Advising Scholarship in Motion - Adventures in Advising

In this episode, Matt and Ryan welcome Dr. Hilleary Himes from Penn State for a lively conversation about advising scholarship, professional development, and why the history of academic advising matters more than we might think. Hilleary shares her unexpected journey from anthropology and archaeological digs to academic advising, reflects on how advising structures shape student experiences, and offers practical encouragement for advisors who want to turn everyday questions, conference presentations, or “hmm, I wonder…” moments into scholarship.

Hilleary digs into the publication process, including revise-and-resubmit realities, co-authoring, writing routines, and how rejection can be reframed as part of making the work stronger. Plus, Hilleary explains how long-distance running and long-form writing have more in common than expected: stamina, patience, and trusting the process one step at a time. 

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Transcript

Matt Markin  
Well, hello and welcome back to the Adventures in Advising podcast. This is Matt Markin along with Ryan Scheckel. Ryan, by the time people listen to this, it's probably end of spring semester for many but we're right in the thick of it right now.

Ryan Scheckel  
Yeah, you know, I always, I like the transition points. I'm always good for a routine and hitting your stride and that kind of stuff. But I think some of the most fun times in higher education is as you're approaching something new, wrapping up something old. There's lots of fun connections between years and people and experiences and just, you know, provides perspective, makes it feel like we're not doing the same thing over and over and over again.

Matt Markin  
Well, you mentioned connection, so let's see if you can just what you just talked about, how can you connect that to our guest? Oh, he's on the spot, yeah.

Ryan Scheckel  
Well, I mean, as we go through today's episode, our listeners and viewers, they're gonna hear all of the things that well, the interests I share with our guest, of course. But you know, the the idea of the work of academic advising, sometimes just it can feel so compressed and so very now, you know, enrollment pressures, student questions, registration cycles, but it stretches way back to the very first institutions of higher education, and we have a lot in common with what they were doing, even in like the 1300s in Europe. So I think that's super cool. And I know we're gonna get a chance to talk a little bit about the history, for sure.

Matt Markin  
Oh yeah, your favorite. So let's bring on our guest. Hey, Hilleary, hi. How are you?

Hilleary Himes  
In the thick of it here too, spring semester. So glad to hear I'm not alone.

Matt Markin  
Yeah, not alone. And glad it worked out that we can squeeze an hour in here to do this. You know, I know we were chatting at the Nakata annual conference last year, and you came by our poster that Ryan and I did, and all of a sudden it was like, Oh, by the way, would you consider being on the podcast at some point? So we're definitely glad that you said yes.

Hilleary Himes  
Yeah, I'm in good company. I know. So Thanks for Thanks for inviting me.

Matt Markin  
So let me go and read your formal bio, and then we'll jump into questions. So Dr. Hilleary Himes has been an academic advisor for 18 years at the Pennsylvania State University. Hilleary has served a variety of roles in the Division of Undergraduate Studies, Penn State's exploratory unit, and as the advising director in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences. Hilleary currently serves as a member of the director team in the Division of Undergraduate Studies. In addition to working with exploratory undergraduate students, Hilleary's responsibilities include coordinating professional development activities for Penn State's academic advising community. In this role, Hilleary also serves as the current editor for the mentor innovative scholarship on academic advising, an online journal with a long and rich history of advancing academic advising scholarship. Hilleary has served on the NACADA region two steering committee as awards chair, served as a mentor in the Nakata Emerging Leaders Program, and currently serves as the chair of the Nakata Research Committee. Hilleary's own research interests include understanding the intersection of academic advising structures and student characteristics on student behaviors and outcomes, philosophy and theory of advising and everything to do with academic advising, history. Hilleary earned a bachelor's degree in anthropology from Penn State, a master's degree in anthropology from the University of Montana, and a doctorate in educational theory and policy from Penn Hilleary, again, welcome and of course, let's jump into the first question. So we just heard your amazing bio. But can you talk in your own words and kind of give us your path and journey in higher ed. What is your origin story?

