I am someone who has not typically embraced social media; I held on to my flip phone an uncomfortably long amount of time. But I have had a Twitter account for approximately three years, and I believe it has positively impacted my professional academic career. Here is what I have learned over the last three years.
 
If you are new to Twitter, I highly encourage you to find a colleague who is an experienced Twitter user and have them provide you some initial tips and advice. Learning how to block tweets containing particular words or phrases was very important for me. This allowed me to filter out certain aspects of current events that, while important, are not why I am on Twitter. People also have different opinions about how best to keep tweets or threads that have really critical or important information. For example, early on I found a thread from a highly respected researcher about academic writing tips. I knew I would want to refer to this often, so I direct-messaged the thread to myself. This works for me, but there might be better ways to do this. Get advice from experts!
 
Be selective about who you choose to follow. I followed very few people for the first 2-3 months, only following academics, scientists, and educators whose research was directly related to my own. I looked at who they were following and engaging with on Twitter. I started to follow organizations directly related to my line of research as well as funding agencies such as NIH and IES. Another thing I consider is the tone of responses.  I personally appreciate spirited discussions but don’t like pompousness, so I take this into consideration when following (and unfollowing) people.
 
One of the primary advantages of Twitter for me is hearing about new research. In a way, Twitter can serve a similar purpose as a conference. I often hear about new research results months prior to seeing it in journal. I have also connected with colleagues that I have never met in person via Twitter; after a few positive Twitter exchanges, I now feel comfortable contacting them directly to ask questions about their research findings. Also, when I have posted information about my own research, Twitter colleagues have posted suggestions for other authors or lines of research that I had overlooked.
 
Having “twitter friends” is also amazing when you attend a conference. In the past two years, I have connected with people in person that I have been conversing with for years on Twitter. I have also noted researchers finding dinner dates and writing buddies at conferences simply by tweeting that they were at a particular conference and were looking for company. For young/new faculty in particular, or for folks attending a conference a little out of their wheelhouse, this can be an amazing resource.
 
I have not utilized Twitter to promote my own academic work as well as I should, and this is a goal for 2020. Some people do this really well. Find them and try to emulate their tweets as you think about how to promote your own work.
 
One other unexpected advantage to Twitter is the feeling of solidarity with other academics. Although I love my chosen career path, it can often be hard and also really isolating at times. It makes me feel better that someone else is writing a grant at 11 o’clock at night while feeling incredibly guilty about not being fully present with their family. And if they are doing it over a glass of wine, as I often do, it’s even better! But I also love to see academics that are very prolific and highly respected tweet about leisure time-- books they are reading, museums worth seeing, trips they are taking (or planning to take post-COVID times). It makes me feel like pursuing extracurricular activities is an okay thing to do during my academic career as well.
 
Many POWER members have Twitter accounts. I encourage you to seek them out and follow them. It’s a great way to both support our members as well as learn something about their research in the process. (Also make sure to follow POWER at @poWOMENer!)
 
There are many articles written about the benefits of social media, and specifically Twitter, and here are a few links that I particularly enjoyed:
 
https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2016/10/19/how-academics-can-use-twitter-most-effectively-essay
 
https://blogs.plos.org/scicomm/2019/06/18/a-nifty-guide-for-academics-on-using-twitter/
 
https://www.natureindex.com/news-blog/ten-tips-tweeting-research-academic
 
 

The professional development committee has been working on putting together resources that we know and love. That isn’t quite done yet, but we thought that in this time of COVID-19, there would be interest in COVID-19 related resources. Here they are!
 
These resources were gathered from our Steering Committee members as resources they have found helpful to them. They will likely not all be of interest, or all right for you, but we hope this list might bring you some needed information/support during the time. We haven’t individually team-vetted each resource, so normal disclaimers apply.
​
 
National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity 
https://www.facultydiversity.org/
Professional tools, mentoring, and support for being successful in the Academy, with a specific page dedicated to COVID-19 resources.

