[00:00:00] Bonni Stachowiak: Today on episode number 460 of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, well-being and social justice with Dr. Roxanne Donovan.

Welcome to this episode of Teaching in Higher Ed. I’m Bonni Stachowiak. This is the space where we explore the art and science of being more effective at facilitating learning. We also share ways to improve our productivity approaches so we can have more peace in our lives, and be even more present for our students.

Today on the podcast, I’m joined by Dr. Roxanne Donovan. She’s a former corporate negotiator turned psychologist, author, and professor. She’s a nationally recognized expert on topics of well-being and social justice, and features regularly in the media, such as The Washington Post, The Conversation, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and Georgia Public Radio.

Her two co-authored books, Teaching Diversity Relationally and Unraveling Assumptions, apply psychological and structural perspectives to the teaching and learning of diversity. Her popular Wellness Wednesday newsletter focuses on helping faculty of color and other scholars design purpose-driven lives of meaning, fulfillment, and vitality. Integrated with her professional identities are her rich and multi-layered roles as spouse, mama, sister, and auntie.

Roxanne, welcome to Teaching in Higher Ed.

[00:01:49] Roxanne Donovan: So happy to be here with you, Bonni.

[00:01:51] Bonni Stachowiak: Your background has me fascinated. I feel like we could do 3 episodes, perhaps 30 episodes just on that. Have you seen those pictures before where it shows this is what most people think their careers look like, and then this is what most people’s careers actually look like? Would you tell us, Roxanne, what does the actual career thing look like for you? What lessons would you draw from those kinds of silly cartoons?

[00:02:19] Roxanne Donavan: I think the one statistic that sticks in my mind that I tell my very stressed-out seniors who are thinking this next job is the step in life, and if they don’t get it right, they will mess it up, that most of us change careers, not once, not twice, but three times throughout our life. That’s what I did. I have to say that I wanted to be a psychologist, a clinical psychologist, in particular, from a very, very young age.

I came across, I don’t even know what it was, a sheet of paper that I guess my grammar school asked the students to write what they wanted to be, and I had written there, clinical psychologists. Now, if you would have told me that my future self would actually become a clinical psychologist, I don’t know if I would have believed you, but to see that in writing for my eight-year-old self, from my eight-year-old self speaking to me multiple, multiple decades later, it’s pretty incredible.

[00:03:24] Bonni Stachowiak: I just shared in front of our full faculty meeting yesterday about being little and knowing that I always wanted to be a teacher and having, I don’t even know how my mom managed to make this happen, but having, at such a young age, not just the student textbook or workbook for kids, but then the teachers edition, and then having the little old school attendance taking thing and all that.

I got little blank stares from a lot of people, and I felt like, oh, but it was so sweet because afterward, someone came up to me and said, “Oh, you were singing my song there.” It’s funny how when we think back to those young ages, how our careers do really shift by I think that fundamental part of our identity that yearns to be of help in some way to make some kind of an impact in the world, but so many times we get held back from our imaginations. That’s what really I think about people. I read this book called Range. I don’t know if you’re familiar with that book.

[00:04:21] Roxanne Donavan: No.

[00:04:22] Bonni Stachowiak: I’ll put it in the show notes because it’s a really good one. It makes me feel really more calm in my parenting, because Range is all about that we specialize too much, and we do that from way too young of ages, and really what our society, what the world needs today is that interdisciplinary. If people are trying things out, one of our kids really likes to one day it’s basketball, and the next day it’s soccer, and I don’t really want to commit to any sports right now as a parent, so I’m really happy that we’re just into them for a couple of two, three weeks and then we’re on to the next one.

Well, we are here to talk about a very serious topic, but my question may not sound as serious as I want it because I just want to ask you, what is stressing out faculty these days?

[00:05:06] Roxanne Donavan: Oh, boy, it’s so much. Actually, can I go back to talk about the question that you asked?

[00:05:10] Bonni Stachowiak: Oh, please, please. Yes.

