This spring, we are bidding a fond farewell to our beloved Associate Dean in the Graduate School, Dr. Beth Allison Barr. Dr. Barr has been a champion for improving graduate student quality of life, and she’s helped accomplished the reduction and eventual elimination of student fees, healthcare improvement, and more during her tenure as Associate Dean. Dr. Barr kindly agreed to talk with us about her time working in the Graduate School and what’s coming up next for her as she returns to the History department. We want to thank Dr. Barr for her tireless support of the graduate student community and wish her the best as she assumes the James Vardaman Endowed Professorship!!!
BearTracks
Okay, so first, just a little background. How many years have you been in this role?
Dr. Beth Allison Barr
January 2019 was officially when I transitioned into it. I started sort of halfway transitioning in Fall 2018. But I assumed the role January 1, 2019.
BT
Okay, and what drew you to admin in the first place?
BAB
Well, some of it was like what the Provost said [during her talk last week]. I’ve been teaching for a long time, and I liked administration. I liked that work with being a GPD. And I also remember, Larry Lyon told me, he said, “It’s really good to be able to help graduate students on a large scale.” So that was really where I was like, Well, that would be nice to actually be able to do to have conversations and do work that matters. That’s really what drew me into it.
BT
What have you enjoyed most about this position and the least?
BAB
The most is being able to do things that impact graduate students’ lives. I really enjoy that. There’s been a lot of things that I’ve helped launch and seen [happen], like, for example, the Postdoctoral Teaching Fellowship. It was something that I started working on really early on. We got it through, and now it is thriving. I’m really glad for that. So it’s now becoming institutionalized. Also, the expansion of the GPS workshops, being able to streamline those and being able to talk to graduate students about what actually is more effective for them. That’s been really fun getting to do those and be responsive to graduate students. And I think just working with graduate students has been a lot of fun. I’ve gotten to meet so many across campus – STEM students that I never knew before; learning what is it like to be a STEM student at Baylor, even Social Science students. I’ve really enjoyed getting to see that broader picture. And working with the students in GSA. So that’s been my favorite part is working with graduate students and accomplishing things. Getting projects started off the ground and seeing them actually happen. It’s fun and something that, in academia, we don’t always get to see.
What if I liked least about it? So I’m so thankful that we have gotten health insurance to a much better place for graduate students, but that was a really difficult part of the job for me, especially before we had a set person who now does graduate student insurance. The nitty gritty of having to learn that was not a skill set I have, and that was very, very difficult. That type work, very in the weeds, is not always a place where I excel. I’m better at visionary work, the sort of things that have to do with with teaching and research, enhancing students career opportunities. I’m a lot better at that than being an insurance specialist.
BT
What has surprised you about working in administration?
BAB
How collegial it is! I think sometimes from the faculty side, we often have a perspective that working in admin has a lot of drudgery associated with it. It’s often called the Dark Side. Faculty often say it’s just all politics and everybody’s scrambling. What I have found is that it’s really people who are committed to both students and faculty trying to work work for them. It’s not really different areas working against each other. It’s areas trying to figure out how to work together for the better. And so I really love that part. It’s not that academic departments aren’t or can’t be collegial, but it’s different. Being faculty is much more individual-focused. I’ve really liked that community, collegiality that you see in the administrative level.
BT
So that actually segues perfectly. How has working in admin changed the way you are as a faculty member and then vice versa? How has having your background as a faculty member changed the way you do administration?
BAB
I wish I had known what I know now, as a faculty member, because I have a much better understanding of how the university works. And I have a much better understanding of how to actually move an idea through to get traction than I’ve ever had before. I think a lot of faculty sometimes feel like they’re constantly just kind of talking in circles, like nothing’s ever getting done. And part of that is because of not understanding how the process works. So I’m really thankful to understand how the process works. Also having a big view of what the university as a whole is doing, because it gives a better perspective. It minimizes where everything is not just about you and your research, and you see how it fits within a bigger picture. It also helps me realize that things aren’t always the high stakes that we think they are. I have a much better perspective, like, Well, if that doesn’t work out now, that’s okay. It’s something good to try for, but if it doesn’t work out, we can move to Plan B. I’m much less stressed about sort of faculty level things than I was before because I realized that the university is a big place. The university changes over time, and you can always try again. It has given me a much better perspective.
Being a faculty member, though, coming to administration, I think was also helpful, because I had a better idea of what motivates faculty. I could think about, well, that wouldn’t motivate me to do it. So that’s not going to work; that’s not how we’re gonna get faculty on board with this! It was helpful in thinking, how do we help faculty? How do we communicate this in a way that faculty see why it matters, and, even if they don’t agree with it, at least how will it help us better communicate with faculty?
BT
Obviously you got into this role because you care very deeply. How have you balanced wearing your heart on your sleeve without wearing your heart on your sleeve?
BAB
So I think having that broader perspective helps. You can’t help every student. But you can create structures that help more students. I know I can’t alleviate every problem that every graduate student has, but there are things that we can do to help alleviate more, and to help make life or make the program be more successful. I hate to use the words “less stressful,” in the sense that we’re not trying to make it less academically rigorous, but we’re trying to make it less stressful by alleviating things that really shouldn’t be causing graduate students stress. And there are things where even if I can’t help every individual student, I now know the people who can help them. That’s been really helpful, knowing that I don’t have to do everything. Being able to point people towards resources is something I’ll carry back with me to my department. I know how to get this done. I can’t help you, but I know who can help you – making those connections.
BT
What do you wish grad students knew about administrators?