Academic Woman Amplified Podcast by Dr. Cathy Mazak
 https://www.cathymazak.com/podcast/
The podcast for academic women who want to write and publish more while rejecting the culture of overwork in academia, with recent attention paid to what to do during the pandemic.

Mirya Holman's Aggressive Winning Scholars newsletter
https://miryaholman.substack.com/
A weekly newsletter focused on being successful in academia, which recently has been focused on being successful as an academic in the time of COVID-19.

The Professor Is In website, blog, podcast
General website: http://theprofessorisin.com/
 
COVID-19 specific blogs/resources:
https://theprofessorisin.com/category/covid19/
Crowdsourced information, advice, and resources for managing your career (both in and outside of academia) generally as well as during COVID-19.

AERA Virtual Research Learning Series
https://www.aera.net/Professional-Opportunities-Funding/AERA-Virtual-Research-Learning-Series2020
Live or on-demand access to online professional learning workshops on relevant research and academic writing topics with scholars across country as instructors.
 

Virtual Coaching for Graduate Students and Academics: Teaching Academia
https://www.youtube.com/c/LeighAHall/featured
 
YouTube Channel with a library of videos to support graduate students and academics with relevant and timely content on navigating academia in the time of COVID-19.
 

 
 

The Providing Opportunities for Women in Education Research consortium was developed to address inequities that people who identify as women or non-binary experience in educational research. We also work with our membership and broader research community in their efforts to address issues of social justice and systemic inequities. The most current iteration of blatant racism and violence, as those of the past, is deeply troublesome for us; we know that we cannot fully understand how it has impacted our membership and their communities. As an organization we unequivocally say that Black Lives Matter. We acknowledge and condemn white supremacy and racism. We recognize that centuries of systemic inequity and racism have a real and profound negative impact in the day to day lives of our colleagues of color, both professionally and personally. We acknowledge that now is the time to listen, engage, and take specific actions that combat systemic inequalities and racism in all of our organizational structures. Most of our research and scholarship engages young children and adolescents. These children and adolescents should not have to fear for their lives and those of their family and friends. We urge our membership to consider how they can use their expertise to take action in their own communities. We are committed to change in our own organizational structure and goals to ensure that we are supporting these efforts. We are committed to doing this through our own reading and learning, engagement and action in our own communities, and as always, we welcome feedback from all our members about how we can better serve both our membership and the broader educational research community.  
 
We are here to connect, support, and advocate,
 
Emily Solari, President, [email protected]
Sara Hart, President Elect, [email protected]
Jill Pentimonti, incoming President Elect, [email protected]
 
On behalf of the Steering Committee.

Emily Solari, Ph.D.

​Just two weeks ago, I had been prepared to send a letter to our POWER membership about the organization’s plans for the new decade. The contents largely outlined the goals and mission of the organization, described some of the work we had been actively and sometimes quietly engaged in, and our aspirations moving forward. It became evident two weeks ago the world was quickly changing, and today, having re-read what I wrote weeks ago, it became crystal clear that much of what I had outlined is no longer relevant.
 
As I have settled into a forced homeschool situation with my three young boys coupled by an exponential work load increase, the things I deemed important two weeks ago are no longer. Today I worry about the health of my nuclear family, my aging parents and grandparents, and my friends far and wide. In a very real way, I worry about being able to manage my job while also managing my kids at home. I hope that someday soon, I will get through just one zoom call without my 5-year-old interrupting it by yelling some totally asinine thing that at the very least worries the participants on the call, and most certainly makes it so that they are judging my parenting. As I work late into the night trying my hardest to catch up, I often get paralyzed by the thought that I just can’t do it all. I can’t, and quite frankly, I just don’t want to. It feels weird to be pushing so hard on the ordinary work things when the world is in such a desperate and strange state. I worry that my kids are worried. Should I be concerned that they have started playing a game called “social distance freeze tag”, I mean- this is odd, right? I worry about the kids in schools, those who usually benefit in some way from my work, and are often the most marginalized in schools- how are they coping at home? Essentially, I worry about all the things. And, I am concerned that with all this worry, about my family and the world around me, that I will never again be able to fully engage in the deep and critical thinking that is required in our line of work to be a productive scholar.
 
