A Resource for Advancing Care
at Institutions of Higher Education (Tracie Marcella Addy)
By Dr. Tracie Marcella Addy:
One observation I’ve made about higher education is that there are not enough conversations centered on faculty and staff care. Paradoxically, given the ever-changing educational landscape and issues of faculty and staff burnout, now is a critical time as ever to hold such discussions. In this post I describe a care guide that my institutional team created for the 2022-23 national Care in the Academy project as well as my reflections implementing it within my own unit. I invite all to use the guide as an empowering resource and to share it with colleagues to advance care dialogues on your campuses or organizations.
To provide insights into why this discussion guide is a promising resource, I’d like to explore several barriers to care conversations. In academia many may not know how to facilitate such discussions which might feel uncomfortable and unfamiliar. Academic institutions also have deeply embedded traditions and distinct cultures. As a result they can be resistant to change. Such can result in doing what has already been done in the past by convention with a lack of critical thought towards different actions that have the potential to improve our working environments. Institutions may lose sight of investing in their most critical resources, faculty and staff members. Institutional and departmental rewards systems might also overemphasize productivity and achievement to the detriment of addressing basic needs, and reinforce competition amongst faculty and staff rather than collaboration and collegiality, which can also have siloing effects and a focus on self-preservation.
Further, although care conversations and their resulting actions can have very positive returns on time investment, bandwidth concerns might also be another reason they are not actively pursued, revealing the need to rethink our institutional priorities and workload. Further, such dialogues might only be attributed to the responsibilities of specific college and university units like counseling services, religious and spiritual life, and human resources from whom much can be learned and partnerships seeded. Such dialogues, though, must also be seen as crucial components of everyone’s work regardless of campus unit.
Additionally, because of limited systemic implementation of care initiatives within institutional and departmental strategic plans, the initiation of these conversations also can heavily depend on whether the current leadership values them. Thus, when leaders change, as is conventional in higher education, the implementation of care initiatives can also stop unless the new leader shares the same priorities and values or if care has already become embedded within the culture. Whatever the reasons, we must be critical of what holds us back from engaging in care discussions and subsequent commitments and seek out appropriate support. We must also acknowledge that we are all learning together and that continued assessment of outcomes, whether informal or formal, and revision will be natural parts of the process.
When I conducted an initial care needs assessment on my campus with my Care in the Academy institutional team, I was pleased to learn about a number of departments who “cared well.” These included both academic departments within disciplines as well as campus offices. The outcomes were positive in that their faculty and staff members of varying backgrounds and position types felt supported. I was proud of them as colleagues and enjoyed learning from them and hearing about their successes. These conversations solidified my understanding of departments as critical care units.
Because of the thoughtful responses of my colleagues, I learned even more from this needs assessment. What became clear to me was that to effectively carry out the mission of higher education, we need to implement care across multiple dimensions, such as through regular and transparent communication, equitable policies, and various practices like giving recognition and building community. Implementation is important at the individual, departmental, and institutional levels. Through the Care in the Academy project I also learned a lot about myself as a leader and what I valued regarding care.
As an actionable step, to provide a resource for how departments can facilitate care discussions in a proactive manner and integrate them into existing activities, our 2022-23 institutional team developed Care Conversations: A Discussion Guide for Offices, Centers, Departments, and Programs at Colleges and Universities. Included within this guide are a series of conversations with discussion prompts that units can engage with over time. Also included is a hypothetical sample care plan. Next I share aspects of an actual care plan that my staff co-developed and integrated into our work. Departments can create and discuss their care plans during retreats, regular meetings, and other typical activities, or dedicate extra spaces of time for them by choice or feasibility.
I used this guide in my center for teaching this past year. We held care discussions, created a care plan, and discussed how effectively our plan was working as agenda items on regular hour-long team meetings. One component was the recognition of the birthdays and the achievements of team members (e.g. center staff, student partners, etc.). These recognitions have been met with appreciation and delightful surprise. We also included intentional team outings in social events on campus as well as with center partners with no agenda other than to build relationships. Team retreats were also part of our care plan; they allowed us not only to strategize but to also learn more about one another and how we could work together to leverage our strengths. My center also incorporated care into our initiatives by leading communities of practice focused on care such as one for international faculty members which integrated internal support that they felt was useful to navigate their work environments as well as broader advocacy efforts. We also led informal gatherings for newer faculty of color to connect in a space dedicated just to them.
What appeared to make our care plan successful included the thoughtful and intentional actions that were part of it, its co-development by all members of the team, and our commitment to follow through on the agreed upon actions. I believe that our care plan helped my center grow stronger as a unit; the conversations were worth the initial and ongoing time investment, and the actions bore good fruit.
As a product of what we learned during the Care in the Academy project my team presents the discussion guide to you to support your campus care efforts. Please distribute it widely and make it a part of your goals to integrate in the coming academic year. We’d love to hear your success stories!