Professors, your online presence can be supportive for your students in many ways. Here’s 13 scenarios in which being intentional for your digital presence as an academic online can support your students in and beyond higher education.
Hi there, I’m Jennifer van Alstyne. I created The Social Academic blog back in 2018 when I began working with professors on their online presence. Most of the faculty and researchers I’ve worked with to be more intentional about how they show up online are doing so because “it helps more people.” Many have their students and mentees specifically in mind when it comes to who you want to help.
I hope this article inspires you to know that if your online presence becomes a goal for you in the future, the energy you put into it can help your students too.
These stories may help you consider ways in which being intentional for your online presence could support your students.
Your teaching deserves space online
On a scale of 1 to 10, how important is it for you to include teaching and mentoring in your academic bio? This is a question I ask each of my bio writing clients.
The professors I work with on Strategic Website Plans to design their personal academic website are often surprised we spend a full hour together talking about their teaching and mentoring to inform how it’s shared on their website.
An Associate Professor shared with me, “I’m happy to talk with you, because I felt like as a teaching-focused faculty, maybe it wasn’t right for me to have a website since research isn’t my top priority.” How could we share the resources and things she’s already created to better support your students? Let’s celebrate your students instead. She was delighted to chat about the creative ways we could make students (and alumni) an intentional audience for her website.
Many academics have a faculty profile or are listed on their college department website. You’ve probably talked about your teaching and written about it before in hiring, review, or promotion documents. People who teach in higher education have sometimes never shared about their teaching on social media or other ways online. Even if you don’t have an intentional online presence beyond your faculty profile, your academic bio is one place to consider how you want to share teaching and mentoring.
You deserve an online presence as an academic when you’re a teaching-focused faculty member. If you’ve felt some hesitancy to create space for your teaching or students, you’re not alone.
You can have that space to celebrate your students if you want to. A personal academic website is one of my favorite ways. Here are 35 page ideas for your personal academic website. There are many ways you can showcase your teaching online.
How important is teaching and mentoring to you?
What would you like people to find about you when it comes to your teaching and mentoring?
P.S. Here’s what to include on a 1-page personal academic website.
Your students are waiting for you to share 1st
Academia, by nature, is a place of gatekeeping and permissions. Some of that is necessary, like peer review. Some of it can be harmful too.
One way I’ve seen that play out is when it comes to online presence for graduate students when their supervisor or mentor feels like having a digital presence isn’t worth their time.
Have you felt that way about your own online presence? Like it isn’t worth the effort or energy for you?
I get that. I never tell people you have to have an online presence. There’ve been times in my life where being visible online was the last thing I wanted (like when I fled a domestic abuse relationship when I was quite young). If you don’t want an online presence for yourself, that’s okay.
Please support your students to be intentional about how they show up online (even if it’s not something you want for yourself). You can point them here to The Social Academic blog, where there’s lots of free resources to support them to take action. I even have a self-paced course where students and faculty from around the world have helped to prioritize where to start.
Most career coaches would recommend your students, at any stage, have an online presence. It’s helpful for their career goals. Some people may say being on a platform like LinkedIn is “necessary.” It’s certainly beneficial. Here’s social media tips for the job market your students and mentees may find helpful.
Whether being an academic who shows up online is an intentional priority for you right now, or not…
Please know that your thoughts and feelings about it can impact how your students make choices for themselves. And many of your students are waiting for permission or a role model to do it first.
Here are resources to help graduate students with their online presence on The Social Academic blog.
Students better feel they deserve space online too
Most professors don’t have a personal academic website. Many people aren’t thinking about their online presence. You may have never taken action towards shaping their digital presence online. That’s okay.
There’s many reasons that may prompt you to want a stronger online presence for yourself.
When minority faculty members share the story of their academic journey with me, at some point, it often comes up that students say something like “you’re the 1st black professor I had” or “having you as a professor makes such a difference for me.”
