On this episode of the agile academic podcast, I talk with Dr. Mary Churchill, Associate Dean for Strategic Initiatives and Community Engagement and Adjunct Professor at Boston University’s Wheelock College. And since we recorded this episode, Mary has a new role as Chief of Policy and Planning for the City of Boston. In our conversation, we talk about leadership, collaboration, and the power of women coaching women.
On this episode of the agile academic podcast, I talk with Dr. Mary Churchill, Associate Dean for Strategic Initiatives and Community Engagement and Adjunct Professor at Boston University’s Wheelock College. And since we recorded this episode, Mary has a new role as Chief of Policy and Planning for the City of Boston. In our conversation, we talk about leadership, collaboration, and the power of women coaching women.
Rebecca Pope-Ruark (RPR): On this episode of the agile academic podcast, I talk with Dr. Mary Churchill, Associate Dean for Strategic Initiatives and Community Engagement and Adjunct Professor at Boston University’s Wheelock College. And since we recorded this episode, Mary has a new role as Chief of Policy and Planning for the City of Boston. In our conversation, we talk about leadership, collaboration, and the power of women coaching women.
Hello listeners. Welcome to the agile academic, a podcast for women in and around higher education and its first season. I talked with our special guests from all over academia, about a wide range of topics from teaching and research to writing and speaking to career by tally and burnout and everything in between. I'm your host, Dr. Rebecca Pope-Ruark.
Today, we're joined by Dr. Mary Churchill, and I'm really excited to have her and I'm excited to be in her space and hear and learn from her for the last couple of years. So thanks for being on the podcast, Mary.
MC: Oh, thank you for asking me. This is fun. Let's get into it.
RPR: Yeah, let's jump right in. So why don't you tell the audience just a little bit about yourself?
MC: Well, I've done a lot, um, in the years that I've been in higher ed. So, uh, let me start, let me start now and go backwards. So I am currently associate Dean of strategic initiatives and community engagement at, um, we like college at Boston university and we like college of education and human development, which is came about, was founded in June, 2018. When we locked college merged into Boston university and I was the vice president for academic affairs slash provost at Wheelock college that led the college, uh, through that merger process. So, and came in as an associate Dean to continue to build this new college at BU, which has been really fun. So then as my official title or my official job, I also teach part-time in the higher ed administration program within our college and this past summer taught governance and decision-making, which was a blast.
And we'll continue to do that. And this past year I was trained as a leadership coach at Georgetown University and I've started executive coaching during COVID. All of my clients have been women. And so I'm really focused on helping women find their true leadership style, potential through coaching. And then I have a blog Inside Higher Ed, University of Venus. I think we're entering year 11 at Inside Higher Ed. And I have three podcasts, one that is related to, or a companion to University of Venus it's called View from Venus. And it highlights women in higher ed as guest experts. I have Rocking the Academy, which is co-hosted by Roopika Risam and sponsored by Johns Hopkins University Press. And that focuses on individuals who are trying to change higher ed either from the inside or outside. And I have another one called ExperiencEd, which is about experiential education and is co-hosted with Jim Stellar, who is the former provost at Albany and was my Dean of arts and sciences at Northeastern where we both were fully immersed in the co-op world and the experiential ed world. And so we bring that sensibility to this podcast. I have a book coming out in April when college is closed leadership in a time of crisis from Johns Hopkins university press. And, and I are working on our proposal for another book women, uh, coaching women in higher ed is the working title and loan ended up being the final title, but that's the topic. And so those are just the things I think of immediately. I could talk for an hour about my board service as well. It's just today. So…
RPR: That's amazing. And our listeners are all saying, when do you sleep?
MC: From 8:00 PM to 4:00 AM!
RPR: Yeah, yeah. The 5:00 AM Writers Club. So I've gotten to about the 7:00, the 6:30 is about as early as I've gotten into the writing club in the morning so far.
