Shiree Harbick is a speech-language pathologist and clinical educator at James Madison University. Her clinical background informs her research conducted through the Infant and Toddler Language Lab and the JMU Speech-Language Clinic. Her current research involves working with families and caregivers to support the communication development of 6-12 month old infants and developing clinical experiences in early intervention for graduate clinicians in CSD. Shiree lives in the Shenandoah Valley with her husband, Andy, and is the mother of 3 young adult sons.
During this episode, I talk with Dr. Shiree Harbick about her recent experience applying for a clinical educator position. Shiree shares what she describes as her nontraditional path to a PhD, taking classes part-time while maintaining the flexibility to spend time with her family. She discusses the process of applying for a clinical educator position at the same institution where she earned her PhD and started a clinical program for families with infants. We discuss the application and interview processes for clinical educator positions, as well as Shiree’s responsibilities in her position. You can connect with Shiree on Twitter @sharbick, Instagram @jmuinfantlanguagelab, or Facebook @JMUinfantandtoddlerlanguagelab.
Transcript
NOTE: This podcast was transcribed by a free tool called Otter.ai. Please forgive any typos or errors.
Danika Pfeiffer
Hi Shiree, thanks so much for being here with me today on the podcast.
Shiree Harbick
Hi Danika it is such an honor just to be asked to participate with you I could talk to you for a long time.
Danika Pfeiffer
I’m so I always love having my JMU folks on the podcast so I know this will be a fun one. All right, well, let’s jump in and start off with a little bit about you before you started your academic journey. Tell us a little bit about who you are and where you came from.
Shiree Harbick
I grew up in primarily Northern Virginia. So I grew up in the town of Reston. I wanted to be girl detective. So Nancy Drew was like a big part of my life. Harriet, the spy, was an avid reader. And so I read everything I could get my hands on, especially mysteries. And as I think about it, I realized like as a kid, I was an information collector and organizer. Like I literally besides doing detective and spy related things in my backyard, I tried to start libraries of information that and this was all like pre internet so you know, that was, uh, libraries are very important places then
Danika Pfeiffer
how did you end up deciding where to go to college and what to study?
Shiree Harbick
Yeah, so And maybe this would be good for your guests to know I’m, I’m older than your traditional, you know, starting out academic. So this is very much my set what I think of as my second half of my career as an SLP. So I went to JMU where I am right now, in the 90s. I actually graduated with my undergrad in 96 and my master’s degree a year and a half later in 97. That was I graduated early, which doesn’t happen really anymore. But I had decided in high school I actually came to JMU. Because of speech language pathology or audiology, I was really open to audiology at the time too. So yesterday, I kind of discovered it in 11th grade. Up until then, if you had asked me what I wanted to be, I would tell you that I was going to be a writer, and I was the editor of our literary and art magazine. I took creative writing three times in high school. Yeah, there’s mysteries. I wanted to write Nancy Drew books. But I also became aware as I took, you know, classes and things that like science, something I loved as well. So sort of figuring out like, writer and a scientist, I should probably be both I actually discovered doing some career project speech language pathology, when I instinctively knew that the sort of marriage of science and communication would work really well for me. I gave up on my longtime plan, much to my mother’s disappointment of going to William and Mary. I had gotten into but they didn’t have an undergraduate program and CSD at the time, they still do. And so I felt like coming to JMU as part of the what was then the Honors Program was also a good fit for me. And so I came to JMU. I did my undergrad work here and my master’s work here. And as an undergrad, I did an undergraduate honors. thesis with Brenda seal. She was a little younger than I am now and had just finished her PhD and was just a fabulous mentor to me. I kind of got that first experience in research and I really took to the statistics part of it. And which matched to the sort of science math kind of things that I also gravitated towards. So yeah, so I actually one of the reasons I wanted to stay for grad school was because I could extend that line of research from undergrad and then I was pretty hooked. By then I was like, I knew I wanted to do a PhD.
Danika Pfeiffer
Okay, wow, that’s so neat. Yeah, it really does sound like the perfect combination of things to prepare you well for pursuing a PhD. But you mentioned that this was kind of the second half of your career. So what did you do after grad school?
