Collaborating Across State Borders
By: Katie Eliot PhD, RDN, FAND
There were big changes at BE-Collaborative over the summer. We found out in the spring that I would be moving to Oklahoma with my family for my husband to pursue a career opportunity. While it was a hard decision to leave St. Louis and Saint Louis University, the best part about collaborative work is that the foundation we built as scholars would be able to carry on, no matter the geographic distance separating our offices.
I am currently teaching classes at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center and getting my family settled in to their new school while putting the finishing touches on a brand new house. Even with all of that going on, I’ve had some time to reflect on the benefits of a collaborative partnership.
A couple of things the move has taught me about being collaborative:
- Staying connected requires intentionality. At SLU, my office was across the hall from Tony’s. It was easy to pop into each other’s offices with a question, word of encouragement or sometimes just a quick little vent about something that wasn’t going quite right. Now, we have to schedule times to talk on the phone and be more intentional about keeping each other filled in on our work.
- Staying motivated requires intentionality. To piggyback off my previous thought…it is easier to get distracted when you aren’t running into colleague in the hallway or at a meeting. Days can turn into weeks and I realize I haven’t looked at the project. We’ve learned to set deadlines and to give each other gentle (or sometimes not so gentle) reminders to keep working.
The bottom line is that collaboration requires intentionality but a solid foundation among colleagues will help to extend work beyond state borders. In fact, right now, we are working on writing a book chapter, a multi-institution research study and our IPE consulting business.
We are picking up steam and looking forward to what the future collaborations will bring!
