis, I just was diagnosed with PTSD, and this explains X,
Y and Z in terms of what's been happening with me,” to be able to listen and to hear it,
(22:39):
and then to move forward in productive ways.It can be really difficult for faculty to find
community in these spaces when you have to decide to disclose, who to disclose to,
and then does that lead to maybe meeting some other folks who have disclosed or allies to
kind of form a coalition so it is easier to speak out and to advocate when there's numbers,
(23:06):
when you're not just alone, but it's hard for faculty to find those connections,
because there is so much masking that has to happen to feel protected in your position.
Well. It also speaks to the silos that tend to exist in higher education as well. How
many faculty, again, depends on the size of your campus, obviously, but we tend to get it's like,
“our department is the university,” and so maybe your college, depending on how big or small your
(23:31):
college is, but if you're like the College of Arts and Sciences, it's sort of like, “well,
I've got my department and maybe a couple of colleagues who are studying something related,
and I'm a humanities person.” So it's like over in history, or maybe over in religion or that,
but mostly it's like, you know the people in your department. And so, even for neurotypical, the
(23:52):
challenge of belonging is that if you don't belong in your department, there's very little effort to
help you belong within the larger institution, very often as faculty, which is also why
contingent faculty tend to feel so disconnected, is because the primary point of belonging is the
department, and depending on the department, most of them make it very clear that contingent faculty
(24:16):
are not a part of the community and that they are not welcome. So there's that added challenge as
well, of like, how do you even go about finding community outside of your academic discipline?
Yeah, and I think too, following that even further, that you get to the point where “do
I disclose so that I can belong? Is that coming out process part of advocacy now? Do I now have
(24:38):
to be the advocate for this?” And maybe you just want to belong in your institution. You
just want to belong in your department. You don't necessarily don't necessarily want to
have that advocacy role. We kind of expect it of people when they disclose and we don't necessarily
want to be forcing that onto someone.I think that's why it's really important
for those who are comfortable speaking out and advocating, whether you have a diagnosis
or you're neurotypical or whatever, that those that are comfortable or in spaces or
(25:03):
in positions of power that can speak out, it's important to help move a culture in a space. Can
you provide some advice for educational developers, instructional designers,
etc, folks that are maybe doing some professional development work on campus, on how to support
neurodiversity and faculty who might identify as having a mental illness or might be having mental
(25:26):
health challenges? What should we be doing?I think the first step is learning. I think
there's reading to be done. There are resources to be accessing so that you have a sense of what
folks are up against. Our book contributes to that by giving you some first-person narratives to have
conversations around, so you don't necessarily feel like you're calling people out in your space.
(25:46):
You can talk about these cases. So I mean, I really hope it gets picked up as a book club
piece for a lot of places, so that they can have those conversations around this. But it's gonna
take some additional learning, and maybe that's training. Maybe that’s just some good reading
about these topics. Maybe it's a Coursera class or something about understanding neurodivergence,
but I think there's learning to be done for all of us in conversation
(26:08):
and in the research that's out there.Yeah, and I think that the thing that works
against all of us in all of this is just time. My advice is time and patience, because even then,
you can do all the reading on ADHD, you can do all the reading on autism, you can do all the
reading on depression or PTSD, but it's going to be different in every single person. Again,
on our podcast, All the Things ADHD, my co-host and I have a joke, or we'll say to each other,
(26:32):
“it wouldn't surprise you to know that my experience is completely different,” or “that
thing that helps you sounds like my nightmare.” And so it's really being able to take the time
and that openness to be able to say, “Okay, what do you need from me? How can I help?” And some
of that is really also gaining a self awareness. Part of it is the diagnosis, and then accepting
(26:55):
it and just being like, “Okay, I need to figure out what works for me now,” rather than trying to
make everything that everyone says should work for me, work for me. So it's fairly typical. I give
an example, Right now we're working on getting ready to launch all the summer online courses,
and so I'm a learning designer, I’m working with faculty. I have a grad student working with me
(27:17):
as well in building these courses. I'm fine for 95% of it, but the last 5%, I struggle to
get that last 5% done. “Add the captions to this video,” to me is more daunting than “build this
course.” And so, as an awareness, I have to be very clear with the people I'm working with, and
I'm sorry if I keep repeating myself, but I have this to do list, and I want to make sure that I
(27:42):
really get in and understand it, so that I do it, because these are the things that I struggle with,
and it's really hard for us to talk about the things that we struggle with. We are supposed
to be experts, particularly in higher education. We are supposed to be the subject matter experts,
the knowledgeable ones. And so to kind of admit fallibility and to say these are the things that
(28:02):
I need help with, and then to be able to ask for them. And so I think it's a two-way street in
that like, ask them what they need. And if it's an unconventional ask, don't just scoff at it,
probe it a little bit. But on the other side, try to ask for what you need. Try to figure out
what it is you need, that if you're bad at that last 5% don't just tell the Learning Designer,
(28:23):
okay, yeah, no, I got this last 5% be like, “No, I'm like, Could you do the captioning?” Again,
there might be stuff in contracts and all unions, but if we're having these conversations,
if we gain an awareness ourselves about what we need, and then we are greeted with an
openness to hear those needs that makes such a huge difference in terms of productivity,
(28:44):
if we want to reduce it to that, but just in terms of the experience being a more pleasant one.