Shiree Harbick
Yeah, so probably you’re all wondering, like, why didn’t she go read on and get her PhD? And well, because life? Yes. As you all know, life happens. And so I had gotten married and of course I married a man that was very intelligent and very high performing as well. And so some of you know, there’s just a lot of intake that has to happen and different people’s careers need to take precedence at different points. You can sort of we decided from a young age that we wanted to do life together. And so that’s sort of what it took for us to do that. So in the late 90s, my husband got recruited to this company no one had ever heard of amazon.com and we made the really hard choice to leave Virginia. And my first job I worked in Fairfax County Schools, and moved to Seattle to work for this startup. Wow. And yeah, and in retrospect, that was 100% the thing we should have done, but it made some of my academic aspirations take a backseat as we focused on that. So we started a family and we had two kids. Yeah, two kids while we were there, but all through it, I was able to keep, like some connection to research
Danika Pfeiffer
okay, but you were working clinically throughout this whole time. Yeah.
Shiree Harbick
Yeah. Not as much during that time. But I was I my clinical work really happened when we came back to Virginia. So I did a lot of like, I did a lot of full time mothering Yes, little people in Seattle, and research work tasks. Okay. So I was hired on a few gray edits, I did some data stuff through, you know, connections that I had made in grad school. But I still wasn’t even as clinical as I later. So that’s good.
Danika Pfeiffer
I’m glad you shared that because I think for a lot of people, these journeys are not linear. And things happen along the way, and that’s totally okay.
Shiree Harbick
And I want people to know that like I’ve dealt, really, I’ve dealt with like, some guilt. And shame at having, like, come so far and have been, you know, I got scholarships and people told me all the time about all this promise that I was demonstrating. And then it looked like I was just ending it all, you know, to stay at home with my kids. And I knew that that wasn’t the full story yet. Right. But, you know, other people didn’t necessarily understand that and so I would feel bad, you know, talking to professors or people from my past about what I was doing, and I think it’s important for people to realize that like one of the great things about this profession is you can do that. I really remember thinking of this, like five years in Seattle is my retirement. Like, these are my retirement years because I knew on the other end, I would probably not be doing the typical retirement things and I think it started out that way. So I wouldn’t do it differently, but it was hard. It was very hard to do because you don’t know the future if I’d known for sure. You know what I would be doing right now it would have been a lot easier but you don’t know
Danika Pfeiffer
you know, know and like that has its professional elements. We have our personal elements. And it’s, yeah, and I think there’s no right path and there’s no right way to get there. So I’m glad that you shared that. So you did eventually come back and you just recently completed your PhD. Congratulations. Yeah, very, very exciting. And when did you start thinking about your next steps after your PhD during that time?
Shiree Harbick
Again, like I think having had the experiences in life that I’ve had, where things fell into place? So like, I guess a part of a really crucial part of my journey to the PhD that I left out, was that we moved back to Virginia. I worked in private practice for a long time. My third son was born with genetic a genetic disorder and lots of needs. And for years, I said that he was my PhD, right because I just I gave up on it. At that point. I was like, There’s no way this is going to happen. I don’t see how but as he got older and things started evening out for him and the support that he needed and my husband was able to kind of shift his functioning. It suddenly became my turn to be able to do this and I was back at JMU. Again, not something that I planned, right and a lot of it has to do with like some serious mentorship. I already mentioned Brenda seal and I can’t imagine a mentor or more driven and purposeful and she has been in my life. She just never let go of me. Right. She knew I was doing the thing at each point. Along the way that I needed to do to trusted my judgment, but she was also on the lookout for when things might change for me. And honestly, I don’t know if I would have had sort of encouraged to continue towards a PhD even halfway through her clinical career. If it hadn’t been, you know, some heart deep conversations with her. And specifically, we went out to lunch one day and I was filling her in on my clinical practice and things I liked the things that I wished that I could do more of, and she just really honed in on this, this sort of liminal space in life for me and said, Well, I don’t tell you this lightly and I might not have ever told you, but your PhD is on my bucket list.
Danika Pfeiffer
She was determined.
Shiree Harbick
Yes. And I was like wow, my PhD as I’ve read. But she also identified that like this might be the time Sheree might be the time to do it. And she was actually also connected to a research team at JMU in the infant toddler language lab that is run by Rory Depaolis. And she and Susan Ingram and Charlotte McQuilkin were all like working on several research projects related to intervening really early in the life of in and family for language development. And she kind of intuited that this might be a really great fit that they needed a PhD student to do some of the things they had envisioned, and that I was ready and my life was at a place where I could do it.
