Over the last several months, the POWER Steering Committee had the pleasure of interviewing Drs. Patricia Edwards, Shelley Gray, and Kate Cain. Please see our website for more information about their backgrounds and commitment to mentoring.

As an inspiring start to the New Year, we will be sending out ambassador interviews over the next few weeks. With Dr. Patricia Edwards, we had a thoughtful conversation about what to consider when advocating for yourself and for others. Stay tuned for our next installments!

What is the best advice you’ve received in your career?
The best advice that I’ve received is that you need to have a focus. What do you want to be best known for? You can’t know everything about everything, but you can know a lot about something. Can you attract people to come and work with you? If so, you will need a focus to build up your CV in a way that attracts a talented team. When you finish your dissertation, let this launch your career instead of jumping around to this and that.


What are the most important characteristics of a good mentor?
The key to a good mentor is to know what will make an individual successful in the academy and in their given academic institution. A good mentor advocates for their mentees in many ways, such as increasing their visibility through nominating them for awards and getting them on national committees. Sometimes you will have to use your mentoring skills to negotiate for your mentees.

I want to make sure women are given equal opportunities. I want to make sure they get a seat at the table. At one of my past institutions in the 70’s, I saw that there were no women with tenure and moving through the ranks. Therefore, I tried to make sure that women who were right for this job were given opportunities and the experience they need to move through the ranks.

In academia, it is all about your reputation. No one gets to where they have gotten without help. Who do you want to help move through the ranks? How do you want to leave a legacy? This is good not only for them but for you and your institution. Women need to know the rules and then we can play it just as well or better than the boys.


What are the most important characteristics of a good mentee?
As a mentee, you need to listen to the good news AND the bad news. We need to see bad news as a learning opportunity and be humble. For example, my advisor marked my writing up so much with a red pen that it looked like it had been given a blood transfusion. I was so upset at first. But then I realized that the feedback was coming from a place of caring and I needed to learn from it. And I did. And on my later papers, my advisor didn’t need to mark them up.

Remember that you own the responsibility for your own success. Your mentor is there to support you, but you need to do the work.


What advice do you have to help people manage their time effectively and stay engaged? 
I think that many junior faculty don’t know how or when to say no. As one of my colleagues says, “No is a complete sentence.” When someone asks you to do something, you want to consider “Who’s to benefit?” For instance, as a person of color, I am asked to be on many committees and serve in other roles. I have to be careful that I don’t get sliced up to the point of incompetency. Think of yourself like The Giving Tree. You only have so many resources to offer.
As a minority researcher, I get asked to do things all the time. I told someone I am not a minority anymore because you can get so sliced up and diced up. My advice is work 8 hours, sleep 8 hours, and do something else for 8 hours. And if you overcommit, you won’t be able to hold up your end of the bargain. Then your reputation suffers and you don’t want people to think of you as someone who says “Yes” but does not do what they promised.

However, saying no can be tricky because you also need to be a good citizen of your institution. Sometimes, especially as you become more senior, you need to say yes to requests because if you don’t do it, then someone else will have to do it. You want to protect your junior colleagues. You also need to be careful about who you say no to. There are two people that you have to work well with - your Dean and your Chair. Sometimes there are situations where they ask you to do something that you didn’t plan on - like a search committee. You need to be flexible.

It’s also important to remember to take a long view of your career. There are some years that you will be at the top of your game and producing a lot, and some years you will not be because of personal issues. But if you take the long view, you will always retain a focus on quality and ways to move the field forward, even if you are not publishing the same amount as in other years.


What are some of the things necessary for success that you think women researchers might not think about or need support in developing?
One thing is that the ability to teach is not going to get you tenure. But the inability to teach will get you in trouble. You have to be able to teach but also do research, write grants, and national service.

I keep copies of winning grant applications and share these as examples with my mentees so they can see what this looks like.

It’s also really important to learn how to negotiate for academic positions. We hold a negotiation workshop for our doctoral students to learn critical negotiation skills. I tell people that institutions have a salary range that they can offer, and I explain that women are earning less than men. But women did not pay less for their PhD training than men did, so why should be paid a lesser salary? That doesn’t make sense.