I think this conversation really pokes at a lot of things that need to be discussed in our campuses,
and we need to lead some of these conversations to get the word out. And your book might be a
really great platform to do that through a reading group. Can you tease a little
(29:05):
bit more about some of the specific topics that are addressed in some of the essays?
Oh, goodness, it's such a wide spectrum, like we've mentioned, we've got folks different places
on the autism spectrum, ADHD, anxiety, depression, all kinds of folks who really are coming from all
over the corners of higher education. So it's really well represented. You'll be able to find
(29:26):
someone that you can connect with in the reading of these stories. And we have some sections around
masking. We have a section around stigma, specifically, we have a section around higher
education structures that can exacerbate for folks these experiences. So there's just so much to draw
from that you'll find someone that you connect to or that you maybe see yourself reflected in.
(29:47):
There's also a lot of other kinds of intersectionality, talking about gender,
talking about sexuality, talking about race, and so those are also in there, and they are
linked in terms of the ways that, how can you tease out: Is this because I am visibly queer,
or is this because I am autistic? Is this because I am a woman in higher education,
(30:11):
or is this because I have ADHD? Again, all of these things come up as well, and so this is also
an opportunity to really start those conversations on a more broader definition of inclusivity,
because it isn't always just only one.We always end with the question, what's next?
What's next? Well, the book will come out. Yay! So we hope to be having lots
(30:36):
of conversations with different groups of faculty around the country about that book,
especially if it gets picked up and read. So we're looking forward to that. I personally
am currently working on a book about women's leadership and burnout in higher education. So
that's my project for the rest of the year. Yeah, the book is coming out in August, and so we
wanted to take the opportunity over the summer, when things calm down a bit, to talk about,
(30:57):
do we want to do a podcast where we have some of the contributors come on who are willing to
talk a little bit more about their essays, answer these questions, and so we can put up a website,
all kinds of fun stuff that right now I just can't think about. No more spoons, as they say,
there are no more spoons for that. Hopefully it will spark conversations. Hopefully we
(31:18):
will be able to go and Zoom in to campuses to talk about these experiences. Hopefully
other neurodiverse faculty will feel empowered to come forward with their own stories as well. And
you hope that this creates more opportunities for conversation, more opportunities for storytelling,
more opportunities for connection in all of those kinds of ways where we've opened the door
(31:42):
a crack. It is really only just a beginning, but hopefully it just starts something that
other people can take up and keep going with in terms of their own. People always ask us, like,
“is there a campus that's done it really well?” And we're like, “No, not really, no.” And so
what you hope is, in 5, 10 years, because academia moves slow, but that's fine, we will have examples
(32:05):
of institutions that are doing it very well, that will have case studies for this and models
that other institutions can emulate. And so again, like there's what we hope comes next is: “Here's
a starting point. Go forward with this and create. Feel empowered, feel creative, feel less alone and
(32:26):
go in and in small ways, make things better.”Well, thank you. I'm very much looking forward to
reading your book when it comes out in August, and it's an area that all institutions can do better
with, and all faculty perhaps can do better with, in terms of creating a more supportive
environment for everyone.Definitely.
This is a great project, and we're looking forward to your future projects as well.
(32:46):
Thank you so much. Thank you.
If you've enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes
or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on
our Tea for Teaching Facebook page. You can find show notes, transcripts and
(33:08):
other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.
Since the pandemic, universities have focused attention on student mental health. In this
episode, we shift the focus to faculty and staff mental health and wellbeing.
Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective
(00:23):
practices in teaching and learning. This podcast series is hosted by
John Kane, an economist... ...and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer...
...and features guests doing important research and advocacy work to make higher education more
inclusive and supportive of all learners. Our guests today are Rebecca Pope-Ruark and Lee
(00:50):
Skallerup Bassette. Rebecca is the Director of Faculty Professional Development at the Georgia
Institute of Technology. She has 17 years of experience teaching undergraduates and
is a Certified Scrum Master and design thinking workshop facilitator, an ICF-certified coach, and
the host of The Agile Academic podcast. Rebecca is the author of Unraveling Faculty Burnout:
(01:12):
Pathways to Reckoning and Renewal and the coeditor of Redesigning Liberal Education: Innovative
Design for a Twenty-First-Century Undergraduate Education. Lee is the Assistant Director of
Digital Learning at Georgetown University and is a regular contributor to Inside Higher Ed,
The Chronicle of Higher Education, and ProfHacker. She is also the editor of Affective Labor and
(01:33):
Alt-AC Careers and co-hosts the All Things ADHD podcast. Rebecca and Lee are editors of:
Of Many Minds (01:40):
Neurodiversity and Mental Health Among University Faculty and Staff,
which is scheduled for release later this summer. Welcome Lee and welcome back, Rebecca.
Thank you for having us. Yeah, thanks so much.
Our teas today are (01:51):
Rebecca, are you drinking tea today?
I am drinking a Starbucks iced black tea lemonade, and enjoying it quite a lot.
A good way to start the summer. And Lee?
This is a Mango Maui iced tea. Well, I made it into an iced tea, but this is a
Mango Maui herbal tea.Sounds interesting.
And Rebecca? I'm drinking English
(02:13):
tea time this afternoon, John.Very good. And I am drinking
an oolong tea today.So we invited you here today
to discuss Of Many Minds. Could you tell us a little bit about the origin story of the book?
Sure. I'll take that one. In 2020 through about 2022 I was working on a book on faculty burnout,
and that book came out in November of 2022 and as I was researching that book,
(02:36):
I was talking to a lot of people who had a lot of stories about their own wellbeing and their
own mental health and how that connected to the burnout stories that they were telling me. And it
was a big part of my journey as I was experiencing burnout as well. And we were going through a
period of time in the midst of COVID where, of course we were spending a lot of energy and a
lot of time thinking about student wellbeing, obviously. And we were starting to question,
(03:00):
what about faculty and staff wellbeing at the same time? So that led into some conversations
with some folks, and eventually hooking up with Lee and proposing this collection. It was
originally going to be stories and critiques, and by the time we started getting the stories and the
stories were just so powerful that we decided to just go with the first-person essays.
How did you select the essays for this book? We put out a call in our various social media
(03:24):
networks, spread the word. Again, it really helped Rebecca having a book out on burnout,
and myself having a podcast about having ADHD, so we were able to really spread the word about it,
and then really we just wanted to honor the authors of the stories. The selection process was
very much a labor of respect in terms of ensuring that the stories were told in such a way that was
(03:52):
authentic to the person telling it, and in a respectful way, and that were relevant for our
readers. To give an example, there's an essay that we kind of call a bonus essay at the end,
which is one of the few that gave advice. It was a little bit more student facing, but certainly
was advice that you could give to anyone, and we really thought it was important. And so even
(04:13):
though it didn't fit into buckets that we had set up to section off the book, we were like, this is
still an important piece, and this is an important perspective, and so we're going to find a way to
include it. And so it was really with the attitude of inclusivity as well that we wanted to be as
inclusive and expansive as possible when it came to the variety of voices that we published.
(04:34):
To help frame our conversation, can you define neurodiversity for us?
No. So, neurodiversity is… there's some debate on it, and in the introduction to our book,
we tried to keep it as expansive as possible. And so we, for our purposes, included mental illness.
(04:56):
We included cognitive disabilities. We considered mental health and any kind of diagnosis, either
self diagnosed or officially diagnosed. So we have stories from bipolar, autism and ADHD, depression,
PTSD, anxiety. I know I'm missing some, it’s not an exhaustive list. We really wanted to
(05:23):
be as expansive as possible and inclusive as possible in our definition of neurodiversity.
Some people will say that mental health issues might not be considered a part of that, and it
is limited to things like ADHD, dyslexia, and even then, sometimes dyslexia isn't neurodiverse,
it's a learning disability. So again, there's a lot of debate,
(05:45):
and we just wanted to say that if your brain works a little different, be it on a social level,
on an emotional level, on a cognitive level, on all three levels, we want to hear your stories.
