Ginie Servant-Miklos is an educational innovator, engaged researcher, activist, Director of Bildung Climate School, Comenius Network Leadership Fellow and Associate Member of the Club of Rome. Recently she also got appointed as an Associate Professor in the Education profile at ESSB. In this interview Ginie talks about her career journey with focus on education and why good leadership matters for making talents thrive.
“There are no professors on a dead planet”
At the beginning of the COVID pandemic Ginie almost quit academia. She just finished her postdoc on sustainability education and was busy with the Veni [grant] application. She remembers “arguing with journal editors about little points that no one cares about, for a paper that maybe four people will read. It was also the first time I really confronted myself with projections on climate change, biodiversity loss, fundamental notions like energy return on investment, all things that now drive my work. The confrontation with the seriousness of what we're facing led me down this path, and to stop trying to get a traditional research academic career. There are no professors on a dead planet.”
On the advice of her mentor prof. Liesbeth Noordegraaf-Eelens [Dean of ESPhil], instead of proceeding with the Veni, Ginie started writing her book, Pedagogies of Collapse. She also developed her own method for sustainable and transformative education - Experimental Pedagogics framework, through a Comenius Senior Fellowship. But she had doubts. “I thought - this is it, I'm never going to have an academic career. I told people: I think I'm going to leave academia because I don't think there is place for me here.” It was then that her current supervisor Semiha Denktaş said: “I think we might have an option for you. Do you know that we have this Recognition & Rewards (R&R) programme at ESSB? Why don't you come and join us as an Assistant Professor?” Eventually Ginie chose for the education profile – one of the five focus profiles available at ESSB since 2020.
Good team lead, good supervisor, good mentor
Education is one of the areas of academic work for which R&R programme aims to create more space and appreciation, together with research, impact/engagement, management/leadership, and clinical work. But how do you grow and develop in an education focus profile? Ginie recalls getting “a lot of space to work on my education stuff, complete my Comenius Senior Fellowship, run a minor, create my Summer School for teachers, and finish the book and get it published. And also to get started on the Bildung Climate School.” She also praises opportunities to implement innovative education through her secondment at ESPhil for the Masters in Societal Transitions. “I have a free hand because they trust me to do all kinds of really experimental stuff. I'm trying to show students different ways in which people cope with eco anxiety.”
A supportive team environment is also essential to being able to grow your talents and follow a less traditional path in academia, says Ginie. She credits her BRAVE team at ESSB for being “a team where everyone's welcome as they are, where no one pushes their agenda on somebody else. And there’s a lot of encouragement.” She continues: “A good team lead, a good supervisor, and a good mentor were instrumental to me feeling like I had the freedom to do what I needed to do. All that experience could be built up because I was given space for it. That was absolutely critical that my team lead Rutger [Engels] and my supervisor Semiha really protected that space for me to work on innovative education.”
Give them space
So what is needed to support academics growing and developing in career paths other than research? “Especially for these non-traditional roles, I would definitely formalise a mentoring process”, says Ginie. “And when someone's ‘made it’, leave a trace or a reflexive process that is public and transparent so that other people can understand. And if you truly see someone that has the potential to do something new, you can be strict on deliverables, but you've got to give them at least a year of space.”
She also points out that developing in ‘non traditional’ career paths is still a challenge. “There's a lot of great infrastructure, access and institutional knowledge for supporting research careers, not so much for education careers. We recognise it as a bottleneck every single time.
"If you're really serious about creating these new, shining beacons of educational innovation and educational progress, you need to make space for it.”
Uneven change and sky high standards
Does Ginie see a change at EUR in how academic talents are given space and opportunities to develop outside of a typical research path? “It depends where. I would say the change is uneven. Leadership certainly matters. So who your leader and your mentor is will definitely shape your chances and your experiences. I'm lucky that I had the right people around me that were able to accompany that process and see the potential. Of course, you do need to be the kind of person that's willing to go off the beaten path.”
Walking this relatively new path is still challenging though. “I do feel that the standards that you have to reach to ‘make it’ and to have a career in a non-traditional academic profile are way higher than with the research profile because it is less known. You have to be truly impressive in order to get to the next stage. I am worried that we are setting the bar really high. Liesbeth [Noordegraaf-Eelens] and I both got the Comenius Leadership Fellowship and if that's the standard for getting promoted, then there's only one applicant allowed per university per year.” Her hope is that eventually academics who choose to follow a career path in education “don't appear like odd ones out, but rather that we're creating a path after us. Where it will be as normal as the regular Veni-Vidi-kind of pathway, but for education.”
About Recognition & Rewards
Erasmus University Rotterdam is modernising its system for recognising and rewarding academic staff to create more room for diverse academic talents and better enable employees to contribute to the university’s mission of creating positive societal impact. That is why EUR kicked off the Recognition & Rewards programme in 2020. Curious what R&R means for you or your School? Get in touch with the contact person for your School for R&R or reach out to the Recognition & Rewards team directly via recognitionandrewards@eur.nl.
- More information
Please contact Marjolein Kooistra at kooistra@essb.eur.nl or on +31(0)6 83 67 60 38