MC: Well, and that's, you know, accountability, right? For me, accountability is what really helps me do all this work. And so the book is coauthored. The blog is a multi-author blog, all three podcasts have co-producers co-hosts. So none of these projects are on my own except for my teaching and my, and my full-time position clearly. But I prefer to do collaborative work as part of a team. That is how I work best. I show up better for others than I do myself sometimes. And the 5:00 AM Writer's Club is a way for me to write every morning and check in with a larger group all around the world and say, Hey, I'm doing it too. And I support you and let's do this together. So it's about collaboration supporting one another and the amplification of other people's voices. So with it, that's my through-line game.
RPR: I love that collaboration is, is definitely something that I've studied for a long time with undergraduate students. Um, that idea and what I've been thinking about in the last year or so is the concept of connection. And I think that becomes really important, especially now during the pandemic, as we're, as we're recording this, it's the end of December, 2020, and we're about to wave just 2020 goodbye. Hopefully leave that in the rear view mirror, but it's it's right now, it's the collaborative projects that I get energy from as well. I mean the, the book I'm working on as a single author book, but I'm still getting feedback from folks like Mary's looked at chapters for me and other folks I've looked at chapters. So there's still that engagement around different projects that are in place, still collaborating with folks at work. And it's the connection piece is so important right now. We're just also isolated.
MC: I agree. And I think their writing for me is really social project because I am writing to readers. Right. You know, I don't really do any writing or hardly any writing. That is something that I'm writing to myself, right. I'm not necessarily talking to myself. I am in conversation with anticipated readers when I'm writing. And I think comes out of blogging. It also comes out of feminist methods for me to always be aware of who you're talking about, who you're talking to and the way you're doing that. And so it's this kind of meta, but it's, it's really about writing as a social process rather than as a solitary process. So during COVID writing has become really important because it's a way to continue to talk to people through my writing.
RPR: Yeah, definitely. That's one of the reasons I started the podcast I've wanted a podcast for a long time, but every time I tried, I was kind of talking to myself and I really didn't enjoy talking to myself. So it really, it was COVID that even kind of came up with the idea to do the interviews because I just, I was reaching out to people intentionally in ways that I would not have before the pandemic. I think getting up the courage to email folks that I admire or folks that I, who I know or who I don't know to have these conversations. And we're having just these such wonderful conversations with these folks, just kind of on the fly that it made, it just made so much sense to share those conversations. Um, and the women coaching women and the women talking to women, I think in higher ed, especially, um, from different places in higher ed, different roles, different career times. I think that that coaching and that mentoring is so important as we need as we start to make some changes on hiring.
MC: Yeah. You know, it's interesting. I've been reading Living a Feminist Life. I think I got the title come on. Um, and, and then I also came across this concept of the tempered radicals. I think it's a Deborah Myerson wrote the book. And so there is this concept of doing feminist work inside of higher ed and as a tempered radical. So maybe a tempered radical feminist, really, which is if you are working in inside higher, inside higher ed, you have made this decision to be within a structure. Right. And so, and you and I have talked about this, like how can you use your positional and organic leadership to make change happen within the institution and within the structure of higher ed in general, rather than just protesting higher ed without a solution to incrementally tempered radical, make changes happen from within and as using that authority and using your experience to say, this is what I have experienced and witnessed and noticed for the last 10, 20, 30 years. And here are some solutions that other institutions have come up with for these challenges, especially around making higher ed a place where women and people of color can be successful and lead, balanced, and meaningful lives and find joy in the work that they do, the joy that originally pulled them in. So
RPR: I love that we're using words like that. Now that we're looking, it's not just follow your passion, it's really look for, for what gives you joy. Look for ways that you can offer grace to yourself or to others. Things that we wouldn't have necessarily said 10 years ago. I know that I certainly wouldn't have coaching training kind of shifted a lot of that for me to think about things more positively.
