Nicola M. Imbracsio, Ph.D.
Nicola Imbracsio is from Boston, MA. A first-generation college student, she attended Clark University before collecting degrees from UMass Boston (MA in English), Emerson College (MFA in Applied Theatre), and the University of New Hampshire (PhD in English)—along with the expected amount of student debt.
She has worked at small liberal arts colleges, large public research institutions, and everything in between, teaching British literature, Shakespeare, the plague, and women and witchcraft. Her intellectual and aesthetic interests include puppets, Harry Houdini, Hammer Horror films, vinyl LPs, Victorian photographs of cats in fancy dress, and vintage View-Master reels.
When she is not engaged in these pursuits, she writes grant proposals, enters short story competitions, and is currently returning to her scholarship—specifically, her long-standing fascination with bodies in early modern performance. She currently lives in Rhinebeck, NY—a development that still surprises her.
I trained as a Shakespearean.
I spent over a decade working in academic leadership at Big Ten institutions.
Now, I’m the Director of Faculty at the Culinary Institute of America—an accredited, degree-granting college that offers associate, bachelor’s, and master’s degrees in Culinary Arts, Food Science, Food Business, and Hospitality Management.
Although it is often perceived as a “professional” or “industry” school, the CIA operates within the same structures as other institutions of higher education: accreditation, shared governance, faculty ranks, curriculum oversight, and assessment. At the same time, it differs in important ways—most notably in its integration of industry expertise into faculty identity, and in its emphasis on experiential, practice-based pedagogy.
You may wonder how one goes from professor of Shakespeare at several small regional schools, to academic administrative leader at some of the nation’s largest and most decentralized research institutions, to director of approximately 150 faculty—including the largest staff of Certified Master Chefs. I keep saying: “it’s not my first rodeo—it’s just a different horse.” And honestly, having that attitude is what has helped me be successful at each iteration of my career.
I went on the academic job market in 2009 as an ABD in English at precisely the moment when the market was collapsing. I left New England for a two-year VAP at a Midwestern regional state school, followed by a one-year VAP at a satellite campus of a large Midwestern public R1. Neither converted to a tenure-track line.
But in those contingent roles, I made a deliberate choice: I treated each position as if I were already on the tenure track. I published, I sustained a research agenda, and—crucially—I said yes to service work (despite all advice not to). I served on General Education and Assessment committees, not because I knew where that would lead, but because I was curious about how the university actually functioned.
That curiosity became the pivot point of my career.
Eventually, I became the Director of Assessment for the interdisciplinary Arts and Humanities general education program at Michigan State University. Over my five years at MSU, I moved from assessment to program leadership, while teaching in the program. From there, I was recruited into a university-wide leadership role at a small Catholic college in Minnesota, and then into an Assistant Dean position at the University of Minnesota in the College of Liberal Arts– the state’s largest college of liberal arts– where I also continued to teach occasionally. I now serve as Director of Faculty at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, NY.
Some of these moves were driven by opportunity; others by necessity. Like many academic leaders in recent years, I have worked within systems shaped by budget constraints, political pressures, and rapidly shifting expectations around higher education. My most recent move was, in part, a response to burnout—and a desire to return to the Northeast– but also a recognition that I wanted to engage the institution differently, as someone shaping the conditions under which faculty work.
It has also, somewhat unexpectedly, returned me to my own scholarship. With greater flexibility and a new institutional context, I’ve begun to approach questions of embodiment, death, ingestion, and pedagogy in ways that feel like a natural extension of my earlier work—just through a different lens.
But here is the thing no one tells you: as a faculty member turned administrator, you don’t leave academia—you move into a part of it no one trains you for. That has remained true across every institutional context I’ve worked in—including specialized colleges like the CIA, where the disciplines and faculty profiles differ, but the underlying structures of academic life remain fundamentally the same.
The skills that make you a successful scholar—deep expertise, individual achievement, disciplinary authority—are not the same ones that make you effective inside an institution. What’s required instead is a shift in perspective: you are no longer working within a single discipline or department, but across a complex system with its own logic, constraints, and forms of power.