Hilleary Himes  
Yeah, that's a great question. Matt, thanks. When I was in high school, I always knew I wanted to major in anthropology. I was really interested in the history of humans and where we had been all the way back from those early hominid species. And so there was a faculty member at Penn State who I had read about in National Geographic. So it was really easy for me to make that choice. People would ask me, as a undergraduate student, what are you majoring in? I would say anthropology. They would then follow that with, what is that? The study of humans. And then the next question, inevitably was, what are you going to do with that? And I always said, I don't know. I don't know yet. I'll figure it out. Grad school became a possibility, and there was a. Period of time where I debated a master's in education, it was constantly pulled back to kids, mostly elementary age kids. I loved the educational setting. I choose to read and write reports on things that nobody asks for. So I'm a nerd in that way, and so I debated about going back to grad school for education and working as a before and after school teacher. I decided classroom management wasn't something I was really excited about, and stuck with anthropology. So went and got my master's in anthropology, worked on an amazing dig site in eastern Montana where we camped, and I was studying bison bones from a kill site. It was an amazing experience for my master's thesis. And then had another moment of like, well, but what about education? Right? I like to work in that space, and so I literally stumbled into a part time job. It here at Penn State during orientation, where we were talking with students about their educational goals at orientation. And so it was not even an eight hour a day job. I think it was four or six hours, but I loved it, and they would do some professional development on, you know, what is academic advising, and how do we study this? And I was hooked. I did that job again the following summer, and then was lucky enough to be hired full time at Penn State in the Division of Undergraduate Studies. I am confident if I was competing for one of these open advising positions at any of our institutions, I probably wouldn't even be interviewed at this point, because my college student experience was pretty limited, but I have been happy ever since. I think it's the right choice, and I'm happy that the path I was on led me, led me here.

Ryan Scheckel  
Yeah, we will see if we get to talk metaphors, but I generally think that the the frameworks of anthropology have a lot to inform the way we talk about academic advising work. But your current role, you're responsible for coordinating professional development for Penn State's advising community. So what have you found? Really makes that professional development experience truly meaningful for academic advisors?

Hilleary Himes  
Yeah, and this is a fairly new part of my role. I've been formally doing this since October, so there's still lots of room for me to learn and grow here. And in what I am offering, there's maybe a more logistical I think learning from each other is very valuable. There are very knowledgeable members of our advising community here and across the globe, so we've been able to pull in speakers and colleagues to share best practices. But what I really look for are those opportunities, even if it's a software training, right? Does? How does this help us think a little more deeply about the work that we're doing with students? Because that, really, to me, under is an undercurrent to everything that we're doing in the learning space. As advisors, our job is complex. We need to know about our institutions, our systems, our software, the tools, the latest and greatest. But we also need to, importantly, know about our students. And so there's a lot of different parts, I think, of professional development topics that we need to include.

Matt Markin  
Yeah, for sure. And then I think also the extra thing of as advising professionals need to know the gray areas that we can work in to help our students as well. Now you have a various research interest, and you know one of your research interests looks at the intersection of advising structures and student characteristics. So speaking of which, how do you think advising structures shape student behavior in ways that institutions may not always recognize.