BAB
Maybe that administration often has to play the long game. We have to have a broad perspective that things take time, and that we can’t accomplish everything immediately. But we can put steps into place that begin to solve problems. For example, think about the reduced fees. The Graduate School tried slowly for years to get the fees reduced. And then finally, it was my first year where that was my first big project that I took on, and we got the the fees reduced by half. And now they have been absorbed into tuition helping so many graduate students. But that was a multi-pronged process, and I got to be on the final end of it and see it be successful, but other people had worked on it for years without seeing success. Sometimes graduate students get to be on the end where they see what they have been working for resolved, and sometimes they’re at the start of the process, and they may not see the success of it. It’s just thinking that sometimes it’s like, okay, that’s a great goal, but we’ve got to start here. The problem, of course, is that many of these things affect graduate students’ lives personally. So, being like, yes, we want to help with that, but we can’t do that yet. We have to start here. It’s hard. And I’ve learned that if you want to start change, you just have to start change and follow the process.
BT
Yeah. I’m very grateful that those fees are gone. My first year, between insurance and student fees, I was paying over $800 a month. I was like, this is more than my mortgage!
BAB
I know, it’s crazy. The people who remember the fees are becoming fewer. Institutional memory changes. And so now people don’t realize the hard-fought battle. But it took it took long time.
BT
What is your proudest accomplishment in this role?
BAB
So I think maybe the fees, even though most people don’t remember that now. That was my first project that I took on and we got them reduced by half. That first year was also sort of my baptism by fire into the world of spreadsheets and figuring out how to convey detailed information in a way that people can understand it. I think also getting the postdoctoral teaching fellowships up and running. That took a lot of coordination. Then of course, although it hasn’t quite gone into effect yet, is the mentoring agreement [between advisors/PIs and their graduate advisees]. I’ve been working on that for a couple of years. And now with Sara Dolan coming in, we’re presenting it today to the Grad Council, hoping to have a positive outcome. Some of my very first graduate student workshops that I changed in the beginning were about mentoring, for both faculty and for students. I didn’t start working on the mentoring agreement until I was in here for a year and started talking with faculty and students, doing research on it, hosting workshops that connected to it. And then that second year I started working on it. Last year, we had a full working draft that we presented and had a soft launch of, and we’re hoping to have a more formal launch next year.
BT
That’s great. Is there anything you wish you had had time to do or complete before leaving?
BAB
I would have liked to have seen the mentoring agreement go all the way through. Sara is gonna do a great job with it moving forward, but that’s one of the things I kind of wish I had been able to do. I am really glad I got to see the Postdoctoral Teaching Fellowships take off. It would have been great to have been able to continue to see that grow even more. Now that we have begun to change this culture, the importance of having research and postdoctoral position for Baylor students for a year out, there’s so much more that could have been done with that. These are things that are kind of hard to let go of, but at the same time, it is close to being institutionalized, which means that it’s going to stay. I wish I had been able to restart WITA (Women in the Academy). That was something that was on the books. We ran it for the first two years I was in the grad school, and I began looking at it and looking at the feedback and I realized that we needed to have better trained mentors, and we needed to have more committed students to make it work. COVID was a good moment for me to pause it, because people just didn’t want anything else on their plate. I started thinking a lot about it and talking with some folks and came up with a plan to relaunch it. But when I realized last November that this spring was my last semester, I decided not to relaunch it with a new person was walking into the role. So I paused it, but I really would have liked to have seen that relaunch.
BT
If there’s one thing you wish you could have told yourself when you started this position, what would it be?
BAB
There were a couple of things that I think I spent a lot of time on early on, that if I had understood how they actually worked, I could have resolved more quickly. I wish maybe I had that confidence moving in where if I realized what the problem was early on, then I could have actually done something earlier. It took me a little while to build that confidence, moving from just being a faculty person to working in these higher administrative positions. It took me a little while to realize that if I did figure out what a problem was that I had the resources to help, or at least begin to move towards solving it. But at the same time, having now learned that confidence is going to help moving back into a faculty role. I think I’m much more confident and much more willing to speak out, even if it doesn’t cause change. But knowing how to speak my mind in a way that people can hear and without being divisive or in a way to have civil disagreements. That’s something I have definitely learned in administration. I also realized stakes aren’t so high. I can speak out without worrying if nobody agrees with me. It’s fine. It doesn’t matter. Well, it does matter, but it doesn’t. The stakes aren’t so high. It’s not like this is a live or die thing.
BT
Alright. Last question: what are you looking forward to about returning to the History Department, and what will you miss?
BAB
So I am looking forward to being on research leave. I feel like I’ll have the chance to collect myself. I have just been moving so fast. And of course, I’m starting three book projects. I’m looking forward to getting those organized and moving forward with them. I am looking forward to being more present in the classroom. I love teaching. I’ve always loved teaching. It’s been kind of nice to have had this little break, because it gave me perspective. And it also has made me think about my teaching, and so I’m excited about moving back into the classroom in those ways. I’m also excited about getting to spend more time with my graduate students, my doctoral students, I have three at the point of comprehensive exams and one at the writing dissertation stage. That’s a time when they need their advisors present, so I’m really glad I’ll be able to be present for them. I have a graduate student finishing the summert. I’m very glad to be able to be back into all of those things again.
I will miss the collegiality of the Graduate School. I will miss being able to see a problem and solve the problem. But I will definitely miss the collegiality of the graduate school. It’s a really great community here. And I’ll miss getting to work with graduate students across campus. This move will silo me a little bit more into the humanities, and I’ll miss the broader interactions.
BT
Well, thank you, every student I’ve talked to just said, please, tell her thank you. You’ve been such a champion for graduate students. So everyone’s just really grateful for the years you’ve put in. Our lives are better because of it.