Danika Pfeiffer
Had you had those thoughts? That this was a good time or was this kind of nice.
Shiree Harbick
I think that I have always been looking for the good time. I don’t think I ever fully gave up on it. And I will share too that I was part time okay as a PhD student, which is a little different. I paid for my own tuition. But what that gave me was flexibility, on the other end like to do the other things that I really was passionate about or needed time to do.
Danika Pfeiffer
That’s good to know because most PhD programs are funded if you are able to go full time.
Shiree Harbick
Yes. And I at the outset, by the end like my advisor ended up being worried to polish and he said that I was in this full time part time he’s ever met, which is very in character, but it was really important for me to have a lot of control over my time and obligations because other people dependent on me at home.
Danika Pfeiffer
Right and what a great way to get through the PhD program but also be present for your family. I think there’s probably a lot of others that are listening to this that maybe have thought about the PhD but it might seem impossible. And you found a way to make it all work.
Shiree Harbick
Yeah, yeah. And I’d like to share the non traditional stories because I don’t fit the to what you might think is traditional. Maybe there isn’t traditional.
Danika Pfeiffer
I don’t think there is anymore. Yeah, but it’s great to share all the different paths. Absolutely. So you just recently finished up your program, and you had to start thinking about what was going to be next. So how what was important to you and thinking about your next steps once you finally were wrapping up the
Shiree Harbick
PhD. Yeah, well I really am the last the last year and a half of the PhD program was when you really need to start thinking about what is coming next and what do you want. And when I started I really didn’t have an expectation. What would come after it I just knew that this program itself was gonna give me a lot of the tools that I had been wanting a long time in terms of being not just a great consumer of research, but somebody who can contribute to the research base that’s been that is so motivating to me and so I knew that that was my motivation for doing it and I had to kind of come up at the beginning with some personal why’s to help me like fully understand why I’m going in the direction Why am I investing in myself in this way? What are the potential outcomes and I had to be okay with if the outcome is that I have a PhD and I got a private practice that’s valid. That is absolutely 100% valid, you can do that I was not going to live with a guilt feeling again, like I felt like I did after my graduate school and then you know, some stay at home mom time. And so I did not want to do that to myself again. And I think age and maturity helps me with that.
Danika Pfeiffer
Yeah, that’s a lot to do that upfront to come up with those wise up front because I think once you have go in and you hear what everyone else is doing you can get off track and you lose the why you lose your values, you lose your priorities. So I think that’s yeah,
Shiree Harbick
yeah, that’s an that is really was really important part of it. And I could share those wise with the very close mentors that I had, so that they understood, you know, they have a lot of you that your committee has a lot of words over, really the direction that you go next and what they’re encouraging you to do and what advice they might be giving you and things like that, so that they know that you’re pretty self defined in a certain direction. It’s important for them to know that they had a good idea to have me being sort of open to multiple possibilities at the end of a PhD program, like the Ph. D program was very much like a journey for me that was very personal and meaningful. And it wasn’t just a means to an end. I think what became a thing that was my research. I got really attached to it. It feels like my fourth child.
Danika Pfeiffer
Yeah, right. You become invested.
Shiree Harbick
Yeah, I have the same sense of like, like shepherding need to shepherd guide, this line of research. And that and it seems like I could keep doing it. That was what I sort of lead with, for sort of what comes next phase is what comes next is the thing that will allow me to continue with this line of research that I’ve started and that I see great potential for and that there’s so much more to do.
Danika Pfeiffer
And your your research that you did during your dissertation was really clinically focused, really clinical training focused. Do you want to tell us a little bit about that? Because I think that will help connect the pieces here.
Shiree Harbick
Yeah I think it will. So I developed a program. The nugget of it was the idea of this committee, that sort of this research group that sort of recruited me to come be their PhD student help define this idea that they had and the idea was to provide early support to parents with babies for communication, development, and support graduate students in having experiences with parent coaching and young infants at the same time. And so I developed something that we call the first program it means facilitating infant responsiveness to stimulate talking but what it does is it takes families with babies six to 12 months old and brings them to campus and pairs them with two graduate students. And we work in large groups together like the families of the babies and the clinicians all together, do sort of a large group sort of this is our topic for the day kind of thing that I or another clinical educator could lead and then they break out into smaller groups and the graduate students do coaching and how to actually apply the things that we just learned about in terms of supporting language development with their specific infant measured baby things. I measured, caregiver things I measured, student things, really compelling results, and it seemed like a program that was worth worth doing. It was good for our community. It’s good for babies, and it is good for graduate clinicians to have these experiences.
