During the COVID-19 pandemic, women in academic leadership positions were faced with an unprecedented career challenge. While data previously existed to show that female leaders face an uphill battle in obtaining promotions, tenure, and leaderships positions within academia, the COVID-19 crisis that ensued within higher education created an unstable work-life balance, inequitable work expectations, and a need for increased psychosocial support for these already disadvantaged leaders. This chapter will explore the power and challenge of women mentoring other women in the midst of a global crisis. Using a personal perspective from a mentor and mentee, the authors will comment on current and extant literature on the challenges facing women leaders in academia.
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Ashley Gambino (AG)
There it was. My name, Ashley Gambino, on the office door at my undergraduate alma mater. I was fresh from graduate school and somehow, unfathomably, walking into my dream job. My imposter syndrome raged as I unlocked the door and began to set up my office. As I unpacked photos of friends and family and carefully placed them next to the notebooks I had been scribbling course notes in just a few months ago, my cell phone rang. It was my mother. I answered as my former professor/new colleague (this would take some getting used to!) stopped in the doorway and exclaimed, “There’s a doctor in the house!” “Barely,” I thought to myself, while my mother asked who the woman was cheering me on in the background.
I have had no shortage of such cheerleaders in my academic career and, before I recognized the privilege of such relationships, I would minimize their words and actions as ‘duties.’ Then, suddenly, I was no longer slouching in my seat taking in the sage words of my instructors. Somehow, these cheerleaders thought that I deserved to be a colleague and I had a room full of slouching college students staring expectantly at me and waiting for ‘sage’ to appear. I was not sage. I was green, so very very green.
Rachel Flemming (RF)
“Never put anything smaller than your elbow in your ear!” The classroom erupted into laughter as my audiology professor engaged us in one of her passionate lectures about her self-proclaimed favorite topic: ears. Dr. Ashley Gambino was brand new to SUNY Plattsburgh, but she was already one of my favorite instructors. She had a dynamic teaching style that was both firm and familiar. She knew each of her students by name and was not afraid to call us out individually if we arrived late to class or dared to text during her lecture. She had high expectations, but she also believed that each of us could meet or exceed them. As a student, I, Rachel Flemming, sat in her classroom and thought “I wish I could do that.” On the track for a degree in speech-language pathology, I thought I knew what my future would look like. I assumed I would work in an elementary school or high school providing speech therapy to students with communication needs. However, as I watched Dr. Gambino explain the dangers of a Q-tip that October afternoon, I remember wondering for the umpteenth time if I had made the wrong career choice.
AG
As my position was a one off and I was the only member of my discipline within the department, my cheerleaders, though pleasant and supportive, didn’t transition to true mentor relationships as I found my footing in running a clinic and teaching future clinicians. And it is safe to say that I did find my footing. Over the next decade, my imposter syndrome faded as it became increasingly apparent that my dream job and I were meant for each other.
RF
In the meantime, I faced a personal crisis of career identity. No matter where I worked, I had a gnawing feeling that I was not where I belonged. In the first seven years of my career, I practiced in many settings: schools, skilled nursing facilities, rehabilitation centers, a hospital, and even via telepractice before it became the “new normal” in 2020. In fact, it was during my years in telepractice that I entertained the notion of teaching as an adjunct at my alma mater. SUNY Plattsburgh was advertising the need for someone to teach one of my favorite undergraduate classes in the Fall 2016 semester. As I read the job description, a familiar line of thought ran through my head “I wish I could do that.” This time, however, I looked at the evidence and realized I could.
AG
I was on solid ground and an emerging leader in my department as the 2019-2020 academic year rolled in. By then, many of my cheerleaders had retired and I was facing new challenges and another acute case of imposter syndrome associated with new administrative and leadership roles. But, these were not insurmountable difficulties! This was not my first time diving headfirst into a pool of uncertainty. I was the poster child for ‘fake it ‘til you make it!’