For some professors, taking up that space online shows the people in your community that space is possible for them too. What to hear stories from professors and grad students about their online presence? Check out The Social Academic podcast and interview series.
I’ve you’ve ever felt like having space for your teaching / research online was too marketing-y or self-promotional, I get that. It’s a worry many academics have.
Trust that you can be as intentional about your online presence for your students as you are for them in your classes and through your mentoring.
When you consider who you want to help and how you want your students to be able to engage with what you share online, it becomes far more about them than it is about you.
Being ‘in network’ on LinkedIn with your students
Have you connected with your students online (like on social media)? Some faculty have a policy against this. I get it. You may want to keep your personal / professional life a bit more separate. Especially if your personal Instagram account never shares content related to your academic life, for instance.
I love when faculty are open to having a profile on LinkedIn. Even if you’re not searching for academic jobs or considering a career change, your presence on LinkedIn as a professor can help your students.
When you connect with your students on LinkedIn, you help expand their network, increasing their ability to make new connections. It helps your students have the ability to reach out to and be in network with more people.
If the only thing you do to support your students in their online presence is send/accept a connection request, that’s already helpful for them. Without having to do anything else, that connection has potential to support that student.
Here’s 32 reasons LinkedIn’s great for faculty and researchers like you.
Looking for LinkedIn resources for your grad students? Here are my LinkedIn profile tips for people in graduate school.
Your grad students may find these interviews helpful
- Dr. Gertrude Noneterah / LinkedIn for PhDs
- Dr. Jen Polk / What Are Informational Interviews?
- Sammie Walker Herrera / LinkedIn for Grad Students
Stay connected with ease
How do you keep in touch with your students after they graduated? Professors have shared with me a variety of methods, such as email, text, phone call, “in person whenever we can manage it,” and LinkedIn.
Actually, I can’t recall anyone mentioning another social media platform (like Instagram or Bluesky). Do you keep in touch with your students through social media like with direct messages?
What about if you’re like, “I don’t really keep in touch with my students, but I’d like to.”
The subtext is often, “I’d like to if it’s easy.” A solution that fits into your life.
I always recommend LinkedIn. I mentioned above that having a LinkedIn profile and connecting with your students is helpful for them.
Connecting with your students on LinkedIn is the most helpful for your students in terms of their career, not just their relationship. That LinkedIn connection can often be the best way to keep in touch. People tend to keep their main info updated on their LinkedIn profile (like their email address and current workplace). That makes it easier to get in touch even if their institutional address changes with a new appointment or career transition.
I also like that once you’re connected with those students, mentees, or alumni on LinkedIn, there’s potential to help them find what you’re open to sharing.
For instance, many faculty don’t post themselves on LinkedIn. But they may be open to reposting a relevant event, conversation, or resource.
Connecting on LinkedIn is kinda like having the ability to continue the conversation. When you do have something relevant to share, you have LinkedIn posts and articles as a potential avenue for reaching people.
Getting connected long-term through a social media platform like LinkedIn can help you get in touch again if it’s relevant for either of you in the future. And, helps expand the network and scholarly community in your field online.
Introduce your student for their research or career
A few years ago I interviewed career coach, Dr. Jen Polk for The Social Academic about the question: What are informational interviews? When students have the opportunity to chat with a professional in their field to ask questions about their career, it helps them make more informed decisions about their future.
I’m thinking about this because we have a new interview out this week about Jen’s website and online presence program helping PhDs get clarity on their future career. I’m excited to share it with you. I’ll update this article with the link when that video goes live.
Informational interviews are helpful for your undergrad and graduate students. They may also be helpful for postdoctoral researches in your lab. Or, for yourself as a faculty member if you’re making decisions about promotion or potentially changing institutions.
If you can help a friend, student, or a former student/mentee, connect with a person you actually know? That can make such a difference for them. It makes it warmer. You can help that networking process with more ease. While I love when professors bring their students to conferences with networking in mind, you have agency in supporting their ability to connect with the larger community online.
