About
I help faculty reclaim the narrative of their scholarly lives.
So their work reflects what they actually came to academia to contribute — not someone else's definition of what matters.
I'm Dr. Brielle Harbin, founder of Your Cooperative Colleague — a faculty burnout coaching and higher education consulting practice for professors and institutions ready to design how academic work gets done.
The Person Behind the Work
I’m a political scientist, educator, and the 2023 APSA Distinguished Teaching Award recipient.
I spent over a decade inside higher education as a tenure-track faculty member. I taught political science. I mentored students. I published. I served on committees. I did all the things you’re supposed to do — and I did them well.
I earned tenure. I won the 2023 American Political Science Association’s Distinguished Teaching Award.
And somewhere along the way, I realized something that changed the direction of my career: the system I was working inside was never designed to sustain the kind of work I came to academia to do. Not for me, and not for most of the faculty I knew.
So I started solving that problem. First for myself — building systems, rhythms, and boundaries that let me do rigorous, meaningful work without constant overextension. Then for other faculty who were asking the same questions I’d been asking: Why does this feel so hard? Is it supposed to cost this much? What would it look like to do this differently?
That’s what Your Cooperative Colleague is.
What I Actually Do
Systems thinking.
I’ve spent years dissecting and critiquing the “how to work” problem in academia—how to manage a research pipeline, how to teach without it consuming everything, how to track progress in ways that keep you grounded. I’ve built the systems so you don’t have to start from scratch.
This is the work of the Scholarly Systems Reset and the Sustainable Faculty Life by Design workshop series.
Narrative work.
Faculty have inherited a definition of scholarly success they never chose — publish endlessly, chase prestige, seek external validation.
I help them see how those scripts drive their overwork, separate what they inherited from what's actually theirs, and define what "enough" looks like on their own terms.
Institutional redesign.
For institutions, I work at the systems level — helping leaders redesign the conditions under which faculty teach, write, and lead. This work is grounded in Civic Courage by Design — a framework for moving beyond conflict avoidance toward more intentional ways of engaging disagreement, complexity, and change. Not resilience workshops. Not time management tips. Structural change that makes sustainability possible.
A Guiding Belief
Higher education doesn’t need more individual endurance. It needs better design.
The faculty who are struggling aren’t struggling because they lack discipline or commitment. They’re struggling because they’ve been working inside structures that rely on invisible labor, informal norms, and personal sacrifice to function—and they’ve been told that’s just what academic life requires.
It doesn’t. Proving that—one faculty member, one institution, one redesigned system at a time—is what this work is about.
Recognition and Context
I’m the recipient of the 2023 American Political Science Association’s Distinguished Teaching Award and have partnered with research universities, teaching-focused institutions, and military service academies on faculty development and institutional design.
My approach is grounded in both research and practice. I don’t offer theory without having lived inside the systems I’m helping people navigate. Every framework I teach, I built first for myself.
How This Work Takes Shape
For individual faculty: The Scholarly Systems Reset is where most of this work begins — three private sessions where we untangle what you inherited from what's actually yours, so that every system, tool, and decision that follows has a foundation you built on purpose. The Sustainable Faculty Life by Design workshop series offers monthly sessions for faculty ready to solve a specific, bounded problem right now. Notes From a Work Friend is my weekly Substack newsletter that gives faculty language for what they're experiencing but haven't been able to name.
For institutions: Through keynotes, workshops, cohort programs, and strategic partnerships— helping academic leaders redesign the systems that shape faculty experience, retention, and contribution. All grounded in Civic Courage by Design.
Ongoing Connection
Notes from a Work Friend
Story-rich reflections on teaching, writing, and leadership in higher education — for those reimagining what sustainable academic work can look like.
Contact
You don't have to have it all figured out to start a conversation. If something on this page resonated — that recognition is worth following.