[00:05:12] Roxanne Donavan: I think what you just said about the teacher, and that your mom was supporting you in that, it really resonated with me because I actually had the opposite experience. Because we are immigrants to the United States, because education is primary, and because we had financial vulnerability when we moved here, my parents really wanted for me and my sister to be financially secure, and they just thought psychology, as much as I loved it, wouldn’t take me as quickly to financial security because they believe that end up having to go to grad school. They didn’t understand psychology as a liberal arts degree. That’s what I did. I was the very good girl, I did what my parents said, and I majored in business my first time around in school, and I was an intern for AT&T my entire four years in college. I would come home to the New York, intern there 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week, I did my thing, and the whole time I felt it was so performative. I have to say, I just never felt like it was a good fit, but I was like, “This is what I’m being told is the right thing to do when I want to make my parents proud.” That’s what I did when I graduated.

I was successful, and I made a lot of money, but it never fit. By a series of happenstance that I would never tell my students this is the way you find yourself to being in graduate school for clinical psychology, just happenstance, some amazing mentors along the way, I ended up getting a second-degree, undergraduate degree in psychology, and just because I love the subject so much, and a mentor encouraged me to apply, but I thought, “No way. No one would ever take my application seriously. I’m this business person dabbling in psychology.” Somehow ended up being accepted to graduate schools, and I landed at the University of Connecticut with the best mentor who really helped me find my place in the academy, in graduate school, the whole thing. I feel a lot of mentorship, a lot of luck, and a lot of support.

How does this relate to your question about what’s stressing faculty out? It is the lack of those. It is the lack of support. COVID. Just the unraveling of our socio-political structure and the divisiveness that we’re in for those of us who teach social justice topics in particular, and I’m one of them, there’s just much less warmth, compassion, and support that faculty are experiencing in these times. I think all of that, on top of just the inherent stress that is the academy. When I say that out loud, people look at me who aren’t in the academy like, “Are you kidding? You all have it so easy.” Now, truth, tenured faculty do have a privileged place when you consider occupations. I’m not obviously going to argue that.

Research, however, shows that faculty life is among one of the most stressful occupations similar to K through 12 teachers and emergency room doctors. I think that is a surprise to people, because our jobs never end. There’s always the next paper to grade, the next grant to try and get. It’s just because we don’t turn it off, there’s always more work, that causes inherent stress. It is the climate that we’re in writ large, it is the institutions, the occupation that we’re a part of, and then there are added things depending on one’s positionality that can make it even more stressful, which I’m happy to talk about too.

[00:09:30] Bonni Stachowiak: You talked about tenured faculty, and since the majority of faculty in the world are not tenured faculty, then we talk about where things get exasperated when you aren’t holding the most privileged positions. Please, people listening, don’t misunderstand. I am affirming what Roxanne said about it is stressful for all of us, but especially when we start talking about some of the precarity for one’s income and livelihood. Those stresses just get exasperated. I would love to have you share a bit about how these challenges that you’ve talked about become exasperated for the group of people who are women of color?

[00:10:12] Roxanne Donavan: Yes. There’s so much there, depending on your positionality, how you are perceived in the academy. Not even how you’re perceived, one’s access, outcomes, and experiences or start base, are influenced by your positionality on systems of power, privilege, and oppression. Things like ability, race, class, gender, sexuality. We’re just looking at the intersection of race and gender, but we can expand that and contract that.

For women of color faculty, there’s an incredible amount of research to suggest that we experience more stress in the academy, especially if we’re teaching on subjects of social justice, but at large, because we don’t meet the mythical norm of a professor. The mythical norm of a professor is a white straight cis male that has access to middle-class privilege.

The further you are away from that mythical norm, the more friction, the more stress you will experience because students just don’t expect when you show up to the classroom that you are in a position of authority, and so unconsciously, resistance can come up. I’ll just give you some examples of what that’s like on even a smaller scale. We’re not even talking about policies and procedures that don’t necessarily recognize this extra stress.

