Isis Artze-Vega on Care, Love, and Kindness in Higher Ed

On this episode, I chat with Dr. Isis Artze-Vega, higher education scholar, writer, and senior leader. We talk about bringing care and empathy into higher education and finding joy in the work

Transcript

Rebecca Pope-Ruark (RPR): On this episode, I chat with Dr. Isis Artze-Vega, higher education scholar, writer, and senior leader. We talk about bringing care and empathy into higher education and finding joy in the work. 

Welcome to the Agile Academic, a podcast for women in and around higher education. In each episode, we tackle topics from career vitality to burnout and everything in between. Join me as I chat with inspiring women about their experiences, pursuing purpose, making change, and driving culture in the academy and beyond. I'm your host, Dr. Rebecca Pope Ruark. 

Hi Isis, welcome to the show. 

Isis Artze-Vega (IAV): Hi, I'm happy to be here. 

RPR: So why don't you just start by telling the audience a little bit about yourself? 

IAV: Of course. So I'm Isis Artze-Vega, and I had a failed early career as a journalist, but I like to think of that as a really good sign, right, that I tried out being a full-time journalist, it didn't feel right in my spirit. And I went back home to Miami, Florida, went to grad school, and I was required to teach a class. And so that really is the origin story of Isis in academia. I fell in love. I mean, just as I was falling in love around the same time with my husband, still my husband, I fell in love with teaching. It felt like something that I could do forever and I felt really lucky, and I never even thought about administration. I didn't know that it existed, frankly, these just people walking around busy. But I only knew from my undergraduate experience and even as a grad student that there were students and professors, and then I really was oblivious to the broader organizational schema and personnel, et cetera. 

So then I wanted to keep learning about higher ed. I was able to teach full-time. I was teaching writing and was invited to participate in a new doctoral program in higher education. And that was my glimpse of administration. I ran a preparing Future faculty program and suddenly my eyes were open to this other way of contributing. So as much as I loved the immediate benefits and joy of teaching and of seeing students writing evolve over the course of a term that never got old, I started being thinking of myself as a possible administrator. And long story short, I applied for a full-time job. I helped faculty with their teaching at a Florida International University, and then I took on more and more responsibility till I took on a more senior role overseeing teaching and learning initiatives. And then I served as an vice president for academic affairs and later provost at a large community college in central Florida. And so I did that until about two months ago. But really my love of teaching and then recognizing that I could contribute in other and really impactful ways as an administrator is really the crux of the journey for me. 

RPR: That really leads into our typical first question. And that question is what defines your purpose in and around higher education? 

IAV: I love that, Rebecca, you asked, what defines my purpose in and about higher education? That qualifier at the end, but I want to say that as I live out my leadership in higher education, it is because I'm living out my purpose, period, not limited to higher education. And I'll tell you a funny, maybe funny little story. I was at a retreat for a project that I'm on a few months back, and the icebreaker, I don't always love icebreakers, you might understand that, but the icebreaker was to create a tent card and on one side we put our actual titles and the other side, we were asked to put our, what title would we give ourselves if we could give ourselves any title? And I really appreciated the nature of this question, and I hadn't asked myself question, and my teenage daughters will laugh when they see it around my house, but I wrote Ambassador of Love and kindness. 

This is what is in my heart. I want to be a person who goes through the world, both personally and professionally in both sectors and is kind and behaves in kind ways and extends love to others even when they're not loving or right. And so that is my purpose as a human being. I have been so privileged and blessed to lead a life just surrounded by love and care. I have the most extraordinary parents, and I have been and felt so loved from the moment I was born until today. And that is such a gift to me, and it fills me and it supports me in all of the ways. And so I feel not responsible, but I feel very lucky to have that and to be able to pay it forward within the context of higher ed. Then, especially as a senior leader, there are all of these individuals who as part of my leadership, that is what I want for them. 

I want them to lead happy, healthy, peaceful lives. And so my responsibility as a leader requires that I extend care to them, that I love them, right with the boundaries that are appropriate. But that is part of my purpose as a leader to care for all of these individuals that are part of my portfolio and team or whatever. I don't like to think about an org chart, but really everybody. And then my purpose within higher ed is also to make it available to more individuals and so that more people can benefit from the truly transformative power of higher ed. I know we say that enough that it's a cliche, but I believe it in my heart that higher ed changes lives, changes communities, and that benefit I want for students. And because so many of them leave our institutions without having attained those credentials, then I think it's crucial for them to, and part of my purpose is having the time that they do spend with us in academia to be characterized by respect and validation and care because our degrees and our institutions can't only hold value for students if they happen to jump through all the hoops and manage to graduate when they're there, we have a responsibility to them. 

