How do we articulate our own metrics for success in academia?

Tools for reflecting on and identifying what makes your academic work meaningful (or how to shift your focus so your work indeed is meaningful to you)

I’ve written these exact words (up to the secret sauce bit) in my annual reviews and promotion reviews for at least 3 years now.

I’ve been reflecting on how inadequate the metrics of the academic prestige paradigm [1] are. In truth, these metrics are both narrow and lame.

Seriously.

Academics are supposed to be so smart. We study and teach some of the most complicated ideas humans have ever thought of. So, why can’t we handle documenting and recognizing the nuanced ways in which scholarly impact actually manifests!?! 🤦‍♀️That’s a whole thing, and I’m not going to get into it now.

Instead, I’m going to build on my recent discussion of some reasons why I think people in academia—despite not liking the traditional metrics—don’t try to change how we measure/demonstrate success in academia. I’m revisiting these ideas because my first take might have seemed a bit abstract.

What we risk by defining our own metrics of success

So, let me tell you this: It’s risky for me to act as if the outcomes and activities I care about count more than what people are conditioned to value by the academic prestige paradigm. [2] I’m not on the tenure track (I’m actually waiting to hear if my promotion to a 3-year [3] rolling contract will be approved this spring). I also don’t get the same resourcing as my tenure-track colleagues (no start-up/discretionary funding, no lab space, way lower salary, etc.). And yet, I still need to perform at the same level. I don’t mention this inequity as a bid for sympathy. Rather, I want to be clear: most academics will experience plenty of friction (some coming from our own minds!) if we shift to saying what matters and stop letting the prestige paradigm dictate to us.

At the same time, I’ve learned it’s also risky to not prioritize work that I know matters. For one thing, scicomm writ large is usually devalued (or even impeded) by people who uphold the academic prestige paradigm. If I let those priorities drive my work, I wouldn’t be doing any of what I do now! Moreover, straining to get academic gatekeepers to care about my work has soured some of my relationships, caused personal health issues, and led me into at least a couple of rounds of major burnout.

Those are the risks I’m no longer willing to take. Fortunately, despite that friction, I’ve found it is possible to set my own metrics of success and then work outward from them to make my work legible in academia. I first found language to do this deliberately after I encountered Dr. Beronda Montgomery’s (a botanist VP at Grinnell College) process for working from affirmation, not for it. Her framing confirmed for me (as a newbie, unlikely academic), that I could stick to my principles and expertise, do work I knew mattered, and still make my work legible—even to colleagues and administrators who cling to the prestige paradigm.

Defining my own metrics of success

For the past several years, I’ve worked to articulate and affirm my professional metrics of success, to myself. I especially needed to do this work because I only recently came into the academy after a career in community development, adult education, and journalism. Much of that work was freelance, so I both did what I chose and needed to do what my clients hired me to do. The nature of any faculty role in academia (apart from teaching-only positions) even further compels us to decide how we are going to spend some or all of our time. And, what I wanted to do as an academic built on but was distinct from what I had done outside academia.

I used to teach ecology, natural history, and urban sustainability. I used to write articles about scientists. I used to illustrate and create photos of people doing science. But now, “through the programs I lead at UW, led in ESA, have more recently launched at global levels, and through my scholarship and teaching, I actively work to help people in scicomm overcome barriers like declining public trust in science and scientists not feeling equipped to engage. The good news is that we're seeing substantial positive impacts after a decade of this work. Without the interventions I and many others lead, we can't shift the culture. The shift I'm helping to get us to on our campus and in ESA—a shift to actually valuing training in communication, collaboration, and related leadership skills—is essential to achieving UW's mission (and arguably, that of academia writ large). Without our efforts, we will continue to produce scientists and science professionals who care about helping Wyoming and the world but don't actually know how to use science to do so.”