Across institutions—large publics, small privates, specialized colleges—I’ve been asked to mentor faculty stepping into administrative roles: chairs, program directors, associate deans. And what I tell them, consistently, is this:
You are not just changing roles– you are learning to see the university differently.
Here are the “guiding principles” that I have developed, and I share with those faculty who wish to move in academic administration:
- Service is not a burden– it’s the training ground.
The work that many faculty are told to minimize—committee work, assessment, curriculum review—is actually where you learn how the university functions.
It’s where you:
- see how decisions impact students’ lives
- understand the constraints under which institutions operate
- build relationships across units—and across institutions
Even if you are not considering administration, service should not be seen as a distraction from your career; but central to it.
When I was at Michigan State, I regularly collaborated on committees with colleagues across Big Ten institutions. Those relationships became critical when I transitioned to the University of Minnesota—I already understood the institutional landscape, the challenges, and the opportunities.
The connections you build through service—whether across your campus or across your conference—are not peripheral. They are what make movement, opportunity, and leadership possible.
- Pretend the university is 16th-century Europe. Because it is.
If you move into administration thinking your research, publications, or disciplinary expertise will carry authority—you will be disabused of that notion quickly.
Your prior work will not matter. What matters is whether you understand how the university actually functions: where decisions are made, who holds influence, and which levers move resources.
Higher education is not a unified system. It is a network of semi-autonomous units—departments, programs, colleges—each with their own priorities, alliances, quirks, and internal politics. Think: small city-states that engage in trade, not a unified nation.
My training in Early Modern literature turned out to be unexpectedly useful. I had already spent years studying court politics, patronage systems, and institutional power in Renaissance England and Europe. Universities operate in much the same way: influence is negotiated, not declared; alliances matter; and yes—there is occasionally (often) some “cloak and dagger” activity.
If you stay at the level of your department, you will misunderstand the institution. You have to zoom out.
- It has almost certainly been thought of before.
Your first instinct will be to fix things. Resist it.
While your disciplinary expertise likely got you here, it is no longer what makes you effective. In administration, credibility comes from how well you understand other people’s work—not how quickly you explain your own.
The most important skill in administration is not proposing solutions—it’s listening long enough to understand why things are the way they are. If you are the one doing most of the talking in a meeting, you are probably missing something.
In order to learn what you don’t know (which is a lot), start with staff—and listen to them carefully. Listen to people who have been there for three years. Listen differently to those who have been there for ten years. Learn who actually does what. And above all: Talk to the Registrar.
The Registrar is one of the few people who sees the entire academic ecosystem—curriculum, policy, scheduling, compliance. If you understand how their world works, you will understand the institution (especially the one that students are navigating).
At Michigan State University, I was tasked with revising a diversity requirement that had been in place since the mid-1990s. It needed updating—both in language, to reflect current scholarship, and in structure, to account for a student body increasingly shaped by transfer credits and non-linear pathways.
While faculty spent hours debating the use of the word “empathy” in the learning outcomes, I went to the Registrar—whose office, fittingly, was in the basement of the administrative building—to understand the implications of removing the requirement’s sequential structure.
It was the beginning of a beautiful relationship. From that point on, before I proposed a pilot, a reform, or a policy, I ran it by her first.
Before you propose anything, assume:
- it has been tried before
- it failed for a reason
- and someone knows why
Your job is to find that person (PS: it’s probably the Registrar).
This doesn’t mean don’t try something new. It means don’t start from zero. The strongest ideas are rarely the newest—they’re the ones that build on what’s already been attempted, with a clearer understanding of why it didn’t work the first time.
Innovation in universities is rarely invention; it’s iteration—with memory.
- We’re all eating the same sandwich– shop accordingly.
Everyone in a university is working under deficit conditions: too little time, resources, and recognition. What we lack in those areas, we make up for in ego– there is plenty of that to go around.
If you want to get anything done, you need to understand what matters to the people you’re working with—and meet them there.
Years ago, in a graduate seminar on feminist theory, I found myself arguing with a fellow grad student across the table about a particular text. The professor stopped us and said, “You’re saying the same thing from different angles. You both eat peanut butter sandwiches—just with different brands of peanut butter.”
