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One of the benefits of working in higher education is the rich opportunities to get involved beyond your core position, grow your skills, and explore other paths or focus areas. This doesn’t mean unchecked autonomy or indulging your leisure interests. It’s about finding your niche. It’s about cultivating a professional identity. It’s about applying your unique combination of skills, knowledge, and experiences to contribute to the success of your institution.
Like most modern knowledge work, jobs are not set in stone. While each position has its own responsibilities, there’s often room to engage beyond your core duties, however you choose — whether by serving on committees, collaborating across departments, or exploring interests in other areas of the institution. The working model is not the same across institutions or disciplines. Human interactions, multiple institutional priorities, shared governance, and many other factors create nuances — and opportunities.
You can explore different research topics or teach classes that fit your expertise. You can curate a portfolio of administrative responsibilities that accentuate your strengths. You may even be able to design your own role through job crafting.
You can do anything… Well, almost.
Remember, your job is more than a vessel for career exploration. You’ve entered an economic contract, and your employer will expect a return on its investment in you. You have to do something that matters to your institution, regardless of your passion projects.
Five Ways To Contribute Beyond Your Core Duties
John Rindy, assistant vice president for career and academic progress at Slippery Rock University, always tells faculty and staff that there are five ways you actually contribute to your institution:
- anything that attracts students,
- anything that keeps students,
- anything that graduates students,
- anything that gets students jobs, and
- anything that gets graduates to give back.
“That’s what we measure our stuff against,” Rindy said. “Don’t ask for resources if you can’t show that it’s going to do one of those five things, and you can show how you’re going to measure it. People will say, ‘Oh, that’s so cold and businesslike,’ but I’m watching what’s happening to other schools (that are struggling to sustain themselves) and I don’t want us to end up like that.”
Be Ready for Anything
Now, Rindy works at a regional, comprehensive teaching institution. You might work somewhere that is more focused on doing cutting-edge research and securing grants for its revenue. If so, adjust your five accomplishments accordingly, but all higher education professionals should have accomplishments in some, all, or at least one of these areas.
What if funding stops? What if your institution becomes more tuition-dependent? The higher education market is in flux, so professionals who work in this industry should become more resilient to change and adopt a generalist approach so they can adapt.
You might have to change, or you might want to change.
“If you only value being a psychology researcher, and you can’t get past that, then, yeah, that’s going to be what you do the rest of your life,” Rindy said. “But how do you know? You might be called to do something else that’s going to influence more students.”
In a way, this mindset shift can be settling to specialists who don’t succeed at being the best in their field or whose bulleted accomplishments on their CV are assessed by simple scholarship criteria: either the survival game of publish or perish to earn tenure or, to get hired, the winner-take-all game of who can get published in the most prestigious journals.
Contribute with a Cause
In Steven Brint’s book “Two Cheers for Higher Education,” the author references how “identity pluralism” prevails in academia when professors aren’t the best at these games.
“Most faculty members begin their careers with ambitions to make a professional mark,” Brint wrote. “But those who are not successful in the professional path are prone to take up other causes — teaching innovation, social justice, senate service, college advising, or community engagements.”
Brint said that some faculty at teaching-centered institutions might take up avocational interests that become more important to them than their professional identities.
That’s why the “five anythings” practice of reflection is important. You might succeed in finding a fulfilling cause in higher education outside of the cutthroat corporate environment or at higher-level research institutions. Your cause might very well satisfy one of the five contributions to your institution. But make sure you’re not perpetuating bureaucracy with an unimportant cause or a false sense of accomplishment based on feelings or identities instead of outcomes.
Bottom Line
Don’t write an idealized story for career success because it’s only what you want to do. Measure your work by what matters to your profession or your university.
Ask yourself cold questions using the five anythings so others can warm up to the work that you’re doing.