MC: Well, I also think you make me think of something like, and I've thought about this a lot and written about it. Some which is for those of us that are first gen college. Often we have parents, my father worked the night shift at General Motors on the line, but his job did not bring him joy. And so I did not grow up in a family or household where job enjoy we're in the same sentence. So it is only as a professional who has had the privilege to choose a career path that I have said, I want it to also bring me joy and meaning, and I want to have impact in the larger world. And that is, you know, something, my father and mother worked very hard to create opportunity. So I can be in this space to have that choice and to chart my own path. But, but I do think that joy in your job is a privilege. And I think it's not something that many people think of a locating,
RPR: Right? As I'm looking at higher ed research for the burnout book, there's very much this culture of busy and culture of expectation escalation, and you can kind of get really wrapped up in that when those values take over the value of productivity of always going of overwork. So thinking about ways to come out of that, because I think those mindsets, certainly for me, they contributed to the burnout, a big push for me into burnout, but how do we change that? How do we adapt that? Right. I loved working with students and then I hated everything about my job, even though it was a wonderful job. And it, that's, that's a really hard thing to go through when you're so committed to these ideals, that then kind of turn on you in different ways.
So what do you think is the biggest challenge facing women in higher ed? Right now?
MC: I, you know, I have to, uh, put family obligations as one of the first things because I watching women this year that has been the recurring theme, even women whose children are adults, but who have, um, home during COVID or who they're just worrying about more during the COVID. And so we've seen the stats of how much productivity women have lost during this period and in higher ed. And we've also seen that many men gained an incredible amount of productivity during this period. So I think that part of it is the actual care, the time on task of taking care of the house that the children, the elders worrying about people, but the other is the psychological pool of feeling. It is your responsibility to worry about these populations, whether they're friends, family, neighbors, whatever, or spouse, right? So I think there's a, on average, there's a higher level of concern and worry and emotional energy being expended by women than men for these types of things.
So that's very hard to capture. And I do think that that, um, contributes to burnout, right? Because it's, it's takes a psychological tool and it kind of comes back to that compartmentalization of your work, right? Having your work in your life, not being fully in mash the way they are in higher ed and it's anecdotal, but the men I know in higher ed, I'm not cheap much better able to compartmentalize, right? They're like I've set aside this block to work on my article or my book or class or whatever, or these are my advising hours. They're solid. I bet they're very good at boundary maintenance. And I'm generalizing here in not all men. Some women are really good at Foundry maintenance too, but I think there's a link to that. Um, emotional labor that women and people of color do, especially for other women, students and students of color that somehow I think that most white men just haven't gotten caught up and that they don't feel a responsibility to do that emotional labor, the way women and people of color do.
MC: So that what's the solution to that. First of all, acknowledging it, right? Like having really candid conversations about, um, emotional labor. So making what is invisible, very visible and in department meetings and college meetings, and then, uh, really starting to do two things, one strategies to help, um, women and people of color have better boundaries that is not a structural solution. That's an individual level solution. So it doesn't kind of fix things overall, but I think you have to meet people and, you know, through coaching in their individual lives and help them develop strategies right now that kind of help them right now. But overall, um, we need to find ways to do a better job, supporting the folks who are doing this emotional labor. And part of that is doing a better job at integrating our advising professional advising staff and our mental health facility staff into the academic side.
MC: Right. So right now I feel like they're very siloed and we're making moves to partner professional advisors and mental health staff with faculty. But a lot of it is around the handoff rather than the collaborative team approach. Right? And so I think we need to do a better job of bringing folks together as this is the team that supports students. And while we all have a role we're in this together, and this is not necessarily clearly articulated and clearly delineated feeling needed, who does what? So I think seeing that as a resource for faculty to see that as a resource, the staff on campus as a partner rather than as a non-academic unit is key.
