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Welcome

You’re in the right place.

If you are a university faculty member or senior leader/staff manager seeking greater clarity, focus, and sustainable success in your academic career, this coaching space was created for you.

You care deeply about your work. You want to make a meaningful impact through teaching, research, extension, outreach, leadership and service, but the path to standing out, advancing, and thriving isn’t always clear.

You may find yourself asking:

Are you early in your faculty career and wanting to build momentum the right way from the start?
Are you navigating tenure, promotion, or rising expectations, and unsure where to focus your time?
Are you stepping into leadership and feeling the weight of new responsibilities and competing priorities?
Are you faculty senior leadership or professional staff manager acclimating to a new position?
Are you discerning what’s next and wanting to finish this season of your career with intention and impact?

You don’t have to do this alone.

Executive coaching offers a confidential, supportive partnership designed to help you think strategically, lead intentionally, and align your efforts with the work that truly matters in academia.

At Empowering Excellence, we partner with faculty at every career stage who are ready to move beyond simply managing academic demands, and toward thriving with clarity, purpose, and lasting impact.

If these questions resonate, scroll down to learn how coaching can support your next chapter.

Schedule a Complementary Coaching Session

Dr. Amy Kaleita, Professor and Larry & Bunita Buss Department Chair, Agricultural & Biosystems Engineering, Iowa State University

“Steve has an incredible knack for identifying your strengths and how they can be leveraged in the contexts you work in. He was able to provide suggestions for my leadership development that were aimed at helping me be more effective in my work, and growing as a leader, while aligning with my personal style and preferences.”

My
Story

I’ve Walked the Faculty Path—And I Know How Challenging (and Meaningful) It Can Be

Rooted in Grit and Grace

I was raised on a farm in northwest Iowa, the youngest of five children, growing up in a converted corn bin in a home built on grit, faith, curiosity, and a strong work ethic. Those early years shaped how I approach challenges, and how I show up for others navigating demanding, high-stakes work.

When Doubt Became Fuel

Like many faculty, my academic journey began with doubt. Early on, an advisor told me I wasn’t “likely to be successful” in engineering based on a low ACT score. Four years later, I earned my degree, and returned to work in that very same department, alongside the advisor who had once underestimated me.

If you’ve ever questioned whether you truly belong, or felt the pressure to prove yourself in academia, I understand that experience firsthand.

Walking the Full Academic Path

Over the next four decades, I experienced nearly every major milestone of the academic career. I completed my Ph.D. while teaching four courses per semester and raising four young children. I balanced teaching, advising, research, and service, often feeling the tension between competing demands and unclear priorities. I mentored more than 350 first-year students each year, helped design award-winning learning communities that significantly improved retention, and eventually served as department chair, leading my department to #1 national rankings and guiding a $72 million facilities expansion.

The Lesson That Changed Everything

Along the way, I learned something essential: success in academia is not about doing more, it's about doing what truly matters.

I also learned how easy it is for capable, committed faculty to become stretched thin, burned out, or misaligned, especially when expectations are high but guidance is unclear. I’ve lived that season myself. And I’ve experienced the clarity and renewed energy that come from aligning your work with the activities that actually create value.

Coaching Faculty at Every Stage

Today, I bring that lived experience into my coaching work with faculty across all stages of their careers:

Launching Faculty seeking confidence, focus, and a strong foundation for third-year review and tenure
Advancing Faculty navigating burnout, competing demands, and the desire to re-center around meaningful work
Legacy Faculty stepping into roles that require vision, influence, and thoughtful leadership, while considering legacy and impact

My role is not to tell you what to do or to push you harder. It’s to help you see your situation clearly, focus strategically, and move forward with intention, grounded in the realities of academic life.

Experience You Can Trust

I bring both decades of academic leadership and professional coaching training, including certifications in CliftonStrengths, CoreClarity, MBTI, DiSC, Working Genius, TKI Conflict Resolution, and The Five Behaviors. More importantly, I bring a deep understanding of faculty life from the inside.

Wherever you are in your academic journey, there is a path forward, not just to survive the system, but to flourish within it.

An Invitation

If you’re curious about what it might be like to work together, I invite you to schedule a complimentary coaching conversation.
Together, we’ll explore your current challenges, clarify your next best steps, and determine whether coaching is a good fit for this season of your career.

What Coaching Is / Is Not

What Coaching With Me Is

A confidential, thoughtful space to think clearly
Strategic, practical, and grounded in academic reality
Focused on alignment, priorities, and forward movement

What Coaching With Me Is Not

Therapy or counseling
Performance evaluation
Generic advice or one-size-fits-all solutions

How I Help Faculty Succeed—With Clarity and Intention

What Guides My Work

My mission is to help university faculty gain clarity, confidence, and strategic focus, so they can succeed in their roles, advance in their careers, and experience greater satisfaction in their academic work.

I believe faculty do their best work when they clearly understand what creates value in their position and align their time, energy, and strengths accordingly.

What I Believe About Faculty Success

I envision an academic culture where faculty are not simply surviving heavy workloads and competing demands, but are thriving with purpose, focus, and impact at every stage of their careers.

Through coaching, facilitation, and speaking, my goal is to make practical, evidence-informed support accessible to faculty who want to do meaningful work and do it well.

How I Work With Faculty

My approach is grounded in over forty years of lived academic experience and informed by professional coaching methodologies.

Rather than offering one-size-fits-all advice, I work alongside faculty to:

Clarify what success looks like in their specific role and institution
Identify which activities truly matter for performance, promotion, and impact
Align goals, strengths, and responsibilities into a sustainable, focused plan
Reduce time spent on low-impact work that drains energy without advancing outcomes

Coaching with me is practical, reflective, and action-oriented, designed to help faculty move forward with intention, not overwhelm.

The Faculty Three™ Career Coaching Framework

We have identified three critical stages of a faculty member's career, what we call the Faculty Three™, where coaching can help propel the faculty member to the next level. To learn more, select the button below for your specific stage of your career.