Women faculty of color in higher ed generally receive little training to prepare them for the challenges, unrelated to their teaching quality, that they experience in their careers. In this episode, Chavella Pittman joins us to discuss her new book, Empowered: A Woman Faculty of Color’s Guide to Teaching and Thriving, a resource she created to address these challenges and to help female faculty of color thrive.
Show Notes
- Effective and Efficient Faculty
- Pittman, C. T. (2025). EMPOWERED: A Woman Faculty of Color’s Guide to Teaching and Thriving (Vol. 7). University of Oklahoma Press.
Transcript
John: Women faculty of color in higher ed generally receive little training to prepare them for the challenges, unrelated to their teaching quality, that they experience in their careers. In this episode, we discuss a resource designed to address these challenges and to help female faculty of color thrive.
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John: Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.
Rebecca: This podcast series is hosted by John Kane, an economist…
John: …and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer…
Rebecca: …and features guests doing important research and advocacy work to make higher education more inclusive and supportive of all learners.
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John: Our guest today is Chavella Pittman. Chavella is a Professor of Sociology at Dominican University. She is also the founder of Effective & Efficient Faculty, a faculty development company that works with faculty and campuses across the country to help them develop strategies for creating an environment in which all students and faculty can thrive. Her research interests and expertise includes higher education, interpersonal interactions, research methods, and statistics. She is the author of Empowered: A Woman Faculty of Color’s Guide to Teaching and Thriving, which has recently been released as part of the Oklahoma University Press series on Teaching, Engaging, and Thriving in Higher Education, edited by James Lang and Michelle Miller. Jessmyn Neuhaus will be filling in for Rebecca, the usual co-host of this podcast, because Rebecca has been called away by our campus administrators to do administrative things all day today down in Syracuse. Thank you, Jessamyn, for joining us, and welcome back, Chavella.
Jessamyn: Thanks for having me.
Chavella: Yes, thanks so much for having me here. I’m excited.
Jessamyn: Today’s teas are:… Dr. Pittman, what are you drinking today?
Chavella: I’m trying to get a little fancy because I’m usually drinking water, but I have fireside vanilla spice tea.
Jessamyn: That sounds like a nice fall tea.
Chavella: Exactly, exactly.
Jessamyn: I am drinking tropical hibiscus tea from my local grocery store chain, Wegmans, and I’m drinking it in my Tea for Teaching mug, one of my prized possessions.
Chavella: I love it. [LAUGHTER]
John: And I am drinking a spring cherry green tea from the Republic of Tea, which I picked up at Wegmans down near Syracuse. So we have that in common there.
Jessamyn: Wegmans, do you want to fund tea for teaching? [LAUGHTER]
John: They have a very nice collection of teas and pretty much everything else. And I’ve been very pleased. I spend the summers in North Carolina, and there are three Wegman stores within about a 20-minute drive of Duke University now, which is a very nice improvement.
Jessamyn: We’ve invited you here today to discuss Empowered. Can you share the origin story of this book?
Chavella: Yes, so I would say the short version of it is that there are just a lot of gaps in the support provided for women faculty of color’s teaching, so whether it’s colleagues, the literature itself, the scholarship for teaching and learning, faculty development centers, there are just huge gaps. I mean, that’s how I started doing this work as a grad student. I got recognized by other grad students and faculty too for being adept at helping people navigate some of the challenges they were having in the classroom. And so I was giving workshops at departments, I was being a part of the training for TAs, meeting with faculty to help them navigate a range of challenges. Thirty years later, and most people haven’t gotten better at it. So, [LAUGHTER] I ended up writing the book because I was just like, “Wow, like, how do these gaps still exist?” I wanted to get all that information in one place so that people could have a mentor available, 24/7, so that they could just pick the book up if they were facing something in particular. So essentially, that’s the origin story of the book. And I do want to be clear that when I talk about the challenges that people are facing, they’re not anything that have to do with their teaching quality, like I pretty much became adept at helping people deal with teaching challenges that have nothing to do with their teaching quality and everything to do with other people’s expectations of them and social norms. So that’s essentially the origin story of the book, it’s me trying to fill a gap that has remained for 30 years.
