Influential Woman · Writing Consultant and Professor
Barbara Jane Risman
PhD
Distinguished Professor Emerita, The Writing Guides
Chicago, Il, IL 60608
Her Story
About Barbara
Barbara Risman is a Distinguished Professor Emerita of Sociology at the University of Illinois Chicago, where she started in 2007 and retired last August. With a PhD earned in 1983 from the University of Washington in Seattle and a BA from Northwestern University, she has built a distinguished career in academia focused on mentoring doctoral students and training a new generation of scholars. Risman is also the founder of The Writing Guides, a consulting firm established about 2 years ago that works with academic writers as a writing coach. Through workshops at conferences and universities, online sessions, and work with individual clients on producing or revising manuscripts, she helps scholars communicate their research effectively. She has served as president of Sociologists for Women in Society and the Southern Sociological Society, vice president of the American Sociological Society, co-chair and executive director of the Council on Contemporary Families, and currently serves on the National Chapter Advisory Board of the Scholar Strategy Network. Among her honors are the 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Council on Contemporary Families and mentoring awards from Sociologists for Women in Society and the Graduate College at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Barbara
01What do you attribute your success to?
I believe I have been successful in my career because I was lucky enough to find a way to earn a living doing the work that I am passionate about, research, teaching, and mentoring. Although I have retired from the University of Illinois at Chicago, I am keeping my passion for teaching and mentoring alive by continuing to educate graduate students and faculty internationally on how to write effectively about their research.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
The best career advice I've ever received was that success is 51% about effort and only 49% about talent.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
Be clear about your reasons for wanting to be a professor. Are you passionate about teaching? Are you passionate about a particular research topic? Clarify your own goals, and then look for the kind of position where what you want is supported and rewarded. For some people, that means a community college where you work closely with students who are motivated but not necessarily well prepared, and they need great teachers. For some people that means a department where your worth will be measured by your research productivity. You can't find a job to succeed in until you know what you love to do.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
Higher education is facing existential challenges right now. The most serious comes from the federal government, which seems intent on defunding science, especially social science. That is a challenge that has to be met as a society, and political change. The other existential threat is AI, and that challenge has to be dealt with by faculty conversation, deliberation, and regulation.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
In both my work and my personal life, I strive to make the world a better place, with kindness to those in my personal realm, by mentoring others, and by working hard to translate scientific knowledge into public good.
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