Hilleary Himes  
Yeah, so my dissertation research looked at this specifically, and I think there are lots of questions still to answer, so I don't have all the answers today, Matt, but I think structures of advising have developed over time, primarily with institutional needs at the forefront, budget needs on campus, space needs, faculty needs, staff needs, but not always student needs. And so when a student is coming into a system like higher education that's already fairly complex, navigating that system with an unfamiliar advising structure, or an advising structure that's hard to enter, hard to connect with the people who are doing this work, I think change how students interact, and I know here at Penn State, we have. Lots of different advising models. So we have some that are centrally located. There are benefits, you know, for students in that in that model, we have advising offices that are decentralized, maybe in a student's major or program. And there are benefits and challenges to a model like that. June how Wei recently published an article about help seeking behavior by socioeconomic standing, which is interesting to read. So So I think students backgrounds are coming to our environments and intersecting with these different models in ways that we don't fully understand. Having a one to one assignment, I think is beneficial for some students. I think other students say, I don't need it, I can. I know how to navigate the system, and I can meet with the most benefit me. So I think there are lots of questions. I'd love to see more research on how students are intersecting with different advising structures and models, but I think every element of those structures are important to carefully consider from the eyes of a student, especially a new student in higher education.

Ryan Scheckel  
Yeah, absolutely. I think, I think about the institution that would be willing to take an experimental model to advising and be like, let's see what student behaviors drive structures versus what structures drive student behaviors. It's an interesting way of thinking about it, but I feel like most institutions would be too scared to let let happen. What might happen well,

Hilleary Himes  
and the reality is, it's not realistic to change a model or structure with each generational shift in our student population, but we should be aware of those shifts and think about, how can we adjust our structure or our system to meet whatever the needs of our students are at the time, I just I'm most familiar with my own institution and the history of advising here, but I know what students need. Student Voices aren't always at the table. When these things are are decided.

Ryan Scheckel  
Sure, and we don't just have structures on our campuses in like the literal sense of buildings or departments or colleges or advising offices. We have structures in our heads too, that we become to this work with. And do you have any ideas about how we can help advisors who maybe might be a little bit more transactional, see it as more of policy, procedure kind of work, and don't really see themselves as reflective practitioners, maybe contributors to the field of knowledge, how they might be able to make a shift in that structure.

Hilleary Himes  
Yeah, you know, I think this has been long debated, but I am fully in the camp that academic advising is more than listing off what classes a student should schedule. Advisors should be helping and guiding students through that decision making process, challenging them when it's appropriate, supporting them when it's appropriate. So I really do think advisors need to be reflective. Practitioners. Was the term you used, Ryan, but I want to capture that idea of contributor for a minute. The contributor to the field. Everyone who serves an advising role really is contributing to the field. Not everybody realizes they are or is intentionally doing so. One of the interesting things from my dissertation research was that advisors and students were talking about advising and scheduling, even when advisors would tell me it wasn't that was what was on the websites. That's what we were communicating to students. I didn't incorporate new student orientation communication, but I imagine it was communicated advising is scheduling your classes, and so we are all contributing to that understanding of advising is scheduling in the way we're talking to each other, the way we're talking to students, the way we're talking to parents and families, the way that we're talking perhaps, with our administrators. And yet, I don't want to we don't talk about it that way all the time. When you read a lot of the scholarship, we're not talking about it that way. But then de facto, in day to day work, we're talking about it as scheduling. And I think Ryan, that goes back to some something you mentioned earlier, that it's really the, this is the mechanical, transactional time. We're really trying to it's not, those aren't your words. I'm paraphrasing, right? This is we're talking to students. We're feeling pressured. We've got lots of appointments, and so with advising rosters at at high numbers and a limited number of hours in the day, we default to that. And so we are therefore contributing, I think, to that wider societal understanding of what advising is.

Matt Markin  
Sometimes fortunately, sometimes unfortunately. We. With with some of this. But maybe what helps is maybe learning more about the history and understanding of that. And I guess that leads into this. Next question is, in your bio, it was you've kind of described it as having an interest in, quote, everything to do with academic advising history. Can you share a little bit about what drew you to that interest with the history of advising?

Hilleary Himes  
you know, I think just my interest in the study of humans and the history of humans, right? I've always been, maybe naturally interested in history, just just, I think that's just a my wheelhouse. But I think, you know, the stories are really fascinating. And maybe that's my anthropology background coming out. Stories Through history are just interesting. And there are so many connections to things that are happening today in so many ways.

