Rise with Clarity Podcast

Are you currently feeling stuck in your faculty position, and considering some sort of pivot? But you're unsure of what your next moves are?

In this 63rd episode of the Rise with Clarity Podcast, I share some ideas with you on how to explore doing a possible career pivot within higher education. I also offer some reflection questions to help you clarify what matters as you begin exploring some of your options. 

This will be Part 1 of a Career Pivot series that focuses on how to move forward on exploring career pivots within and beyond academia. Tune in next month for Part 2 of the series, when I talk about exploring career pivots outside of academia.

Dr. Katherine Lee is a Higher Ed Coach and Career Strategist and a former tenured professor at an R1 university. She helps women of color faculty to manage the tenure track, navigate politics, and take the next steps to advance their careers. To find more resources or to work with Katherine, check out her website at: Rise with Clarity.

Given the ubiquity of recommendation letters in graduate school admissions processes, fellowship applications, job searches, and promotion cases—particularly in North America, it’s pretty wild that there isn’t more attention paid to this genre of writing. 

Why is it that faculty receive such little training on how to craft letters of recommendation? Especially when these letters can have a critical impact in an evaluation process? 

In this encore broadcast of the Rise with Clarity Podcast, I’m going to be reflecting on this mysterious, yet ubiquitous genre of writing. I also provide some strategies on how to better manage the labor that is entailed in writing these letters.

Find the full transcript for this episode at RisewithClarity.com/62 or RisewithClarity.com/29, along with all of my other podcast episodes and other useful resources for women of color faculty in higher education.

Dr. Katherine Lee is a Higher Ed Coach and Career Strategist and a former tenured professor at an R1 university. She helps women of color faculty to manage the tenure track, navigate politics, and take the next steps to advance their careers. To find more resources or to work with Katherine, check out her website at: Rise with Clarity.

In this 61st episode of the Rise with Clarity Podcast, I share some early reflections on caregiving, grief, and academic life following the loss of my father this summer. I discuss the often-invisible labor of elder caregiving, the multiple pressures faculty can feel to remain productive and composed through profound loss, and why higher education needs to make more room for care, grief, and our full humanity.

You can find the full written transcript along with other resources at RisewithClarity.com/61. 

Dr. Katherine Lee is a Higher Ed Coach and Career Strategist and a former tenured professor at an R1 university. She helps women of color faculty to manage the tenure track, navigate politics, and take the next steps to advance their careers. To find more resources or to work with Katherine, check out her website at: Rise with Clarity.

This episode reflects on the narrow set of expectations that are often cast upon academics in higher ed. In North American institutions of higher ed, there are prescribed milestones set up for us, like landing a tenure track position and achieving tenure. In this encore episode of the Rise with Clarity Podcast, I talk about the importance of being able to name and honor your personal milestones as well as your academic ones.

Find the full transcript for this episode at RisewithClarity.com/25 or RisewithClarity.com/60, along with all of my other podcast episodes and resources for women of color faculty.

Dr. Katherine Lee is a Higher Ed Coach and Career Strategist and a former tenured professor at an R1 university. She helps women of color faculty to manage the tenure track, navigate politics, and take the next steps to advance their careers. To find more resources or to work with Katherine, check out her website at: Rise with Clarity.

Dr. Katherine Lee is a Higher Ed Coach and Career Strategist and a former tenured professor at an R1 university. She helps women of color faculty to manage the tenure track, navigate politics, and take the next steps to advance their careers. To find more resources or to work with Katherine, check out her website at: Rise with Clarity.

Are you a new professor who is beginning your first year on the tenure track this fall? If so, then this episode is just for you! 

In this encore episode of the Rise with Clarity Podcast, I reflect on the different components of the onboarding process for new faculty, and offer you 5 tips on how to manage some of the overwhelm that may come with this big transition. 

Find the full written transcript for this episode at RisewithClarity.com/59 (or RisewithClarity.com/41), along with all of my other podcast episodes and other resources for women of color faculty in higher education.

Dr. Katherine Lee is a Higher Ed Coach and Career Strategist and a former tenured professor at an R1 university. She helps women of color faculty to manage the tenure track, navigate politics, and take the next steps to advance their careers. To find more resources or to work with Katherine, check out her website at: Rise with Clarity.

What are your non-negotiables right now?