It’s important to know how to talk to policy makers. As researchers, we are trained to be careful about what we say about our research. At least within my own discipline, when we talk about the implications of our work, we typically limit it to suggestions of areas for future research. Trying to use our research findings to influence policies can seem like a  daunting concept. However, in recent years, institutions are devoting considerable resources into helping academics build their skills, so they can communicate complex science or technical social science into ‘user friendly’ and digestible soundbites. If your research overlaps with nationally recognized policy, then this provides the opportunity for you to talk with multiple audiences. Since coming to MSU in the fall of 1989, I have continued to be an articulate spokesperson and my service has taken three forms. I have served the university, professional organizations, and parents and children. For example, I have responded to more than 50,000 teachers, administrators, daycare providers, adult educators, legislators, and governors around the country regarding the two family literacy programs I developed. I served as an advisor to the U. S. Department of Education, specifically the Department's Office of Elementary and Secondary Education and the Office of Planning, Budget and Evaluation. My work with the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education led to the document Preparing Young Children for Success. It provides guideposts that may be helpful in taking actions to achieve the first national goal, Readiness for School. Without careful counsel, such reforms are likely to create more problems than they solve. My contributions to these policy statements and to the research and development that they support for the next five years is crucial, for I reminded the Department that teachers need to be educated in how to accommodate the needs of the changing family. My work with the Department brought me in contact with many key state and national leaders which has served as an important avenue for the dissemination of my scholarship from MSU. I was also a consulting reader of "The Mechanics of Success for Families: An Illinois Family Literacy Report." This experience also brought me in contact with several state and national leaders. Also, I had the distinct honor and pleasure to testify in Washington on March 9, 1989 to the Congressional Subcommittee on Select Education about my work with families and children. Additionally, because of my work with families and children, I was invited to the 52nd Presidential Inaugural "Bells for Hope" Historic Event and Reception in Washington, DC, January 1993.

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It's grant season! Are you writing a grant proposal for a federal agency?
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If so, GRANTS.GOV has a terrific resource called the Community Blog. You will find a broad range of topics including grant writing basics, funding opportunities, tips for writing grant applications, and grant policy. There are also plenty of embedded links to a variety of resources.
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Member Jessica Logan has provided a brief powerpoint presentation that goes through an overview of the What Works Clearinghouse (WWC), and an introduction to the standards handbook for evidence in experimental and quasi-experimental designs. The WWC standards handbook is now used to review all ingoing efficacy or effectiveness grants to the Institute of Education Sciences (ies.ed.gov), and proposed projects must meet strict criteria to be eligible for funding. This presentation reviews why the WWC exists, why it reviews studies, and what design elements constitute the three different tiers of evidence standards: Meets standards without reservation, meets standards with reservation, or does not meet standards.

This presentation includes excerpts from a (then pending, now successful!) grant application to IES. This should give readers an idea of how to include the necessary information related to the WWC in their grant applications. 

Find the presentation on figshare HERE.

Part of the POWER mission is to connect our members such that we can support and advocate for one another. Your desire to connect and share was a primary outcome from our recent membership survey!

There are multiple ways that you can currently connect and share as POWER members (and we are working on more!). You can reach out to members to ask questions, solicit advice, and share resources through the listserv, via Twitter, and at our networking events.

● To send a message to our listserv of POWER members, email  powomener@googlegroups.com. You can celebrate an accomplishment, share a link to a promising resource, start a conversation on a particular topic, see who is attending an upcoming conference, highlight a service opportunity, etc. Also, make sure that this listserv email address is added to your contacts/address book so messages do not end up in spam!

● We have a POWER Twitter account – follow us at @PoWOMENer. We encourage you to use our hashtag #WomenEdResearch to engage with our POWER Twitter community. Let everyone know what you’re doing to support the POWER mission! And keep an eye out for our Women’s Wednesday Twitter chats (2pm EST on the first Wednesdays of the month).

● We will continue to organize networking events throughout the year. Our SRCD event in March was a great success! Look for opportunities to meet other POWER members at the SSSR conference this summer and additional conferences this fall and winter; information will be shared via the listserv.

As always, feel free to connect directly with a Steering Committee member if you have other ideas about engaging our growing community.

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Thanks to everyone who responded to our member survey!

The results of our survey provide us information about members’ perceptions of the resources/opportunities provided by POWER. We had 54 members respond to our survey, and a report of our findings is posted online HERE.  We are using the information to guide our plans for the upcoming year.

Some key points:

• Members are very interested in more networking opportunities, both nationally and locally. In the upcoming months, stay tuned for details about additional events at conferences, ways to connect with other POWER members within your local communities, and opportunities to join in on conversations on Twitter.
  
