Faculty often talk about how busy, overwhelmed, and stressed they are. These qualities are seen as badges of honor in a capitalist culture that values productivity above all else. But for many women in higher education, exhaustion and stress go far deeper than end-of-the-semester malaise. Burnout, a mental health syndrome caused by chronic workplace stress, is endemic to higher education in a patriarchal, productivity-obsessed culture. In this unique book for women in higher education, Rebecca Pope-Ruark, PhD, draws from her own burnout experience, as well as collected stories of faculty in various roles and career stages, interviews with coaches and educational developers, and extensive secondary research to address and mitigate burnout. Pope-Ruark lays out four pillars of burnout resilience for faculty members: purpose, compassion, connection, and balance. Each chapter contains relatable stories, reflective opportunities and exercises, and advice from women in higher education. Blending memoir, key research, and reflection opportunities, Pope-Ruark helps faculty not only address burnout personally but also use the tools in this book to eradicate the systemic conditions that cause it in the first place. As burnout becomes more visible, we can destigmatize it by acknowledging that women are not unraveling; instead, women in higher education are reckoning with the productivity cult embedded in our institutions, recognizing how it shapes their understanding and approach to faculty work, and learning how they can remedy it for themselves, their peers, and women faculty in the future.Rebecca Pope-Ruark, PhD, is the director of the Office of Faculty Professional Development at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She is the author of Agile Faculty: Practical Strategies for Managing Research, Service, and Teaching and the coeditor of Redesigning Liberal Education: Innovative Design for a Twenty-First-Century Undergraduate Education.Pope-Ruark introduces burnout as a common experience in academia, offers ways to understand and assess burnout levels, and provides pathways out of burnout. Given the pandemic and the late stage of academic capitalism, this is a timely and significant topic.Unraveling Faculty Burnout couldn't have arrived at a more crucial time in higher education. This book is essential reading not only for current and future members of the faculty but also for all of us in the academy who work with them and care deeply about their well-being.Pope-Ruark captures the essence of burnout in higher education, its root causes and solutions. More importantly, she provides a pathway out of the darkness.
Publicado por: Johns Hopkins University Press