And so it kind of blurs the lines between my purpose and what's most important to me in higher ed and as a human being. 

RPR: It's so interesting. I did an interview this morning for another project and we were talking, it's for a book that recently came out, the edited collection that we did called of Many Minds Mental Health and Neurodiversity among faculty and staff. And the experiences can be so different. They can be really negative and they can feel like you're being excluded, but to have people who care that way, the way that you care about students and the way that you care about the folks that are on your team and the people that are around you, that part can be just as transformative as all of higher ed and what higher ed can offer. 

IAV: That's a really, really good point. And I remember early when I was figuring out what does a leader do in academia and do I ever want to be that? And I looked around and frankly, I didn't love what I was seeing, and I knew that I didn't want to be anyone that I was seeing. There wasn't a model of leadership that I wanted to replicate. And on the one hand, it was a little discouraging and I first thought, well, that just means you're not supposed to be that, right, not going to behave in those ways. And certainly nobody was awful, awful. So I don't want to mislead, but they were not manifesting their roles in ways that I thought I could do with authenticity. I would have to pretend to be that more authoritative or issuing demands or being strict and rough, and that's just not how I am, Rebecca. 

I can be very serious and focused and strategic, but I also want to be able to be kind and empathic. And then I read this great book and I keep it nearby, so I'm pointing at it. Nobody can see me, but I'm pointing at it, and it's a book called Everybody Matters: the Extraordinary Power of Caring for Your People Like Family, not a higher ed book, but they write about Bob Chapman and Raj Sisodia, I don't know if I said that right. They write about this recognition that they had as leaders that the people that we work with. So here I would be inclusive of the students, faculty, staff, everyone, their experiences in our sector, in their classroom, online, in their workplaces. It goes with them into their lives. And so if they are hurt or jaded or angry or upset or disrespected, now you have these negative ripples going out into their homes, their siblings, their children, their communities, and how they recognized that they had a responsibility to be good and to be kind and to care, and that caring would also have this positive ripple. 

Then I started imagining, okay, now maybe that leadership could be a thing that I do or aspire to do because somebody told me that that's legit and that they validated some of the ways that I wanted to lead. So I feel really lucky. And so when I talk to people who are a little bit nervous about whether they should take on a leadership responsibility or young people who aspire to leadership, I always say, you get to be the kind of leader that you want to be. You don't have to be like anybody else. You don't have to be like me. You don't have to be the leaders you've seen. You'll get to be the leader and create the version of the role that is authentic to your values, to your purpose, to your personality. And I love that. That was very liberating for me. So that's why I want, as much as I want to share what I've learned about leadership, I have learned a lot. I always want people to know that if my version isn't authentic to them, then it doesn't work. That's how I think about that. Rebecca. 

RPR: It's so interesting to think about higher education culture and how critical it can be. And I talked to Catherine Stewart earlier in a separate episode that I'll link to, and we talked about that difference between being critical, being discerning and being critical, being harsh or being mean in different ways. And so we're constantly judged in higher education culture, and when we think about leadership, we promote from the ranks typically, and those folks don't get a ton of training. So sometimes it's easy to just replicate what you've seen as opposed to really think about how you want to make changes. When you get thrown into something like that, 

IAV: You're right, and not only do we often hire from within and from the ranks, but if there is any kind of an evaluative process, the criteria that we look at are often really misaligned with the traits that I think it takes to be an effective leader. And so that's another very common challenge that I see within academic administration in particular, lots of well-intentioned people stepping into jobs that are lots of grace for them, and then a lot of systems that don't recognize that the skillset isn't there, and we are so used to being high achieving. It's really frustrating. I remember when I had my first person report to me, I was so worried about her because I knew that nobody had taught me how to do that. And so I started reading all the books just because I write the nerd in me, the scholar in me was like, there has to be literature. 

You can't mess this up. This is a person. And it was one person, it was a grad student, just like when I started teaching, I thought, oh no, this isn't going to be good for them. Isis, you're no good at this. So I read everything I could and worked very hard to iterate on my practice, but I was very lucky that I had working conditions that allowed me to do that, and resources that allowed me to read and grow. But I think you're right. In a lot of parts of our jobs, we really aren't fully ready. And if the support systems aren't there or the conditions aren't there, then we do the best we can and sometimes inadvertently we do a good amount of harm. 