Ryan Scheckel  
Into that, that vibe anyway, that idea that there's natural connections there. If you had to make a pitch for why the history of academic academic advising should matter for practitioners today, what would you what would you start your argument with?

Hilleary Himes  
Well, I have to say the patterns I see today are the patterns I see in the history of advising. So things have changed, but some things are still the same. You know, the debate over who, who should be advising? How should they be advising? What's the purpose of advising? Those are things that have been evident in the scholarship for over 50 years. You know, things from the 1950s they're using different language, but they're saying the same kinds of things. They're asking the same kinds of questions. I think as as I learn more about the history both at my institution, because I think that's important for practitioners to understand, is how have things developed at their institutions? But looking more widely, I feel better able to work with students. I have a wider range of perspectives to pull from, and I think we can all be better advocates for advising. We will be more aware of the messages and the communication we're sending. Where are we How did we get here? But I think also importantly, where do we need to go next, or where are we headed? I haven't been paying attention. Where are we headed, and what do I need to do to help, you know, advocate or or contribute to that path.

Matt Markin  
It's always looking at where we're at now. Where could we go? What paths are ahead of us now, one of the other responses you have is, you're the editor of the mentor. I was wondering if first you could chat about a little bit about if someone has never heard about the mentor. How would you describe the mentor to someone?

Hilleary Himes  
Yeah. So the mentor is an online journal that has been devoted to academic advising scholarships since it was created in 1999 and at that time, being a completely online journal was fairly unusual. The Nakata journal was, you know, in print it, you know, it was the first, dare I say, the first online advising journal, and it was created here at Penn State. It's still housed here at Penn State, and has had some pretty important scholarship. You both have recently published in the mentor. So thank you, authors for sharing your ideas and contributing to the scholarship. Mark Lowenstein had some early writings that that are often cited in the mentor, we've been able to highlight graduate students many years ago through the University of South Carolina, which is a great way to build experience in writing. And then, more recently, it's shifted under June how ways editor term to innovative scholarship on academic advising. So really trying to push push the envelope when it comes to sharing ideas things that are maybe outside the norm in terms of mode or content. And so I think we've had some really great work, especially in the last couple of editions.

Matt Markin  
I appreciate you giving us kind of the foundation and understanding and background behind it. So my next question then would be, is there anything that excites you most about the current landscape of academic advising scholarship?

Hilleary Himes  
Yeah, I think we're at a really interesting time. So as I mentioned earlier, there are repeat trends. If you look at the scholarship of advising, there are common themes that have occurred throughout throughout the scholarship. I think we're becoming more specialized in a way, we have people who are writing about academic advising as distinct and different and important. I think the for. Upcoming definition and scope of practice from vacada also holds some exciting opportunities in terms of the research agenda, the research priorities. Will that shift? Will that shift? Maybe right, maybe a little bit, but maybe not. I think there are still some scholarship themes and patterns that will continue as they should. And frankly, there is still so much to write about. There's plenty for everybody. And so I'm just excited still about the unique ideas that are, that are being written about and published, because it's the new frontier, perhaps.

Ryan Scheckel  
Sometimes, like, I bounce between the intimidating, intimidating reality that there's so much that still can and should and needs to be done and the I don't know if I'm the person to do it, you know, like that voice in your head that's like, but you have, like, a you have a day job, and, you know, there's other people who are way better prepared, or, you know, got more experience, or whatever. For advisors who feel intimidated by the idea of scholarship, what can they do to start to see their everyday as worthy of inquiry and sharing with others?

