Submit a Manuscript to the Journal
Journal of Public Affairs Education
For a Special Issue on
Pedagogy of the Emotionally Exhausted: Uncovering, Designing, and Coping with Academic Stressors
Abstract deadline
Manuscript deadline
Special Issue Editor(s)
Staci M. Zavattaro,
University of Central Florida
staci.zavattaro@ucf.edu
Rachel Emas,
George Washington University
Rachelemas@email.gwu.edu
Nicole Humphrey,
University of Kansas
n.humphrey@ku.edu
Sean McCandless,
University of Texas at Dallas
Sean.McCandless@UTDallas.edu
Pedagogy of the Emotionally Exhausted: Uncovering, Designing, and Coping with Academic Stressors
With a world constantly in turmoil, faculty, staff, and students are not divorced from facing these challenges, but instead are tasked with remaining informed, present, and proactively involved in addressing these challenges. We write this in the wake of Hurricane Helene closing Appalachian State University for several weeks with faculty, staff, and students stranded and even in danger (Johncox, 2024). Hurricane Milton flooded the University of South Florida campus, and the university shared resources for employee assistance through its human resources office (University of South Florida, 2024).
College campuses also are often the sites of protest, riots, and even death. The Kent State massacre in May 1970 left four students dead at the hands of the Ohio National Guard. An undergraduate at Virginia Tech killed 32 students in 2007. Campuses are often ideally safe spaces for free speech, yet many states are implementing laws to limit speech, and professors are getting fired for expressing their own views on global wars or current events.
Many U.S. states have passed laws limiting discussion of diversity, equity, inclusion or other “divisive concepts.” This leaves many professors, staff, and students struggling to feel accepted on campuses yet wanting to engage in these topics in meaningful, impactful ways (Berry-James et al, 2021; Stitzlein, 2022). For example, LGBTQIA+ faculty, staff, and students are leaving the academy all together or leaving states where they cannot fully be themselves in the classroom or other public spaces (Meyer, Larson & Anguelov, 2024).
Moreover, higher education itself is losing its value proposition for many students. According to a May 2024 Pew study, 40% of respondents believed a college education was important, and only 22% said the cost of a four-year degree felt worthwhile (Fry, Braga & Parker, 2024). Faculty and staff are often being tasked with doing more marketing, recruiting, and branding to counter these narratives, and yet little to no resources follow this increased demand.
The academic ecosystem is inextricably tied to massive global and local shifts, and more research is needed to understand how this ongoing trauma affects public administration students, faculty, and staff. “We can talk about these things in our classes. We all live in the same world. However, we also have a responsibility to address the response of the public administration community” (Benenson et al, 2022, p. 285). Faculty, staff, and administrators in universities are often the nodes within networks responding to ever-changing political, social, cultural, and environmental factors. Additionally, we often cannot avoid these environmental factors. They deeply shape our classrooms, what we study, and our lives outside of academia. To continue our work involves changes in how we teach, feel, respond, and cope. The purpose of this special issue is to share empirical, theoretical, and community engaged research on teaching within these ever-changing climates.
Submission Instructions
We welcome research from multiple empirical, theoretical, or practical perspectives. We encourage autoethnography and personal reflection grounded in existing research as well. Research from students, faculty, staff, and administrators is encouraged. Submissions are encouraged for all the journal’s sections: https://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?show=instructions&journalCode=upae20
The following topics can be addressed, but others not detailed below are welcome and encouraged:
- Trauma-informed teaching – Trauma adversely affects the learning environment for students and faculty, via either primary or secondary trauma. Trauma-informed pedagogy brings these issues to light (Harrison, Burke & Clarke, 2023). Papers here can consider how trauma manifests in the classroom, tools the university community have to handle trauma, experiences dealing with classroom trauma, and theoretical approaches to trauma-informed public affairs education.
- Emotional labor and burnout – Faculty engage in emotional labor through deep acting and surface acting, regulating our emotions while also handling personal stressors. Faculty oftentimes play a counseling role without any formal training or awareness of university-specific support resources for themselves or students. During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, MPA faculty responding to a survey reported managing their emotions and others’ emotions, feeling exhausted yet empowered by doing important work, and coping by confiding in family (Rinfret, McCandless & Grewell, 2022). Gender differences played a key role in these findings, with women reporting doing more emotion work than men. The primary studied outcome in relation to emotional labor is burnout (Humphrey, 2022). A global survey from McCandless, McDonald, and Rinfret (2023) reported high levels of burnout among public administration faculty, highlighting that burnout is an essential component of how we understand faculty experiences in today’s environment. Papers here can address the myriad ways in which emotional labor and burnout embed themselves in the classroom and throughout the university setting.
BIPOC scholars are especially encouraged to share their experiences with the additional burdens placed on them to support students of color. Humphrey (2022) notes this racialized and raced emotional labor negatively affect BIPOC employees working within White normative spaces, and academia is traditionally embedded in Whiteness. Academia is traditionally a racialized structure that places additional burdens on faculty, staff, and students of color (Ray, Herd & Moynihan, 2023). Papers here should center the experiences of BIPOC scholars doing racialized emotional labor inside and outside of the classroom.
- Grief – Grief manifests in the classroom in several ways, and research usually focuses on student grief and available university/community resources to shoulder grieving student needs (Balk, 2001). A gap remains when it comes to understanding how faculty handle grief in the classroom, especially when students die in what Rosenblatt (2021) calls grief out of order. In other words, how can professors better equip themselves to handle deaths of young students? At UCF, for example, two Pulse nightclub shooting victims were students in 2016 when they were murdered. A memorial mural is painted outside the student union, a visceral and daily reminder of loss, tragedy, and grief. Annual memorials also take place on campus to honor the students and 47 other victims of the tragedy (Boatner, 2023).
Papers here can share personal experiences with handling grief in the classroom. Pedagogically, how can professors address and even teach grief management in the classroom? How can leaders help faculty, staff, and students manage grief? What other disciplines can inform pedagogically engaging with grief?
- Human-centric stressors – Oftentimes, university messaging around disasters focuses on setting students up for success and caring for them while leaving faculty out. There is seemingly little recognition that we also live in our communities and engage in global events. An ethic of care might change the way we see public affairs education (Zavattaro et al, 2024). Papers here can address ways in which removing our own humanism from academic spaces and places affects our commitment to the organization and profession. What mechanisms can we use to center ourselves as individuals within the academic ecosystem? What is the effect of this dehumanizing language on professors? Where does this language come from, and are there any patterns across institutions? What does a care-centered academia look like, and what are the perils and pitfalls?
- Exit, voice, loyalty – Hirschman’s popular Exit-Voice-Loyalty model expresses someone’s agency when it comes to how, when, and why they choose to engage in organizational politics. Some people can leave, others fight, while others remain loyal to the organization. Organizational policies and practices can enhance or inhibit employee voice and power (Gan, 2020). When is silence better? How does the fight look different when certain words, phrases, and terms are illegal? What are personal experiences with leaving the academy? How can we return humanism to the public affairs classroom and teach it to our students?
The following is the timeline for the special issue:
1) 500-word abstracts submitted to Dr. Staci Zavattaro (staci.zavattaro@ucf.edu) by March 31, 2025. Decisions will be made within six weeks. Invitation to submit a full manuscript does not guarantee publication.
2) Papers due to Journal of Public Affairs Education submission system by October 31, 2025. All papers go through the journal’s standard peer review processes, and publication is not guaranteed.