John: Now, you’ve already partially addressed this, but who is the target audience for this book?
Chavella: Well, the cheeky answer is everybody. I really do want everybody to read it, because there are lessons in it for everybody, of course, but the audience that it’s centered on is definitely women faculty of color, their experiences often get invalidated or they’re silenced or they’re marginalized. And so I wanted a book that was squarely focused on their experiences, their teaching, their careers, which isn’t to mean that other people can’t get something valuable from it, like there are lessons that everybody can get from it about their teaching. There are lessons that everybody can get from it about how to navigate some of the challenges that they could be facing that might be similar for women faculty of color, but the book is very much so wanted to center women faculty of color, so they’re the primary audience, but the secondary audience are allies that want to support those people and the other secondary audience are just other folks that want to have great teaching and who want to thrive instead of surviving, because the book is very much so about thriving and having like a sustainable academic life and having joy as well.
Jessamyn: What would you like readers to take away from the book?
Chavella: Well, I would say a couple of things. I want people to feel empowered. So I want them to take away that they can feel empowered, that the things that they’re facing have solutions, essentially. That’s part of the empowerment is that you don’t have to just put up with it, or suffer through or muddle through, that you can be empowered, that the things that they’re facing, they can absolutely address. I want them to take away that they can champion their teaching in reviews. So it’s not about just sort of like slinking away and sort of managing some of the stuff that’s going on. It’s very much about proudly proclaiming in reviews like these are the things that I’m bringing to the university, because that’s part of the reduction of stress. It’s like not just managing the stuff in your classroom, but knowing that these things aren’t going to bite them in the butt when it comes time for tenure, promotion, or any sort of retention or renewal review. So I want them to know that they can champion their teaching in reviews, and I want them to feel equipped to teach authentically in a way that amplifies their gifts, in a way that allows space for joy. So instead of having to modify their teaching, or dumb it down, or do the things that people expect, even when those things are not considered to be good teaching, like people are encouraged to do things that are not evidence-based, and women faculty of color are doing things that are evidence-based; they just might be less common. And so I just want them to teach more authentically and joyfully and have space for joy, essentially. So that’s what I want them to take away.
John: You talked a little bit about some of the topics that you’re addressing. Could you give us an overview of some of the other broad topics that are being addressed in the book?
Chavella: As faculty developers, I think that we have the vocabulary for talking about teaching challenges that faculty often don’t have. We think about women faculty of color, and all faculty actually situated in their disciplines, whether it be chemistry or math or English, history, psychology, political science, they don’t have the vocabulary that we have. So I very intentionally don’t introduce the chapters by the threat. So what I do is I sort of describe it. So each chapter opens with a scenario, and the scenarios are meant to be relatable. So every single scenario is something that I’ve either seen in a faculty client or it comes straight out of the research, and it’s something that I want people to read that chapter and be like, “Oh my goodness, that’s exactly what’s happening to me.” And I know, just from consulting for a while, they’re going to relate to that more than me giving the jargon. If I give the jargon, people are like, “Oh no, I’m not experiencing that.” And I’m like, “Okay, I know you’re experiencing that, [LAUGHTER] it’s just that the label that you don’t want to sort of be associated with, or you just don’t recognize it.” So it’s stuff like that. So, for example, chapter two in particular, where I’m telling people to anchor the strong points, I do that in two ways. So there’s a scenario. So I describe something that someone might be facing. So I’m not going to read the whole thing, but I’ll just give you a little bit of it. It starts by saying: “We all know her. In fact, you might know her as you, whether that’s you as you are today, or maybe a younger, more naive version of you. Who am I talking about? The person who sits on every committee as the diversity person, the person who’s asked or coerced to spearhead new initiatives, the person who goes beyond the call of duty to serve students, including students of color, outside the classroom, without being asked and without recognition. Inside the classroom, you’re going all out for these students. You’ve been guilted and pressured to participate as the only woman,” etc, etc, and then says here: “But it gets worse. Despite unflagging extra effort on a part of this woman of color, you guessed it, the University delivers a crushing blow. It’s a ‘no’ to her tenure application, and it’s about her teaching.” So there are more scenarios like that. You get the feel from that one. And this chapter is about extra labor. It’s about additional teaching labor. So someone may not know that as invisible labor. They might say, “Oh, I like doing that. I don’t mind doing that. I’m committed to doing that.” So the chapters open up like that. There’s also another little descriptive piece that opens the chapter: “Gain crystal clarity about your teaching labor, and don’t let your generosity continue to go unnoticed. Reap well deserved benefits from this labor that steals time from research, writing, and grants and, at the same time, banish accusations of bias or an agenda.” So the chapters are all about challenges like that, if that makes sense. I guess the point that I’m trying to make is I don’t want to use the jargon. So the chapters are about challenges such as teaching labor, interactions with students in the teaching, interactions with colleagues about the content that you’re teaching, about expectations for student care. So broadly, that’s what I’m talking about. But I know for a fact that a lot of women faculty of color, shoot, and even the administrators reviewing them, that’s not going to click with them, because they’re not developers. Seeing the descriptions, the outcomes of these things, that’s what’s going to click for them.
