A Guide to Surviving and Transforming Academia for the Benefit of All
Co-authors Roberta Hawkins (left) and Leslie Kern (right). Photo credit: Roberta Hawkins
Authors Roberta Hawkins and Leslie Kern discuss how they came to write their 2024 book Higher Expectations: How to Survive Academia, Make it Better for Others, and Transform the University and how they hope that the recommendations in their book will improve academia.
By Roberta Hawkins and Leslie Kern with Janet G. Hering and Patricia A. Maurice
Date: 18 February 2025, DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.14837288
In November 2024, Professor Roberta Hawkins visited Switzerland to present the book she coauthored with Dr. Leslie Kern [1] as part of the University of Bern’s Better Science Initiative [2]. Janet, who lives in Zurich, took the opportunity to meet Roberta at the airport and travel with her by train to Bern. They discussed their common experiences in academia and the book.
Both Roberta and Leslie have academic backgrounds. Roberta is currently an Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Guelph. Leslie was a professor at Mount Allison University for 15 years. In 2024, she left academia to focus on coaching and writing.
Inspired by receiving and reading a signed copy of their book, Janet invited the two authors to answer a series of questions (below) about the book, their writing experience, and their hopes for the book’s impact.
What would you say are the key messages of your book?
One premise of our book is that academia is a deeply problematic institution that poses many challenges for faculty, students, and staff. These challenges arise from academia’s traditional hierarchical structure and culture of exclusion, competition and isolation, aggravated by the more recent emergence of decision making based on audits and metrics. A further premise is that we don’t have to accept academia as it is. We can raise our expectations.
We wrote our book “for people who want to improve their own day-to-day-work lives and create better conditions for everyone.” We structured it as a series of pragmatic and achievable recommendations grounded in values of equity, inclusion, and the collective responsibility of universities to society. We argue that, collectively, we can make changes that improve academic life for ourselves and others while working to transform the institution itself.
Through our research, we found many examples of individuals, departments, and academic institutions already implementing changes that make a difference in the lives of students and scholars. At the individual level, professors (or research group leaders) can increase collaboration and transparency through various measures, including early and open discussion of authorship order, co-authorship, and which references to cite. Departments can “move beyond metrics” to foster cooperation over competition and encourage quality over quantity (which are also core principles of the Better Science Initiative [2]). Student, faculty, and staff unions can be strong collective voices for improving working conditions by strengthening policies to prevent abuse and exploitation among other measures. Institutions can also offer support, for example, by reducing the official teaching workload for faculty from historically excluded groups (like Black women). This would provide some recognition for the invisible and often emotional labor they take on within institutions, such as unofficially mentoring students, guest lecturing in classes and sitting on diversity committees. Although we recognize that change is not, and will not be, easy, we argue that change is possible and that it is something that we can strive for, individually and collectively.
How and when did you and Leslie start to work together on your book project?
We had already been friends and collaborators for many years. We met when Leslie came for a job interview to Clark University (Worcester, MA, USA) where Roberta was doing her PhD. Although Leslie didn’t move to Clark, it was the beginning of our friendship.
In 2019, Roberta had sketched out the idea for this book over a week or two and then quickly realized that she wanted to write it with Leslie. Roberta sent Leslie a disorganized e-mail explaining all her thoughts and Leslie agreed to join! We got our book contract in March 2020 and even had a writing retreat planned for ourselves. Our plans got derailed immediately by COVID-19 lockdowns and we ended up working on the book slowly over a few years and finally finishing it in the fall of 2023.
One reason that the book took so long is that it was important for us to include real-life examples of how people have been doing things differently in academia. We are especially grateful to the many friends and colleagues (some mentioned by name in the acknowledgements of our book) who modeled ethical and inclusive ways to respond to the pressures of academia. We spent a lot of time seeking out additional examples and incorporating them into our writing. We hope that including lots of different situations, structures, experiences and successes in our book provides a valuable complement to the expertise on the power structures of academia that we gained through our own research and lived experiences.
How did you keep the work on your book going?