You can facilitate connecting people with your student or mentee for networking opportunities with ease when you have an online presence.
I really like when LinkedIn or websites can be involved in that process.
An example is: your student is exploring visiting research opportunities for the summer. You have a friend whose lab does similar research to your student’s current project. You share the PI’s website with the student (which shares about the lab’s research). And, you email CC: the PI and your student to introduce them so they can find a time to meet virtually.
When there’s a LinkedIn profile, personal academic website, or research lab website link you can share with your student it helps them prepare for the conversation. Similarly, if your student has a LinkedIn profile, personal academic website, or bio on your research lab website that you can share with your PI friend, it can help them know a bit about who they’ll be talking with.
When you connect with your students on LinkedIn, that can be great opportunity to help them be part of those conversations in the future too.
What if the students you’re graduating now can support the students in your lab with a short chat 5 years from now? That potential for connection is beautiful to me.
In a sense, the people you connect with in your own online presence as an academic, can be a potential referral network for informational interviews for the people you work with in a teaching / mentoring capacity.
Recommend your students
You’ve probably had to write a lot more letters of recommendation than you expected when you chose academia as a career. I hear this is especially true for faculty in the United States.
In my LinkedIn Profile for Professors and Researchers course, I encourage academics to consider ‘asking for a recommendation’ on their LinkedIn profile.
I’m sharing this with you because you should know that should a need arise for it, you can share a recommendation on your student or mentee’s LinkedIn profile.
The words you have to share about your student and reasons you’d recommend them don’t have to stay in letters read by few. Your intention has potential to help your student for years to come if you’re open to sharing them publicly. For instance, you might write a short paragraph about your student as a recommendation on their LinkedIn profile. Or, you could share the words with your student directly for their portfolio or personal website.
The experiences you had working with your student directly can help people in their future better know who they are and what it’s like to work with them. And I love that your student has agency in what recommendations show up on their website and LinkedIn profile too.
Did you know that your student can also write a recommendation for you? That’s something that feels ‘braggy’ when I mention it to professors. Until I share how helpful that may be for prospective students for your classes or research lab.
You probably work more closely with some students than others. Whether you’re director of their dissertation or they’ve been a member of your lab for years, consider asking your student for a recommendation that helps future students know what to expect.
When people can understand who you are and what your research / teaching is about, it can add value to your recommendation letter too. By that I mean, understanding you can help people understand your student’s history when reviewing their application.
An example of this is a professor when we chatted about the Recruitment page for their research group website. “I had no idea what that research lab was about,” they mentioned, when talking about a recent application to be a PhD student in the professor’s group. “Their CV had summer research at a lab that seemed totally out of left field, I was glad I was open to meeting with her” because it turned out the research at that lab was relevant to project the professor was hiring for. In fact, it made the PhD student an aligned candidate. “But I couldn’t find anything about the lab itself.”
If you’re a PI with a research group or research lab, you might consider what the hiring committees of your students and alumni might be able to find about you.
Do you think something like that might happen based on your current online presence?
In some ways, being intentional about your website and online presence as an academic is a practice of empathy. A space that can adapt and change to share what’s important to your research, teaching, and leadership now. And when you’re thoughtful about creating space that supports the people you work with, the people your research and teaching supports? It only helps more people.
Here’s an example: Professors often share with me, “I don’t want an Awards and Fellowships” page on my website. That they want to avoid the website “being about me.” I usually chuckle when people share this, because I get that inclination
I share, “We can totally not have that page at all. By sharing the opportunities you’ve gone after or been nominated for can help your grad students and early career researchers find opportunities to consider for themselves too. I’ve found those pages can be helpful for students and early career researchers. And, people don’t really look at that page at all unless they’re curious.”