RPR: We're back to that collaboration again, how do we put these teams together that support people because we are siloed in different ways. And I think one of the things that is hopeful for me is that we've seen a big surge in universities taking student mental health seriously and wellness initiatives being ramped up even before COVID, which was probably a bit of a blessing because those folks were, were in place when all of this was happening. But the expansion, like you said, really does need to move into faculty work and to staff work. Now, all of us feel potentially secondary trauma as we're working with our students, I work in a center for teaching and learning. So there's a potential for even more of that, working with the faculty that are working with students. So having those resources available and understanding what's happening, having language for it, to be able to talk about it, I think is super important. That's what I've been trying to do with the burnout work is just give people a language to talk about these things. So I see, especially during COVID, I've seen a lot of faculty much more willing to talk about their mental health to talk about their students' mental health. There's a, there's a common humanity that maybe is coming out of this that we might not have seen to the same extent before COVID or before the events of 2020.
MC: I also think there's something about Zoom. It's hard to fight on Zoom, right? We all have the same amount of space in this box and the focus is really on our faces, you know? And so there is no back row. Like I just feel that the Zoom is just funky is it's kind of like Twitter, like everybody's limited to the same number of characters or whatever. And so you've got these limits that technology has put on us that love snuck. Some could say, have a democratizing impact, right. Or one that we didn't really anticipate. And so I think that when you're teaching and you see your students' faces on Zoom, you just see so much more than if you're in a classroom and you've got a front row in a macro and people kind of making noise or wearing bright clothes or something to draw attention to themselves, your eyes are drawn.
Like we're in the Zoom. It's, you've got this grid, um, there that really changes the way, at least for me, that I interact with. So, but I think that was something I was thinking about when you talked about mental health and focusing on faculty, and I would say staff too, I think right now we treat the different groups very distinctly differently in the, not necessarily a good way. So you have folks on campus who support student mental health, and then you have a flux on campus often out of HR who support faculty and staff mental health. And I would love in the future to see a mental health and wellness program for the campus, right. Where students who are suffering from challenges, mental health, challenges, see that. So are there faculty and staff, like we're all human. We are not, um, special and better and stronger because we're older because we have a PhD we're, we're all human together. And I think that would actually be really helpful for our students to see that, you know, I think my son has seen that with his teachers. Um, he's in 10th grade and his teachers, whether it's appropriate or not, I've been very candid about the challenges they're facing. And I think that humanizes them and makes them less scary. Um, I'd love to see a full campus health and wellness program that focuses on all bodies rather than just the students from. [inaudible].
RPR: One of the things that we've been trying to do in our center, especially in the summer, was to let faculty know that it's okay to be human with your students, even if it's just an acknowledgement at the beginning of a class we were giving after George, George Floyd's murder, after COVID issues, after pre-election going into the election. So we've been advising people that it's okay to say, this is weird, right? Or this, we didn't necessarily sign up for online classes. So we're in this together and we're going to figure it out together. And I'm going to ask for your feedback. And I hope that you'll give it to me so that we can make sure that we create the experience that we all want to have for your learning, but I'm not, I'm not all okay either. You know, and it's, it's okay to be okay in this chaos and this, this kind of perennial stress, it's trauma, we're all experiencing that trauma at the same time.
MC: We've brought up kind of, what can we do for folks? I do think affinity groups on campus are really, really important for women and for people of color at BU we also have a women of color group, right? And I do think that these are important spaces for people to go to two. And there's lots of different names for these I'm thinking of, I think bell hooks calls at home spaces, but these are really spaces where you can let down your guard and have candid conversations and feel a bit of safety. And that you can talk about the challenges you're facing as a black woman or a woman or a gay Latino man. Right? So you can start to have these more candid conversations and brainstorm solutions together in that group. And so I do think that affinity groups are really, really important and a way of building your network and maintaining a network and having a space to have a candid conversation and not feel unsafe.
RPR: Who do you think are the best people to put those together? Is it, should people find each other, should it kind of come through professional development or a faculty development office? How do we make those spaces available?
MC: On many campuses? It's the chief diversity officer will start that up, but it happens. So like, it'd be you, we have 17 colleges and schools, right. So it happens at the academic unit level as well. Right. And so it's about doing things centrally that support things at the local level, right. And so recognizing individual or, you know, kind of individual department and college and school, academic autonomy, and that each, you know, the psychologists are going to do this very differently than the engineers. And so meeting people where they are and supporting the ways that they're doing now. So having things centrally and at the school college level, I think is a really good combination.