Danika Pfeiffer
Yes, absolutely. I can see how you would become really invested in something like that and seeing how successful it was in getting off the ground and so now you had this amazing experience with your mentors, your advisors, but the community members with your graduate students. And so how did that factor into your decision of what to do after the PhD?
Shiree Harbick
I realized that clinical education which this research was as much about providing clinical education experiences for new graduate students as it was services to babies and families. That that was really a big part of my new why. Why you know now you’re somebody equipped with the skills that a PhD has, right? I’m teaching and scholarship and I understand this the academic world in a way I didn’t before now what what’s the next why like how do you take your years as a in the clinic and your privilege you’ve had of gaining this additional degree? What do I do with it and to me, the clinical education position that I was looking for, again, happen at the same time, and I needed it.
Danika Pfeiffer
Which is wonderful.
Shiree Harbick
It’s wonderful and also weird, and not typical at all. And so I just want to caution people that this doesn’t normally happen, and I couldn’t have planned it ever
Danika Pfeiffer
so there was an opening in the department that you were doing your PhD and that just popped up right at the right time. exactly the right time. Tell us what the position is and what it means to be a clinical educator. Some might not be familiar with that term,
Shiree Harbick
the way that mine is structure, but I think most clinical educator positions probably are is it’s not my particular one is non tenure track. Others might be I think that sort of could be either way and it might even be something you could potentially negotiate the application process was identical to what you would do for a tenure track faculty position. At least for me, it was but it’s defined as 75% teaching. My tip my actual like title is lecturer, okay. And that’s how it fits sort of within the system that Jamie uses for clinical instructional faculty, which is what I am and so 75% of my time is spent teaching, which means I’ll teach one class a semester, I’ll run a few diagnostic teams of graduate students within our speech language clinic. And then I’ll supervise sessions with graduate students in our clinic. The other 25% of my time is devoted to research and service. And this position was described as appropriate for PhD level, okay, and that research was encouraged as part of it was a big draw, and that’s something you always see. So that might be that would be something to look at. You know, is research encouraged act not just permitted right, but actively encouraged, right, so supported and supported. Yeah, and like we have seen at JMU that the first program has made a big impact on our clinical services and we’re wanting to start like a specialty clinic essentially, that will be the first program so now my research becomes part of my job. And the research components can fit into the research part, but then the educational components are that teaching part.
Danika Pfeiffer
Wow. So that seems like a really perfect fit. Yeah, seems like things just fell into place.
Shiree Harbick
If they did, and I feel really, really fortunate. To have had that
Danika Pfeiffer
for a non tenure track. Those are usually contract positions where your contract comes up and you have to resign and that could be every year could be every three years depending. Was that your experience with your non tenure track position that you have kind of a renewable contract over time? Yeah,
Shiree Harbick
yes, mines annually renewable Okay. However, I will say that given that the application process was really the same as the tenure track process, and took a long time, yes to do, I would find it I think that it would be really hard to let somebody go, that went through all of that.
Danika Pfeiffer
Right? Not only have you invested all that time, but they have invested all that time in you as well and going through the interview process. Absolutely. And there’s more and more non tenure track positions that are coming up in our field. And so I think we’re going to see more and more not only for clinical educator positions, but assistant professor positions as well. So I think this is something that will we’ll see more and more and people are going to be having questions about can you talk to us a little bit about this application process that you just mentioned, and what kinds of documents you had to submit?
Shiree Harbick
Besides my CV, I had to have a few statements that I prepared ahead of time in writing. So I submitted a philosophy of teaching. I submitted information about like my research interests and activities beyond what is described in the CV there’s to hear more about that and then the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion statement. is pretty standard now, but new for a lot of people. So I would say that was actually one of the harder ones to write just because I didn’t have read many models of them and but it was also really rewarding to put the time into that that I did.
Danika Pfeiffer
Okay, great. So those are like you said, these are very similar to tenure track position documents that you might have to write. Do you feel like there was anything in particular that you are trying to highlight because this was a clinical educator position that might be a little bit different than things you would highlight for a tenure track assistant professor position
Shiree Harbick
what I really honed in the nature of my research being and clinical education initiative, yes. And that this role fit me well, and my research well, for specific those specific reasons. Yeah, so it really does
Danika Pfeiffer
sound like it was the perfect
Shiree Harbick
Yep, it was,
Danika Pfeiffer
and how did you prepare for your interviews and what were these interviews? Like?