And that's where the title came from, too, the Of Many Minds piece. We feel like we focus so much on
the logical aspects of our minds, but there are so many other elements that we bring into our
workplaces and into our lives that we wanted to make sure those were represented well.
(06:08):
What are some of the most common types of mental health issues or mental illness that
faculty have been experiencing, whether at increased rates or being more willing
to vocalize the existence of mental health issues, which used to be much more hidden.
One of the things is that, particularly this book, brings up and Rebecca had previously published a
book on burnout and burnout stories, and what this particular book brought to light is in a
(06:34):
lot of cases, the depression, the burnout, the anxiety that the people who were telling their
stories eventually came to realize is that the reason they were depressed, the reason that they
were burned out, the reason that they were anxious was either because of a diagnosed or, very often,
undiagnosed condition, such as ADHD, such as bipolar, such as PTSD, such as ADHD. And so in
(07:00):
their efforts to try to mask, in their efforts to try and fit in, in their efforts to try and appear
normal, quote, unquote, normal, they were putting such stress on themselves that that led to other
conditions coming up, and it was very often the depression, the burnout, high levels of anxiety,
(07:20):
that led them to seek help, and that help led to the diagnoses very often.
Not that it wasn't a universal experience when the people tell these stories, some of them,
they knew the diagnosis and tried to push through anyways, because ableism is a hell of a drug. But
for the most part, for these stories, for those people who are neurodiverse in higher education,
(07:42):
a lot of the mental health issues stemmed from their attempts to mask whatever other neurodiverse
condition or conditions they happen to have.And a lot of people were finding out or starting
to think about themselves and the way they process things in different ways when they had
their children being diagnosed. They would talk about that being kind of the start of their story
(08:02):
or their journey, or students coming to them and then realizing that they have some of the similar
characteristics with the student accommodations, or could benefit from some of those accommodations
as well. So it really crosses the board, which is, again, why we wanted to have such a wide spectrum
of folks. We've got a variety of folks with different autism diagnoses as well as ADHD, CPTSD,
those kinds of things, OCD, a lot of acronyms…Yeah.
(08:24):
…but they were coming from this perspective of feeling like what's going on, what's happening,
and how do I process this? And it's those stigmas and that masking can be so exhausting that it can
lead to things like burnout. So having the diagnosis, or even a self diagnosis,
becomes a real turning point for many of our contributors who speak about their diagnosis
(08:44):
or the path to diagnosis, and what that allowed and unlocked for them after being diagnosed.
You started hinting at some of these things, but can you describe some of the challenges
facing neurodiverse faculty and faculty that are experiencing mental illness?
So I think the biggest issue a lot of folks with neurodivergence or mental illness in higher ed
face is really related to stigma. So it's not an internal issue, it's an external issue in a lot of
(09:08):
ways. So they're facing these preconceived notions about what an academic should be,
or what someone who works in higher education should quote, unquote, be, and they're coming
in as their authentic selves and feeling like they really can't be those authentic selves. So
they end up spending all that energy masking. They spend all that energy trying to hide who
they are and not participating in the ways that they want to, and often when they try to… we have
(09:31):
several stories in there that really talk about folks who really tried to do some advocacy work
around these issues, and were kind of shut down in different ways. So folks in higher
ed weren't really listening or weren't open to these conversations. I think a lot of faculty
have preconceived notions about what students bring accommodations in for and may have some
negative perceptions that way, and those translate into their perceptions, potentially, of colleagues
(09:53):
who exhibit some similar behaviors or mindsets.I think part of it is, and I write about this in
the conclusion, is how we understand professionalism, and there's stigma,
but then there's also stereotype, and there's this idea of professionalism. And it is incredible the
number of contributors who, due to stigma, described the ideal professor: white, older,
(10:20):
male, upper class, married, hetero, all of that kind of stuff. And so it's not just the people who
are neurodivergent who have this kind of idea and thus a stigma attached to them, it's also
our colleagues in higher education who have this idea of what an academic should look like, or how
they should behave, or how productive they should be, and what that productivity should look like.