Hilleary Himes  
Yeah, it's overwhelming on so many, on so many fronts, there's a lot to write about. So how do you pick the one thing that you want to write about, or the few things that you want to write about? And time and space to do it is limited. You know, as we've talked about, advisors are very busy working with a lot of students. You know, I've been inspired by particular articles that struck me as important and generated an idea or a passion. And so great ideas develop over time and are rarely one person. So taking someone's concept or idea and moving it a step farther could be really important to the next author who becomes inspired by that piece, and so. So if there is something that you've read, or a topic right, which might be a little more overwhelming that you're really interested in, take it one step further, or add your voice to the conversation. And I think that in itself, is really important, because then someone can take it the next step, or maybe your ideas develop over time, and you take it the next step, you don't have to solve the problem in one article, but building the research, building the literature, you know, even thinking about a meta analysis of other studies that have been done, and pulling it into one place, and putting A new perspective on it could be really valuable to the field of scholarship in this area, time and space wise, I don't have good answers to that. I wish we all had time and space. I wish it was part of our jobs to read and think and write and contribute in those ways. You have done a lot of writing on the weekends and in the evenings, and that's just the reality. But even spending 20 minutes at the beginning of my work day with the door closed, writing can be really valuable. Mornings are good for me. I know that's not true for everybody, but even 20 minutes of just getting something on paper and then editing it the next day, and my 20 minutes can actually produce some interesting ideas. 

Matt Markin  
So it's kind of like a little bit at a time now, before we talk about maybe the stages of publication, you know, I would imagine many of the listeners, maybe have never thought like I could do this. Can you in this the first time, kind of hearing about a lot of the scholarship and the writing. Can you talk a little bit about a breakdown of you know, sometimes I'll hear first author, second author. What kind of that means?

Hilleary Himes  
Yeah. So if you're working with co authors, which is also a great way to get started in the writing space, usually the first author has has written the most of the article, right? And so second and third article or authors might have less, maybe they were research or gathering literature. It's really important for faculty when they're first author or second author or third author. I don't know, Matt, is that? Were you hoping for something else? 

Matt Markin  
I'm just thinking, if someone's listening and they're like, This just sounds overwhelming, I do want to write, but, you know, maybe they, they start out as, like, a second or third author, and maybe they're, you know, someone takes a bunch of wing, you know, so absolutely,

Hilleary Himes  
yeah, you know. And I've co authored a few things with a strong author. And so that's always wonderful, right? Because you learn so much from a co author, both in like, the process of writing, the editing, the taking of feedback. It's, it's nice to have somebody who's in it with you, right, a partner, and so that can make it a little less intimidating.

Matt Markin  
Yeah. Yeah, very much, though, and I can definitely attest to that. And I guess now let's maybe talk about the kind of general process of publication. Can you kind of chat a little bit about what those key stages might look like, from submitting a manuscript to hopefully fingers crossed it getting accepted?

Hilleary Himes  
Yeah, when an author or author submit a manuscript to a journal, I'm going to speak from the mentor, really, other journals might do it slightly different. The editor takes the first review to see if it's within the scope of the publication. And so there are times when a manuscript might be declined at that early stage in the review process. But it doesn't mean it's not worthy of publication. Often, it's just outside the scope of the mentor. Maybe it's more focused on the act of mentoring, as opposed to academic advising. In our case, title, the title can can get authors. If the editor decides that it's within the scope, and you know, reasonable, reasonable to expect publication, the editor will send it to reviewers. The Mentor, we aim for at least two reviewers, and they're a blind review, so the author doesn't know the reviewers, and the reviewers don't know the authors. So we make sure everything's de identified, including in the file metadata, before that's sent off to reviewers. The reviewers have a chance to review the abstract before accepting the review or declining. We try to get reviewers who have expertise in that content or methodology. And then, you know, having two reviewers, you try not to get maybe two qualitative, maybe a qualitative and a content expert, depending on the nature of the article, the reviewers have, you know, anywhere between four, four to six weeks to review. We try to give them a little more time if needed, just because, you know, reviewers are experts and we appreciate their feedback. And then the reviewers will submit their feedback, both in comments for the authors as well as comments for the editor and a recommend, a recommendation on the outcome for the mentor, it can be accept, which means minimal changes needed before accepting revise and resubmit will mean, typically more substantial revisions before a second review and then the decline the article for a variety of important reasons. Once the reviewers have submitted their feedback, the editor then has to make another decision about the decision for the manuscript. Reviewers sometimes agree and sometimes don't agree. So so the editor has, has to sort through the comments and make a decision for the publication, and then the the decision is sent to the author, or the authors, if it's a revise and resubmit, we the mentor, tries to find a target timeline that would be reasonable. Certainly, authors can decline to revise and resubmit. That's up to them as well. They could. They could submit to another publication once an article is accepted for publication, then it moves through the copy edit stage, where we have a copy editor who will work through making sure it follows APA guidelines, making sure information is conveyed correctly and accurately and all of our sources are properly cited. We're also working through accessibility requirements because of the Department of Justice decision around accessible documents. And then once it's through copy edit and the authors have reviewed those suggestions, we'll send a proof and make sure everything's in line with author bios and things like that, and then it's released for publication, which for the mentor, is online. And so once we're ready, we push the button and we publish the the issue. I think this year we're going to try to do more of our rolling. So as we have them, we will, we will, you know, publish them in individual articles. So I'm excited to see how that goes this year.

