For advice, I turned to Regan A.R. Gurung, executive director of the Center for Teaching and Learning, at Oregon State University. Gurung has written about burnout and is a member of a national project focused on creating more compassionate campuses (more on that below).
The question came from Stephanie Kratz, a professor of English at Heartland Community College who is developing a course on managing faculty burnout for employees in the liberal-arts and social-sciences division.
“I’ve been reading about faculty burnout, and there are many blog posts and articles about its existence (!) and why it’s happening,” writes Kratz, “but there are fewer that suggest specific teaching and/or work strategies to manage it. What can faculty members put in their syllabus, establish with students, and/or adopt in their daily lives that will prevent and manage exhaustion and feelings of being overwhelmed? Especially when administration is not actively supporting faculty or listening to what we need to feel seen.”
Gurung’s response:
I resonate with the request for specific strategies to manage burnout. The volume of material on faculty burnout over the last few years can cause cognitive overload in its own right. Yes, there have been numerous books addressing it and even an entire grant-funded initiative to address this issue (Cate Denial’s Care in the Academy), but the volume of such posts may make it difficult to know where to start. Here are some key goals to aim for with pragmatic solutions for how to pull it out.
Protect your personal time and space.
This is perhaps the biggest issue to tackle. You may not have enough personal time yet. The time you have may not be enough. Before the new school year starts, (re)examine how you schedule your time and try and make some of the following changes:
- Block out times in your calendar that are “you” times. Note, you should have times for personal relationships, friends, and family, as well, but explicitly, add “me time.” This can be when you get physical activity, read something fun, or just do nothing (not even podcasts) so your mind has time to settle. You can create more of these you-times in simple ways too. Next time you are driving home, turn off the radio and have nothing impacting your senses other than the task at hand (driving), take a walk with all notifications on your phone set off, try forest-bathing — walking among trees for a little bit. See this piece for more.
- If you are someone wearing many hats, consider allocating time to each hat and keep to it. I am a faculty member and an administrator. There are times blocked out for administrative stuff and times for my teaching and research. I resist one spilling into the other. This is particularly important when setting times to meet with students. I link my Outlook calendar to a scheduling tool (e.g., YouCanBookme) where I have set times to meet with students versus meeting anytime I have an opening in my schedule. I put this link in the syllabus and my email, and anyone can automatically set up a meeting with me without umpteen emails back and forth to find times.
- Let students know when to expect a response from you. Put this in the syllabus and talk about it in class. It is all right to only work during business hours, especially for administrative work. Even if you do check email “after hours,” consider scheduling when it is sent (e.g., set it to send at 8 the next morning) so you help build a community where people are not working at all hours of the day.
- Find better ways to say no. Two suggestions are creating a “No folder” in your email box (from Eric Landrum, described starting at the 7:30 mark in this podcast), and having a “No committee,” a group of people who you chat with when you get an invitation to do something new (from Mona Xu, in the same podcast). You will gain some satisfaction from saying no and putting it into your No folder, and it actually makes it more likely you will say no.
Be consciously aware of your mental health.
Many of us in higher education behave as if we are superhuman, balancing multiple responsibilities, students, families, caregiving, and more. We rarely cut ourselves enough slack and often miss when our bodies and minds are wearing down. Take a moment to assess if you are burned out. Are you more irritable than normal? Do you no longer feel motivated to do your academic work or teach or work with students (all the elements that are core to being an academic)? Do you wake up and dread the day? These are all signs of burnout. Reach out to your campus or personal health-care providers. Many of us could use some more help, and we mistakenly think that it is a sign of weakness. Administrations and HR are getting better at helping staff get help. Here at Oregon State University we have scheduled “quiet weeks” or “quiet Fridays” where the administration urges recuperation. There is a lot needed to change the culture, but you and I talking about our needs and the ways we create spaces are specific active ways we can move toward addressing burnout in general.
I have kept this list short to avoid adding to the mental load. That is a key tip right there. Pick a few things you will work on. Focus on them to the exclusion of all else. That will help you cope in the long run.
Have you come across any promising practices that have helped you avoid — or mitigate — feelings of burnout? If so, write to me at beth.mcmurtrie@chronicle.com and your ideas may appear in a future newsletter.
The caring campus
Gurung made reference to the Care in the Academy project, of which he is a member. I introduced readers to the project, formally known as Pedagogies, Communities, and Practices of Care after Covid-19, in a newsletter in January. Supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, it has brought together dozens of experts to devise concrete steps that leaders can take to improve working conditions in colleges across the country.
This week I checked in with the project’s leader, Cate Denial, chair of the history department at Knox College, a teaching expert, and author of a forthcoming book titled “A Pedagogy of Kindness.” She reports that the discussants, who came up with a list of recommendations in the first phase of the project, recently completed the second phase, in which they devised strategies to introduce the recommendations at different kinds of institutions, such as research universities and liberal-arts colleges.
Starting in September, Care in the Academy will work on pushing those ideas out to the broader higher-education community through its Substack newsletter, podcasts, and other means.
At the heart of much of this work, says Denial, is community building. The challenge? How to create those communities on and across campuses without adding to people’s workloads. One idea is to create a form of office hours, but for faculty members and others to share support and ideas.
Denial said it’s also critically important to create networks that are not institution-based. Those groups would benefit contingent and short-term faculty members as well as people in states where legislation may limit or prohibit colleges from engaging in care work that focuses on diversity, equity, and inclusion.
ICYMI
- Interested in incorporating climate-action pedagogy into your teaching? Karen Costa and OneHE are offering a free, live online working session on Wednesday, August 16.
- How do programming instructors plan to adapt to ChatGPT and other AI? This blog post and paper by Sam Lau and Philip Guo dive into the topic.
- Are you getting a stream of email pitches to try new AI teaching products? You’re not alone, our Taylor Swaak reports.
Thanks for reading Teaching. If you have suggestions or ideas, please feel free to email us at beckie.supiano@chronicle.com or beth.mcmurtrie@chronicle.com.
— Beth
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