RPR: What do you think are some of the qualities that we need in our higher education leaders today? 

IAV: I think we need humility. Just to start with, if I have to start with one, I feel today's challenges are herculean. They are strange, absurd. They are plentiful, right? Every day there's a new leadership challenge. And so I think a leader who doesn't recognize, I don't know how to navigate this by myself and I don't have all the answers and I don't have the right answers, is essential. So I think humility was always important, but I think today it's extra important, authenticity and integrity and credibility. Were always a key part of leadership. And so the minute you enter today's spaces and say to a group of faculty or external constituents, I got this, I figured it out, I think then you've lost everyone because it is not possible. I think we have to operate from a place of humility and transparency. I think other key qualities are maybe that we talk about less are the ability to care and to demonstrate care, which is different. I think almost every person that I've met in a leadership role, of course deeply cares. And you can find that in them if you ask them directly. But so many individuals feel like they are being ignored or manipulated or used data points or as if they were cells in a spreadsheet. And the vulnerability and the uncertainty affects everyone, certainly everyone in the higher ed workforce. And so the ability to demonstrate care, I think today is another to communicate and to demonstrate care is another kind of bundle that I would bring toward the top. 

RPR: I recently did a project talking to women leaders in higher education and around the area of burnout and thinking about that, and I think that there's such a weird thing that happens when you go from faculty to administration or you go into a leadership role, there's some switch that gets flipped in faculty's minds that you're suddenly on the dark side now and you're still the same person and you still care the same. You still care the same about what you want, but you maybe have different information. So it's just like how do we as faculty or how do we as leaders help faculty see that we do still care and we are engaging in care in these roles. We just are kind of coming from different positions. Now, 

IAV: I think you just modeled that really well, which is to openly describe why things are different or why you're approaching something this way or why you are doing it. In the absence of information and understanding, people fill that in. They fill in those holes with assumptions, with their hypotheses, with their suppositions or their accusations, and that's not helpful. And I think part of what I see happening today with academic leaders is we're so busy that even the individuals who in regular times would have had the town hall, had the conversation, provided the explanation, opened it up for questions and make sure that, okay, you might not like it, right? We're not always going to agree, but leaving saying, okay, I can see why this person is deciding to go this route right now. Everything feels so rushed. It also feels so risky. So one of the things I wrote about recently was the real risk that academic leaders feel today in communicating with faculty, putting something in writing, or that they're being recorded. 

And some of what that is resulting in what I'm seeing is a lack of communication or a lack of effective communication and trying to say so little that there's little to find fault in. And that I think is further getting in the way of the trust and the relationship between faculty and administrators in particular, which as you know, was already not in a great place before all of the current level of political interference. And so that hasn't helped. These are relationships that I think it need to be tended to. And so if you don't see time in your schedule as a leader where you are cultivating relationships, having conversation, then you're really not doing your job as it needs to be done today. That's my view. 

RPR: Yeah, I think that piece is so important that leadership really is a relationship cultivation business. It's a people business. It's not just a bottom line business. So how do hundred percent, when you think about bringing that care into leadership roles, what are some of the ways you recommend leaders demonstrate care? 

IAV: One of the ways that I have read about, have seen and recently saw a really good example of leader demonstrating care was revealing their humanity and vulnerability. So often we have this separation as if the administrator, senior leaders are all the way up here and faculty, and something that reminds you of your shared experiences of your shared humanity I think can be really helpful. So recently I was visiting a college and their president was welcoming the faculty back to the fall, and he shared his frustrations. He didn't go on and on, it would've been unwise, but he shared how he has been in a state of uncertainty and angst, and I think reminding faculty and having moments of shared humanity is one way and then another way to demonstrate care. I think, and this goes back to my earlier point about humility. I am a big fan of Xueli Wang's work, and one of the points that she raises in her last book Delivering Promise is that as leaders, we tend to be really out of touch with the realities of faculty day-to-day life and their experiences. 

So I think one key way of demonstrating care today is to resist the urge to make assumptions and to create the time to say, what is it like? How has this policy or has this change or this generative ai, how is this affecting you? And listening, we cannot cultivate relationships of any kind, certainly not of relationships of care without listening intently and real listening, not listening, because I'm here and I'm nodding or I'm ready to tell you what I already decided, even though I'm supposed to be listening to you. And then acting in ways that demonstrates, I heard you and I maybe couldn't do all the things you wanted, but I am going to trust you to do this. Maybe that's maybe a third one. If you want faculty to trust you, demonstrate trust. Trust. I think and care go hand in hand. Our systems of higher ed are not perfect, but they certainly are remarkable and have had many wonderful outcomes, and so much of that leadership has come. Curricular leadership, for example, has come from faculty. And so continuing to communicate our trust in them I think is another part of care and respect. 