Shiree Harbick
Yeah, so the first interview was on Zoom okay with the search committee, and it lasted a little over an hour, and they have definitely like standard questions that I’m sure they asked every candidate and I felt really prepared for most of them just having gone through the application material and you know, being in the second the last year of a Ph. D. program. I feel like JMU does a very nice job preparing us for the what’s coming, you know, in terms of the job market. I wasn’t surprised by most of it. I think again, the D the Diversity Equity and Inclusion type questions. I was ready for them. But I have very little experience with those types of questions. And so I didn’t feel unprepared but I had those took a little more thought in the mitt of how I was going to answer what I was asked and I can’t even remember totally. What they asked me it was something kind of generic and I think that’s what makes some of the DEI questions hard, is you have to figure out what you have learned or what you value. Or what progress you’ve made in terms of that type of learning and competency and find your hook to match their questions. And that’s just not something any of us have had a lot of experience doing yet. So I actually found mine, really in the inclusion and the diversity part of it. One being the parent of a child with intellectual disabilities. Inclusion means something different to me than if I had lived with that. And then diversity and the nature of the first program, really is to include low income families in our community. And there’s so many languages and cultures and helping first year graduate students to navigate that when very often their cultures are very different than what they’re encountering.
Danika Pfeiffer
Yeah, those sound like great things to share. When you get asked these kinds of questions. It’s figuring out what experiences you’ve had and what you’ve learned and what how you want to keep learning and keep helping this department or wherever you’re interviewing and helping them improve their diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and their university. So I think any it can look really different person, a person and it’s, I think you’re right, it takes a lot of reflection when you’re going into writing these documents and answering these questions, because everyone’s answer is probably going to look really different.
Shiree Harbick
Yeah, and I think it would be fun to be on that committee asking these questions because it would help it feel sometimes the DEI initiatives could be critiqued some as performative or right to know a bandaid and I think having having them intentionally included and then promoting that personal reflection and small group discussion is huge.
Danika Pfeiffer
Yes, I was just talking on another interview with someone who went on the job market this year and she was talking about how sometimes we are asked to write these diversity statements, and it’s never brought up in the interview process at all. There’s no follow up questions about it. And so it does feel a little bit performative. But it’s nice that in your case, they did ask you about it, and it was really a priority.
Shiree Harbick
Yeah, they did. And, and honestly, because they asked about I realized that it was really important to include some of my perspectives on that in the second interview
Danika Pfeiffer
talk that I gave, okay, tell us about that. Yeah, yeah. So
Shiree Harbick
when they narrowed down the list of candidates, then we had our full day interview on campus, and this would, it was a little weird for me. I’m very familiar with this campus, and the people here.
Shiree Harbick
It would be really important for somebody that was brand new to get a feel, would they like to be here or not? And it was, it’s really well done and it’s a full full day of talking to people. And I was asked to give a talk on what I saw as the it was clinical challenges, like challenges and clinical education and what how would I solve them? Okay, right. What a pro i Yeah, it was pretty wide open. I didn’t I did enjoy working on that and doing that talk and I was able to visit they scheduled me for the morning and so after I met with the academic unit had that department head then I went straight to giving the talk right off the bat and that was to faculty and students and I got great feedback from that which felt which felt nice. Somebody told me that she got teary eyed during it actually two people told
Danika Pfeiffer
Wow, you must have been so passionate
Shiree Harbick
Well as a clinical educator I’ll tell you and everybody else secretly know everybody knows that I very much like to help people feel seen and understood. And so it’s, it’s not a good semester. If somebody doesn’t cry around me. For good reason. Because they feel heard and seen and supported. Yeah. And so to have some people say they can go felt that way. And a talk just felt like a lot of confirmation for me that this is what I should be doing.
Danika Pfeiffer
Those are moments that are so hard to describe, but when they happen, especially when it’s involving your next steps in your life or your professional career when those moments happen, and you feel like oh, this is exactly where I’m supposed to be. It’s just the greatest feeling.
Shiree Harbick
It really is. It feels just right. And so my husband will jokingly tell people that Sheree makes people cry. And you’re proud of it. Not for the reasons you might. Very proud of it.