RPR: Thinking since we've kind of started moving toward the individual level a little bit, let's just talk about coaching. So how do you define coaching? Mary just smiled a big smile when I said coaching. So, so how do you define coaching and what are the benefits in the context that you're in
MC: Define coaching? I have like my coaching philosophy, my goal is to partner with, um, leaders to help them move towards their full leadership potential and that really women in higher ed, although right now I'm coaching women, professional women across different kinds of sectors, not just higher ed. And that's been really, really helpful because I start to see the patterns of things that humans face women face. And then what's different about higher ed, right? And I think we have more in common with folks outside of higher ed than we realized a lot of the veterans are so incredibly similar. And so for me, coaching is different than mentoring, different than sponsorship, different than therapy. And it it's really, um, and I was trained in the Georgetown's Institute for Transformational Leadership and its, so I was trained as a leadership coach. I'm an executive coach. And so it's really focused on people who are leaders or who want to be leaders within their organizations and helping them meet their leadership goals, whether that's thing in a current role and doing a better job with work-life balance or their direct reports or managing up or managing their peers, or if it's getting a promotion moving either at their institution or another institution, no, for me, coaching is supporting leadership goals and some of life comes into that.
RPR: Of course, you know, part of the reason you can't, um, move up the ladder is that you can't move because you have family obligations that keep you in a geographic location, right? So it's a compromise. So life does come in. But I think that what I was taught and the line I use in coaching very often is coaching is about the present and future. And the kind of coaching I do is focused on, uh, your career goals and therapy is really focused on the last and challenges that you faced often in childhood and that you're still kind of working through today. So they impact and we were given really good phrasing to use when, uh, issues that come up in a coaching session are really much better dealt with in a therapy session of how to redirect and guide our clients, to seek a therapist for some of those issues. So that was one of my biggest challenges I think, or fears, concerns going into coaching is once it gets to their therapist and they're like, here's what he's saying. And I'm like, okay, good. Because you know, humans are really complicated.
RPR: I'm currently in Dr. Katie Linder's training program working specifically with academics and academic women. So one of the things that I've taken from that training is the idea that coaching is like a thinking partnership with the person. I don't have to be an expert in what that person is going through therapy aside. I need to be able to, to refer if that's what that particular client needs, but in terms of coaching, I provide a space and a set of questions to help you pull out of yourself what you probably already know or to figure out what what's in your heart or what's in your mind for moving forward. I kind of use a head heart hands model. So I find that works really well, both as a coach, because I don't have to be concerned that I'm not enough for this person as a coach because I'm an expert or becoming an expert in the process.
And the process has always been what's most important to me really thinking because I, my PhDs are in writing. I'm a writing professor. So teaching a writing process has always been just part and parcel to what I do on a daily basis. So adding the coaching level into that seems very similar. I'm helping you through a process so that you can work towards your goals. And part of that is articulating them. Part of that is articulating your values, seeing how those things align or don't align. And I think kind of like, like I said earlier with the idea of joy and with grace, I feel like people are more willing to start talking about those things in different ways, in ways that they might not have in the past. So we're seeing this kind of surge of self, self-knowledge, I think maybe in ways, you know, we've moved away from, I think the self-esteem movement and moved into kind of more of a place of authenticity and, and maybe self-knowledge, um, above the kind of self-esteem that we're used to seeing.
MC: Yeah. And I think, I think the they're both there. Right? And so I think of some of the recent conversations we've had on View from Venus and it's, there's really been this focus on how do you bring your authentic self to work? How do you bring your holistic self to work right. The work you do. And so I think there's still an issue of self-esteem and women being uncomfortable self-promoting and try and really that, and that comes up with all my clients, right? Like I want people to know the good work I'm doing, but I don't want to have to brag about it. Right. That's a common theme I hear. And, um, but then there's also, I'm sick of like not bringing my whole self to work. Like I'm sick of like pretending to be someone I'm not, I'm sick of feeling like a guest.
