Bonus: Your Relationship With Your Institution In 2025
Apr 17, 2025
Universities have survived countless crises by adapting to changing times. As 2025 approaches, it’s crucial for academics to assess their relationships with institutions. Fund cuts and political pressures highlight the importance of personal agency. Participants are encouraged to evaluate their values against those of their schools. The Navigate program offers structured support to enhance academic careers and management skills. In this turbulent landscape, individuals must determine how much effort to invest in their institutions.
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insights INSIGHT
Universities Prioritize Self-Preservation
Universities prioritize self-preservation during crises, adapting to survive over centuries.
Their actions aim to protect the institution, not necessarily support individual academics.
volunteer_activism ADVICE
Define Mutual Responsibilities
Reflect on what you owe your institution and what it owes you in return.
Use this reflection to deliberately decide your relationship with your university going forward.
insights INSIGHT
Fear Creates the Reality You Avoid
Decisions made from fear often create the feared reality.
Acting intentionally rather than from fear helps avoid inadvertently worsening situations.
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Universities have been around for over a thousand years. They’ve persisted through war, famine, plague, natural disasters, vast shifts in people’s beliefs about them and what they are for.
That’s because universities are self-preserving. They adapt.
Look right now at how your university is adapting. Are they partnering with you to solve problems? Are they saying “keep your heads down and pivot”? Are they saying “don’t worry we’ve got this” but aren’t actually in conversation with you about how? Are they placing the burden of adapting squarely on YOUR shoulders?
In 2025, you need to think carefully about your relationship to your institution and DECIDE what it is going to be.
Here are some questions to help you get started:
What is my responsibility to my institution, and what is its responsibility to me?
What are my values? What are my institution's values (the ones it is showing you right now, not the ones in the strategic plan)? How are these aligned or misaligned?
If your institution is not bending over backwards to save you, how much energy should you be using to save it?
There is no one “right” way to relate to your university. YOU get to decide. The university and your position in it is just one container through which to do the work. YOU get to decide your relationship to the container.
We're receiving applications for our next cohort of Navigate: Your Writing Roadmap®! Check out the program details and start your application process here.
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Our 12-week Navigate: Your Writing Roadmap® program helps tenure-track womxn and nonbinary professors to publish their backlog of papers so that their voice can have the impact they know is possible. Apply here!
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