• Members want to have access to more resources on our website. We hear you and plan to increase the information that we provide to you both on our website and through Twitter.
  
• Our goal is to be an inclusive, active community. We now know that many of our existing members would like to become more involved in POWER, so we are currently brainstorming the best ways to accomplish this.
  

We are growing and now have over 200 members. With this in mind, we felt that this was a good time to reflect on where we should dedicate our resources. We noticed that most members are not using the password-protected “members only” portion of our website. This portion of the website was removed so that all of our information will be accessible to anyone visiting the website.

The POWER Steering Committee is grateful for the opportunity to get to know many of you better and welcome your ongoing feedback about how best to serve you as we continue to move forward. ​​

In February 2019, members of the POWER Steering Committee met with Sharon Vaugh, Ph.D. We had a thoughtful conversation about research, writing, and how to say “no” sometimes.
 
What is your advice for developing as a writer? 

• Prioritize daily writing – 30 minutes minimum, but 60-90 minutes is better. Treat this meeting as if it was with a dean or someone important, so you truly protect that writing time and aren’t tempted to cancel it. Would you cancel an appointment with your dean? Put these times in your calendar.

 

• Early in your career, you must prioritize publishing in the peer-reviewed journals that have the highest impact. For the most part, your daily writing routine should be focused on producing manuscripts. Unless your institution has a requirement for funded grant proposals, it is manuscripts published in high quality journals that will secure your position.

 

• You will also want to focus on writing grants, but keep this focus constrained. Look at the calendar and note grant deadlines. Focus on grant writing for the 30-40 days before the deadline. Do not let grant-writing take over your writing life. If you spend too much time letting the grants take over your daily writing, you will lose focus and energy on manuscript writing.

 

• Consider setting big goals for which journals and fields you want to most influence early in your career; this will increase your influence early on. For instance, my goal was to publish one manuscript per year in Journal of Educational Psychology. Whereas later in your career, you can develop more diversity in the audiences that you are writing for. Don’t hide your excellent work by publishing it in a low impact journal.

 

• I write on more than one paper at a time, but I only lead one paper at a time because I really need to keep my head in that paper. In this way, I can be very responsible for what I am leading, but support others. I make sure that junior people are not waiting on me because they need these papers for promotion and tenure.

 
What are your tips for successful grant writing?

• You should go for low hanging fruit in terms of university grant opportunities or other accessible grants if they meet your needs. But in the first three years, you might want to consider writing grants for larger funding agencies such as IES and NIH because this experience is important for you to understand how your ideas are thought of in the field. Make sure you have an experienced mentor who can help you by reviewing the proposal prior to submission and possibly be the co-investigator for the project.

 

• It’s also important to keep grant writing in perspective. The reasons for external funding are: 1) if you want buyout for your courses; 2) consistent summer salary; 3) fund graduate students; and/or 4) if your job is yoked to it. Good work can also be done without external funding.

 
How do you envision a focused program of research?

• I would admit that I splintered off a good bit in my early work. I feel like when I was dabbling in multiple fields, I was not as productive. When I put together a set of studies that were related and could occur over about 5 years, then I was much more productive. I put a five-year plan together and I talked about it.

 
How do you recommend young researchers find a more senior mentor?

• I think this is really tricky and for several reasons. One thing I have observed is that the most senior people are often the best to work with because they know who they are and so mentoring others is a desirable and exciting activity. Early in your career as you are trying to establish your own line of research, you are still “treading water” in some ways, so it is hard to be as generous with your time as you might like to be.

 

• Yoking with a very productive associate professor who is interested in working with you can also be very helpful. These types of people can show you the ropes and it can be mutually beneficial.

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• Don’t be relegated to your own institution to look for mentors. I don’t think we should think of our university walls as the boundaries for where you can find good mentors. I have examples of colleagues at other universities that are excellent collaborators who initially reached out to me as a mentor.

 

• Also, start when selecting a mentor or research partner with something small before going into a longer-term project to see if the collaboration is beneficial. For example, start with doing a conference presentation or a short-term research project. 

 

• I tell people all the time “Don’t work with people just because you like them.” You have to have high confidence about the quality of their work and their reliability in doing their work. You have to be able to trust them more than thinking about whether you want to see them on Saturday night.

 

• Also, if you as the junior researcher are willing to do more of the heavy-lifting work, it will be a much better sell for senior scholars to work with you (e.g., the role of senior scholars to consult on the design, intervention, and measures and junior researchers manage the implementation).

