ABOUT CAROLE SARGENT, PhD
Traveling in Spain and Italy with faculty from Jesuit colleges and universities. Photo in Rome on the roof of the Jesuit Curia, 2015.
I founded Academic Authors to lead faculty members and other research scholars to understand how valuable their individual intellectual contributions actually are to scholarly publishing. Through a surprisingly clear process, I inspire scholars to move out of supplicant mode, and transition naturally into attitudes of peaceful strength and confidence. The result is a radical re-imagining of the faculty-publisher relationship that benefits everyone and results in more peer-reviewed journal articles and university press books accepted at the very highest level.
Faculty learn how essential their unique perspectives -- including gender, race, socio-economics, regionality, sexuality, nationality, religion, and much more -- are in the publishing world. "No mentor can gate-keep for you. No colleague is an expert on what your ideas mean, and no one has any power to stop you. Only editors get to vote on your publishing future, and even they are subjective, flawed decision makers. The editor who turns you down may be followed by another who loves every word you write. Keep asking." My scholars learn to slip by obstacles as they discover their true intellectual communities, ones usually hiding just beyond that last un-knocked-upon door. As an adult returning college student, my struggles with academia and eventual success now form the most popular aspect of my seminar, and I have a heart for anyone who feels like a late-blooming rose. Because of early hard knocks and just-folks backstory, I relate in a down-to-earth way with those facing all sorts of challenges including emerging scholars from under-served communities, two-city academic couples, parents of children with special needs, and scholars living with disability. My authors learn to identify the spirit inside themselves that brought them to the pursuit of a doctorate in the first place. By understanding who they are and what their ideas are worth, they’ll leave my courses with a fresh perspective: that they and their ideas are precious and irreplaceable, and when framed properly, they are absolute gold to editors. In my seminars, scholars learn the best paths to tenure or promotion at their individual institutions and they see their work as part of a larger story: one that can only thrive with their input offered with assurance, clarity, and appreciation of an artfully well-shared conversation. |
IN THE MEDIA A faculty and author event held at The George Washington University's Gelman Library, July 2016.
I joined Georgetown as a faculty member in the English Department in 1997, teaching eighteenth-century literary history. In 2006 I created the Office of Scholarly Publications and became its founding director. To date I have guided over 4/5 of Georgetown’s tenure-line faculty to publication. In June of 2017 I joined a group known as vicennial medalists, those who have served for twenty years at Georgetown.
Media background: "60 Minutes" filmed me teaching on campus in Georgetown University's historic Healy Hall. The Chronicle of Higher Education profiled my faculty scholarly publishing office. The New York Times photographed me in front of the statue of Georgetown founder John Carroll. My books have been featured on National Public Radio, CNN, in Time and Newsweek, and in many more national and regional outlets. You can learn more about how your interests might fit with my focus by reading more on my LinkedIn profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/publishingadvising/ From an Italian-American family,* I am a first-generation college graduate, and author of two books from Farrar, Straus & Giroux embraced by many adults returning to college. * Sargent is my mother's maiden name. I retain the Italian birthname, Fungaroli, as a middle name. |