Ryan Scheckel  
Yeah, I think the article that's out that I can read and see it's it's hard to imagine the many, many steps between that and like the initial idea, but I can assure you that, having been on both sides of that equation, there are a lot of similarities with the student journey in college. It's hard to imagine the graduate with their diploma and their tassel turned to the other side of their cap the first day of orientation. There's so many little steps along the way, but if advisors can find a home in that student centeredness. You can make connections between it and saying, Yeah, there'll be check in. There'll be people who can help. We might have to completely come up with a new plan or a new idea. But that's not the end of things. You know, there's, there's a lot between the student journey and the journey of a manuscript publication, too.

Hilleary Himes  
Yeah, I really, I really like that, Ryan, that's interesting. I hadn't thought of it that way, but there's, there's also a conversation that happens with the authors. So it is completely fair if the copy editor has made a suggestion to say that suggestion would change the meaning of this sentence or this section. And so we, we we're not changing it. To change it. We want to have a conversation with the authors about what's right. Ultimately, this whole process, and maybe this is why I like the student. This student analogy is that the manuscript should be better at the end of it, right? Having written and published, I'm not very fast, right? I am a slow writer. I'm a slow thinker. It's always better at the end of that process.

Ryan Scheckel  
Well, then that gets to another question that we had in mind for today, and that's the the idea that you there's a little bit of rejection fear in there. What if we don't agree? What if they don't like it? What if you know the idea is that you're wrong in some way? I know that's hard. What advice do you have for someone who's thinking about submitting or writing or whatever, on how to handle requests for revisions or the possibility of rejection?

Hilleary Himes  
Well, rejection is a hard word, because even if we were to decline a manuscript because it was out of the scope of our publication, it doesn't mean it's not a worthy manuscript, or it's just not a fit with the publication. I do still remember the first time I had my first revise and resubmit, and it was devastating. It's hard to get constructive criticism. As the editor of the mentor, I do work hard to make sure that my comments and our reviewer comments are really phrased in a way that's meant to support the authors and the manuscript to become better. That's the whole the whole point of this. If something isn't clear to me as a reader, even though I'm the editor, it might not be clear to another reader, and so wouldn't you want that message clear? Wouldn't isn't that the point of this? Right? You wouldn't have written it if you didn't want to share it. So making sure that you know the message is clear, the relevant pieces are included. Sometimes my feedback is, you know, I don't, I'm not understanding how these two concepts are connected, right? And as someone who's been very close to projects, sometimes it's hard to get yourself out of it, because I know why those two things are connected, but you know, including the details, including the the parts of the research study methodology, maybe that would be that would help to fill the gap. For the reader who isn't familiar, authors are just very close to it. I know I've worked on manuscripts for years, which means I'm even closer to it. And so being able to separate yourself is hard. And so having somebody come in and say, I think adding these three items would be more helpful to the reader to understand what you're trying to convey, or the message you're trying to convey was this, and the author says, That's not what I was trying to convey. So, so we're just working with the authors to make sure the manuscript is the best that it can be. It's just a step in the learning. It's a step in the production, right the receiving of a revise or resubmit. And, you know, certainly, from the mentor, I do offer authors to ask questions. You know, if, if I've declined it because I've said it's out of scope, and you want to explain why you think it's in scope, then let's, let's talk about that. But it wasn't evident in the manuscript that was submitted, which, again, is, I think, another, another piece that we need to include.