It was very challenging for the regular reasons – our workloads as university professors, our family responsibilities, and our attempts to have lives outside of work. In addition, we wrote the book during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our work and personal obligations ballooned, and the book was moved to the back burner. Even so, we continued to check in with each other consistently online. Even if we hadn’t managed to do any writing, the project was always on our minds. Once our pandemic responsibilities eased a bit, we met for a few longer writing retreats, both in person and online, to focus together on the book.
We also played to our strengths in terms of the types of writing and research we were each good at. For example, Roberta is good at laying out big picture ideas and connecting them to our own experiences, while Leslie excels at writing with a relatable and snappy tone and at finding real-world examples of the concepts we cover in the book. In this way, we were able to divide up tasks and keep moving forward. Having already written together for many years made this easier.
What has been the response to your book thus far? What do you think it has accomplished?
It’s been great to hear that our book has helped our readers realize they are not alone. Many people have told us that they feel less isolated after reading the book and rejuvenated to keep fighting and not to give up on academia. This is very gratifying and inspiring. It tells us that the book is doing what we hoped it would. A lot of the people who attend our talks or give us feedback are people who have been struggling but are also deeply invested in making academia a better place. If the book gives them some new ideas to try or ways to connect with others, we are pleased about that. We hope that graduate students, post docs, and junior faculty are reading the book and can use it to guide themselves and their peers to more sustainable, joyful, and caring academic careers.
What do you see as the longer term impact of your book? Do you have any spin-off projects planned or ideas for going beyond the recommendations you made in the book?
We hope that the book will eventually find its way into the hands of people who have more power within institutions, for example administrators and institutional leaders. Ideally, the book would inspire them to champion some of the systemic and institution-wide changes we advocate for. We also hope that the book allows people, especially those with more privilege, to understand some of the different ways that their colleagues and peers may be struggling or may have been systematically disadvantaged.
We have been offering workshops with tailored prompts, exercises, and expert guidance to help participants identify concrete steps that they can immediately implement alongside longer-term and collective strategies for institutional change. We aim to leave participants with a sense of renewed hope for a better academia and feeling energized to be a part of the change.
How should readers contact you if they have questions or want to pursue some of the recommendations in your book?
We can be reached by email or on LinkedIn [3]. In addition, Leslie offers academic coaching services through Leslie Kern Coaching [4].
Concluding comments from the editors and questions for further thought
As editors of this blog series, Janet and Patricia thank Roberta and Leslie for taking the time to answer our questions and provide insight into their book and their writing process. We are inspired by the “Higher Expectations Manifesto” at the end of their book. In this manifesto, they call for resisting isolation, competition, and the quantification of scholarly contributions; expanding the boundaries of scholarship and education; dismantling hierarchical structures and combatting power abuses; transforming academia to include the participation, experience, knowledge, and needs of previously excluded and marginalized groups and to promote new ways of knowing, learning and acting; and valuing ourselves and our colleagues as full human beings.
We are encouraged that Roberta and Leslie’s call for the transformation of academia echoes calls that we have made previously to improve the capacity of our institutions to meet pressing societal challenges [5]. Let’s work together to build “a modern [academic] system that uplifts everyone” [6].
In closing, we offer a few questions to stimulate further thought and discussion:
· How well do you feel supported in academia? How well do you feel that you support others?
· Are there aspects of the academic experience that you would like to see changed?
· How do you think that you could help to bring about change in academia?
References, notes, and links:
[1] Hawkins, R. and Kern, L. (2024) Higher Expectations: How to Survive Academia, Make it Better for Others, and Transform the University, Toronto: Between the Lines, 267 pp.
[2] https://betterscience.ch/en/#/
[3] Roberta can be reached at: rhawkins@uoguelph.ca or https://www.linkedin.com/in/roberta-hawkins-b1043330b/. Leslie can be reached at: kernleslie@gmail.com or https://www.linkedin.com/in/leslie-kern-coach/.
[4] https://lesliekerncoaching.com/
[6] https://www.epistimi.org/blog/a-trip-to-paris-and-the-rights-of-women-in-stemm