Speaking

Important Resource for
Department Chairs, Conference Coordinators, Graduate School Deans, Provosts, or Anyone in Charge of Student and Faculty Development

Not the Same Old Speaking Topics…

Are your graduate students taking forever to finish writing their dissertations?

Do you worry about the productivity and publication rates of your professors?

Is the morale low in your department or university?

Does your conference need a practical presentation that addresses the real problems that academics face today?

Would you like to have an engaging speaker help your graduate students, postdocs, or faculty members with these concerns?

Let Academic Ladder Help!

If you’re ready for a dynamic, entertaining, and information-packed presentation, you’ve come to the right place. Gina Hiatt and her team of highly qualified academic coaches have helped well over 1,000 academics improve their writing productivity, advance their careers, and achieve their academic goals. From that wealth of experience we have developed two presentations that tackle important, but seldom-addressed issues in a light-hearted and engaging way.

We have presented and/or given online writing productivity programs for Brown University, Emory University, Caltech, UCLA, USC, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Smith College, Amherst College, Hampshire College, Mt. Holyoke College, and University of Michigan.

Topics Include:

How to maximize your productivity on long-term writing projects

Do you have research that has gone unpublished because you can’t make yourself finish the manuscript? Do you sometimes suffer from writer’s block? Do you wait for that elusive free morning in order to concentrate on your writing, but find that the time is never available? Or do you just plain procrastinate on writing your dissertation or book? This presentation/workshop will present simple, doable action steps that you can take to increase and maintain your writing productivity over the course of a long-term writing project. If you’ve been unhappy with your writing output, the strategies presented here can help you turn around your writing habits, while dispelling common myths about writing that impede productivity.

Here is what Kelle Cruz, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Hunter College, said about this presentation after attending it at Caltech:  “You changed my life!”  And when she introduced me as a speaker at the American Astronomical Society, she reiterated that sentiment and added “This talk will blow your mind!”

Making Sense of Academia: Action Steps to Come Out Ahead

Whether you’re a graduate student just starting out, a postdoc, an adjunct instructor, or someone who’s been a professor for a while, you’ll want to attend this thought-provoking and information-packed class. Although working within any large organization can be challenging, there is something in particular about academia that can wreak havoc with your self esteem, your sense of self-efficacy, and your sanity in general. That’s why it’s important for you to be aware of the myriad ways that the academic system may be negatively affecting you, and know what to do about it, so that you can thrive and enjoy your academic life.

* The intimidation factor
* The hierarchy of academia
* Lack of adequate mentoring
* Mixed messages
* The missing road map
* Focus on content at the expense of process
* Guilt about having a balanced life, especially for women

Finally, I will suggest steps that you can take to ensure that you don’t fall prey to the subtle and insidious negative messages that the academic environment can unwittingly put forth.

Attention Department Chairs and Deans! Unhappy grad students or faculty members are not productive academics. So email us at info@academicladder.com!

Gina Hiatt speaking to the Postdoctoral Society at UCLA

Optimize Your Relationship with Your Dissertation Advisor

Many grad students struggle to figure out what their advisors want from them. Are you bothering your advisor if you ask for a meeting? Or should you be initiating more contact with your advisor but don’t know what to say? Are you asking your advisor too many questions? Or should you be asking more questions? How do advisors think about their graduate students?  Being a graduate student may leave you feeling helpless, overwhelmed and bad about yourself.  We cover all these topics, and more.

* Avoid repeating the mistakes that so many other grad students have       made
* Learn what you should expect from your advisor
* Learn what your needs are and what your advisor
needs from you.
* Deal with different advisor styles of relating to their graduate students
* What can go wrong in your advisor-advisee relationship, and what to do about it
* Learn communication skills that will improve your relationship with your advisor
* When and how to change advisors
* Finish your dissertation faster and with less pain
* Get the best reference letters possible from your advisor
* Start making your graduate school experience better than you thought possible

Attention Department Chairs! Improving advisor/advisee relations can help retention rates and time to graduation! So email us at info@academicladder.com!

Weaving Together Academic and Family Life: Finding Your Balance

Female academics constantly struggle to balance the overwhelming and competing demands of academia and motherhood. For this reason we have developed a workshop for academics who:

* Feel the constant stress and strain of having too much to do and        too little time  to get it done
* Experience every day as a battle of competing priorities
* Feel inadequate as both a mother and a scholar
* Feel like you they are falling behind and never able to catch up

They will learn successful strategies, including how to:

* Build an effective support system
* Make effective use of small amounts of time
* Plan and prioritize
* Enlist the help of others
* Ease the daily transition from work to home (and vice versa)
* Say “no” to less urgent and less important demands

To find out more about bringing Gina or one of her team members to your location for a presentation or workshop, contact us by email at info@academicladder.com and we will get back to you right away.

Gina J. Hiatt, Ph.D

Gina J Hiatt, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist and academic coach who helps professors and graduate students to complete research and writing projects and publish, while maintaining high teaching standards and other commitments. She is the founder and president of Academic Ladder, a company that provides a wide range of services for academics and universities. Gina is particularly proud of the Academic Writing Club, a phenomenally successful online tool and support system that allows participants to log their writing progress on a daily basis, interact with others about the process of writing, and get help and feedback from a coach.

Gina received her undergraduate degree in psychology from the University of Pennsylvania, Summa Cum Laude, in 1973. She was one of only 12 people inducted into Phi Beta Kappa her junior year at Penn. Gina received her Ph.D. in 1978 from McGill University, in clinical psychology. Her research was in the area of learning and memory, working with the noted neuropsychologist, Brenda Milner. She then went on to do her postdoctoral year at UCLA, at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute, sponsored by the Brain Research Institute. She also had the opportunity to teach two psychology courses at UCLA. Since then, she has been in private practice for over 25 years, and has focused on helping academics become productive researchers and writers.

Gina has given presentations to graduate students, post docs, pre-tenured professors and tenured professors at Brown University, Emory University, Caltech, UCLA and USC.  In addition, she has done online productivity programs with Emory University, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Smith College, Amherst College, Hampshire College, and Mt. Holyoke College.  All of these programs received extremely high ratings from the faculty who participated.