And, I had to find a way to distill all that, plus the highly varied career experiences I have had, into a couple of sentences that make my work legible. I’ve written so many iterations. Here’s where I’ve landed:

My goal is to enhance ethical leadership capacity in science communication, science, and academia. To do so, I conduct research on:mechanisms to enhance scientists’ communications skills, and mechanisms of ethical, transdisciplinary leadership, research, and teaching to foster civic engagement with science.To achieve positive change, people need models, tools, and ways of working together that are concrete, equitable, and evidence-based. My past work offers models from community development, science journalism, adult literacy, art-science integration, and scicomm training. I now leverage insights from these transdisciplinary fields to lead and study efforts to enhance student, staff, and faculty capacity for success in scicomm.

To be able to write those sentences—particularly the first two—and feel confident they convey what I do, why, and even some how, I relied on a suite of resources (see list below). Each of these resources prompts reflection. That might feel a bit touchy-feely, or even like too much work to justify for just one person (vs. an organization, say). But, these tools have been vital as I’ve sought a sustainable, though unconventional, path through academia over the past decade. If you’re no longer clear on why you do what you do (maybe you’re early career or you’re burnt out or stuck in a rut), I highly recommend using some of these tools to initiate your self-reflection.

Getting your motivations and values into words can be deeply clarifying. And, if you’re trying to find words and processes to articulate what aspects of your academic work you think should count for evaluation of your impact and success, you will have to dig into your motivations and values.

Here are the tools I’ve used and currently recommend (in no particular order):

• Unravel Your Year (and the companion Word of the Year) workbook;

• the Remarkable Life Deck;

• the Passion Planner;

• Sustaining Your Well-being in Higher Education;

• Radical Hope: A Teaching Manifesto;

• Happier Hour;

• Beronda Montgomery on self-affirmation in the academy;

• writing an academic mission statement;

• Social Change Now;

• you might also appreciate the various perspectives on this covered on Meteor: The (overly) honest podcast about scicomm with impact, which I co-host with Virginia Schutte. 

These tools, along with various books on happiness, self-care, and more, plus so many conversations with my no buddy, helped me articulate what I care about. Understanding what I care about, and what work I want to do as a result, was essential to being able to articulate my own priorities.

I’ve since written extensively about how I decide what I do and don’t work on. My decisions are rooted in my core values and conviction that certain kinds of work within and beyond the academy are (a) my calling and (b) actually gonna make a difference. I got to that level of clarity by working through the tools I’ve listed above (and then some).

I have also written about how deeply I believe my work matters, and how much it aligns with what we claim that academia and science are for, even as our systems and institutions impede and disdain this work. I’ve written a lot about shifting my focus from things that were important, but not my unique work (another vital concept from Dr. Montgomery). And, last fall, I discussed candidly how—only after stating and affirming to myself the value of my work—I could then map the impacts of my work back on to the metrics that “count” in the prestige paradigm. I’ve also shared resources for the exact process I use to do this as it relates to teaching evaluations.

But really, how do you make what matters to you matter to academia?

Fair question! I’ve talked about self-determined metrics for years now, but in the process of writing this series, I’ve realized I’ve never publicly mapped out precisely how I make my self-defined metrics both legible to and compelling to my fellow academics. In the last post in this mini-series, I’ll show you some very concrete examples of how I do this.

How about you?

Have you ever tried to articulate what matters to you, about your work in academia? What tools or processes did you use to arrive at words that conveyed your intent and self-affirmed values?

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[1] For a primer on the academic prestige paradigm, see the “Use Your Power for Good” paper I recently co-authored.

[2] And, if higher ed collapses, everything I’m talking about here might seem moot. But, in whatever sectors/settings we live and work in, the fundamental idea of articulating how our life is meaningful stands. Indeed, it’s one of the most vital concepts arrived at by many wisdom traditions and a lot of survivors. Viktor Frankl was a Holocaust survivor, and his book Man’s Search for Meaning is a quick read and important, once-again-timely example.

[3] Yeah, just three years at a time. And that’s a lot better terms than many contingent faculty and staff work under.