About

Anna Sims Bartel, PhD

My dissertation director once said to my father-in-law: “You know what Anna’s problem is? She’s part academic, part administrator, and part activist.”

Dad said “Yep. But why is that a problem?”

I’ve spent my whole career, even my whole life, following my nose. Like moths, described by the entomologist in Barbara Kingsolver’s novel Prodigal Summer, I don’t focus on a goal in the distance and travel a straight line towards it; I am always microsampling my environment for concentrations of the things I need. I fly toward them: community, integrity, public purpose, creativity, generosity, generativity, beauty…

This means I can look, er, nontraditional. I started Princeton at 16 and earned two more degrees from Cornell University. I’ve never held a job that existed before me. I’ve worked at four different higher education institutions in three different states, but always working toward the same goal: helping higher education be more useful in the world, by nurturing the spirits and practices of the scholars who make it so. How do I do that?

• By helping people develop a clearer sense of themselves and each other, using participatory and reflective approaches like Liberating Structures, Art of Hosting, deliberative dialogue, appreciative interviews, and a lot more…
• By working with teams, departments, issue-oriented groups, etc. to build a shared sense of purpose and a common vision, and then to put that into practice…
• By helping people, groups, institutions understand the kinds of impact their work has, through democratically-engaged assessment.

They say vocation is the thing you can’t not do…for me, that’s helping brilliant, generous people make the most of themselves and their sense of calling, especially in academic contexts.

I am excited to bring my wide range of skills and experiences to support of your important work.