It may help your students find opportunities, especially if they’re more obscure. There are awards, committees, and conferences that people don’t hear about outside of your field. This helps students learn about how you engage with your scholarly community and helps them make an informed decision about what may be a good use of their time.
Get students excited about your research project
This one is inspired by my friend, Brittany Trinh. She’s an advocate for sharing your lab’s mission and values on the website so students can learn more.
Faculty online presence supports student recruitment. When students know about the projects you’re working on, it helps them make informed decisions. It helps you receive aligned inquiries for working with you. If there’s a lack of information about what you research and how you work with students, you may be missing out on great fit students for your lab.
Can prospective students and researchers for your lab find current research going on?
Can they learn about how they might fit into your lab or if you’re hiring?
Brittany Trinh and I run the Best Personal Academic Websites Contest along with our friend, Dr. Ian Li. We all agree that when people can tell things are going on at your lab, that your team and research are active? It makes such a difference.
Just knowing ‘this team is communicative’ helps. It helps you. It helps your students. It helps people considering joining your team.
And for professors, being intentional about what people can find about you online can save you time and energy. I don’t want you to get a million messages from unaligned postdocs who don’t fit your lab goals. When people are reaching out, I want you to receive messages from students who feel like an aligned fit and what you’re hoping for your lab or group. This happens with more ease when we are more open about our research first.
Team page or bio pages on your website
For some students, the only online presence they have is the space you create for them. Or, that their university has for them.
Most graduate students don’t have training in creating an online presence.
Students may feel imposter syndrome when it comes to having space for themselves online. Some feel like it’s ‘too early’ for them. Or, they wait until it feels like a career priority before taking action. While it’s never ‘too late’ to have an online presence as an academic or grad student, you get more benefits when you do it now instead of waiting.
I’d rather a student bio show up on your research lab’s Team page on the website. Or, in a section of your personal academic websites for students you’ve mentored.
At most colleges and universities, the space graduate students are offered online can be fleeting. Whether it’s their name listed in the department directory or a short bio, those spaces are often temporary, limited to the period in which the student is an active member of the community. It’s rare for alumni to have space on their university websites.
There is so much lost when so many universities remove their graduate student alumni from their university pages.
My PI clients are often intentional about not doing that when it comes to their alumni in their lab.
Universities are creating new space for new students. But they also have a hard time keeping in touch with alumni. If you start your research lab website by creating that space, sharing their bio and photo, and relevant links? That can be amazing for your students. When I work with research labs on their websites, I often recommend gathering bios as part of the onboarding process for new students
Professors often say their research is “not something we do alone in a silo.” That learning and research are done in collaboration. Help your students have their story out there. You can help them create and build upon a teaching/research legacy.
Helps students share with their family, friends, and local community
This scenario isn’t about your website or social media specifically. Rather it’s about anything that helps share your research or teaching story online.
What is your online presence? It’s what people know about you, what they can find about you when they search for you or your research online. What comes up for you?
For some faculty, it’s your faculty profile. Or the research profile on your college or university website.
Maybe you’ve been mentioned in the news. Or your institution collaborated with you to share a story about students in your class.
Your online presence could be a research talk, an event, or webinar.
It includes things like new publications or project announcements.
There’s so many things that have potential to come up for your online presence as an academic. Oftentimes, I see them as potential tools of advocacy for your students to share what you do.
I remember the 1st time my professor appeared on tv. I’d only had him for one class and since then had switched majors from Social Work to English. So I wasn’t likely to work with him again. There I was in the common area of my college dorm excited to share with my residents that a professor they could take was on tv. The news segment wasn’t long, just a minute or two. But those seconds drew the attention of students from several majors. They paused their activities for a moment to celebrate a Monmouth University professor on tv.
Since then, I’ve read hundreds of stories about student research celebrated in local and national media. I’ve seen the hours and hours of work university staff and offices put into collaborating on student stories of transformation on campus. Whether it’s news articles, magazine features, or video, there are people out there open to helping you share your students’ stories.