I'm sick of feeling like I don't really belong at the table that I've just been invited for the moment. And this is true for women and people of color. And I think that coaching, like you said, kind of what I love about coaching is at least the way I've been trained is it is very formulaic and not in a bad sense. Like there are certain key questions that you open the session with to contract people within the session and then throughout the session. And then there are closing elements that are, that are consistent, that you do the same way each time and there's neuroscience behind this. Right. And so the process you, um, walk the client through is based on, um, scientific research in psychology to show like the different parts of your brain that are at work and kind of how you cement these commitments and awareness and how they're able to do that going forward.
And kind of the way I approach it is that what I provide is the structure and the container for the client to do the work. Right. And I bear witness, I facilitate, I support, but they're doing 95% of the work and I'm just there to, um, facilitate that. And it's been it it's shocking. And I think this is very much an academic hangup. It feels like I'm doing less and more is happening. Like I feel like I have to do it more. Right. And it feels the more that you're doing is just bearing witness and holding the space. Right. And that is, that is enough to use your phrasing. Like this is enough and it's more than enough and it's so powerful. And that is where it's incredibly different from mentorship or sponsorship, right? Mentorship is very loosey goosey. And so is sponsorship both very important, but mentorship is like two people hanging out having coffee or a glass of wine sharing stories.
There's a lot more that resonates with me that you don't really do in coaching. Coaching is about the client, not the coach, whereas mentoring. Those are big, you know, there's this concept of, um, mutuality in feminist mentoring where I have as much to learn from you as you do from me. And so we're equally sharing stories and sponsorship is very much like I have a positional power, powerful position, um, positional leadership role where I can get you into very high profile projects, committees and editorial work that will help you move your career forward and, and meet your goals. And so that is very directed, very specific. And, um, the sponsor is willing to do that work for, um, the person who's sponsoring, but also expects the person they're sponsoring to show up. And so when you sponsor someone and they fail, they're probably going to stop sponsoring you because they're investing in you to move forward. And so I think that that is much more transactional.
RPR: That's definitely what I was thinking in terms of mentorship and sponsorship, which I, I don't think I've really thought about that word as much and thinking about them as different, but there is, there does feel like there's usually some sort of power differential in a mentoring relationship. Um, so, and I, I think for me, one of the hardest things about coaching is suppressing the expert in me suppressing the one who wants to try to fix a problem who wants to say, okay, this is what I'm seeing bright. The let's do something about this rather than letting the client get there on their own. That's one of the things that I think has been most challenging about coaching for me is focusing on facilitation, not, you're not, you're not really helping necessarily, right? Because helping implies a fixing or some sort of other power differential, but you're like you said, you're holding space and you're witnessing as that person does the work. And you're just there to facilitate the work.
MC: I try to use the word partnering, but it's, I slip in and out because it's, um, it's challenging. And I like you, I'm Austin. Like I have so many solutions to them and they're like, you know, actually I get really get, cause there they're super high level smart women. So I say, yes I do. But the research shows that if you come up with a solution in this session on your own, it's going to be one that works for you when that you'll actually implement. And one that you'll remember, whereas if I give you my advice, like, yeah, maybe you'll do it right. And when I do give advice like that, I say, okay, this is not coaching. I have now moved into a consulting role. And what you've asked me to do is be a consultant. So this is a consultant's answer, not a coach's answer. So pretty clear about be marketing. That
RPR: It's that idea that you're supposed to coach the client, not the problem. And that's a natural instinct for us to solve the problems. So well, to wrap it all up for today, what do you, what is one thing that you wish academic women knew about coaching?
