Faculty Identity & Trauma: Connections and Opportunities for Further Exploration

• In Event: Educator Trauma and Identity: Perspectives Across the Postsecondary Education Continuum

Abstract

Though the scholarship centered on the experiences of faculty has increased over the last decade, discussions about faculty trauma, well-being, and healing remain significantly under-researched. This can perhaps be linked to feelings of shame, stereotypes about trauma, and mental health precarity, which are not easy for many faculty to admit and/or work through (Gill, 2009). The purpose of my contribution to this panel is to center conversations on excavating how faculty identity and trauma are inextricably linked, and engage in dialogue about how to integrate and normalize healing and well-being practices for faculty – especially faculty whose identities and experiences are impacted by various systems of oppression. By applying an intersectionality lens, we can start to truly understand the complex ways in which educator identity, experiences, and trauma collide – and strategically develop ways to not only dismantle oppressive structures in academe, but also develop structures and systems that focus on supporting the health well-being of these faculty who are often on the margins of higher education.

Faculty who are minoritized constantly navigate hostile, unwelcoming, and isolating environments that further reinforce much of the harm they have encountered across their lifespan (Wright-Mair & Museus, 2023). Faculty within these environments often face harm in the classroom, in their specific college units, and across the institution. Additionally, they are often asked to do more service, and frequently have their research attacked and/or not valued. Coupled with exclusionary processes, policies and structures that typically do not support their individual identities, experiences, or research agendas, these faculty are expected to move through academic institutions on the quest towards tenure, promotion, and other academic accolades – often without recognition or support for the compounding trauma they constantly face. Many times, these faculty experience strong dissatisfaction for their job, high levels of stress, burnout, fatigue, illness, and even death due to stressors associated with academe, and the complexities that accompany their varying intersecting identities. Emerging research (Anthym & Tuitt, 2019, Wright-Mair, 2022, Wright-Mair & Ieva, 2022) has illuminated the vast impact that the cost of staying in academe has had mentally, physically and emotionally on faculty, namely those who have minoritized identities. Many faculty move through academe with compounding trauma and often get no help as they continue to work steadfastly to meet academic goals and advance the goals of the neoliberal institution (Wright-Mair & Ieva, 2022). The Covid-19 pandemic brought to light conversations about the health and well-being of not just students but also faculty and staff in institutions of higher education. Many faculty started becoming comfortable identifying that they too were in fact struggling with their overall health and well-being. This laid the foundation and, in many ways, gave permission to faculty to admit that they too were not okay. The acknowledgment that faculty are navigating their own traumas while performing their duties and caring for others has provided a great opportunity to dive deeper to better understand the intersections of educator identity and trauma and strategize how to create institutional environments that value, incentivize and support faculty well-being.

Author

• Raquel Wright-Mair, Rowan University