(10:45):
And one of the ones that has stayed with me is one of the essays was about someone who was denied
promotion because they didn't socialize enough with the department, and so they were like, “We're
not sure if you're really invested and a part of this community,” and this was somebody whose
neurodivergent condition absolutely exhausted them at the end of the day of socializing with
(11:10):
students, socializing with colleagues in the hallways, doing everything they needed to do,
which they understood. It wasn't really masking, but it was just like this takes up so much of my
energy that there is literally nothing left for me to be able to go out afterwards. And they describe
the process of going home, turning off all the lights, and just being and being able to recharge,
(11:30):
but that… it's not even an accommodation. It's just like we expect you, like a good colleague,
a professional colleague looks like somebody who comes out for dinner and drinks with people
at least once a week and comes to all of the after hours activities that we do. So we've
all internalized this idea of what a productive professional looks like in higher education, and
(11:56):
any sort of deviation from that is… the case that I’ve given is probably one of the more severe,
was punished. And that adds to the stress, and that adds to the feelings of alienation, and that
adds to depression and anxiety and burnout.And we're living in somewhat interesting times,
going back to the pandemic, the rise of faculty burnout, as we've talked about earlier,
(12:21):
and we're in an environment where there's not a lot of support at the federal level,
for a higher education in general, in fact, it's being outright attacked in many ways.
Might all of that help create an environment where perhaps anxiety, stress, and depression
might be normalized, as well as with the rise of contingent faculty, where many, many faculty
(12:42):
members are trying to do many more things than ever before, than in earlier periods when we
had a larger proportion of tenured faculty with perhaps fewer demands placed on their time.
Yeah, I think there are a couple of things going on there. I think that we've got pandemic, we've
got racial injustice, we've got AI, then we've got the White House right now, it’s what else could
blow up? Don't put that out there in the universe, but it has been kind of a collective trauma for
(13:06):
years for everyone. And if you're spending a lot of energy fighting stigma, fighting stereotype,
masking, you don't have a lot of energy left for fighting the good fight in a lot of ways,
so you have to take care of yourself as well. So I think we are in a high anxiety…. obviously,
we haven't seen the statistics yet, but we can estimate that things like burnout and anxiety and
(13:28):
depression are probably going to go through the roof right now for a lot of people, and there's
a lot of anxiety attached to that. And then you factor in other differences, and it becomes even
more stressful. So how do they do that? And we can factor in the workload level of folks who
are tenured, non-tenure track, adjunct. There's a lot of neoliberal sentiment in the way we look at
(13:49):
higher education these days, and how we perform in education these days, what is measured, and
I think that becomes really challenging for folks who have different cognitive processing or another
issue that might help in other ways to alleviate some of that anxiety. It's difficult to figure out
how to get your way in and out of that anxiety.Yeah, and this was probably one of the hardest
parts, is how to conclude this book. What kind of advice should we give? And it varies as like:
(14:14):
dismantle ableism? remove stigma? It's all very high level structural issues,
as you said, have better federal support for mental health treatment. There was just a… I
think it was ProPublica did it, but I just saw that insurance companies are willfully
making it more difficult to access mental health services, to keep the costs down. So it really
(14:36):
is these individual stories within a much larger societal system that is working very hard against,
not just neurodiverse folks, like at this point, it's everyone. A friend of mine used to put it
that the neurodiverse and the disabled folk are the canary in the coal mine, that if it's
hitting us, it's going to hit the rest of y'all soon. In terms of being able to say, “uhhh,
(14:59):
it's hopeless,” because it's not, and if it was hopeless, then we wouldn't take the time and the
effort and the energy to edit a book like this, that there's power in sharing people's stories.
There's power in gathering folks together around these kinds of stories, to start conversations
within your academic unit, within your center, within your team, around these kinds of issues
(15:24):
to be able to then start addressing them, where we might not be able to dismantle systemic ableism,
but we certainly can make it better for the handful of individuals that we have direct impact
on, and you hope that that grows from there.Yeah, and those first-person perspectives are so
important in this case. The stories are just so powerful that you really just have to sit
(15:49):
with them and really think about, how have you participated in this process or in this social
structure, and what do we do in higher education to be the open system and the place where everyone
is welcome? There's a lot of characteristics of higher education that fit very well for
neurodivergent folks, but there are also just large scale ableism and sexism and things like
(16:10):
that can cause these huge gaps in participation. So there's some big challenges there, but we're
hoping that this is one step in getting people to kind of really understand from a first-person
perspective what other people's lives are like in our disciplines that are in our industry,
and move from there into conversation.I think a lot about higher education’s initiatives
(16:31):
to promote things like inclusive teaching, inclusive pedagogy, and Universal Design for
Learning, and other ways to establish inclusive environments for a wide variety of students.