Danika Pfeiffer
It’s amazing. What else did you meet with during that day?
Shiree Harbick
Yeah, so like I spent time with a clinic director and which was strange because she was on my committee, and we knew each other really well. But you know, there were lots of things I didn’t know. You know, that my program did a good job of keeping me in the PhD world even though I also did work as a clinical educator on a part time basis. Here, there were a lot of internal things that I didn’t I did not know, and that were good for me to like, get a feel for like if this is your job. These are the kinds of things you have to think about that we’ve never asked you to think about before and that was really helpful and good to know. And then I met with like, almost everybody on the faculty for like 15 minutes each. Okay, come see me in a conference room. And I decided since I was familiar with many of them that like I was also interviewing as much as I’ve been interviewed. And so I actually had specific questions for them ahead of time that I wanted to know, as it was relate to this potential position for me.
Danika Pfeiffer
So great idea to prepare some questions ahead of time. I’m sure they were looking for that too. That you came prepared with some questions. So a lot of faculty the the Clinical Director, clinic director, and then the department head anybody else?
Shiree Harbick
Yeah. And then the students. A group of undergrad and graduate students took me out for lunch. And so I got to have sort of more informal discussions with them, but they had questions prepared also, and I had questions for them. So that was a really good time to do that. I think. The student perspective is arguably one of the most important ones that you should consider before taking a position and sit and they did a good job of providing me with multiple types of students to talk to so I really, I really did enjoy that part a lot. And getting some feedback from students about what is important to them for clinical education standpoint. It specifically was really good and then we went out to dinner as a search committee at the end and any additional questions that came up came up, and it was very, very thorough.
Danika Pfeiffer
That’s great. That’s a very full day. Yes. Okay, so at the end of the day, how are you? How are you feeling about the position and the process and where are you feeling like that was the place to be?
Shiree Harbick
Yeah, so I just I started my position this month. And you know, it’s still the summer and so things are getting reworked. We actually JMU added to full time clinical educator positions this summer. So I have a counterpart who I’ve just met. So yeah, and we can already tell that we work very well together. There’s some clinical education things that were already happening this summer. like summer camp that we do, and she and I were intentionally paired together as like CO CO teachers in a classroom and that was a really great way for she and I to get to know each other and our styles with students and clients and we could tell that we were a great match.
Danika Pfeiffer
That’s awesome. That’s so nice to be able to start with somebody else when you’re coming into a position.
Shiree Harbick
Yeah, it’s I feel like having like a built in partner to sort of learn things with and pool our knowledge. I have background knowledge that she doesn’t have. She can she’ll think to ask questions that I might just assume answers to, but they might not be the right answers. Hi. So
Danika Pfeiffer
it’s good. Someone to bounce ideas off of. Absolutely. Yeah, reflecting back on this whole process of interviewing for this position. Did you face any challenges during that time along the way? And hit any roadblocks along the way?
Shiree Harbick
I think the process took longer than I was anticipating that it would, and I that might have just been a Jamie specific thing. I’m not sure. I think in general it does just take longer though, because departments want to make sure they have the right person. Right there and you want it to be the right fit as well. And so I think the length of it, you know, it was longer than I expected, but I wouldn’t really call that challenging but it would have been if I had other clear paths, like I did look at other opportunities, but then I quickly decided that I needed to stop looking at other opportunities, because I was gonna get really conflicted really fast. Okay, there were things that would have fit me nicely and would have fit into my life and I would not necessarily I’m not in the place where I wanted to move. But that wouldn’t have been a barrier. Like there are positions out there that I could have done. It didn’t have to be here. And so I needed to do that work to to know for myself. Yes, it’s so strange to do everything at JMU like I’ve done. And so but then I also need to stop that searching. Because I really was invested in continuing the first program that I’ve been working on for a few years and that maybe would be much easier to keep doing at JMU than anywhere else.
Danika Pfeiffer
Did you ever come back to that list of why’s that you talked about in the beginning when you were going through that process?
Shiree Harbick
Yeah, absolutely. And so I think that that’s a kind of that’s that’s something I will foster. I think even through retirement got teen years, at least before I would retire. But I just think at all of these inflection points that’s become a really powerful and helpful motivator for keeping me on track with what my values and desires and like needs are personally.