MC: How powerful it is, really how helpful it is in the sense of, I think what I hear the most from my clients is I don't do anything for myself. And I'm not saying, I'm saying this as a client, right? Like they don't do anything for themselves. And they realize as they get into the coaching sessions, wow, this is one hour, every two weeks because that's my normal schedule where I have someone who is just there for me, who is not, we're not, I don't feel like you have to tell your stories. And I like, you're here. I'm paying you to be here for me for one hour. And I don't feel guilty focusing on myself because it's structured. There's a monetary exchange and this is something I'm doing for myself. And I think, you know, once they get into it, they're like, this is really important work for me too.
Why don't I ever do? You know? And they'll say like every two weeks or like, I haven't done anything for myself in two weeks. And the only thing I'm doing for myself, and then we also are like, okay, what can you do for yourself? Like, because you can't do this forever, right? This is I'm here to give you some tools and techniques that you can use. You don't need me anymore. So they can go on and do this without me. And a lot of that is building network. A lot of women I know are isolated and don't have networks. They don't take that seriously. And so I think that one, it's a temporary thing. Like you'll hire a coach, often their transition coaches, like you've gotten a promotion or you have been passed over for a promotion or you have a new job you're starting.
And that coach works with you while you make that transition and helps you develop the tools that make sense for you to go on without the coach. And so I think that's really, it's like a short term contract where you have the space and some women feel like it's a luxury and I don't want them to feel like it's a luxury. I feel, I want them to feel like this is an important piece. That is part of your toolkit. And it makes sense. We've talked about, you know, kind of hiring a developmental editor for your writing too. That's a toolkit. Like we should not feel like we're cheating or that we're not worth it or feel guilty. Like these are things to be used and trust me, the men use them. They don't feel guilty. It's an investment that they make in their future.
RPR: Exactly. Yeah. That's the way I try to think about it too, is it is an investment in yourself and in your future, right. It's, it's not a luxury, it's an opportunity. So I hope, I hope people will continue to take advantage of it. And I hope women will continue to do the training to become coaches so they can be there for other women in this context.
MC: Yeah. If there was one kind of most important thing I did this year and you know, we've talked about this, who knew COVID was going to happen. Right. But getting trained as a coach during this year was I can't think of a better thing I could have done because the emotional needs were great for everyone in my life, including myself and having the, um, training as a coach just really helped me show up in ways that I never knew I could for people. And if there was one year that that needed to happen, it was this year.
RPR: I also, I feel the same way. And I feel like I've valued my cohorts so much. They became really important. And you and I did a group together the year before that group became very, very important and bonded. And I think having both the coaching training, as well as the cohort support really made a difference in a year, that was pretty awful in a lot of other ways.
MC: No, I agree. My, our cohort is, uh, where I have, we have a WhatsApp, um, there's 26 of us went through the program together and like all over the country, all eight, all kinds of backgrounds. Right. And, um, there, you know, it's at the end of the year. So people are like, we're trying to figure out, but you know, I mean, Georgetown has obviously like they do this. They have, I think they do three cohorts a year, maybe more. And so we were cohort 61, right? So this is like, there are tons of people who've been through the program. And so that's a listserv too, which is really nice. So if you have a question or whatever, you can throw it out. When we do our book and we do our fall for, uh, people to interview, I will be throwing it out on there. Like, have you coached women in higher ed? Are you a woman who coaches women in higher ed? Um, we wanted to talk to you kind of thing.
RPR: Yeah. We need to be building up that network and finding each other and supporting each other. There's a, there's a little professional organization in there for us somewhere. I'm sure.
MC: Oh yeah.
RPR: Well, thank you so much for your time, Mary. It's always great to chat with you. I appreciate you being here today.
MC: Oh, thank you. This was fun.
RPR: Thanks for listening to this episode of the agile academic podcast for women in higher ed. To make sure you don't miss an episode, follow the show on Apple and Google podcasting apps and bookmark the show. The page where you'll find show notes and a transcript with each episode, you'll find the show at RebeccaPopeRuark.com/podcast. If you'd like to recommend someone to interview, please just complete the contact form at the bottom of the page. Take care and stay well.