But what are some of the ways that we can improve the environment for our diverse faculty,
our neurodiverse faculty, our faculty experiencing mental illness, to really think about inclusion in
(16:57):
this other space, and not just around students.I think one of the ways is to be able to talk
about removing stigma. We probably all experienced this during the pandemic or even afterwards,
and maybe even still now, where it's like, “make sure you're taking your breaks, make sure you're
taking your time off,” but then when you do, you're made to feel bad about it. And so, again,
(17:20):
one of the stories talked about they had to take a medical leave due to mental health struggles,
and nobody talked to them, nobody offered meal trains for them, and they were contrasting their
experience with their colleague who had to take a leave because they had cancer, and that this
was kind of acceptable, but it was just really stark. And again, it's a very stark example of
(17:45):
ways that we treat mental health differently than physical health, very often, that if you
get really sick in a way that we recognize, there is a community that forms around you,
if you get sick in a way that is not recognizable… and Rebecca, you talk about this too, around how
(18:07):
so much of our professional identity is around our brains. When something goes wrong with your brain,
it almost feels like, well, we don't want to catch that, right? or we don't want to deal with that
or we don't want to deal with that reality and confront that reality. So that's one of the ways,
is that it is just treat it like any other illness, as you would treat it for faculty. Now,
(18:31):
the flip side of that is that some places don't treat physical illness very well and make you feel
bad if you take any sort of sick leave, parental leave, any of that kind of stuff. But the other
way is, for me, is just having open conversations in ways where, when thinking through, how do you
work best? And again, at least tenured faculty and tenured faculty tend to have a lot of flexibility
(18:54):
in their schedule. I prefer to teach in the afternoons and evenings because it takes me two
hours to get started in the morning, or I can't teach in the evenings because I'm so burned out
from the day no matter what, that seven o'clock at night is a problem. We think of universal
design. How are we expected to participate in meetings? My podcast co-host, she always says,
(19:16):
“I can either look like I'm paying attention in a meeting, or I can actually be paying attention
in a meeting, because the process of looking like I'm paying attention in the meeting takes all of
my cognitive energy, and therefore I actually have retained absolutely nothing of what was
discussed in this meeting.” So again, having those conversations, asking the questions,
(19:36):
not jumping to assumptions around. “Oh well, they're not listening because they're staring out
the window or doodling,” or they can't come to the social events or any of these kinds of things, so
that there aren't these assumptions that are made, but instead open conversations that are had.
One of our contributors talks about trying to get mental health and neurodiversity included
(19:58):
in the inclusion work that was happening on their campus, and really trying to be
an advocate for that, getting on all the DEI committees that this person could get onto,
trying to form kind of an autism community employee research group at their institution,
and really just being kind of fought for that. He was fighting for it, but he was getting a
lot of pushback, that it was very difficult for people to think about inclusion in that sense.
(20:22):
So we need to broaden what we're thinking when we think about inclusion, to make sure that we are
including difference of all sorts, which includes mental health and neurodiversity as well.
And as you noted, a lot of people have been diagnosed later in life with being
on the spectrum or with ADHD or other issues. Is that something, perhaps, they should share
(20:42):
with a colleague, so that their colleagues can better understand why they don't fit in,
combined with more institutional support, perhaps, for just general training on neurodiversity,
because as faculty learn more about the behavior of individuals who are on the spectrum or who have
ADHD, it might make it a lot easier for removing some of that stigma, maybe.
(21:04):
Maybe, well, and that's always the danger. We know, and again, through the stories,
there are, as you said, institutions that were very resistant to these kinds of things. There
are other institutions and colleagues who were very accepting, but often even talking about it
didn't help, because the people on the other side of the conversation were not interested
(21:28):
in having a conversation, were not receptive to these things. So I think that that is “yes,
talk about it,” but be careful. Again, there's this idea of protecting yourself,
where you probably know your institution, your department, your units’ politics best
and if disclosure is something that might be, at best, ignored and at worst, punished,
(21:53):
because that is always the risk. It's particularly for contingent, particularly for staff, and even
we had tenured folks where it got so bad that they gave up their tenured positions. As an individual,
yes, it feels so good to get the diagnosis, but then the acceptance more broadly of that
diagnosis is not always a wonderful experience, unfortunately, and that's why I think it's that
(22:17):
being open to have conversations and listening and unpacking those biases that you have,
and those stigmas, those are the important things. So if somebody does come and say,
“I just got an ADHD diagnosis, I just was diagnosed with PTSD, and this explains X,
Y and Z in terms of what's been happening with me,” to be able to listen and to hear it,
(22:39):
and then to move forward in productive ways.It can be really difficult for faculty to find
community in these spaces when you have to decide to disclose, who to disclose to,
and then does that lead to maybe meeting some other folks who have disclosed or allies to
kind of form a coalition so it is easier to speak out and to advocate when there's numbers,
(23:06):
when you're not just alone, but it's hard for faculty to find those connections,
because there is so much masking that has to happen to feel protected in your position.