 
Can you talk about work-life balance and how you’ve thought about that across your career?

• I deliberately limit how much I will work each week. When I have reached my limit, I “clock out.” So that makes me much more deliberate about making sure that I come to work and work hard during my designated work hours. I bring my lunch and don’t goof off at work. I very rarely work after 6pm.

 

• Get your calendar set up so you have blocked time to write, then email, then calls, or meetings. That way you stay focused and do what you’re supposed to do at that time. That way when it is time to go home, you can leave.

 

• How do you manage anxieties about our type of work – this can be anything from decision making, promotion, tenure, manuscript rejections, etc. There are so many opportunities to be anxious in this type of work. I don’t know the formula to eliminate anxiety, but I do know that ruminating about things is not helpful. These anxieties are real because we often do not have clarity in this business.  But you have to live with these ambiguities because they are part of the nature of this work. Acknowledge those feelings – they are real – but then you have to set the fears aside and trust that you know some things about your work that you should focus on. Hard as it is, it is not useful to have your anxieties push you around.  They really are the bigger enemy than the thing you actually fear.

 
How do you assess what opportunities to “yes” versus “no” to?

• Say “Let me think about that. Let me get back to you”. In most cases, what you need to do is wait to decide – explain that you need to think about it or check on something. If you wait 24 hours, you can visualize yourself doing the work. This will help you make a much more clear decision.

 

• I am working on saying “no” more. We often say “yes” to too much because we are in a helping profession.  But we need to remember that we don’t have greater obligation to do things compared with those who are in other professions. You wouldn’t ask your neighbor who is a lawyer to write your will for free.  We need to respect our own time and teach others to respect it as well.

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• When you say no, keep it very simple, such as “I have other obligations now that require my time.”  If you provide too much information, you either hurt someone’s feelings or open a window for someone to provide a counter argument.

 
Many thanks to Sharon for sharing her advice and time with us; we are especially grateful for her honesty about managing anxieties and decision-making. 

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In February 2019, members of the POWER Steering Committee spoke with Stephanie Al Otaiba 
Ph.D. We had an insightful conversation about making an impact as education researcher and
advice for women. 

POWER: What is the best advice you have received during your career?

• This below model of ikigai, which comes from Japan, is something that I find very useful in all aspects of my career. Ikigai emerged from qualitative research (interviews) with Japanese people who lived to be over 100 years old. I first received training on it from my yoga teacher.

• From Wikipedia: Ikigai (生き甲斐, pronounced [ikiɡai]) is a Japanese concept that means "reason for being".  The word "ikigai" is usually used to indicate the source of value in one's life or the things that make one's life worthwhile.  Another resource is THIS article from Medium. 
• I use ikigai to plan goals.  The first year I used it, I had it posted on the side of my computer to remind me to think about these concepts:  1) what is really important to me? 2) what is it that I really love and motivates me? 3) What is it keeping me up at night that the world really needs? 4) what is it I can be paid for and be a resource for people for others to be paid or receive what they need?

POWER: How do you make decisions about how to spend your time?

• It is important to remember that we need to take care of ourselves to stay good at what we are good at.  We need to be as thoughtful about what we say yes to as to what we say no to.

 

• I use ikigai to encourage myself to say “no” to one thing per month that doesn’t fit in my ikigai vision. As women, we are asked to do a lot. We need to be intentional about how we chose to spend our time. For example, for me, I hold a strong value in teacher education. If I was asked to be on a committee focused on teaching online, I would say yes to this.  It is really important to me to interact with students face-to-face, and I want a voice in that discussion.  But I would say no to a grant opportunity that doesn’t align with what I am motivated by or what I think the field needs or to a role that doesn’t utilize the skill set that is sweeter for me. 

 

• When making decisions, don’t be reactive. Take time to think about the decision. Find an ally who can help you decide.  For example, if you are feeling overwhelmed, you may ask your Chair or other senior colleague to help you prioritize what are the most critical responsibilities and goals. 

 

• Also, be thoughtful about how you can say no. For sensitive topics or with more senior people, you may need to have a face-to-face discussion but in other situations, an email may suffice.  Sometimes it is helpful to role play saying no.

 

• We also need to remember that we aren’t the only person who can do certain things. We may not be “uniquely good.”  If you find an ally or partner who has similar skills and interests, then take turns engaging with certain tasks. 