Jessamyn: So, thank you for describing the organization of the book and some of the things that are going into the chapters. Can you tell us more about the structure of each chapter and how you hope readers will read and benefit from how those chapters are structured.
Chavella: For sure, the organization of the book is incredibly intentional. I want the book to be used; I don’t want it to just sit on a shelf and gather dust. I want people to be able to use it. So I hope that people read it from beginning to end, but it doesn’t have to be read that way. So, with that in mind, each chapter has the same sections. So, for example, each chapter has a section that’s about the threat. So that way, I’ll describe the common teaching threat that women faculty of color and other faculty might be facing. And the goal is for them to be able to name it, for them to be able to see it, for it to be visible, so that they understand that it’s a structural issue, not a personal failing. Each chapter also has a strategic action. I don’t want to just put threats out there and people not know what to do about them, [LAUGHTER] so I walk them through an evidence-based strategy for dealing with that particular threat. Not only so it doesn’t just tank their teaching, but so it doesn’t tank their reviews for renewal, retention, tenure, promotion, etc. And the strategic actions that I describe, they don’t take a lot of time and energy, because I know women faculty of color don’t have time for that, so they’re streamlined, they get to the point. And each chapter also describes a mine field from the scholarship of teaching and learning. So the scholarship of teaching and learning is incredibly instructive for the evidence-based strategies. It’s just not often a fit for women faculty of color, and so that section waves a flag so it tells them like, “Okay, yes, here are the things you’re doing that are great according to the scholarship of teaching and learning, but here’s how they set up a trap, or how they have a gap that could harm you in your career and your teaching, essentially. And then I have a section in each chapter empowering actions that they can take that week. So if they’re not ready to do the strategic action at that point, there are smaller, micro actions that they can take just to feel empowered in the moment. Each chapter also has a summary that’s sort of like high-level takeaways of all of those things that I just described. And the thing that’s interesting is that even though women faculty of color, like the research demonstrates, are doing all this incredibly wonderful teaching with all of these great outcomes for students, for society, for the universities, there are these nagging, persisting narratives about their teaching as deficient. And so where that comes to play in a chapter, there’ll also be an extra section called “the excellence of women faculty of color’s teaching.” Because, you know, the three of us, we know that literature, like we read this stuff all day. But again, if we think about faculty and the administrators that are reviewing them, they don’t know that literature. So in chapters where there just happens to be a narrative of women faculty of color’s teaching as deficient, there’ll be an “excellence of women faculty of color’s teaching” section that outlines the research of how their teaching is actually stellar. So each chapter has all of those sections, and so that’s how I want people to read the book. I would love it if they read it from beginning to end, that would be awesome. And even after they read it from beginning to end, maybe they faced the challenges that are in chapters one, four and five, and then at another time, they have to flip back to chapter three. I want them to be able to immediately get in and find what they need, particularly if we think that some of these faculty might be under duress, they might be under threat, they might have a review coming up. So I want them to be able to navigate and find what they need quickly at a whim’s notice, essentially.
John: At the start of this conversation, you mentioned that there were a lot of gaps in the materials that faculty were provided. Could you talk a little bit more about the unique contributions of your book to the literature to fill in some of those gaps?