To be effective in academic administration, you have to identify other people’s brand of peanut butter—and then make them a sandwich with it.
“Student success,” for example, means something entirely different to a faculty member in the classroom, to a dean, to the registrar (who is now your best friend), to an advisor, and to the student themselves. Knowing the difference allows you to frame your approach strategically.
It’s not manipulation; it’s translation.
It also means working toward the difficult people, not avoiding them. The colleague everyone warns you about? You will need them eventually, so build the relationship early.
Good questions to ask yourself regularly: what motivates this person? Not today, not even this week– but why did they come here? Why do they do this? You may have to spend some time and energy and curiosity figuring this out. But once you do, connect whatever it is you’re trying to accomplish to their deep sense of purpose.
And don’t take anything personally. Truly. You cannot survive in administration if everything feels like it’s about you.
It also means learning how to say no in a way that doesn’t escalate resistance. The most effective administrators are not the ones who shut ideas down, but the ones who help others see constraints clearly enough to arrive at “no” on their own. When people feel heard—and when the reasoning for the decision is visible—they don’t experience the outcome as obstruction.
- Faculty have 99 problems, and students aren’t one.
A surprising amount of faculty conversation centers on things that feel urgent but are not actually central.
Your job is to re-anchor the conversation.
The most useful question you can ask in almost any situation is:
“How does this impact students?”
“How does this serve students?”
It doesn’t resolve every issue—but it cuts through a remarkable amount of noise. If a conversation can’t answer that question, it’s worth asking why.
When I interviewed for my current position—at an institution with a strong faculty union and a long history of faculty and administration being seen as adversarial—I was asked in an open forum with faculty who I would ultimately be serving: who are you serving?
I didn’t hesitate.
Students.
We are all here to serve students.
That answer guides how I approach most difficult conversations. It also gives me a way to redirect them. For example, in a recent faculty meeting, colleagues were expressing frustration that students no longer take creative risks in their work.
My question was simple:
When was the last time you took a risk in your classroom—when is the last time that you modeled failure? What would class look like if you were not always the expert controlling the outcome?
Re-centering students doesn’t let us off the hook. It usually puts us on it.
- People want to feel differently about their work, but they don’t want to do their work differently.
Currently, if you’re in higher education administration, you’re dealing with “institutional change.” You will be facing change, you will be navigating change, you will be responding to change– constantly.
As part of that, faculty and staff will express frustration with systems, processes, or outcomes. They want things to improve.
But meaningful change almost always requires changing habits—how courses are structured, how assessment is done, how time is allocated. And it also means changing our feelings about those habits.
And that is much harder.
Your job is not just to propose better systems. It’s to recognize the gap between aspiration and behavior—and work within it.
Small shifts matter more than sweeping reforms—and peanut butter sandwiches come in handy for this (see #4). Because if you can translate needed change into language that speaks to another’s own agenda or motivation, then you’re more than halfway there.
- Decide what hill you will die on. Stand your ground.
Academic administration requires constant negotiation. You will be asked to compromise, to adapt, to find middle ground.
But not everything is negotiable.
Early on, you must decide what your “hill” is—the principle you will not compromise. When everything else is in motion, this becomes your North Star.
You cannot have many hills. If everything matters equally, then nothing does.
For me, that hill is faculty governance. It is at the core of how academic institutions function—and it is often the first thing to erode under external pressures. I come from faculty, and I take that responsibility seriously. I also believe firmly that when faculty understand how decisions are made, when their roles are respected, and when processes are transparent, the institution is stronger.
When you find your hill, stand there and be consistent.
You don’t need to win every argument, but you do need to be known for something.
People learn quickly where you will bend—and where you won’t. That clarity is what builds trust.
There is a narrative that moving into administration means “leaving” academia. I don’t think that’s true. You are not leaving intellectual life; you are shifting its scale. Instead of interpreting texts, you are interpreting systems. Instead of making arguments on the page, you are making them in rooms. Instead of analyzing structures, you are working inside them—sometimes trying to change them.
But the work is still, fundamentally, the same: attention, analysis, interpretation, judgment. You’re just doing it where it counts differently. You’re not leaving academia– you are now learning how it actually works.
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