Just know that there’s options to have a stronger online presence that highlights your students more than yourself. Sometimes, sharing what your research is and who it helps is what supports your students most. Be open to opportunities. Consider what’s aligned, and what you should say no to. You have options.
Do you have to tell your students when something like a media mention of your research appears? No. Please don’t have to do something you feel uncomfortable with. That being said, celebrating your news may help your students feel comfortable being open about their news with you too.
When you appear online, it helps your students share what they’re up to and who they’re learning from with their family, friends, and communities.
Being online as an academic often isn’t harmful unless what people can find about you online doesn’t reflect you now. When you Google your name, are people finding things about your research, mentoring, and values from 15 years ago? If what people can find is no longer relevant to what you want them to know about you now, that’s a clue that online presence may be a priority for you.
What can your students find out about you online?
If what people can find is no longer relevant to what students experience with you today, your students may not be getting the information that they need. You have agency in changing that becomes a goal for you now or in the future.
Get students excited for your classes
Do you want students in your classes who are excited to take them? I’m talking repeat students, students there from word of mouth, prospective students who signed up for your class because it’s your class.
Visiting my professors’ personal academic website, reading a mention of their research in the local paper, or tuning into their appearance on the news was exciting. It can leave a lasting impression. There’s potential for you to inspire and help more people when people understand a bit more about you as teacher an academic.
When RJ Thompson came on The Social Academic podcast, he shared that the #1 thing professors experience as a benefit from collaborating with their university news, videos, and marketing for their department…is that they get better students.
If you are visible and people are helping to tell your story and why your research and teaching matter, and the transformation your students are getting in the classroom? It is helpful for you, your students, but especially for future and prospective students.
At an undergraduate level, this helps you get the best students registering for your class and get excited.
For graduate students, PhD students, and postdoctoral researchers who’d be a good fit to work with you…They may not be able to find you because they haven’t heard of you. I don’t mean that in a bad way. How many people’s research do we encounter that we don’t know much about the person who wrote it? For example, maybe they read your peer-reviewed research article, but yours is one of 7 names. How do they know what you bring to the lab just based on the name on the paper?
Help students sign up for the right class when it’s yours. A few ways to do that are by updating your faculty profile, sharing a bit about your classes on a Teaching page on your website, or sharing a bit about your teaching and student transformations in your bio.
Opportunities to collaborate with your university
In my senior year, I was featured in a university video as part of their annual fundraising gala. A documentary director from HBO came to campus with her videographer to help share my story. To share how, as a student without parents, I was able to thrive academically and creatively as part of my university’s community. A success story because of the people who taught me, who mentored me, who supported me through.
I got that opportunity because a person on the planning team for the video series knew my story and recommended me specifically. I remember feeling honored.
What about if you hear of an opportunity on campus to highlight your student or class? Is that something you’d be open to?
I’m smiling right now because I feel lucky to have professor clients who trust me. Some of them now have videos “I never considered or dreamed of” because they were open to or offered to collaborate on opportunities.
Teachers don’t often know that what they are doing in the classroom can become local or national news, that sometimes it becomes a heart-warming or eye-opening, or science-sharing article. Or other output.
There are communication people at different levels in your university. It’s possible there is someone at the school level, department level, and at the university level…The people who you might collaborate with may have marketing as a goal, but they may be from the alumni association. Or the arts department. Or collaboration that benefits the school in a wider way. If you’re open to that kind of collaboration, there are lots of possibilities for you that can benefit your students in a lot of ways, or highlight your students.
Your online presence might attract aligned media inquiries that feature your class or students. It’s great for them, perhaps celebrating their learning and outcomes. There are many professors who end up removing themselves from that story. You don’t have to be the center of the story. It’s okay if you prefer (or the feature necessitates) that your students be the focus.
