What are you going to do with your team? (Team Building - Part 3)
As I sat down to write this week’s post something occurred to me. Finding the next project for your intentionally built research team might feel like a dumb thing to be thinking about right now. Just this last week several more colleagues at my institution received official notification for the termination of their grants.
I don’t know about all of you but it’s hard to think about starting new projects in the heaviness and uncertainty of research funding currently. So, if that’s how you’re feeling right now, stop reading now, flag this post, and come back later after you take a deep breath, reset, and feel ready.
… (Ready? Okay let’s do this)
As someone who finds comfort when looking to history I would like to offer some historical context to our current moment. This isn’t the first time higher education has come under threat. In 1950, as the Cold War was ramping up, a Senator from Wisconsin led a series of investigations and hearings to identify and expose communist infiltration in the US. Of interest to our current situation is the particular attention that was paid to Harvard University and its faculty. The shock wave of these investigations was felt around the nation, but just 15 years later at one of the places most impacted it was a distant memory.
While the extent and implications of our current circumstances are far greater, I am comforted by the fact that we’ve been here before. Universities and colleges have always been at the center of significant cultural shifts. In fact, I think many would argue that’s the purpose of these institutions. So, while this doesn’t make it easier to be living in the middle of it, we will come out of this.
What can we do as faculty in the middle of the chaos? Take care, prepare, and adapt. Take care of yourself and your team members. Living in what will later be called out as, “a historical pivot” is hard. I’m tired, and I bet you are too. Be sure to take breaks, remind yourself why you started this work, and think hard about what you can let go. Also know that we all process uncertainty differently. Let’s give each other grace as we wade through this mess.
Prepare your work. Though everything feels like it’s maybe disappearing, your work is still important. People continue to get sick and need treatment, our systems are evolving and need data to support making the next best step, we are witnessing historic shifts real-time (again), and they need to be documented, and despite how it feels our communities want help improving their wellbeing.
Realizing the funding is currently tight or non-existent, ask yourself what can my team and I do right now for little or no money? Examples to consider: 1) reviews (i.e. scoping, systematic, umbrella), 2) primary data collection (i.e. interviews, focus groups, surveys), 3) community engagement and partnership development.
Will this work proceed at the speed you’re used to? No. Will it be easy to motivate your team to get it done amid the noise? No. Will you have to sacrifice some approaches to things like data collection and using a survey panel to ensure your target sample size? Yes. Will that have implications for what you can conclude from your data? Yes. However, the work can and should continue. As I often tell my graduate students, no study is perfect, and you must decide what trade-offs you’re willing to make to move forward. In the end we could all use a win right now, so importantly choose something YOU want to do, so you can shoulder the burden of helping your team cross the finish line.
Finally, we need to adapt. Research will never go back to what it was in early January of 2025, too much has already happened. For me adapting means engaging the public more intentionally and finding ways to invite them into the academic world. My in-person interactions in my community partners always remind me that people want and need the knowledge we generate in our research, but can’t access it if we don’t invite them in. Keeping that knowledge on campuses and behind paywalls to stay safe from possible critiques hasn’t saved us from criticism. Instead, it’s given the power to people with agendas that have landed us in this moment. We can adapt and take that story back.
I know it feels like the odds are already against us and worsening every day. The research landscape we knew and grew up in has been flipped upside down. Nothing I say here changes that. But the work must continue with the next best step. That’s all we have. Slowly but surely, we will come of out of this certainly changed, and maybe (🤞) in better shape than we started.
Let me help you get your in between project started. Connect here.
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