Menah Pratt is the Vice President for Strategic Affairs and Diversity and Professor of Education at Virginia Tech. A fierce advocate for those who have been disempowered, she is the founder of the Faculty Women of Color in the Academy National Conference, now in its 12th year, and the Black College Institute, now in its 7th year. She has over 30 years of experience in higher education in senior leadership roles at major public and private universities. Nationally recognized as a leader, scholar, and author, Dr. Pratt received the American Council on Education Fellowship award, the Top 50 Women We Admire in Virginia, and the American Education Studies Association Critics’ Choice Award for outstanding scholarship for A Black Woman’s Journey from Cotton Picking to College Professor: Lessons about race, gender, and class in America. The National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education honored her with the Inclusive Excellence Individual Leadership Award and elected her to their board. In addition, she serves as chair of the Council on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion for the Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities, representing 250 land-grant universities in the United States and internationally.
My father, Dr. Theodore Pratt, was my tennis coach. He came to the United States in the 1960s from Freetown Sierra Leone to get his education. He got his bachelor’s degree in physics at Hampton University and his PhD in Nuclear Physics from Carnegie Mellon Institute (at the time). His short-lived three-year faculty career was sabotaged by racism. In a radical lifestyle shift, he became my tennis coach. I graduated from high school at sixteen and spent two years pursuing a professional tennis career. Achieving some level of success on the Avon professional tour as an amateur, I was invited to compete at the 1984 Olympic Trials Tennis Qualifying tournament in New York. I share more about that part of my life in my new memoir, Blackwildgirl: A Writer’s Journey to Take Back Her Superpower. The recent Olympics, however, have brought back those long stashed-away memories. I have gleaned some lessons from the Olympics and athletic competitions that are relevant to succeeding in higher education.
- Accept the isolation. Our success in athletics and in higher education is a result of our time being alone. For athletes, it is time spent alone in training, lifting weights, and practicing the same skills over and over again. For students, it is time behind the scenes, studying, and working in labs. For a professor, it is the lonely isolating time in labs doing research and at our desks writing and revising grants and publications. If we want to strive for success and excellence, we must be prepared to spend many hours, often alone, being disciplined and perfecting our skills. As Lorraine Hansberry wrote, “The thing that makes you exceptional, if you are at all, is inevitably that which must also make you lonely.”
- Do not be an island. In chasing excellence, it is sometimes challenging to create a life outside of your work, your sport, or your field of study. Yet, it is important to be in community with others, to stay close with family and friends, and to have hobbies and interests outside of your profession. We are not one-dimensional and the pursuit of excellence does not require that we abandon family, friends, and fun.
- Depend on coaches. As athletes, we need coaches to succeed. My father was my coach. He had skills, expertise, perspectives, and experiences to help guide me. In higher education, our coaches are our dissertation advisors, mentors, and colleagues. Sometimes, they are actually professional career coaches. They provide advice, guidance, suggestions, and wisdom. The best coaches advocate for us and sponsor us to help us get to the next level.
- Be coachable. As athletes, we have to be coachable. Being coachable requires a certain level of humility and the ability to receive criticism, input, feedback, and suggestions. In higher education, we have to be able to receive feedback on our papers, on our grants, and on our publications. In higher education and athletics, our success is often correlated with our ability to accept feedback and criticism and make the necessary adjustments.
- We will be judged. In athletics, there are judges and officials. In the Olympics, we see the scores of gymnasts, swimmers, and other athletes. In higher education, we are judged, too. We receive grades from professors. Our grants get evaluated and our publications get reviewed. We, too, are at the mercy of others who are judging our work and performance.
- Understand complex identities. The Olympics reminds us of the distinction between ethnicity and nationality. There are citizens of countries who have a very different ethnicity than the dominant populations. One example is Sifan Hassan. She was born in Ethiopia and became a refugee and moved to the Netherlands. She competed in the Olympics for the Netherlands and won the bronze in the 10,000 and the 5000-kilometer races. She also won gold in the marathon. Like athletics, higher education is a space with many different identities, backgrounds, and experiences, working together. It is a space of world-wide collaboration and engagement, particularly as individuals try to work together to address the world’s most difficult and complicated problems.
- Inclusion matters. The Olympics reminds us to notice who is present and who is absent. Athletes from Russia and Belarus had to compete as Individual Neutral Athletes, some chose not to compete, and some were not able to compete in their fields. At the mercy of politicians, those same athletes trained for years for their moment, and it didn’t come. In education, there are many talented students and scholars who do not get opportunities to actualize their potential, often for reasons outside of their control.
- Recognize fleeting moments. Our moments of recognition are fleeting and small. As an athlete, when we are successful, we are rewarded with medals on a podium. At the Olympics, the national anthem is played for the winner and photos are taken. There is much fanfare and celebration. And then, the moment is over. In higher education, our moments of recognition are also fleeting and small. It could be a graduation ceremony, where we wait for those few minutes when our name is read, and we get to walk across the stage to receive the public recognition. For faculty, when we get promoted to associate professor or full professor, there is often no ceremony or recognition. It is a letter that comes to us that we open often in private. For administrators, we are rarely recognized with awards. We just do our jobs and hope that we are making a difference. Because rewards and moments of recognition are so fleeting, we cannot rely on those moments to motivate us. We have to find the intrinsic motivation when we are working behind the scenes where there is no fanfare.
- We are not always winners. The Olympics reminds us that not everyone can win. Athletics reminds us of the value of competing and doing our best. Sometimes we have setbacks and disappointments. Likewise, in education, we will not always get the A and be the best. We might not always get the grant. We might not always get the publication in the journal when we initially submit. We might not always get the book deal we hope. But, like an athlete, we have to continue to work hard and compete.
- Always believe in yourself. Although there is often heartbreak and disappointment in athletics, there is often redemption. American athlete Sha’Carri Richardson won a silver and gold medal after being disqualified from the Toyko Olympic; Rai Benjamin won gold in the 400-meter hurdles after receiving the silver in Tokyo; and Simone Biles won four medals, after withdrawing from the Games in Tokyo. In education, there are also moments of redemption, when we finally get published; finally get an award; finally get published; and finally get promoted. We just have to continue to believe in our work and that we are making a difference.