Don’t protect yourself from those media requests. Be open to a potential conversation. Even if you worry that it feels self-promotion, there are ways to steer that to highlight your students instead.
The way I recommend faculty start to attract that kind of attention in the future is to
- Collaborate with the university
- Be open sharing your research or teaching transformations/outcomes online
- Get permission to share photos of students in advance.Let them know where you’ll be sharing it (on LinkedIn article, blog post for campus newsletter). Be transparent about your hopes and intentions for the information will help you have a more intentional collaboration with the student or class to share their story.
- When you have news that appears about you or your online, consider sharing it with your students
It helps to think in advance about what you might do if an opportunity arises.
What would you do if something like a video or news opportunity comes along for you?
Would you be open to collaborating with your university to celebrate your class, research, or students’ stories?
What about if a local or national news organization reaches out to your faculty email?
Considering what you might be open to now may help an opportunity that arises in your future feel more comfortable (especially if it comes at a busy time during the semester).
Advocate for your students and mentees
When something happens in a students life, they may create a way to ask for help.
This story comes from my personal experience. My parents had each passed away before I went to college. One of the ways I supported myself through college was serving as a resident assistant. I found a deep empathy for how the personal lives of students affected their academic success.
Every year, students (faculty, and staff) had a negative experience due to loss, trauma, or other unexpected event. In many of those instances, there was an ask for help. Sometimes it came from the student, or a friend/family member. Other times, a student club or organization may hope to fundraise to support a member of their community.
Finding that officially university channels can’t support sharing a GoFundMe link like on social media or in an email newsletter, can feel frustrating. It can feel unfair. Or even harmful. Especially if it happens to you or your student.
One of the most frustrating things I encountered was the inability for universities to publicly advocate for their most vulnerable students when opportunities are created to help. I also understand reasons for that, including monetary policies at nonprofit institutions.
When you personally have an online presence, you have more ability to help. To repost or share. To amplify the story of. To not let something go unheard. To share your support.
To advocate for your student if a need should ever arise. It’s a reason you don’t typically think of until it’s already upon you. Rather than being reactive to a sudden need, I hope this story helps you consider now if advocacy for your students is something you may want to better do in the future. Should a need arise, here’s what you can do when you need an online presence as an academic quick.
I was prompted to share this particular point because news outlets have been reporting how many letters of support, for example, an international student has gotten after being detained here in the United States. I think about each of those letters. The words, feelings, thoughts, and intentions faculty are putting into their letters. Even though this came up because of what’s happening here in higher education…
In times of non-crisis, having this ability to advocate for your students online can be really helpful. It may make simpler actions like
- Share your students fundraiser to support their research project
- Share a GoFundMe link or other fundraiser to support them
- Posting an article or press release about your student / your student’s research
- Reposting your student’s post / article / video (sharing what they’ve created to advocate for themselves)
You having a strong online presence can facilitate your advocacy for your students if that’s helpful for you. And, it has potential to help them even after they’ve moved on to their future lives and careers.
RESOURCES
If you’ve found this post helpful, please share it with a friend or colleague. Thank you for reading!
The next blog post will be about ways scientists and researchers can communicate research and engage with people online. I’ve got lots of ideas to share with you beyond websites and social media.
Here’s 19 possibilities for your digital presence as an academic:
- Bio / faculty profile
- Websites
- Social Media
- Substack / LinkedIn Newsletter / Email List
- Video / YouTube
- Data Viz
- Graphic design, comics, and illustrations
- Slides and presentations
- Op-ed Writing, public writing
- TED Talks / Public speaking
- Fundraising / advocating for the importance of research funding
- In person or on paper outputs that help bring people to your online presence too (e.g. handout, grantwriting, nomination, or application)
- Online events and class visits
- Podcasts
- Blogs
- Interviews
- Documentaries
- Collaboration and partnerships
- Media quotes, mentions, and features
Find free resources to help you (and your students) have a stronger online presence here on The Social Academic blog.
