Ep31: How to Be a Strategic Academic – Shelda Debowski

July 11, 2016 in Season 2

Photograph of hiker on hillside. — Navigating your academic career can sometimes involve rough terrain. Image credit: Stuart Higgins.

After Dr Shelda Debowski finished her PhD, she began to realise that in order to be a successful academic, you need a strategy. A strategy that navigates the politics and reality of an often unstructured environment.

The challenge is that the previous generations of academics and researchers ... were given the leisure to get things wrong and then get it right ... the new generation on the other hand doesn’t have that leisure of getting it wrong

Shelda is now a Senior Consultant in Higher Education Development, working with academics to help them to achieve their goals. In this episode we talk about the challenges facing the modern academic, including:

Bad practice in academia
Working in negative environments
The importance of publishing
What a PhD doesn’t teach you
Tools and tips for being a successful academic
How to nurture your core motivation

You can find out more about Shelda’s work on her website, including details of her book: The New Academic: A Strategic Handbook.

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