When I was first in the classroom as a professor, nervous about whether or not students would take me seriously, I had multiple experiences of when I’m standing at the lectern. In the first class, students coming up to me and asking where the professor is, because I’m not what they envision a professor to be. This has happened recently, which is why it’s in my mind, when I’m in the office and there’s the assumption that I am an administrative assistant versus a faculty member, even when there’s other people milling around in the same place I am.

Again, these assumptions, they’re just like the needle scratching the record. Hitting this, and it’s just like, “Ugh, I’m misrecognized. I’m not seen and valued in the space the same way.” That’s individual and interpersonal. Part of what I teach and what I’m really passionate about is transformative education which moves us from these individual and interpersonal ways of looking at stress, at experiences of discrimination and bias, and brings it up to looking at what are the systems, the institutions, and the structures, how do they impact our access outcomes and experiences? How are policies inequitable, how are procedures and practices making equity harder to achieve? Those are the kind of things that I’m really, really interested in, which is why I work a lot.

I coach faculty of color toward finding success, towards finding joy in the academy. Yes, I believe it is possible to find joy in the academy, even in the face of these systemic and institutional forces. How do you do that? Not only from a policy and procedural perspective, but how do you walk the line between understanding that we don’t have full self-determination, even though self-help spaces make us believe that we do, and that you have some but not all. That you have agency, even if it’s not endless agency. How do you walk that line between giving up your power, because all of us have spheres of power and agency even when we don’t feel that way, but not ignore the systemic and institutional forces that can make it hard for us to live the way that we want to, be healthy and be well, not only in the academy, but in the world.

[00:14:39] Bonni Stachowiak: You mentioned about policies being inequitable, procedures, and practices. What are a few examples that come to mind for you that we might see in our own universities?

[00:14:50] Roxanne Donavan: Well, just as an example, women are more likely to do household labor than men. I want to say that I was looking at a recent institute for women’s policy research data, and I think I may have it here. That married women, on average, do unpaid household and care work at a rate of seven hours daily, while married men, so that’s married women, I assume these are heterosexually married couples, married men do approximately 5 hours, 4.7 hours. That’s a gender gap of 34%.

If you think about the second shift, as it’s called, women are working, let’s say they’re faculty, they’re working at their faculty jobs, they come home they work an additional seven hours, where do they have space for self-care? This is a cultural social norm, the expectation that women will do more unpaid household and care labor. If it is that we are expected, let’s say tenure track people are expected to do research and teaching and grade and do all of those things, in order to do that, you need to be well. You need to be rested, you need to have space to think, you need to have space for stillness.

Women, their schedules are more cramped, so the ability to have the spaciousness to consider and think and grade much less so. How do you do the labor that is expected for you to do to get tenure or to get full professor, or even to do the basics of the job when all of these things are pushing on you beyond the expectations for what it means to get tenure. People are like, “Well, we need to have the same expectations for everyone.” That’s the only fair way to go, but that doesn’t account for, I’m just looking at gender here, the different lives that women and men experience, cis hetero women and men experience in the world.

Policies that are gender blind may actually be limiting because of gender differences and socio and cultural expectations. That’s just one thing. We try to ignore the fullness of our life, our entire humanity. Not just the neck up, the cognitive and intellectual people that we are, but our wellness, our self-care, our social emotional beings. We’re social emotional beings, and that impacts our ability to show up to work.

[00:17:39] Bonni Stachowiak: Of course, with COVID, so much of what you’ve said and some of the things happening in our nation, just, it was already bad, [chuckles] already bad. Then it’s just, I think so much about, this is going to be a really random reference I’m probably never going to be able to find, but there was a photo that went viral of, it’s not funny, but sometimes you just have to laugh because it’s like you’re going to cry otherwise. Yes, I am paraphrasing a part of the Indigo Girls, a concert that they gave. I want to quote my source here, but anyway. A woman has a photograph of herself standing in a playroom in their home dressed from the waist up in her business attire to do her Zoom session, and in her underwear, [laughs] and the bottom there’s just toys everywhere. So much of it was just thinking about the invasive ways in which these challenges we were facing while all expected to teach in a format that was not familiar to so many.

