Academic Literacy Coordinator Recommends Getting Experience

Name: Olivia Inwood (she/her)

PhD: Linguistics and Communication/Media Studies, University of New South Wales (UNSW Sydney), 2023

What is your current job?

I am an Academic Literacy Coordinator for Western Sydney University Library in Sydney, Australia.

To unpack that some more, my role is very multi-faceted in tasks. I’ve been part of teams that develop resources such as mandatory Generative AI and Academic Integrity modules for students and the University’s academic skills website, coordinated and taught workshops to students aligned around academic skills and digital literacy, given presentations to staff about university generative AI advice and models for foundational academic skills support to students, and have been on a number of committees related to student success and retention where I help evaluate our current academic support options for students with research-informed processes.

A significant part of my role is operational. I spend a lot of time writing strategic documents informed by research to secure funding and advocate for academic literacy initiatives and enhance collaboration among academic and professional staff, as well as planning initiatives to uplift Library Staff working practices, and I am the direct supervisor for a team of 8 casual staff who develop content and teach academic skills workshops for students.

What is your favorite thing about your job?

I love that my work aligns with my values – Libraries stand for universal access to information and knowledge. Libraries are not motivated by profit, we are motivated by the opportunity to help as many people as possible and by public value. This is so important in the university sector as I’ve seen schools/faculties fight each other for student enrolments. Working in a Library, our focus is on helping as many people as possible not privileging certain degrees/schools/faculties.

I also love the variety in my work (every week is different), ability to talk to so many people across the university and collaborate with a team, and the insights into how the university works at the macro-level (i.e. how the different departments/faculties all fit together). And of course, I love universities and the mission of the university to transform the lives of students through education.

What is the most important skill you developed or experience you had during your PhD that now helps you in your current position?

I don’t think it is one particular skill that helps me but rather a mix of experiences/skills I had during my PhD years. The mixed experience of being a PhD student, working in a professional staff role and as a casual tutor/lecturer, now helps me in my current role.

If I had just one of these experiences, I don’t think I would be as prepared for my current role, where I need to quickly alternate between the ‘academic’ and ‘operational’ mindsets.

How did you build the skills necessary for your current role?

Luckily, I can draw on a lot of my past experiences to build the skills necessary for my current role. There is a need to be able to learn on the job very quickly, have strong emotional intelligence, resilience to keep going despite setbacks, and to be proactive and understand what work needs doing.

I’m asynchronously studying MBA courses on weekends to also help me enhance these qualities as well as counteract negative stereotypes of PhDs not understanding the ‘real world’. I don’t tell many people about this, as coming from a humanities background, I’m worried a lot of people will judge me or think I’m strange for still studying after getting a PhD. But the MBA has actually helped me so much – it has helped me get my mindset in order so I can perform at my best and find ways to answer the questions that preoccupy me e.g. What does positive social impact mean and how do we measure it? How do we navigate technological disruptions and build meaningful careers where we can help as many people as possible? What frameworks guide our decision making?

I wouldn’t recommend going into debt to study an MBA, but I was lucky that I managed to actually make enough money during my PhD years (worked multiple jobs) and so I have some money to invest into my professional development.

How did you find this position? What were the career steps you took to get to where you are now?

When I was working in a full-time casual research role, I just had a moment where I realised this wasn’t what I wanted to be doing and the idea of applying for academic jobs just made me feel very depressed. I started reading the LinkedIn profiles of humanities PhD graduates and noticed a pattern of graduates in professional staff roles at universities in the ‘education space’ e.g. educational developer, learning designer, and digital and academic skills roles.

So I just started applying for every professional staff role in these areas that I could find in Australia (looked at LinkedIn and job boards but also went to university websites directly). My priority was to apply for a ‘continuing role’. I was open to live in any city in Australia and wasn’t particularly focused on level/income, as I thought it was just important to initially get some sort of role with stability.

Within a few weeks I received my job offer. I was lucky that I was applying for jobs during a time when there was a slight increase in professional staff roles at universities as they started recovering from the COVID era downturn.

PhD student/professional staff at UNSW ➡️ PhD graduate ➡️ 3 months in a casual research role at RMIT ➡️ Academic Literacy Coordinator at Western Sydney University Library

If someone is interested in a similar role, what would you recommend they start doing now to prepare?

I would recommend getting experience ‘outside of academia’. So this can still be in the university, but look at non-academic path roles. Particularly, any work that involves working in a team and/or having some element of ‘leadership’ is great to have – this will highlight to future employers you have ‘workplace’ skills. This is not to say academia doesn’t involve leadership/teamwork but unfortunately there are a lot of negative stereotypes about academia that exist.