Chavella: I don’t want to give it all away. I want people to read the book, but I would say one of the unique contributions of the book is that I am suggesting that people thrive, that they’re not just surviving, that they care about their well being, that they’re not martyring themselves for the job, for the students. And that does not mean that you don’t still do a great job. It doesn’t mean that you don’t care about student learning. It doesn’t mean you don’t care about your work. Quite the opposite. There’s an entire chapter in the book that’s about joy. So I think that’s one of the large unique contributions of the book. And just given this particular moment, first of all, it’s a moment that other people have been in for a long time… that have been in before, you know, if you think sort of cyclically, and the messaging, I think that most people give is people to just sort of hunker down and slug it out and suffer, and I’m not saying that. So that’s definitely a gap in the scholarship of teaching and learning is that we don’t talk enough about faculty well being. And I very much so want women faculty of color to be well, to be authentic, to be joyful, and all faculty to be that way. So that’s definitely a unique contribution of the book. Another thing I think, I talk about a couple different sort of terms in the book as well, like I’m introducing a couple ideas. We referenced one of them before, and so I talk about what I call super invisible labor. We talk about invisible labor in higher ed all the time, a lot of time it’s about committee work. We do not talk about it as it relates to teaching. So super invisible teaching labor, like I talk about it at length in the book, I talk about what it looks like, the consequences of it for faculty careers, for student learning, for the university, etc. So these are the sort of gaps in the scholarship of teaching and learning that people will find in the book, some unique contributions that it has.
Jessamyn: I love both of those ideas, and just on an emotional, visceral level, talking about joy and thriving in academia, it feels radical, but it shouldn’t be. It shouldn’t sound like such a major issue that’s never been talked about, but it should be… recognizing what you do well and how to achieve that important work-life balance and thrive.
Chavella: Yeah, for sure, all of my work from the beginning, has always been about having a boundary, trying to be as efficient and excellent as you can be, getting back to time with your life, doing things… if you want to use that time for research, if that’s what gives you joy, like, do it. Like, that’s been the messaging throughout. And I definitely feel like that’s the part of my messaging that gets shushed, right? Like people are like, “Shhh, don’t say that.” Like, it’s shameful to want to care about your well being, that it’s selfish to care about your well being. And I’m sick of it. Actually, [LAUGHTER] I’m just sick of it. So it’s definitely the thing that I’m yelling from the rooftop at this moment. I’m always yelling something from a rooftop, and this seems to be the thing that I’m yelling from the rooftop, is that faculty well being is important. It matters. It should just matter, because we’re human, [LAUGHTER] and people should care about us. But for those who don’t care about that, it’s important because it does have a lot to do with creativity and output and productivity and all the things that we can do. So we’re much better at our jobs when faculty well being is good. And again, that’s just the argument for people who don’t actually care about us as humans.
Jessamyn: And it’s rooted in recognizing and helping other people recognize what they’re already doing well… such an important part of educational development. But often people come to the centers for teaching and learning with this deficit framework, like, I must be doing something wrong, or there’s something I have to add, and part of our job, it’s so important, is saying, “Let’s look at what you’re already doing well,” and this is why.
Chavella: Yeah, absolutely, it’s interesting. You triggered another thought in me is that it’s one of the reasons that the book is necessary. The origin story of the book is, I think that teaching centers and developers do a good job of that sort of diagnosing, the: “Here’s what you’re doing wrong, here’s something you could do better,” but they’re not as good at “You’re already doing it excellent, and people are resistant to it. Now what?” And I’m not blaming the scholarship of teaching and learning or teaching centers, because they have limited resources, time and energy, and a lot of times they’re put in the position to be a bit remedial or to teach people new things, they just don’t have the space to help people who are already doing it great. They just don’t have the space for that. So I’m glad to fill that gap and to be a partner with faculty developers and teaching centers and say, “Okay, I got those people,” and a lot of times those people are women faculty of color.
John: One of the things you note is that a lot of the characteristics of the teaching of women faculty of color are undervalued or are not recognized. Could you talk a little bit about what are some of the strengths that appear in the way in which women faculty of color teach, but are not always recognized by the institution or by students.