In this moment of precarity and change in higher ed, faculty are being asked to rethink what they will and won’t compromise on. In Episode 58 of the Rise with Clarity Podcast, I address the shifting political pressures facing the academy, especially for women of color faculty. I share 10 reflective questions to help you get clarity on what your non-negotiables are in relation to this changing work environment.

You can find the full written transcript at RisewithClarity.com/58, along with all of my other podcast episodes and other resources for women of color faculty in higher education.

Dr. Katherine Lee is a Higher Ed Coach and Career Strategist and a former tenured professor at an R1 university. She helps women of color faculty to manage the tenure track, navigate politics, and take the next steps to advance their careers. To find more resources or to work with Katherine, check out her website at: Rise with Clarity.

In this 57th episode of the Rise with Clarity Podcast, I wanted to use this time to share with you a new program that I am launching later this summer as well as the reasons why I’m doing this. 

The program is called “Writing Support for Faculty Caregivers,” and it’s a pilot group coaching program that I’m developing for faculty who are trying to make meaningful progress on a specific writing goal this summer, while also navigating elder caregiving duties.

You can find the full written transcript for this episode at RisewithClarity.com/57, along with all of my other podcast episodes and other resources for women of color faculty in higher education.  

Dr. Katherine Lee is a Higher Ed Coach and Career Strategist and a former tenured professor at an R1 university. She helps women of color faculty to manage the tenure track, navigate politics, and take the next steps to advance their careers. To find more resources or to work with Katherine, check out her website at: Rise with Clarity.

What happens when you finally give yourself space to reflect on full circle moments and milestones--both personal and academic? In this episode, I share a meaningful full circle moment (returning to Harvard as a keynote speaker nearly two decades after organizing the same conference as a graduate student), alongside the milestone of turning 50.

In this 56th episode of the Rise with Clarity Podcast, I talk about growth, change, and what becomes possible when you step out of the relentless academic grind to allow yourself to intentionally pause for reflection. 

Find the full written transcript for this episode at RisewithClarity.com/56, along with all of my other podcast episodes and other resources for women of color faculty in higher education.

Dr. Katherine Lee is a Higher Ed Coach and Career Strategist and a former tenured professor at an R1 university. She helps women of color faculty to manage the tenure track, navigate politics, and take the next steps to advance their careers. To find more resources or to work with Katherine, check out her website at: Rise with Clarity.

Mentoring and coaching aren’t mutually exclusive practices in the higher education environment. There’s actually a powerful middle space where they can overlap. In this 55th episode of the Rise with Clarity Podcast, I explore how academic mentoring and professional coaching can coexist, especially for faculty who seek both informed guidance and a nonjudgmental space to think, reflect, and plan their own next steps.

For women of color faculty navigating promotion, writing, politics, and sustainability in higher ed, this blended approach can offer the best of both worlds: field-specific insight plus a non-directive, supportive thinking partnership.

Find the full written transcript for this episode, along with other useful resources for women of color faculty at RisewithClarity.com/55.

Dr. Katherine Lee is a Higher Ed Coach and Career Strategist and a former tenured professor at an R1 university. She helps women of color faculty to manage the tenure track, navigate politics, and take the next steps to advance their careers. To find more resources or to work with Katherine, check out her website at: Rise with Clarity.

Do you need an academic mentor or a professional coach? Or both? Or asked another way, what kinds of support can you expect from a mentor vs. a coach when you are trying to reach your career goals?

If you’re a little fuzzy on what some of the distinctions are between mentorship and coaching, then don’t worry, this episode is for you.

In this 54th episode of the Rise with Clarity Podcast, I talk about mentoring and coaching within the context of higher education. In order to think through the question that I just posed, we actually need to parse out what some of the differences are between professional coaching and academic mentoring. 

And in a future episode I want to think through some of the places where mentorship and coaching can also overlap. Hopefully this discussion will help you to decide which one—coach or mentor—may be most helpful for you at this stage of your academic career. Or maybe it will clarify for you that it would be great to have supportive mentors along with a supportive coach.

Find the full written transcript at RisewithClarity.com/54, along with all of my other podcast episodes and other resources for women of color faculty in higher education.

Dr. Katherine Lee is a Higher Ed Coach and Career Strategist and a former tenured professor at an R1 university. She helps women of color faculty to manage the tenure track, navigate politics, and take the next steps to advance their careers. To find more resources or to work with Katherine, check out her website at: Rise with Clarity.