Introduction

Part I: Square One-Starting the Game

Undergraduate Education
1. Attaining and Sustaining Mentorship During College
Emily Farris and Clare Brock

2. Challenges and Opportunities in Mentoring Undergraduate Research
Jamie Scalera Elliott, Srobana Bhattacharya, Alison M. Clifton, Sean Giovanello, and Kirsten L. Taylor

3. FAFSAs, EFCs, and COAs, Oh My: Navigating the Realm of Student Financial Aid
C. Kelsey Ryan

Graduate Students
4. From First Generation College Graduate to PhD Student: How to Successfully Transition
Elizabeth I. Dorssom

5. Live Long and Suffer: The Plight of the Grad Student
Jennifer Tatara

6. Ritual Anxieties: Living with and Working through Anxiety in Academia
William Duffy and Rae Summers Thompson
7. The Developmental Dissertation
Leanne C. Powner

The Job Market
8. Navigating the Affective Component of the Academic Job Search in a Precarious Market
Amy Collins and Kaity Prieto

9. Navigating the “Hidden Curriculum” as an International Scholar
Irmak Yazici

10. Scaling the Chute: Academic Job Hunting while Mothering
Christine I. Kugelmann

Part II: Rising through the Ranks

Non-Tenure Track Faculty
11. The Perpetual Imposter
Amy Cooter

12. Overcoming the Research Funding Barrier: Undergraduate Research as an Opportunity for Non-Tenure Track Faculty
Holley E. Hansen

13. A Placeholder for Progress
The Editors

14. On the Outside, Looking In: Pathways to Success for Non-Tenure Track Faculty
Paul F. Diehl and Karen Huxtable-Jester

Junior Tenure Track Faculty
15. Struggling to find purpose in the paperwork: USCIS petitions, job applications, and tenure files
Kelly Bauer

16. Developing an Intentional Mentor Network
Zora Wolfe

17. From the Top: Chairs' Role in Developing Faculty Success
Shane Gleason, Diana K. Ivy, and Kelly M. Miller

Tenure and Promotion
18. The Chutes and Ladders of Service at a Small Liberal Arts College
Patrick Homan

19. Doing Away with “The Way We Do Things around Here”: Clarity and Equity in Tenure and Promotion
Rashna Wadia Richards

Service, Teaching, and Research
20. Tackling the Role of Department Chair While Living with an Invisible Chronic Illness
Gretchen Peterson

21. Musical Chairs: Service, the Curse of Competence, and Delayed Promotion
Carrie Liu Currier

22. Who's Going to Teach It? Equitable Distribution of Course Development Demands
Tara Parsons

Senior Faculty
23. Burnout, Compassion Fatigue, and Secondary Trauma: Self-Care in Higher Education
Tami Micsky

24. So You're Thinking About Moving into Academic Administration (aka, the Dark Side)?
Mark A. Boyer

25. From Faculty to Administrator
Shannon Blanton

Part III: Historically Excluded Groups

International Scholars
26. Implicit and explicit bias and the “rising star” culture
Claudio Villalobos

27. The Academic and Social Challenges Faced by African International Students in the US
Lillie Padilla

28. Replacing Chutes with Ladders: Creating Authentic Online Environments Inclusive of International Doctoral Students
Crystal Machado, Farheen Mahmood, Ronald Nyanzi, and Lizoon Nahar

LGBTQIA+ Scholars
29. Teaching Political Science while Queer: when your identity is political
Austin Schutz

30. Breaking the Glass Closet: Being a Black Queer Woman in Academia
Kelly Williams

BIPOC Scholars
31. When Work is Personal: Closeness to Research and Its Effect on Well-Being and Productivity
Nasir Almasri and Amirah E. Aly

32. “What's the 411?”: The beauties and burdens BIPOC women scholars have gleaned through unveiling the hidden curricula within the ivory tower.
Crystal White, LaSheba Hilliard, Gina Tillis, and Tera Warfield

First-Generation Scholars
33. Being in Limbo as a Working-Class Academic
Daniel Mallinson

34. Academic Border-Crossings: Ladders for First-Generation Student Success
T. Mark Montoya

Part IV: Invisible Workloads

Women+ Scholars
35. Experiences of a Former Teen Parent Working in Academia
Rachel Blume

36. Academic Motherhood: Holistic Motherscholars Lifting Each Other Up the Ladders
Lynn Bielski, Emily T. Cripe, Katharina A. Azim, Stacey H. Bender, Maggie Campbell-Obaid, Kathryn E. Frazier, Janet Garcia-Hallett, Jennifer H. Greene-Rooks, Amanda Harmon, N. A. Heller, Colleen C. Myles-Baltzly, Summer Melody Pennell, Ivanna Richardson, & Alexandra K. Frazer

37. Chutes and Ladders in the Rearview Mirror May be Less Distinct than They Initially Appeared
Jessica Salvatore

Caregiver Scholars
38. Caregiving & Academia Without a Filter: When a Pandemic Made Invisible Dependents Visible
Karen Sobel and Melissa Bowles-Terry

39. Navigating Hopeful & Heartbreaking Caregiving in Academia
Courtney Peters

40. The Bittersweet Fruits of Perseverance
Lesley Thornton-Cronin

Scholars with Disabilities
41. On-Campus Interviews: The Invisible Chutes for Disabled Academics
Melanie R. Savelli

42. OCD Meets PhD: The Fight to Thrive in Academia with an Invisible Illness
Maya Novak-Herzog

43. Disabilities and the Hidden Curriculum
Eun A Jo, Sally Friedman, and Alan Babcock

44. It Took My Village: How the Pandemic Worsened Decades of Isolation and Increased Loneliness
Jarod Giger

Conclusion