Then here, please come into my home and see everything that is going on or have there be ways we try to hide it. Talk a little bit more, then, about the aspect of the intersectional identity for women of color and the ways that these gender-blind policies and some of the other challenges and stressors. What are some other slices where you see those challenges really getting exasperated for that group?

[00:19:19] Roxanne Donavan: I think when you’re the only, or one of a few, like many women of color faculty are in the departments that they’re in, there is this sense of over responsibility that comes with that. Many of us were in spaces where we were not mentored or valued or we were one of a few, and we don’t want that for our students, and so we feel this extra drive, extra pull to show up to not only change the structures and systems to be more equitable so we’re on the DEI committee. Well, we’re asked repeatedly to be on these DEI committees, and then we feel pulled to show up, but then we also want to show up for our students. This is extra labor. I was just in my annual review, I’m jointly appointed, so I have two chairs, and one of my chairs said to me, “There’s so much service that you do, because students seek you out.” It is true, students of color seek me out because they don’t see a lot of faculty of color in the spaces that they’re in are women of color faculties, so they seek me out. They were trying to brainstorm with my ways of reducing service. I just thought, well, and I teach this stuff about over-responsibility, but I’m sitting there thinking, well, I’m not going to give up the faculty of color group that I lead at my institution. It’s a well-being group that I started and I continued to lead. I don’t want to not do the mentorship that I do with my women of color students and other historically excluded students.

As they’re talking, there’s this calculus in my head that, how could I not, how could I not? The subtext of that is that I’m in a system that under resources, faculty, and students of color, and other historically excluded folks. If I were in a space that had enough support for all of these groups, I wouldn’t have to feel over-responsible. I’d be like, “Oh, they’ve got it.” It does not have to be me. You see how this intersectionality can create the stress of– the tension, I should say, is a better way of putting it. The tension between showing up and stepping back. When I’m thinking about these things, I’m truly thinking, if not me, then who will do it? When there’s less folks around that have a social justice mindset, that has a positionality, that reflects the positionality of our student body, it is harder for me to point to, oh, there are other people who can do it. Now, part of my appointment is in black studies, and there’s other faculty in that space, and we’re all depleted, so I can’t say, well, there’s other black faculty, and let them do it because all of us are experiencing this.

We’re under the same kind of pressure, and we’re all stretch razor-thin trying to live out the message of our institution around equity and inclusion. It is the marginalized bodies that are living out these missions that these universities have more, and there is more pressure on us to make sure these precious missions actually survive. Because the more we’re able to show up in these spaces, the more we create an opening for historically minoritized and marginalized and excluded students.

For many of us, that’s why we became academics. The pressure can feel like maybe I can just say no, because that’s the advice I get all the time. That’s the advice the folks that I work with get all the time. Just say no. The subtle message in that is that it’s your fault that you’re overworked and depleted, and that you’re not showing up for your own family. I want to complicate that. That’s not true. We’re always in conversation. Any action that we make, any decision that we make, is always in conversation with the structures and systems that impact how we think and how we show up in the world in our experiences.

That was a long answer, but clearly, I’m very passionate about this. [chuckles]

[00:23:59] Bonni Stachowiak: Yes. That whole idea of saying no, I have dabbled around in that, in fact, talked about it on this podcast, recommended articles which were by white men, by the way, about how to get better at it. It doesn’t mean that we don’t benefit, I think from learning some tools and resources, since as women we’ve been socialized to say yes. I understand from what you are saying that the saying no, if that healthy practice of setting boundaries like that were to be the only thing we relied on, then we are attempting to take away that sense of purpose calling in terms of the why the work’s being done, why those institutions exist in the first place at least, so they state, why they exist in the first place.

