Since 2017, I have been the president of the Appalachian College Association, a nonprofit consortium of 34 small, private liberal arts institutions. I took this job after almost two decades of work as an academic administrator—from department chair to dean and then provost. While I never envisioned this career trajectory when I was studying sociology in graduate school in the 1980s, my work has been profoundly influenced by my sociological training, and I have used my sociological expertise in each of these roles.
Advancing Mission
In my current position, I lead a staff of seven and manage a budget of about $5 million. I am responsible for overall organizational management, grant writing, financial management, relationships with the board of directors, and strategic direction of the Appalachian College Association. On any given day I might review audit documents, serve as a consultant to a staff member strategizing about how to approach an issue, develop communication plans, talk with presidents or provosts or chief information officers from our member institutions, or visit member campuses to learn more about their opportunities and challenges. I report to the board of directors, but I have a lot of autonomy—and I like the ability to craft strategic direction for my organization.
I especially appreciate the opportunity to support the work of this sector of higher education. The schools in my consortium serve a high proportion of low-income and rural students in a region that has been hit hard by economic and environmental hardship. Appalachia needs higher education, and the personalized attention associated with smaller class sizes and close interactions with faculty and staff make smaller schools an important option for students in this region. Most of the institutions in my consortium are themselves underresourced, and a consortium like the one I lead allows them to accomplish more together than they might otherwise be able to do on their own.
Opportunities for Application
Throughout my career, I’ve identified as a sociologist—that has been a central feature of my sense of myself as a professional and as a person. Sociological knowledge has been useful in many ways in my nonfaculty roles. Fundamentally, academic administration requires being able to see the whole and the parts, to understand and be able to explain how a department or other academic unit is shaped by the larger organizational structure and dynamics, for instance. A lot of the work of academic administration relies heavily on the techniques and processes used in community-based research. For example, academic administration includes working in partnership with the academic community to investigate institutional issues such as inequalities in graduation rates, or whether to continue the music major. I have done this kind of work a lot, regularly advocating for deep involvement of faculty and staff to better understand what was happening and to help devise and test sustainable solutions to problems.
Very frequently in my nonacademic roles I have relied on the quantitative skills I developed as a graduate student and a faculty member in sociology. For instance, I have conducted analyses of faculty salaries to determine whether there were systematic inequalities in compensation. Multivariate statistical tools were extremely useful for those projects, and the skills I developed as one who taught quantitative analysis were also useful in explaining the methodology and results of these analyses to the faculty.
Both as an academic administrator and now as chief executive of a small nonprofit, I have had significant responsibilities for workplaces. In these roles, I have relied heavily on research in the sociology of work, and especially in the relationship between work and well-being. Grounding my work in that research has been beneficial to projects such as updates to faculty handbook policies and procedures; changes in tenure and promotion or hiring practices; student success programs; and diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.
As a faculty member and in administrative and nonacademic positions, one of my goals has been to help to create situations that help others thrive. In the classroom, I relied on sociological knowledge about teaching and learning practices that supported student learning. As an academic administrator, sociological knowledge was essential for helping create and sustain hiring and tenure and promotion practices that helped institutions attract, support, and retain excellent faculty and staff. Sociological knowledge about reducing inequalities, supervisor support, and institutional practices in support of health and well-being was also essential for my own practice as an administrator.
Communicating Sociological Strengths
Our discipline offers valuable tools and knowledge that can lead to rewarding work in a variety of types of jobs. That’s true for sociology graduates at the baccalaureate level, but equally true for those with a graduate education in sociology. Graduate education not only deepens our practice of thinking about issues through a sociological lens, but it also hones our research, writing, and speaking skills. Our disciplinary organizations at the national and regional levels should do a better job of helping graduate students learn how to identify and describe their professional strengths in ways that can be understood both to potential academic employers and potential nonacademic employers.
Any opinions expressed in the articles in this publication are those of the author and not the American Sociological Association.
