About

My career ambition was to teach in high school, which I never did. Instead, after getting a BS degree in Education from Oklahoma Baptist University, I taught in Head Start (in Shawnee) for two years while I worked on my master’s at the University of Oklahoma in Norman. After one year on the faculty at OBU, I went to Purdue for a PhD degree to figure out what my 3- and 4-year-olds in Head Start were trying to teach me about the way children learn, develop, and grow. 

I finished my PhD in four years, hiked and camped in Montana and Colorado that summer, then became a faculty member at the University of Tennessee. I loved it! (I also loved the hiking, camping, kayaking and weeks-long backing trips on the Appalachian Trail while in Knoxville.)  After being tenured, a wonderful colleague (Sky Huck) and I were named the inaugural Chancellor’s Teacher-Scholars and, in that role, we created a campus-wide mentoring program for graduate students, Developing Future Faculty as Teacher-Scholars (aka, The GTA Mentoring Program). I got to work with brilliant, thoughtful, generous graduate students and faculty mentors from all graduate programs. I think the program was the reason, one Friday afternoon in August, I was summoned to meet with the graduate dean (whom I had never met, I was terrified!). He asked me to be assistant dean in the Graduate School, which I had no intention of doing. After encountering my department chair, my college dean, my college associate dean, and the provost later that afternoon and evening at a college event, I accepted the position the next day and started three days later, in a position I knew nothing about. I loved it, because it was an opportunity, for whatever success I had in teaching, researching, mentoring, publishing, securing funding, and managing grant projects, to help graduate students and graduate faculty campus-wide be successful in those same roles and responsibilities. 

After four years in that dual faculty-administrative position, I became associate dean in the Graduate School at Northwestern University (Evanston, Illinois), then associate dean for PhD Programs in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at Columbia University (New York City), and then associate dean for academic and student affairs in the Graduate School at Cornell University. 

After 20 years of publishing journal articles, book chapters, and a textbook (four editions) as a faculty member, I developed two Cornell blogs, The Productive Writer and the Productive Fellowship Writer. I also authored the book The Productive Graduate Student Writer: How to Manage Your Time, Process, and Energy to Write Your Research Proposal, Thesis and Dissertation and Get Published  (Stylus, 2019). Based on the writing productivity workshops and dissertation writing boot camps I started at Columbia and Cornell, the book helps to demystify the writing process and provide strategies and encouragement for starting, enduring, and completing any writing project. I am currently finishing another book for graduate students and new faculty, The New Faculty and Graduate Mentor (Stylus), which offers advice for success in teaching, research, writing proposals for funding, mentoring and being mentored, career development, and balancing the many roles and responsibilities of a faculty member and administrator. After that, a colleague and I will write a book about leadership and graduate education.

In 2021 I  received the Council of Graduate Schools’ Assistant and Associate Deans Leadership Award. In 2023 I began serving as Dean-in-Residence/Visiting Scholar at CGS and, as part of that role, I developed an assistant/associate deans network to promote leadership, career development, and peer support for graduate school assistant and associate deans, colleagues who show such dedication and work so hard to generously support each other, graduate students, and graduate faculty. 

I’m frequently invited by other universities to conduct virtual or in-person workshops or multi-day writing events to help graduate students identify and use effective strategies to overcome obstacles (procrastination, perfectionistic tendencies, fear and anxiety about writing, time and work management, communicating with advisor) to writing and degree completion.  (I never judge or scold!)

Why do I enjoy these workshops so much?  It started as a graduate student at Purdue when, after scheduling individual appointments with various faculty to discuss my academic job search, I discovered these very generous faculty were willing to offer advice to a roomful of graduate students. I organized Friday afternoon sessions about the job search and other graduate school survival skills topics. (Thank you, Professors Gail Melson, Charles Figley, Gary Ladd and Gary Lange!) As a faculty member at the University of Tennessee I offered a broad range of workshops: navigating the job market and career search, making the transition from graduate student to faculty, ethics and legal issues in higher education, writing and publishing, authorship issues, effective teaching, and making conference presentations. These are important skills for thriving in graduate school and as a faculty member. I know from experience that we as faculty mentors have limited time and sometimes limited knowledge about how to help individual students navigate all they must succeed in doing while in graduate school.  

When I prepared my materials for tenure and promotion as an assistant professor, I wrote in my teaching and research statements that “being a teacher, researcher and mentor is often as simple as being a generous human being, that is, to share what I know and what I do with my students, to help them see both the joys and the challenges in teaching and learning and creating new knowledge.” I enjoy continuing to do that in many ways to this day.

If you want to learn about my work or chat about your work, or what brings you joy, feel free to contact me: jan.allen@cornell.edu.