Well. It also speaks to the silos that tend to exist in higher education as well. How
many faculty, again, depends on the size of your campus, obviously, but we tend to get it's like,
“our department is the university,” and so maybe your college, depending on how big or small your
(23:31):
college is, but if you're like the College of Arts and Sciences, it's sort of like, “well,
I've got my department and maybe a couple of colleagues who are studying something related,
and I'm a humanities person.” So it's like over in history, or maybe over in religion or that,
but mostly it's like, you know the people in your department. And so, even for neurotypical, the
(23:52):
challenge of belonging is that if you don't belong in your department, there's very little effort to
help you belong within the larger institution, very often as faculty, which is also why
contingent faculty tend to feel so disconnected, is because the primary point of belonging is the
department, and depending on the department, most of them make it very clear that contingent faculty
(24:16):
are not a part of the community and that they are not welcome. So there's that added challenge as
well, of like, how do you even go about finding community outside of your academic discipline?
Yeah, and I think too, following that even further, that you get to the point where “do
I disclose so that I can belong? Is that coming out process part of advocacy now? Do I now have
(24:38):
to be the advocate for this?” And maybe you just want to belong in your institution. You
just want to belong in your department. You don't necessarily don't necessarily want to
have that advocacy role. We kind of expect it of people when they disclose and we don't necessarily
want to be forcing that onto someone.I think that's why it's really important
for those who are comfortable speaking out and advocating, whether you have a diagnosis
or you're neurotypical or whatever, that those that are comfortable or in spaces or
(25:03):
in positions of power that can speak out, it's important to help move a culture in a space. Can
you provide some advice for educational developers, instructional designers,
etc, folks that are maybe doing some professional development work on campus, on how to support
neurodiversity and faculty who might identify as having a mental illness or might be having mental
(25:26):
health challenges? What should we be doing?I think the first step is learning. I think
there's reading to be done. There are resources to be accessing so that you have a sense of what
folks are up against. Our book contributes to that by giving you some first-person narratives to have
conversations around, so you don't necessarily feel like you're calling people out in your space.
(25:46):
You can talk about these cases. So I mean, I really hope it gets picked up as a book club
piece for a lot of places, so that they can have those conversations around this. But it's gonna
take some additional learning, and maybe that's training. Maybe that’s just some good reading
about these topics. Maybe it's a Coursera class or something about understanding neurodivergence,
but I think there's learning to be done for all of us in conversation
(26:08):
and in the research that's out there.Yeah, and I think that the thing that works
against all of us in all of this is just time. My advice is time and patience, because even then,
you can do all the reading on ADHD, you can do all the reading on autism, you can do all the
reading on depression or PTSD, but it's going to be different in every single person. Again,
on our podcast, All the Things ADHD, my co-host and I have a joke, or we'll say to each other,
(26:32):
“it wouldn't surprise you to know that my experience is completely different,” or “that
thing that helps you sounds like my nightmare.” And so it's really being able to take the time
and that openness to be able to say, “Okay, what do you need from me? How can I help?” And some
of that is really also gaining a self awareness. Part of it is the diagnosis, and then accepting
(26:55):
it and just being like, “Okay, I need to figure out what works for me now,” rather than trying to
make everything that everyone says should work for me, work for me. So it's fairly typical. I give
an example, Right now we're working on getting ready to launch all the summer online courses,
and so I'm a learning designer, I’m working with faculty. I have a grad student working with me
(27:17):
as well in building these courses. I'm fine for 95% of it, but the last 5%, I struggle to
get that last 5% done. “Add the captions to this video,” to me is more daunting than “build this
course.” And so, as an awareness, I have to be very clear with the people I'm working with, and
I'm sorry if I keep repeating myself, but I have this to do list, and I want to make sure that I
(27:42):
really get in and understand it, so that I do it, because these are the things that I struggle with,
and it's really hard for us to talk about the things that we struggle with. We are supposed
to be experts, particularly in higher education. We are supposed to be the subject matter experts,
the knowledgeable ones. And so to kind of admit fallibility and to say these are the things that
(28:02):
I need help with, and then to be able to ask for them. And so I think it's a two-way street in
that like, ask them what they need. And if it's an unconventional ask, don't just scoff at it,
probe it a little bit. But on the other side, try to ask for what you need. Try to figure out
what it is you need, that if you're bad at that last 5% don't just tell the Learning Designer,
(28:23):
okay, yeah, no, I got this last 5% be like, “No, I'm like, Could you do the captioning?” Again,
there might be stuff in contracts and all unions, but if we're having these conversations,
if we gain an awareness ourselves about what we need, and then we are greeted with an
openness to hear those needs that makes such a huge difference in terms of productivity,
(28:44):
if we want to reduce it to that, but just in terms of the experience being a more pleasant one.