Chavella: Of course, that’s easy. [LAUGHTER] Women faculty of color, our teaching tends to have more active learning. We know from the scholarship of teaching learning the benefits of that. They tend to have learning outcomes, again, active learning, evidence based, you know, the scholarship of teaching and learning. They tend to have learning outcomes such as maybe like development of social and personal responsibility, and these things are very much so aligned with General Education says we should be producing in our students and with what our institutions want produced in our students. They tend to focus on more skills like creative problem solving. They tend to have assignments that are more applied. So instead of just memorizing, they’re actually learning to apply skills. And again, these are all things that are aligned with university missions, goals, and part of sort of the purpose of education. So those are just a couple of examples. There’s much more detail and citations and statistics and stuff like that in the book, but just sort of broadly, whether it’s their pedagogy, their learning outcomes, or their assignments, they’re doing, all the things that the scholarship of teaching and learning and that the university say, and that the employers also say that they want from students and from society. So they’re doing all the things that produce all the outcomes that both society and universities want, essentially.
John: And hearing you say that… last night, we had a meeting of our student committee on learning and teaching here on campus, and we asked them for some of the things they observed in classes that were not very effective, and the most common response was that a lot of faculty are still spending most of their time lecturing, and they said it was really hard to maintain a focus for 55 minutes, or an hour and 20 minutes of someone just talking at them. So anything that encourages more active learning, I think, would be very much appreciated by students, as well as being a much more effective way to encourage learning.
Chavella: You know, what’s so interesting about that is, yes, obviously we all know that we should have more active learning. Lecturing can be done, like interactive lecturing. Like, I’m not a no to lecture person. I encourage people to do lecturettes, is what I call them, on particular types of concepts, like, it has a place, but you can do an interactive lecture for 55 minutes, and very much so keep students’ attention. This is an example of what I mean when I say that there’s a gap in supporting people who are doing it right. Students might not like lecturing. They’re used to lecturing. When you lecture, they complain. When you don’t lecture, they complain. [LAUGHTER] So that’s a really, really good example of some of the resistance to innovation that women faculty of color face in their teaching is because they’re not just lecturing for 55 minutes, they’re doing other things, and because it violates students’ expectations and colleagues’ expectations of what’s supposed to be happening in the classroom. It’s violating sort of the social norms. They already don’t trust those faculty for a variety of reasons, or may not trust those faculty for a variety of reasons. They complain. They’re suspicious when they don’t find lecture, even though we know it doesn’t produce a lot of the outcomes that we’re interested in, and then students complain about it. So that’s a really good example.
Jessamyn: And that’s such a good example of why your book is empowering, because knowing ahead of time that there’s these things at play that student resistance will flare up, so enables the strategic approach and the mindset and everything we need then to go into the classroom and be effective.
Chavella: Yes, very much so, into the classroom and into reviews. [LAUGHTER]
Jessamyn: That’s right. Absolutely.
Chavella: Like you said, it’s like a toolkit. You’re like, “Okay, I know these things are coming, but I’m prepared, and so I can skip off into the sunset…” [LAUGHTER] not that extreme, but that’s exactly what I have in mind for people. Stuff is going on around you. Of course, we acknowledge those things, we don’t act like they don’t exist. We name it, we prepare for it, and we carry on with the things that bring us joy.
John: Joy is good.
Chavella: Yes, it is… [LAUGHTER] essential.
Jessamyn: Well, John and Rebecca always end the episode by asking their guest, what is next?
Chavella: A book tour. That’s what’s next. So I’m very much available to campuses for virtual and in person, like book club discussions or book talks or seminars or workshops on one or more of the chapters. So that’s what I’m really focused on now, is engaging in a book tour. So if people want to bring me in, either virtually or in person for any of those things, book club sort of discussion, book talk, or some sort of workshop or seminar, I’m available.
John: Well, thank you. I very much enjoyed reading your book, and I hope many more people will.
Chavella: Yay, I hope so too. Thank you for having me. This is always so much fun.
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John: If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on our Tea for Teaching Facebook page.
Rebecca: You can find show notes, transcripts and other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.
John: Editing Assistance provided by Madison Lee.
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