RPR: I think that's a beautiful way to think about it. So what you were talking about relationships and that relationship building piece, what are some of the ways that you recommend leaders build those relationships? So we talked about trust and we talked about listening and communication, but how do we really build that relationship rich? You're on the relationship rich projects, so how do we build that for leaders and faculty? 

IAV: I'm thinking here, we're talking about leadership without any nuance or breaking that up, but certainly there's some amount of time that even the most senior leaders, the presidents on the cabinet should spend with faculty doing work in partnership with faculty and listening to them, certainly through faculty governance, and then for other leaders. I think doing work together is a wonderful way of both cultivating the relationships and of frankly doing better work. So much of our work in academia or strategic plans and things, many of them I see, they almost pretend like we don't have faculty, right? Many of them center outside of the classroom, whether from an advising or career development or holistic support and brilliant faculty who engage with students on a regular basis, I think are excellent of almost every strategic priority that we have. So that one for me is both a principled way, but also an efficient and an effective way. 

Faculty are professional students, problem solvers, so many of the skills that we need to do the administrative work. So I think taking down this false binary of the faculty work and the administrative work and bringing faculty into that work for the sake of the projects themselves, and also it's a wonderful way to build a relationship. We know that from research on students interdependence, when you are on a team or in a theater troop, it's not just you are a group doing group work, but the outcome depends on the multiple players. And so then it becomes a tighter knit community and the relationships are deepened. So that's a point of reference for me and also where it was at Valencia where so much of our work was done in partnership with faculty, and I immediately saw the benefits of that model. 

RPR: So you're in a point of transition now. So what are you working on? What projects are you working on these days? 

IAV: Oh, thank you for asking. I'm working on so many fun things. I keep my mind stimulated and my days a little busier outside of yoga and Zumba and baking and cooking, which are other favorite things of mine to do. So I'm working again with Leo Lambert and Peter Felten and other folks who shall be revealed in the future on more work around relationship rich education. And that I feel very lucky, not just because I love all of the human beings who I'm working with, but also because in a time of so many negative forces and changes and things, to hear stories of relationships and to write about relationships and connections and authentic connections of trust is such a nice balance for me. So I feel really lucky, but I'm also working on projects related to philanthropy, to what teaching and learning could look like in Hispanic serving institutions on internships and the value of work-based learning with organizations that I won't name, but I'm also working Rebecca on a really cool project that aims to elevate teaching excellence at scale and us higher education with a team of great scholars and practitioners. So I'm excited. And then eventually, probably in about a couple months, I'll go on a job search and my husband and I will probably leave Florida. So it is an exciting time in our home while our daughter, our younger daughter, finishes her last year of high school, and so I'm going to stay put for this year so Delilah can finish out her high school. And then I'm excited to find another institution where I can contribute in some of the ways that I described. I find great joy in being a senior academic leader. 

RPR: It's so fun to think about the kinds of projects that you can work on when you have a little space, how much you can really get done, and how much you can dig into the really fun stuff. The really easy, 

IAV: And I've been writing, which I hadn't been doing a lot as a provost, and I missed it, so I noticed how I get lost in writing. I'm like, oh, I am so happy that I have had more time to write. 

RPR: Well, I think that's a question too. What about leaders who want to stay connected to their writing or maybe not a full blown research project, but what some ways that they can kind of stay in touch with their writing or use that writing for self-awareness and for contributing to the community? 

IAV: I love that you started the end of your question, started answering it or offered a way that I might answer it, which is one of the things that I always did when choosing my writing projects while I was vice president and provost was, is this going to help me do my job more effectively? That was important to me. Not everybody has to make that choice, but for me, that was so when I decided to work on Connections Are Everything: A College Student Guide to Relationship-Rich Education, I thought, okay, I can be a better provost and I can better support Valencia in helping students foster connections when I do this work. So that helped me, that alignment there. Same with The Norton Guide to Equity Minded Teaching. I thought it could help me do my job more effectively. And then I think ideally it many institutions, there is time someone says to you, make time for this because it is capacity building. 