Now we get to the cheerful part of today’s conversation. [chuckles]

[00:24:52] Roxanne Donavan: Can I just say what you just said, yes to everything that you just said about the importance of setting boundaries. Setting boundaries in a decontextualized space. I hear all the time no is a complete sentence. Yes, that is true, and for some groups, the backlash for saying no is considerable, especially if your group is stereotyped as being the one that should show up and care give and to say yes. It doesn’t have the same consequences. It’s also harder, depending on your positionality, so I’m really glad that you brought that up. Thank you.

[00:25:37] Bonni Stachowiak: Coping strategies, what now? [chuckles] What can be done, I suspect on an individual and on a collective approach for addressing some of these challenges, some of these stressors?

[00:25:50] Roxanne Donavan: I’d always like to start with the structure and the systems because that goes beyond the individual. I invite administrators and university systems to consider how to create equitable environments given the sociopolitical structures that we find ourselves. What would it mean to have caregiving help for families on campus, whether it be for young children or for elderly folks that you may be caregiving for? Because many of us are squeezed between the two, caring for aging family members, and caring for young family members.

It would be great for the government to provide that level of safety net. Right now, we don’t have that in our space. What would it mean for institutions and organizations to fill that, to have maybe even a sick care facility for children? Because all the wheels come off when our children are sick because there’s no place to put them to be cared. Somebody has to do the caring at home, and in heterosexual couples, that’s typically an overwhelmingly women.

Structures and systems, thinking about promotion and tenure, thinking about pay, thinking about all the things that we know. There’s ridiculous amount of data that we know can have gender disparities, racial disparities, and how do we close that gap from a policy and procedure perspective. That’s starting there. From an individual perspective, you have to start by complicating the narratives that we have around it has to be me, it has to be now, and it has to be flawless.

I feel those three things are very, very internalized because of our dominant cultural messages that we’re socialized into. How do you raise to the level of importance, your value for well-being and your value for connection alongside your value for doing good work. I think for many of us, that well-being and connection are nascent values that we have to constantly be attending to.

For those who are super stressed out that are just exhausted, burnout has three levels or three factors to it. Exhaustion and depletion, cynicism, and also disconnection. For many faculty, that exhaustion because we care, so we end up pushing and pushing more, as the work piles up, we push harder and harder to try and get it done, it can feel like, a researcher called it this frenetic subtype of burnout that happens when people really are committed and care about the work work that they do.

I have this CPR method that I work with clients with because it’s like triage. If you’re so overwhelmed that you know that you’re just holding on by your fingertips, how do you cut, protect and rest? How do you look at the obligations on your never-ending to-do list, and how do you cut it? Right now you only want to focus on what’s urgent and important. There’s so much of what is urgent and not important in our spaces that ends up stealing our attention. How do you protect your peace? Limit the toxic environments that we find ourselves, limit the impact of that. Sometimes that looks like working from home. Sometimes that looks like really entering and leaving the space on time. How do you get off of committees that can be really problematic? Then how do you use the time that you find for rest and not for more work?

That is the CPR method that I invite people to think about, is literally just how do you get from burnout to stabilized, and then there’s all this strategy to move from stabilized to nourishing, because that’s possible too, but we’ve got to get rooted first.

[00:30:16] Bonni Stachowiak: CPR, cut, protect, and rest. I have a quick question, it’s a selfish one. I’m going to do a selfish one, can I do selfish one?

[00:30:23] Roxanne Donavan: Oh my gosh, please.

[00:30:25] Bonni Stachowiak: Advice for leaving spaces on time. I tend to feel a sense of like that since we don’t get to connect that often, that’s my time, and I get carried away in the moment. I do not do well at leaving spaces on time.

[00:30:42] Roxanne Donavan: I suggest to my clients, and this is what I do, too, to have a work wrap up routine, and it is so important to have a way to close. Not just expect that you will close, but create a habit around closing, so that you don’t keep being drawn back to work, like many of us are, so that you’re working up until you just fall into the bed. My closing routine, I start an hour before I plan to leave. I’m Caribbean, I have a very hard time temporarily. I don’t track time well. My husband, who is a white man from the Midwest, we cannot look at a clock for hours, he will be within 10 minutes of the right time, and I will be within four hours.

