Higher Education Careers Beyond the Professoriate is one of the first collections to explore PhD career versatility within higher education. The twenty-three contributors represent diverse disciplines, institution types, professional roles, and intersectional identities. Each thoughtful and personal essay explores firsthand what it means to remain in higher education, yet not in the traditional role of a professor. Topics include establishing new career paradigms, well-being and work-life balance, blended roles and identities, and professional work around advocacy and inclusion. Unifying the essays is the idea that career diversity is intertwined with other diversity discourse, yielding a broad-based but critical examination of careers in higher education administration.
Though the doctoral landscape continues to change, a self-determined, values-driven attitude remains essential. This book offers powerful insight into cultural and structural barriers that inhibit institutional transformation and obscure the real range of PhD futures. Frank about both challenges and opportunities, these essays reveal how letting go of "track" thinking opens a constellation of possibilities and many paths to meaningful work and a fulfilling life.
Cardozo, Karen: - Karen Cardozo is the founder of Leap Here Consulting, providing consulting, coaching, and editing services for individuals and institutions since 2016. First trained in career services, she earned a master's degree in higher education administration at Harvard and a PhD in literary studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She worked across the Five College Consortium before gaining tenure in interdisciplinary studies at the Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts, then leading career development at Hollins and Northeastern universities. She has published intersectional feminist studies of culture, labor, science, trauma, and higher education in the American Studies Journal, Critical Sociology, Journal of Asian American Studies, Pedagogy, Profession, and Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society.
Kearns, Katherine: - Katherine Kearns is the assistant vice provost for Student Development and director of the Office of Postdoctoral Affairs for the University Graduate School at Indiana University Bloomington. She earned her PhD in ecology at the University of Georgia. She is a coeditor of the book Teaching as if Learning Matters: Pedagogies of Becoming by Next-Generation Faculty. Currently, she focuses on cultivating graduate student communities--especially for students with marginalized identities--that promote well-being and skill development in scholarly and creative activity, teaching, and preparation for careers in a variety of post-degree professions.
Palma, Shannan: - Shannan Palma is co-executive director of the Autistic Self-Reliance Support Network and vice president of continuing education for HER Academy. She earned her PhD in women's, gender, and sexuality studies from Emory University. Her research has been published in Marvels & Tales: The Journal of Fairy-tale Studies and various edited volumes. She has appeared on numerous panels advising graduate students on industry and higher education careers beyond the professoriate.