I think this conversation really pokes at a lot of things that need to be discussed in our campuses,
and we need to lead some of these conversations to get the word out. And your book might be a
really great platform to do that through a reading group. Can you tease a little
(29:05):
bit more about some of the specific topics that are addressed in some of the essays?
Oh, goodness, it's such a wide spectrum, like we've mentioned, we've got folks different places
on the autism spectrum, ADHD, anxiety, depression, all kinds of folks who really are coming from all
over the corners of higher education. So it's really well represented. You'll be able to find
(29:26):
someone that you can connect with in the reading of these stories. And we have some sections around
masking. We have a section around stigma, specifically, we have a section around higher
education structures that can exacerbate for folks these experiences. So there's just so much to draw
from that you'll find someone that you connect to or that you maybe see yourself reflected in.
(29:47):
There's also a lot of other kinds of intersectionality, talking about gender,
talking about sexuality, talking about race, and so those are also in there, and they are
linked in terms of the ways that, how can you tease out: Is this because I am visibly queer,
or is this because I am autistic? Is this because I am a woman in higher education,
(30:11):
or is this because I have ADHD? Again, all of these things come up as well, and so this is also
an opportunity to really start those conversations on a more broader definition of inclusivity,
because it isn't always just only one.We always end with the question, what's next?
What's next? Well, the book will come out. Yay! So we hope to be having lots
(30:36):
of conversations with different groups of faculty around the country about that book,
especially if it gets picked up and read. So we're looking forward to that. I personally
am currently working on a book about women's leadership and burnout in higher education. So
that's my project for the rest of the year. Yeah, the book is coming out in August, and so we
wanted to take the opportunity over the summer, when things calm down a bit, to talk about,
(30:57):
do we want to do a podcast where we have some of the contributors come on who are willing to
talk a little bit more about their essays, answer these questions, and so we can put up a website,
all kinds of fun stuff that right now I just can't think about. No more spoons, as they say,
there are no more spoons for that. Hopefully it will spark conversations. Hopefully we
(31:18):
will be able to go and Zoom in to campuses to talk about these experiences. Hopefully
other neurodiverse faculty will feel empowered to come forward with their own stories as well. And
you hope that this creates more opportunities for conversation, more opportunities for storytelling,
more opportunities for connection in all of those kinds of ways where we've opened the door
(31:42):
a crack. It is really only just a beginning, but hopefully it just starts something that
other people can take up and keep going with in terms of their own. People always ask us, like,
“is there a campus that's done it really well?” And we're like, “No, not really, no.” And so
what you hope is, in 5, 10 years, because academia moves slow, but that's fine, we will have examples
(32:05):
of institutions that are doing it very well, that will have case studies for this and models
that other institutions can emulate. And so again, like there's what we hope comes next is: “Here's
a starting point. Go forward with this and create. Feel empowered, feel creative, feel less alone and
(32:26):
go in and in small ways, make things better.”Well, thank you. I'm very much looking forward to
reading your book when it comes out in August, and it's an area that all institutions can do better
with, and all faculty perhaps can do better with, in terms of creating a more supportive
environment for everyone.Definitely.
This is a great project, and we're looking forward to your future projects as well.
(32:46):
Thank you so much. Thank you.
If you've enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes
or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on
our Tea for Teaching Facebook page. You can find show notes, transcripts and
(33:08):
other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com