I’m just temporarily challenged, so I have to be extra mindful about time. That’s why I start an hour in advance of the time that I want to leave, and I have an unfolding practice. I check my email because I don’t want that hovering. I make sure that I answer whatever is super important and then put on my to-do list the other things that are necessary. I do a reflection, how did I do with the goals that I’d set for myself when I usually only have three main things that I want to hit, and so I assess where I am with that.

I reset my space. Research has shown, if you reset your space to be available for you for the next day, it can help you enter into work more easily, and then I walk. I need to actually move to get that energy out and to close the loop for me on work so that it’s not bouncing around in my head and drawing me back. I invite all the people that I work with to have a work wrap up routine that is helpful.

Now, Bonni, you mentioned that you may actually be doing connection time. If it’s a meeting or if it’s something like that, so instead of fighting it, how about you create time. If the meeting is two hours, you give yourself 30 minutes of slack afterwards to connect. There may be something really important in that connection that is nourishing to you. I would invite you not to fight it, but to lean into it and prepare for it because it will make you a better person and a more efficient worker and a better human, at the end of the day, if you give yourself what you need. We all need connection, and some of us need more of it than others, but we all need more of it right now after the last three years that we’ve had.

[00:33:29] Bonni Stachowiak: So glad I asked. I’m happy with my selfishness, and I think many of our listeners are going to be happy with that last little bit there. This is the time in the show where we get to share our recommendations, and many times my recommendations don’t relate to what we’re talking about.

Roxanne, I am delighted with how much today’s recommendation is an echo of so much of what you just shared. I also do not like to recommend things that I have not actually finished reading or listening to or whatever. I have a little bit of a warning here. I am going to recommend an interview by prior guests, author, spoken word poet, absolute brilliant man, Clint Smith. It’s like the chocolate and the peanut butter thing in terms of desserts. You get Clint Smith interviewing Ross Gay, poet, English professor, beautiful writer, about Ross Gay’s new book, Inciting Joy. I, after listening to said interview, instantly went to go purchase the eBook, which, spoiler alert, I can already tell you I will be recommending in the future. Then I saw, I don’t know if it was a tweet or something, but where Clint mentioned that in the audiobook, Ross Gay will just spontaneously start chuckling to himself as he reads his words.

I have been listening to the audiobook. All this to say, I’m not recommending the eBook yet, I am not recommending the audiobook yet, but I absolutely am recommending the Inciting Joy interview that was done at the DC Library. Again, Clint Smith interviewing Ross Gay about his book, Inciting Joy. I’ll just read a little bit about the book itself in these gorgeously written and timely pieces. Prize-winning poet and author Ross Gay considers the joy we incite when we care for each other, especially during life’s inevitable hardships. Throughout inciting joy, he explores how we can practice, recognizing that connection, and also crucially how we expand it.

Roxanne, that just relates so much to what you just said about why am I fighting this. I could actually embrace this because you are so correct and insightful to have noticed that it does bring me a lot of joy, those moments. Yes, the idea of losing time is not the culture that I come from, and the culture I come from, you better be keeping everything exactly on time. I think me feeling guilty where I lose track of time is actually something maybe I would want to celebrate. I just want to read two quotes from Inciting Joy, and everyone can look forward to future recommendations and hearing more about his brilliant work.

This is from Ross Gay in Inciting Joy. “What if joy, instead of refuge or relief from heartbreak, is what effloresces from us, as we help each other carry our heartbreaks.” Also from Ross Gay’s inciting our joy. “What would happen if we acknowledged that none of this is privilege but rather it is as it should and could be? What if we figured out together in a million different ways how to make it so or, to say another way, rather than cursing the darkness? What if we planted some seeds?” Those are my recommendations for today, and, Roxanne, I’d like to pass it over to you for yours.