It is helping you to be a more rounded professional, and it's filling you for those of us who find joy in writing. And I certainly did that for my team as much as I could. My reality was that that was never going to be something my job could make time for, especially during six years of navigating COVID and Florida politics. So I knew that. So in my case, the decision to write and the commitment to write was something I did with my family. I explained to my daughters and my husband, this is a project, this is why it's important to me, and I'm going to be making a lot of sacrifices to make this happen. And that means sometimes when we're on a week-long vacation, I'd find a local library and park myself there and get some writing done. I was almost always up right in our dining room table becomes, mommy's another little writing lab place for me. 

So going with my daughters to do their homework while I worked on my writing projects. But for me, because my job wouldn't permit it, I found the time when it was my personal time. I don't think that that's the ideal. And I think that to your point, there's so much value in writing. It's not the only form of professional development and reflection, but it can be a really powerful way to learn. So I would encourage more individuals to check in with their supervisors about that ability and more leaders to consider creating space for their team. One of my team members had been wanting to publish something for a long time, and so she and I met every Wednesday morning so that I could be her writing buddy so that she could finally have that publication, which we're really excited about. 

RPR: Yeah, I think I talk a lot to faculty too about how we have to find the time for those pieces of our work that we really care about, because everything else will fill the time if you allow it and it can feel really awkward to schedule a two hour block and then try to protect it, you feel like you have to let people into that time just writing time, unquote. But you have to make time for those things that you really deeply care about. 

IAV: I think so too, and I think it helps you to protect it if what you're writing about is really meaningful to you. How many people got this advice for their dissertation? If you don't feel really strongly about this, it's going to be hard to sustain the momentum and the angst and the hoop jumping that it takes to write it. And so just try to find something you're really, really interested in. And as somebody who doesn't have to write, and I don't think anyone really cares if I write or publish from a professional standpoint, that was part of my commitment. Am I really into this? If so, I know I'll be able to get it done. If not, then you're right. The other things will just take up all the space. And that's a really good point. 

RPR: I think the collaboration piece is really important too. I think that's how we kind of persist with some of our passions. It's to work with other people who care as deeply and can be as encouraging and allow us to encourage them and really get that mutual support when we're doing projects like that. 

IAV: I love it. And even with the logistical complications that come with work with co-writing and I'm giggling, I have some of those happening right now. It's just always so much better for me. I love what comes of it. I love the element of surprise, right? I never know what's going to emerge from the collaborative writing projects and then just the joy of being in community and of working with others because other parts of the job can be lonely, and there your title doesn't really matter. So if you happen to be in a higher title than your co-authors, if you are setting up the structures right, then you are. It's so even very little ego there. We're all working toward that same end goal, like the interdependence point that I made before. I've loved it. I feel really lucky. 

RPR: What recommendations or advice do you have for people who want to get into that and want to find collaborators but maybe aren't really sure how to reach out to someone to see if they're interested in working together? 

IAV: Oh, what a good question. I just did this. I did a cold email and I did a random Google search to find a co-author. So I don't know that I have a lot of recommendations, but I'll say that I was asked to write a pretty lengthy piece, a big chapter, and I thought about it. I felt very humbled and happy to do it. And then I thought to myself, well, this publication could make a really big difference for somebody who is in a tenure track position in this field. And since that is not my case, I started looking for people who are in programs or who are in assistant professor positions who I think this could make a big deal for whose research I might be including in there who have written pieces in the field. And I sent an email, I said, and I know that you don't know me, and I know that this is no pressure, just would you be interested in exploring this possibility with me? 

Here is what I have read of your work. Here is the synergy that I see between our backgrounds and our skillset sets. I promise I have references that I am a kind collaborator. I want to make sure I'm a working collaborator, and would you be willing to jump on a call? So I just did that and I'm going to be meeting with somebody who I don't know. But I think other ways are in your professional community. Certainly the pod network is where I have found most of my collaborators. When I thought about my co-authors for the Norton Guide, I thought about people in my network who I know to be exceptional equity-minded professionals. And so I started with Brian [Dewberry] and with Mays, both of Imad whom I knew and I knew of their work, and I knew that we had different strengths and different disciplinary backgrounds, and I thought that would enrich the work. 