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• Brené Brown has TED talks on: vulnerability and shame – in one she discusses her frustration with herself when she said yes to an “opportunity” to present when she wished she had not. She questioned her own need to say yes and not hear her own inner voice and then eventually feeling resentful. These talks reinforce the intentional use of time for me and also reinforce that we all feel like an impostor from time to time. 

 

• We have also implemented ikigai in our college as we are thinking about our College mission and goals. I also used it in our lab where we discussed how we as a team should spend our time.  

 
POWER: What do you think is particularly important for early- and mid-career women to know?

• It is important to understand that there is often a lack of parity and/or clarity about benefits, such as salary and summer support, across or within universities. You need to advocate and negotiate to maximize opportunities but you need to know what is “beyond the line in the sand” to ask for.   Find out from more senior colleagues what negotiating did they do and what is reasonable to ask for.  Learn about your value at your institution, but always remember that this is different than your self-worth.

 

• Regarding promotion and tenure, try to learn what directions your institution sends out to external promotion and tenure letter writers.  There is often lack of specificity that can be problematic. For instance, does your institution inform external reviewers about family and medical leave policies that may influence how reviewers perceive the productivity or potential “gaps” in productivity in a vita from a faculty member under review.  

 

• When identifying external reviewers, it is always good to have as many as you can from institutions that are a little more ambitious than your own. International reviewers may be helpful but they can be tricky – sometimes they have different tenure clocks or expectations.

 

• You want people that can talk about the coherence of your research. For example, if you work in both autism and early childhood, it would be good to have people in both domains that can speak about both dimensions of your work.  Also, be strategic about providing your reviewers with a detailed research narrative, so your reviewers can make a stronger case for you.

 

• I received the wonderful advice that you should always publish more than what your institution requires. This gives you the flexibility to adapt to changes in expectations. 

POWER: What advice do you have for faculty who are developing mentoring relationships as either the mentor or the mentee?

• I highly recommend this book: The Elements of Mentoring by Brad Johnson and Charles Ridley.

 

• We can mentor both formally and informally. 

 

• Examples of informal mentorship: (a) provide praise and affirmation of others’ work (i.e., “shine a light on others”), (b) cite their work, (c) write tenure letters or help people think about who to list as external letter writers, (d) offer to write other letters of support, such as for a grant or a professional development opportunity (e.g., IES methodological training); (e) create writing groups and advise one another about where to submit manuscripts, (f) assist junior faculty in managing a lab or office hours, (g) help junior faculty learn and negotiate the university system, and (h) help with networking – be intentional about learning about mentoring within AERA for example for historically under-represented individuals in IHEs

 

• For formal mentoring, you should consider having a mentor both within your institution as well as outside your institution. You can ask your senior colleagues for recommendations for mentors outside your university. 

 

• For people in their mid-career, you want to consider whether a potential mentee is really interested in listening to what you have to say. Ask yourself what you are willing to give up to be able to provide mentoring. If you are debating offering time and energy- be sure that you set clear expectations for what you can do and set boundaries (what is confidential, how often can you be contacted, are there “black-out days when you have to have time for your own work or travel, make decisions about socializing, what to do if a mentee-mentor relationship is not working out).

 

• There is power in joint mentoring. You may have a certain skill set that would be very valuable, but someone else could provide mentorship on other skills.

 

• Professional organizations are a great mechanism to develop mentoring relationships and build networks. You can support individuals by suggesting conferences, introducing them to others, and/or helping them connect with individuals with whom they can submit a symposia  For individuals of color or other minority backgrounds, it is helpful to have networks that represent their identity (e.g., AERA minority caucus or CEC Middle East caucus).  Be sensitive to race and ethnicity.

 

• Johnson and Ridley also point out the need to plan for changes in the mentor-mentee relationship- and note that in business these usually last about 5 years: initiation phase, cultivation phase, separation phase, or a redefinition phase if it does not end entirely.

 

• They suggest scheduling periodic check-ins and evaluations to learn more about the process of monitoring progress toward career goals.

 
POWER: Is there anything that you wish you had done differently in your career?  What would you do differently?

• I should have taken sabbaticals and research leaves. I put myself last. Taking the leaves would have given me more time to think and reflect. I think I would also have taken a more active role in initiating mentors for myself. It’s not too late.

 
We are grateful that Stephanie spent her time and energy helping us think strategically about how to make an impact that fits our values.