‘I am the golden thread’
- Wits University
The Mid-career Academic Portfolio Writing Retreat guides scholars in leadership development through self-reflection.
The Carnegie-funded Enhancing Mid-Career Academic Transitions programme (EMCAT) recently held its flagship event, the Academic Portfolio Writing Retreat, to help scholars create academic portfolios they can use for promotions, awards, grant applications or fellowships.
The EMCAT programme, a collaboration between Wits University’s Centre for Learning, Teaching and Development (CLTD), the Transformation Employment Equity Office (TEEO) and the Research Office, and facilitated by Rieta Ganas (CLTD) and Antonia Wadley (TEEO), is to support academics as they navigate their mid-career space and step up into leading positions.
Embracing themselves as leaders, participants work on the self first, exploring their vision and mission, values and belief systems. This introspective and reflexive check-in strengthens their way of knowing, being and doing, and aligns their approach to all the academic missions: teaching, research and academic citizenship/community engagement.
The participants’ personally and professionally integrated, holistic portfolios are grounded in these internal reflections.
Professor Georgia Torres, Head of the Department of Exercise Science and Sports Medicine, shared “I’ve been trying to find the golden thread in my research but what I’ve realised this week is that I’m the golden thread. It’s who I am, my purpose, and values that infuse everything I do.”
A highlight of the retreat was the ‘Leadership Walk’ where participants walked amongst leadership quotes, found the one that spoke to them personally and professionally, and then journaled on how it resonated with them, their leadership journey, and what is being called from them.
One of the participants, Motlalepule Nathane-Taulela shared how a previous EMCAT participant had advised her “to really drink in the quotes on the Leadership Walk.” Those words had so inspired the colleague as she put together her soon-to-be successful application for promotion to Professor.
Participants also explored their contribution and approach to community engagement in the African context, and one activity was to brainstorm the qualities and characteristics of a leader in and for Africa.
One of the biggest AHA! moments was learning the difference between a ‘researcher’ and a ‘scholar’. Most academics think of themselves as a researcher, defined as someone working on a narrow, specialised, deep investigation into a research question that contributes to a specific field. Far fewer participants had thought about how they are scholars, defined as people focusing on the dissemination, synthesis and teaching of knowledge, and applying that knowledge to practice.
The general consensus was that the Retreat had provided a moment to pause and really get clarity on what they’ve done, where they are heading, and where the gaps are. The EMCAT programme will have a Conversation Event in May and then wrap up in June this year.