Danika Pfeiffer
Yeah, I love that advice. I really didn’t do that until I had been on the job market once and was going on it for a second time to find a position and that’s when I sat down and really spend time reflecting on what is it that really will make me feel fulfilled. And once I did that everything became so much clearer. It was so easy to say I’m applying to this. I’m not applying to that. So I really love that you talked about that too and how helpful it was for you. I think that’s great advice. Before we end today, I just have some rapid fire questions that I asked all my guests. So the first one is what is one resource that you couldn’t live without?
Shiree Harbick
I could not live I just put it away. That’s why I’m laughing. I have fully made the switch from paper things to digital things. And I’ve wanted to do that for years but I couldn’t find a way to do it. And then the way I do it is I have an iPad now with a pen. And I use I use the notability app. And I hand write just like I’ve always wanted to I used to have 100 million sticky notes everywhere. All kinds of systems and now I have it all in place lender and I just pop it in and out of my bag. It’s really wonderful. It’s really redone the way that I function. Quite honestly
Danika Pfeiffer
possum good for you. What has been a defining moment in your academic journey?
Shiree Harbick
I can I can actually go to a single day. I think I am. I’m really motivated by actually just helping people. Right. And the first day we designed this, I designed really this first program right and it was gonna be this eight session thing. And I was really specifically looking for low income moms and their babies to come and I had a lot of community help to get a fine. I mean, I had case managers, nurse practitioners, teachers home visitors, like all helping me bind these families. And I remember the first day that everyone was supposed to show up and I had all these clinicians that were paired but we’ve never met you know all these things. It was so nerve racking as to like is this gonna work? This was so much effort isn’t going to work. And everybody but one family showed up but then a woman called me in the morning who she wasn’t, you know, English wasn’t her first language. And she knew that that was the first day and she thought she didn’t just show up for it. She wanted direction. And so I had her numbers I called her and she ks and build it in and it worked beautifully. And everything that I had planned not only worked but it worked many things happen that I didn’t plan that were beautiful and powerful down to the mom who was a refugee from North Africa and her she carried her baby here. And the graduate students who like we were trying to figure out how to get her home because she didn’t have a car. And it took like five or six people to figure out like the best route and that it was actually easier for her to just walk down the hill to her house. And the graduate students who were just like, I’m gonna just walk with her and carry some stuff. Right it just the way we all pulled together and the relationships that started and I remember thinking that for that first day, okay, this is going to work. And all that effort that we put into it is more than worth it. Because really, really amazing things are happening. And that just made like anytime I feel discouraged for I just go back to the people and the students and the infants. And I realized that like if I don’t even get great data out of this, it doesn’t matter. Something important has happened. Yes. meaningful in the lives of adult people. And that’s that is endlessly motivating and encouraging to me.
Danika Pfeiffer
That’s like a Goosebumps story. Now you get to keep doing this really important and meaningful work which is great. What is one thing on your professional bucket list?
Shiree Harbick
That is hilarious that that’s one of your questions. Bucket List got me into this.
Danika Pfeiffer
Now you had to update it. I know
Shiree Harbick
that update it. Um, one of the great things about being a clinical educator PhD is that I can mentor students and I could be on people’s committees, and I can involve others in this work in this really clinically relevant work and so I would like to have a PhD student or it’d be involved at least in partnering with PhD students.
Danika Pfeiffer
Yes, I think that would be really meaningful experience. What has been your favorite part about your journey as a PhD student?
Shiree Harbick
I have gotten to it’s the people it’s always about the people for me. Yeah. And to just to develop really deep relationships with other faculty members with students who I’m just like little piece of their professional journey with parents in our community, with infants in our community, just the relationships and how it all weaves together and kind of builds upon itself is really that’s my favorite. Part.
Danika Pfeiffer
Awesome. And final question. How can people connect with you or learn more about you and your research?
Shiree Harbick
Yeah, so I am active on Twitter. My handle is sharbick and emails always great. I’d love to get emails from people who are interested in what I’m doing. And I’d like to talk about how I got here. And I enjoy talking to people especially who are wondering if it’s possible like what they are thinking is this even possible and just sharing from my own experience, that sort of advice. So you know, people should feel free to email me. Perfect. They will they want to talk to more. That’s okay.
Danika Pfeiffer
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being here and sharing your job search journey. And congratulations to you again, and I wish you much continued success.
Shiree Harbick
Thanks to Danika. I really appreciate the time to share my story.
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