So really backward designing here, thinking about the outcome, I thought it would be better. And because the work of equity has been so segmented in my experience from the world of online teaching, we thought that bringing in Flower Darby with her expertise in online teaching would further strengthen the book, and that one flower will confirm this. I worked really hard on that email to try to woo her into this team because I knew that she was working on so many other things and that this would be hard for her to take on. So I used all of my rhetorical skills there to craft an email that thankfully was effective in bringing her in. But I would say try. If someone says no, that that's okay, but putting it out there, I think it's really humbling and gratifying to be asked. So I have been asked, and I mean, it warms my heart, you don't have to work with me. You want to, it's a compliment. And do your homework just as you don't want to be invited to apply for a job or to do anything when you're getting a template email, like everybody else, have specificity. Do your work and respect to this person and their contributions or their previous publications, and then communicate that to them so that it is clear that you are coming from, you have a sincere interest, and it's not a superficial interest in a collaborator because they have a big name or something like that. 

RPR: Yeah, I think it's good advice, right? Like you said, I mean, it's gratifying to be asked to join a project like that as well as, and it's fun to reach out and to get to know other people and see what you can do and where the synergies are. So I 

IAV: Was writing one recently. Oh, sorry. Rebecca just reminded me, I was writing something recently and I kept quoting the same person, and I thought, I wonder if he's available, and I think he's retired. And I was correct. And I always felt so lucky that in his retirement he was so excited to come in and have a writing project. But the more I kept referencing his work, the sillier, it felt not to just ask him to be a partner. So that was earlier in the summer, and I got lucky. I found someone who knew him. I sent a random text that time. I was like, I'm so sorry to be random text. But he was excited and was an excellent collaborator. 

RPR: Lovely. That's lovely. So as we start to wrap up our conversation, what about higher ed brings you the most joy? 

IAV: I ooh, I find so much joy in higher ed. Students bring me so much joy, Rebecca, that sometimes when I found myself in a Zoom marathon in my office the whole day, I would just leave and walk around and be that, I dunno if you know this, but I'm five foot nothing. I would be the little lady walking around and saying, how are things? How are your classes? Just to hear them and be amongst them. So students bring me so much joy, and when I have my own students, seeing their learning brings me so much joy. I would read my students' papers in a local Starbucks and cry, and I think the baristas always knew what time of year it was, because it was about their third paper where I started to see this growth and more critical thinking and more fluidity and confidence. And that brings me a lot of joy, faculty and their innovation and how hard they work for their students and how committed they are to their discipline and one another. 

Sometimes that comes out in their frustration with administrators, but it comes from such a good place. I spent so much time with faculty. Faculty bring me joy, my colleagues, just the people who work in higher ed, I think by and large care so deeply about learning and about education and wanting students to realize the transformative power again, of higher ed. And I love seeing that. I love seeing people come to work every day because they believe in the work. And then when the community comes in and they see the work that we're doing and want to help and contribute, I think that everywhere I look in higher ed, I find sources of joy. Sorry, I know it seems silly or exaggerated, but I really, really do love working in academia. 

RPR: I think we all need some of that perspective these days. It, it's a challenging time just to do what we do in higher education. So we all need to find those little and big areas of joy for ourselves. So the last question I always like to wrap up with is, what's one thing you wish all women associated with higher education knew or practiced? 

IAV: I think all women associated with higher education. I wish that they practice enough self to know what matters deeply to them to know what they're going to be proud of having accomplished or done, or what they will be proud of doing in terms of how they manifest their work in higher education so that they can then see the difference between their values and their aspirations and their realities. I find that when there is a misalignment between the people we want to be, the things we want to do and accomplish and how we do that work, if there's a misalignment between our aspirational version of that and what we have to do day in and day out, that that slowly starts to chip away at you and to chip away at your joy and your happiness. And that's not what I want. What I want for women is wholeness sense that you want to wake up because you can be in the world and you know that you're making the difference that you want to make. 

And unless we take those moments to pause, to reflect, and to really name those aspirations, then we can wake up one day and say, oh no. How did I stray so far from the version of me that I wanted to be? So maybe that would be my parting recommendation is you deserve to make time for yourself and for noticing and for articulating the kind of woman in higher education you want to be. And if you find that your current conditions don't allow for that, then you can start making a plan to go somewhere where you can be that you deserve and aspire to be. 

RPR: Love that. Well, thank you so much for chatting with me today. It was wonderful to speak with you. 

IAV: It was my pleasure. Thank you for having me, Rebecca. 

RPR: Thanks for listening to this episode of the Agile Academic Podcast for women in higher ed. I hope you enjoyed this conversation as much as I did. To make sure you don't miss an episode, follow the show on Apple, Google, or Spotify podcasting apps and bookmark the show. You'll find each episode a transcript and show notes theagileacademic.buzzsprout.com. Take care and stay well.