Ryan Scheckel  
So I want to go back to something you mentioned sort of early on, and that was how much you enjoyed that dig site in eastern Montana. And like that experience. And I'm curious if you see any common threads between your experience, being involved in contributing to the scholarship of academic advising and being at that dig site. Are there any common ideas or concepts that you know is one of the things that you're still connecting with, even from your spot now.

Hilleary Himes  
So one of the things that I think is similar is working with the archeological record, you only have what's left, right, and so you're. You're pulling the information you have, you're carefully examining it, you're pulling the relevant pieces out, and then you're fitting it together like a puzzle. Students are not part of the educational record, right? They are very much alive and in front of us, but determining what are the pieces, the relevant pieces, and pulling those out takes a different skill set, perhaps, but it's interesting to put those pieces together with the help of a student, right? We're doing it together. Very much. I connect it to, you know, the work that I'm doing in the history of scholarship, the history of advising. I'm pulling out what's I was in the archives a few weeks ago with Dr Eric White, which was really fun, going through old documents and trying to put some put some puzzle pieces together about how things were decided or arranged. Yes, you know, certainly it's not quite as dusty work.

Matt Markin  
Yeah, so let me ask you this, Hilleary, do you think there's untapped potential for maybe future manuscripts being submitted from those that are presenting at conferences on various topics?

Hilleary Himes  
Absolutely, that's a great way to get started on a writing project is to present at a conference and get feedback from your audience, perhaps, and put it together, put it together in the manuscript. Absolutely, yeah. Try to, try to invite that too from present presentations that I'll see over time.

Matt Markin  
Because, you know, I've heard some people say like, you know that if you record your presentation and then transcribe it, that industry could be a first draft of sorts. What's your advice if someone does do that like for in your opinion, what would be the next step after someone has presented, recorded themselves, transcribed the audio from their presentation? What would be next in that process? Do you think?

Hilleary Himes  
Yeah, so you know, probably one of the biggest differences between a presentation and a scholarly manuscript is style, right? So you'll want to make sure it's workable, right? Reading, readable, I suppose, but also making sure that you know you've got scholarly work cited throughout. It's not something we typically do in a presentation. I'm not going to necessarily cite the work that I'm I'm using maybe on my slide. I will. So there are elements that are written for a presentation that are maybe missing in a transcribed presentation. I think having somebody read it too might be really helpful to get an outside perspective a presentation. You know, I rely a lot on the visual elements I have available to me in a presentation which are missing in a written manuscript in some way, right? If you're still working with a chart or a diagram, you can incorporate that into a written document, but something may be lost literally in the translation. So thinking about, you know, what, what, what in your presentation was a visual element that maybe you referred to, that you can more carefully describe or explain? Yeah, I actually would be interested to see, to see that I haven't tried that. Have you tried that? Matt, right.

Matt Markin  
So I, in a way, yes, but the reason I was asking that question, because I was like, well, we have an expert here to maybe give some tips. Because people that have mentioned that, I've asked them, well, what is next? And I I really don't get any answer, and I feel like you've actually given some some real great tips of how presenters can maybe take their work and now maybe start that process to make it into a manuscript later. So I really appreciate that.

