The Coach’s Guide for Women Professors:
Who Want a Successful Career and a Well-Balanced Life
If you find yourself thinking or saying any of the following, this is a book you need to pick up.
- I know or suspect that I am underpaid, but I hate negotiating.
- I do everything else first and then write in the time left over.
- I’m not sure exactly what the promotion requirements are in my department.
- Since earning tenure, my service load has increased and my research is suffering.
- I don’t get enough time with my family.
This is a practical guide for women in academe – whether adjuncts, professors, or administrators – that speaks to the challenges they face and offers real-life solutions that work for people just like themselves. Rena Seltzer, a respected life coach and trainer who has worked with women professors and academic leaders for many years, offers succinct advice on how you can prioritize the multiplicity of demands on your life, negotiate better, create support networks, and move your career forward.
Using telling but disguised vignettes of the experiences of women she has mentored, Rena Seltzer offers insights and strategies for managing the situations that all women face – such as challenges to their authority – while also paying attention to how they often play out differently for Latinas, Black, and Asian women. She covers issues that arise from early career to senior administrator positions.
This is a book you can read cover to cover or dip into as you encounter concerns about time management; authority and influence; work/life integration; problems with teaching; leadership; negotiating better; finding time to write; developing your networks and social support; or navigating tenure and promotion and your career beyond.
Table of Contents:
Foreword
Introduction
I. How to Have More Time
II. Establishing a Productive Writing Practice
III. Teaching
IV. Work/Life Balance
V. Networking and Social Support
VI. Tenure, Promotion, and the Academic Job Market
VII. Authority, Voice, and Influence
VIII. Negotiation
IX. Life after Tenure
X. Leadership
Bibliography
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Reviews & Endorsements
“I would not have gotten tenure without Rena Seltzer’s skillful coaching. If you can find a way to work with her as a coach, do it! But if you can’t, read her book at least twice. It has all the life and career hacks every academic (male and female!) needs.”
– Dolly Chugh, Jacob B. Melnick Term Professor, New York University
“The advice in The Coach’s Guide corresponded to conclusions that I have drawn from my research on women faculty. I also related to the book on a personal level – as a professor, a parent and spouse, and a newly appointed associate dean. I loved the checklist at the beginning of the book and I found myself laughing at how many of the items related to my own experiences. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is engaged in or contemplating an academic career.”
– Lisa Wolf-Wendel, Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies, University of Kansas