The Academic Career: Encouraging Humanities Faculty to Become Higher Ed Leaders

Marcela Kostihova (PhD 2004) and Ariane M. Balizet (PhD 2007) met in the English doctoral program, where both were involved with the Medieval and Early Modern Research Group (MEMRG), “a motley group of quite dorky grad students who provided the supportive community that all of us needed,” says Kostihova, now a professor of English at Hamline University. More than 25 years later, after the two friends had both become leaders in higher ed administration, they co-edited (with Natalie K. Eschenbaum) the collection Strategic Shakespeare: Transformative Leadership for the Future of Higher Education (Routledge).

“The book grew out of a conviction that higher education is living through a period of profound strain and that we urgently need leaders formed in the humanities,” says Kostihova, who served for the last decade as Hamline’s Dean of the College of Liberal Arts, a role that quickly expanded to also overseeing the School of Education and Leadership and the School of Business.

“We started collaborating in 2022,” recalls Texas Christian University English Professor Balizet, “on a series of workshops at the annual meeting of the Shakespeare Association of America, aimed at prompting humanities faculty to consider the skills we use daily as teachers and scholars of literature skills—empathy, storytelling, and inclusiveness—as vital leadership skills.” Balizet is past Associate Dean for Faculty and Engagement and current Assistant Provost for Faculty Success at TCU.

“We became increasingly aware,” adds Kostihova, “that many of the challenges confronting universities—political polarization, financial contraction, technological disruption, declining public trust—are not merely technical problems. They are interpretive, ethical, and narrative problems. In other words, they require habits of mind that, at its best, humanities training cultivates. The humanities are not peripheral to institutional leadership but central to it. Humanities scholars need to stop prevaricating and claim the leadership roles for which their training has prepared them. Universities need you.”

Kostihova is the author of Shakespeare in Transition: Political Appropriations in the Post-communist Czech Republic (Palgrave Macmillan) and How to Analyze the Works of Stephenie Meyer (ABDO). She is currently co-authoring AI and the Liberal Arts: Learning at the Edge of our Future (under review with Cambridge University Press) and Making Learning Matter: Course-Based Undergraduate Research for the 21st-Century Student (Routledge, forthcoming 2027).

Dr. Kostihova graciously answered the below questions via email. Her responses have been edited for length. (Dr. Balizet was a previous interviewee in this series.) 

You took on the responsibility of high-level leadership at Hamline. What surprised you about this role?

What surprised me most was not the scale of the responsibility, but the extent to which the success or failure of nearly every initiative ultimately turned on relationships between people. Policies matter. Resources matter. Strategy certainly matters. Yet again and again I found that progress depended less on the perfection of a plan (spoiler alert: it does not exist) than on the extent of trust among those asked to carry it forward. The deeper labor lies in cultivating cultures in which colleagues feel heard, respected, and accountable to one another. That requires patience, candor, and a tolerance for ambiguity. It also requires the capacity to hold competing goods in tension without collapsing into cynicism or haste. In that sense, the role demanded the same habits of close attention and ethical imagination that my Renaissance training instilled, though now applied to living communities whose futures are very much at stake.

What did you find most energizing about administrative work?

Working with others to make new things happen. Faculty are the most valuable resource of every university; they hold the deepest expertise. When people have the tools they need, when they understand the data and the institutional stakes, and when they have confidence that their work is tangible and that it matters, things move. That is what led to the launch of more than 35 new programs—degrees, majors, and minors—over the past decade at Hamline.

Equally energizing has been seeing colleagues and students grow in confidence in their own work. When people begin to see that their ideas can become structures, curricula, opportunities—when they recognize that their work has weight—their posture changes. They become more willing to experiment, to revise, to lead. What sustains me is that arc: people understanding the stakes, stepping forward with their expertise, and discovering that, together, they can build something durable.

What advice would you give current graduate students preparing for the academic job market?

The number of tenure-track positions has shrunk, and pretending otherwise does not serve you. But that doesn't mean that the world has shrunk. Being an academic still matters, perhaps more than ever. Universities remain one of the very few places in society genuinely tasked with pursuing and defending the truth, even when that truth is complicated, inconvenient, or politically unwelcome. In this changed world, you need flexibility. There are intellectually serious, genuinely interesting positions both inside and outside the traditional tenure-track path. Be prepared to think beyond a narrow definition of what counts as success.

Second, learn to explain your work clearly to people who do not already inhabit your field. If you cannot articulate why your research matters to an intelligent non-specialist, you are limiting not only your audience but your own imagination. Clarity forces you to confront what is essential.

Finally, cultivate a genuine growth mindset. See each application and each interview not as a high-stakes exam, but as a try that will teach you something. Prepare carefully (your friends and you should "mock each other" before you go out in earnest—they will challenge you much more than any real interviewer, plus hilarity will ensure), reflect honestly, and if the outcome is not what you wanted, learn and adjust. Try again.

What do you wish you'd known as a grad student?

The dissertation feels enormous when you are inside it, as though it must contain the full range of your thinking, but it does not. It is the beginning of your scholarly life, not the last word you will ever speak. Just start writing. Really.

I also wish I had understood how important my fellow graduate students would become. You will see each other again and again—colleagues at nearby institutions, project collaborators, co-writers (right, Professor Balizet?), your emotional support system. Treat these relationships like gold, because they are.

What English professors here significantly nurtured your development?

Goodness, so many! I will name a few. John Watkins was the best dissertation adviser one could hope for. Always excited, always full of ideas, always encouraging. Toni McNaron, who generously took on what now feels like 87 independent studies until I felt confident in my dissertation subject. Tom Augst, who helped me out of the emotional morass of “historical irrelevance” and to a politically charged project that supercharged my dissertation writing and still fuels me to this day. Andy Elfenbein, who was one of the best exemplars I have ever witnessed of even-handed, nurturing teaching.