Ryan Scheckel  
And I'll share Matt's and my experience with a presentation that we gave in 2021 Cincinnati, talking about theory of mind development advisors and like, really what we had learned through our own experiences and and pursuing the scholarship further, taking that presentation transcript and trying to turn it into a manuscript to submit. You know, I think what we found is we got kind of like, again, super close to it, and it became a bit of a challenge to be like, Okay, well, what do we really have here? And having another voice or focusing on sort of a preparation mode, like you'd mentioned, or whatever, as opposed to just waiting through an hour long presentation transcript we I may have personally struggled a bit with next steps as well, and I think the advice that you gave was certainly helpful for sure, so you didn't publish that. Well, let's just say we are currently in the copy edit stage with somebody. Me, but we also chased publication outside of academic advising discipline at first, and also our presentation article includes copyrighted material. So you know, it's been a bit, but we're super excited to be in the copy editing stage. And again, that was 2021, we gave that presentation, and we're copy edit stage now so. But I think, you know, we, we all have our experiences. You know, we all have these possibilities of presentations, these ideas, these live experiences as practitioners and stuff and and we draw from our own interests as well, too. And I, I think it's for me, anyway, choosing a frame from within which to operate, as opposed to getting overwhelmed by the whole wide range of possibilities.

Hilleary Himes  
Yeah, you know, and lots of lots of ideas are coming through my head. You know, scholarly papers at the narcotic conferences are papers that are written and submitted ahead of time, which is a great step. You're getting great feedback during the conference and in writing that will improve your manuscripts right to make it publishable. So you know, that's a great a great step for people. Janet Schulenburg did a keynote at Penn State a few years ago, and the mentor published her comments on the history of advising at Penn State. And so I think there are ways to easily make a presentation a publication. I'm glad to hear yours is in process, sure.

Ryan Scheckel  
Well, and speaking of personal interests, running has become a more focused personal interest for you. Tell us a little bit about that. But also, what have you learned about your scholarly work as a runner?

Hilleary Himes  
Yeah, so I've always been a runner. It's been in and out right, depending on what stage of life I'm in and how much time I have, and I'm a long distance runner. So I ran my first marathon in 2022 and my second marathon was in 2025 as part of Disney's dopey series, where you do a 5k a, 10k a, half marathon and a marathon across four days. It was a lot of fun, though, so a couple of things. Running long distances gives me lots of time, and many runners will tell you, your mind just wanders and you solve all sorts of problems. But I also will say having a stamina to complete a long run is just like the stamina to complete a writing project. One of the first manuscripts I published in the Nakata journal, took me five years between starting to dabble in these ideas and writing drafts and getting that revise and resubmit feedback and then rebounding and revising. So five years is a long time. The good things take time, and I know that. You know, I'm not a sprinter, as I said, I'm a slow writer. I'm a slow runner. It's the long distance running and the, I guess, long, long term writing that I that I excel at, I suppose I don't know, I finished, I finished.

Matt Markin  
That's ultimately the goal. And if listeners take, you know, one idea or more from this conversation that we've had today, what would you want it to be? Well, this

Hilleary Himes  
is hard. We've talked about a lot of great ideas. I think the one takeaway I would I would ask people to take, is that, you know, contributing to the scholarship is for all of us, and it's, it's not easy. I mean, I've certainly have had my ups and downs, and you hit a roadblock. You know, seek, seek a colleague, seek a peer, get a get a support, get a writing buddy, get I mean, it's just, there's a lot of us out there doing it, and we're not doing it alone. Even if we are authoring alone, we are not alone. And so, you know, there's a community of people, and it's hard, but it's worthwhile.

Matt Markin  
Perfect way to wrap it up, Hilleary. Thank you so much for joining us today. This was fun.

Hilleary Himes  
It was fun. Thanks for inviting me. It was nice to see you both. Good to see you too.