Academic Woman Amplified

Academic culture makes us believe that the "traditional” path through academia is the “normal” path, and a “non-traditional” path is often code for “less-than”. Don’t believe it! Your path is valuable. Today I want to talk about disrupting this idea of the “traditional” path in academia.  So many of the women I talk to during the application process for Amplify and Elevate (our programs for pre-and post-tenure women on the tenure track) lead by saying that they haven’t taken the “traditional path” through academia. Here are some reasons: They had a baby during their PhD They worked a career between their undergrad and grad school  They became the associate director of a research center instead of getting a “traditional” tenure-track job They worked as an adjunct between their PhD and their tenure-track job They took longer than their cohort to graduate their PhD They worked at a teaching institution or an aspiring institution and so they didn’t build a line of research early in their careers, but they need t