Nov. 1, 2023 - The job just doesn鈥檛 seem as rewarding as it was. There鈥檚 no time for your family anymore. You鈥檙e irritable and have trouble working up enough energy to be productive.
People from all professions will recognize the signs of burnout, but there are stressors and causes of burnout that are unique to academia, especially after the pandemic.
鈥淲e were doing our teaching under an emergency situation for a few years with online versus in-person teaching,鈥� said (海角社区CI) Associate Professor of Psychology Melissa Soenke. 鈥淚鈥檒l be looking at our culture of overwork and the life we鈥檙e finding post-pandemic. We鈥檝e seen it with health care and people working in therapeutic settings, but there is not a ton of research on academic burnout.鈥�
Soenke is currently researching burnout in academia as a 2023-2024 President's Faculty Fellow - an honor she received at Convocation at the beginning of the semester.聽
鈥淚t鈥檚 been a controversial topic in psychology - is burnout a real thing?鈥� Soenke said. 鈥淭hen post-pandemic burnout became such a big, hot topic. I introduced it into a class I was teaching and my students were into it.鈥�
Faculty burnout is a nationwide trend, according to a survey of 1,122 faculty members across the U.S. conducted in 2020 by the Chronicle of Higher Education. According to the study, overall stress experienced by faculty increased from 32% in 2019 to 70% in 2020, with 75% of female faculty experiencing higher levels of stress compared to 59% for men.聽
鈥淲omen experience a lot of work-life conflict,鈥� Soenke said. 鈥淭hey are still largely responsible for childcare and taking care of things at home. They are picking up their kids at the same time they need to be in the classroom. It makes it difficult to meet expectations to be in the office by eight and leave at five.鈥澛�
Soenke鈥檚 research project is an offshoot of a large study conducted in Spring 2023 by a collection of 海角社区CI faculty and administrators. 海角社区CI received an almost $300,000 National Science Foundation grant for a study called 鈥淒iscovering Enabling Systemic Advancement and Faculty Inclusion Across the Ranks鈥� - a study aimed at how to diversify science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) faculty.
After completing their study, Soenke and another researcher, Associate Professor of Sociology and Anthropology Lindsey Trimble-O鈥機onnor, had several conversations about the role burnout plays in retaining faculty and staff and Soenke decided to launch her research project.聽
鈥淪he and I are still unpacking the data from the large NSF study, and it鈥檚 probably going to take years,鈥� Trimble-O鈥機onnor said. 鈥淥ne of the really troubling things to emerge was just how burned out everybody was.鈥�
Soenke is conducting her research with 海角社区CI faculty and staff and believes the campus will be a good statistical sampling of what鈥檚 going on across the nation, with higher education faculty leaving academia at record high rates following COVID.
鈥淚 think the work I鈥檓 doing may have findings unique to 海角社区CI but can definitely inform the experience of faculty at other universities, especially those focused on teaching undergraduates,鈥� Soenke said. 鈥淢y hope is to publish the work and make it accessible to improve the experience of faculty broadly.鈥