[00:37:14] Roxanne Donavan: You just gave me some goosebumps. Oh my gosh. Yes, I’ve got to read whatever you’re reading.

[00:37:19] Bonni Stachowiak: Oh, it’s so good, it’s so good. You’ve got to hear him read whatever it was.

[00:37:23] Roxanne Donavan: Oh God.

[00:37:24] Bonni Stachowiak: The audio book, you’ve got to do it. You’ve got to do it. So good.

[00:37:27] Roxanne Donavan: Thank you for that. All right, couple of books that I am just in love with. bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress, Education as the Practice of Freedom. Yes, my entire way of teaching has been deeply, in my black feminist praxis period has been deeply influenced by bell hook. I am reading, almost done now with Caroline Perez’s Invisible Women Data Bias in a World Designed for Men. It’s holi– Okay, this is really heavy, but she’s talking about how snowplows, and the path that snowplows take is gendered. It’s from a variety of perspectives that you would not believe I’m going to include this book in my psychology of gender class because it is so good at the way that it pulls and pulls and pulls on the thread of sexism in creative ways until the data just is screaming in your head, and I love it.

Presumed Incompetent I&II: Race, Class, Power and Resistance of Women in Academia. A beautiful edited volume. For those of you who are part of historically excluded groups, and it can be be crazy making to be in those spaces and to think am I doing something wrong, is this racism, is this gendered racism, and just to never know to hear the voices of other people reflect back to you experiences that you’ve had questions about, it just it had made me, it has made me feel deeply seen. Few books I think have the ability to do that when you’re part of a historically excluded and minoritized space, this one does.

My very dear friend, Liz Roemer, and Sue Orsillo, they are clinical psychologists, they have a fantastic book called Worry Less, Live More: The Mindful Way Through Anxiety Workbook. I just can’t recommend that enough if you’re just in this place of wanting to live a fuller life. This is the guide to help you get there. Finally, Kristen Neff’s Fierce Self Compassion: How Women Can Harness Kindness to Speak Up, Claim Their Power and Thrive. I do so much with helping people develop self-compassion, and this book is my go-to, my recommendation when you’re trying to be on a journey to kind of turn down the volume of the inner critic, the nasty narrator, and turn up the volume on something that is just gentler and more loving, this is the book to begin that process.

[00:40:40] Bonni Stachowiak: Roxanne Donovan, I am so glad to have been connected with you by Becca Price. I didn’t mention that earlier, that Becca is the goodness that just keeps on giving [laughs] [inaudible 00:40:49] come on the show, but also what a wonderful connection to have made. What a joy it was to talk with you today and to learn from you. Just thank you for your generosity and coming on Teaching in Higher Ed.

[00:41:02] Roxanne Donovan: It’s such a delight, Bonnie. Thank you.

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[00:41:07] Bonni Stachowiak: Such a joy today to get to talk to Roxanne Donovan. Thank you so much for coming on the episode, and thanks to each one of you for listening. Today’s episode was produced by me, Bonnie Stachowiak. It was edited by the ever talented, Andrew Kroger, podcast. Production support was provided by the amazing Sierra Smith. If you have yet to sign up for the weekly update from Teaching in Higher Ed, you can get the show notes automatically sent to you in your inbox along with some other goodies that don’t show up in the main podcast show notes. Head on over to teachinginhighered.com/subscribe, and you can sign up and receive those emails.

Thanks for listening, and I’ll see you next time on Teaching in Higher Ed.

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[00:42:06] [END OF AUDIO]

The transcript of this episode has been made possible through a financial contribution by the Association of College and University Educators (ACUE). ACUE is on a mission to ensure student success through quality instruction. In partnership with institutions of higher education nationwide, ACUE supports and credentials faculty members in the use of evidence-based teaching practices that drive student engagement, retention, and learning.

Teaching in Higher Ed transcripts are created using a combination of an automated transcription service and human beings. This text likely will not represent the precise, word-for-word conversation that was had. The accuracy of the transcripts will vary. The authoritative record of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcasts is contained in the audio file.