At the same time, I realize that my concerns are happening from a place of great privilege. I have a roof over my head, resources for myself and my children, and job security. I am keenly aware that not all the people that make up our membership are in the same situation. I have spent a lot of time thinking about the impact this situation will have on my more junior colleagues and those not situated in tenure or tenure line positions. Since so many of us work in applied research settings there is no doubt that research agendas have been disrupted. This will have more of a negative impact on our junior colleagues than more senior, there is just no way around this. Folks who hear the tick tock of the tenure clock, or were collecting data as pilot study to submit an early career grant are more impacted. Similarly, dissertation studies are being altered as we speak and graduate students and postdocs are looking at a new reality of a potentially even more difficult academic job market. 
 
When POWER was first conceived we had a laser focus on three main goals, which are to advocate, support, and connect people in educational and human development research, with a particular interest in lifting up junior women in our fields. Now, more than ever, is the time to think about how we can do this as a collective group. I have heard from several good friends who are more junior that they feel hesitant about speaking up against the narrative around productivity during this time. To those people, I would like to scream, “I am here for you and I think many others are as well.” It is so important for us to keep in mind that for people who are in vulnerable positions within the academic structure, their vulnerability is exacerbated in times like these. The question becomes how do we use our collective voice to support ourselves and those around us.   
 
Advocate. I am hopeful that the people who are in positions of power across the multiple institutions that we represent, and those that have secure job positions, will be unapologetic in their advocacy for folks in our community for whom this is not their reality. Those of us who can speak up, should. We should be asking the hard questions about how our institutions are going to deal with tenure related concerns and funding of graduate students as we move forward. I am not suggesting that we all have to be publicly vocal, some very important things can happen at the local level. Be the person who surfaces the issues at the faculty meetings, engage with your other more senior colleagues about these concerns. Lead the efforts around how we will rethink the notion of productivity in 2020 and 2021. Ask the hard questions about your institution’s plan to support graduate students. Bottom line, our junior colleagues should not be left alone to consider how the current situation is going to impact them differentially and in inequitable ways. 
 
Support.  People are approaching this new reality in drastically different ways, and I have found over the past two weeks that this means that there are very different types of supports that folks need. One interesting consequence of our current situation is that I have heard on more than one occasion more senior colleagues suggesting that this time is a great time to be productive. I’ve heard - we are stuck at home, why would we not consider how we can use this time to write more papers, conceive of grant ideas, etc.? To those people, I ask that you stop to consider how this narrative impacts the people around you and how actively resisting the notion of sustained and even increased productivity during this time may be a supportive step for women and our more junior colleagues. As people are settling into this new reality, we each have our own individual distractions. Some of us have increased childcare and/or eldercare responsibilities, some of us are scrambling to provide quality content to our students in an online platform for the first time, many of us have seen research disrupted. Many of us are feeling a heightened state of anxiety- we are concerned about our students, our families, the world. Let’s be mindful of this in our interactions, especially those of us who are in positions of power within institutions. And more importantly, let’s try to be intentional in support of our colleagues, especially those who are struggling to find secure footing in their personal and professional lives during these extremely trying times. 
 
Connect. Let’s be purposeful about connecting with each other, both socially and professionally. One of the most successful activities that POWER has been engaged in over the past two years is our most simple - we host happy hours at professional conferences and meetings. These happy hours serve as a safe place for women, and, others who support women in our field to talk about successes, issues, and create meaningful relationships. Early on, our steering committee recognized that we are more powerful as advocates when we communicate with each other. As our new reality sets in, we should share what is working for us, how our institutions are responding, and ideas for advocacy and supports across institutions.  Please also connect with me and with our steering committee as you see fit, we want to hear from you and we want to know how we can support your efforts at your institutions. 
 
Let’s take care of and be kind to each other and ourselves as we move through this uncharted territory.