As I used to say to the media students I taught, thousands of students will have the same degree as you, what makes you unique is the experiences you have outside of the classroom. So have a mix of academic and non-academic roles, and think about how you can develop a unique skill-set i.e. a combination of skills that other people might not typically have.

I didn’t do this enough during my own PhD, but in hindsight, spend time looking at LinkedIn profiles of people doing similar work to what you want to do in the future or have studied a similar degree to you and ask if you can chat to them to learn about their role and career journey. I think most people want to help others and enjoy talking about their journey, so don’t feel afraid to do this.

Why did you decide to not pursue a career in academia?

I originally thought that after my PhD I would work in the public service as my PhD was partly funded by the Defence Science and Technology Group in Australia. Just thinking about applying for postdocs made me feel depressed, I didn’t want to move cities/countries every few years for the next decade and work in casual roles, so basically, the academic pathway did not appeal to me. My PhD funder gave me funding for research after my PhD with the potential for continuing work (e.g. postdoc or public service role) but then government funding priorities changed so they could only give me casual work and that wasn’t really what I wanted due to lifestyle/pay factors/lack of variety in work.

It is funny because I tried to leave the university sector but somehow, I kept getting drawn back in! I take this as a sign that I really love universities. I don’t have any regrets about the pathway I’ve taken, working in a university but not as an academic aligns with my love of universities but lack of interest in the conventional academic pathway. I do have my days where I sometimes feel guilty for not becoming an academic or angered by the lack of respect I sometimes face as professional staff and working in a Library (people sometimes have strange stereotypes) but these are factors based on other people’s perceptions. At the end of the day, I really love what I do and I love the freedom to forge my own career path and perhaps disrupt people’s stereotypes through the range of work I get to do.

What advice do you have for someone getting their PhD and looking to pursue a career outside of academia?

Firstly, think about what you enjoy and what you want from a job. If you like teaching or research, you can find that similar work outside of academia. If you want prestige and autonomy, academia still scores the highest for these factors. I think the concept of ‘job crafting’ is a powerful one – if you build enough trust with your manager/organisation or your organisation has a flexible work/life balance, then you can find the time to work on passion projects. Although I’m not an academic, I’m actually still collaborating with academics on research projects and writing journal articles.

Secondly, to save time in the job search, I would recommend getting that ‘non-academic’ work experience during your PhD years, even if it means it might take longer to finish your PhD. Showing that you can navigate both the academic and non-academic worlds is a valuable skill.

Thirdly, remember your CV for non-academic jobs will be very different to your academic CV. I’ve been on job interview panels, and unfortunately, I’ve seen some PhD graduates not know the difference. While my academic CV lists all my journal articles and conference presentations, all this only makes up one dot-point on my non-academic CV. Also count your PhD years as work experience, important to counteract the stereotype of just being a prolonged student. In fact, when I write my CV, I always think of the assumptions that people might hold e.g. PhD graduates not understanding the ‘real world’ – so show in your CV experiences you’ve had with industry and/or leadership roles and/or simplifying complex information for others.

Lastly, don’t let people convince you that your PhD wasn’t worth it. I am so happy I got a PhD, it has transformed me for the better. Although my current role didn’t specifically request a PhD, I don’t think I would be as good at my job without a PhD or have been able to start at my particular pay grade considering my age and lack of years’ work experience compared to others. I really believe that PhD graduates can contribute a lot to the professional services side of universities and help bridge the gap between academic and professional staff that often emerges due to misunderstandings or misaligned values.

Are there any components of your identity you would like to share, including how they have impacted your journey?

I am a young woman and grew up in rural Australia on a farm. My Mum is a migrant from Lithuania, and everyone in my immediate family is a farmer or unemployed (so no university connections). I received an equity scholarship from UNSW when I was 18 that allowed me to move from rural Australia to the city for university. I love universities and university transformed me as a person, it has given me a love and appreciation of knowledge and culture that is an intrinsic value I will always carry with me. I also acknowledge that I have a lot of privileges and while I was at UNSW I had access to great networks.

And for those interested, what was your main area of research?

My PhD research explored the language and visual meaning-making of users engaging with discourses of misinformation and disinformation (information disorders) on YouTube. I compared political vs non-political case studies, and developed a method for categorising the different communicative strategies users employ in these various discourses. This method highlighted how specific linguistic and visual patterns are used to affiliate with like-minded people and legitimate shared values.

The applications of this research are for informing the design of automated systems that identify dangerous discourses and for developing targeted media literacy initiatives.