S2S stands for Strength-to-Strength or Struggle-to-Strength based on people’s preferences, contexts, and needs. In this program, we help educators, qualitative researchers, and academic leaders craft a purpose-driven blueprint for their careers, integrating their strengths and talents and enacting an aligned project without compromising their passion and purpose. The goal is to help everyone discover their zone of brilliance and cultivating their work from that zone.
These projects range from academic research to developing strategic missions and visions for educational leaders. We support faculty and academic leaders through tenure, promotion, and post-tenure career development. For graduate students, we help enhance their research and writing skills and establish solid frameworks for their research or professional goals.
For qualitative researchers and academic leaders, we are the leading academic mentoring service. We are uniquely focused on holistic professional development and align scholars and academic leaders congruently with their professional goals and life-work balance.
If you believe that your work should be purpose-driven, robust, and dialed in and consequently become a possibility model for those who come after you while you feel fulfilled, energized, and with expanded capacity, then S2S mentoring could be for you.
We are currently moving platforms, so enrolling in the program now offers the following:
Lifetime access to new and existing content
Unlimited requests for workshops for skill enhancement
Lifetime access to our writing circle
Lifetime access to our community
Access to weekly live mentoring with Dr. Bhattacharya or another experienced facilitator
To apply for the program, please click on the button below.
We serve graduate students, faculty, academic leaders, independent researchers, and academic adjacent professionals.
Mentees will:
progress through the program via watching on-demand videos
completing homework for every module to receive feedback
request customized workshops for skill development in qualitative research, strategic leadership mission and vision building, life-work balance, academic writing, theory building, and academic wellness
attend weekly mentoring meetings to receive feedback and deepen their knowledge and understanding of their chosen projects
attend co-working writing sessions to create writing rituals and be supported by a community
participate in relevant programs and workshops suited to the mentees' customized professional development needs
Enrollment is currently open, but Dr. Bhattacharya is selective and handpicks every mentee to ensure a fit. The acceptance rate for the program is 33.33% of all applicants thus far.
To apply for the program, complete the MAP assessment form.
The foundation program focuses on understanding one's positionality in academia and crafting projects for professional development as scholars, academic leaders, academic adjacent professionals, or independent researchers.
Additionally, the program supports participants in maintaining a healthy life-work balance, handling difficult conversations, and navigating reviews and critical feedback. It helps create professional agendas that align with their positionality and culture, including research, writing, and leadership goals. The program also offers strategies for responding to critical reviews, avoiding burnout, and countering harmful narratives.
In this program, you will learn how to work from a place of inspiration, joy, life-work balance, and harmony instead of the normalized hustle and grind.
The curriculum is a six-module self-paced program. You will submit homework and receive feedback. You will also have lifetime access to content and weekly coaching meetings.
We meet every Thursday from 4-5 pm E.S.T., and the breakdown of the meetings is as follows:
1st Thursday of the month: Qualitative research workshop customized to the mentees' needs. Mentees request what workshop they need for their professional skill development. Academic leaders and adjacent professionals can request strategic mission and vision mapping workshops, leadership and problem-solving workshops, and other relevant research-based conversations aligned with their professional aspirations.
The second Thursday of the month: Research writing and publication workshop customized to the needs of the mentees. Mentees request what workshop they need for their professional skill development.
The 3rd and 4th Thursday of the month: Questions and answers from the mentees based on their learning and professional development needs.
Module contents include (but are not limited to):
Understanding personal and professional positionality
Creating empowering personal and professional narratives that help in developing a successful career in academia
Understanding, neutralizing, and working with issues of stuckness, impostor syndrome, writing blocks, etc.
Building healthy boundaries
Deepening the "Why" of your work
Crafting a customized, wholeness-centered, culturally situated, purpose-driven framework for your research, writing, leadership, and professional agenda (M.A.P.)
Enhancing your skills in qualitative research and academic writing
Responding to criticism of your work without draining your internal resources
Modeling embodied work and leading from a place of embodied understanding in one's professional career-building
Developing justification strategies for your work, navigating difficult conversations, de-escalating conflict
Your customized blueprint (M.A.P.) will guide your professional and research goals, strategic mission and vision, and tenure and promotion narrative. It will also help you evaluate which projects and invitations to accept or decline. The M.A.P. will be tailored to align with your strengths, purpose, and positionality.
You will receive customized feedback from Dr. Bhattacharya or one of our academic coaches (as we expand) on your work within a week of your submission of homework. We want you to feel supported, heard, seen, and nourished.
We want you to feel fully supported as you go through this program. You can access weekly live mentoring meetings with Dr. Bhattacharya or another experienced academic coach. If you are part of the current enrollment, you will have lifetime access to these meetings, which will be recorded and shared as replays.
If you are not part of the current enrollment, you will have access to all materials and replay for a year and can continue as alumni for a small fee afterwards.
In pricing the S2S program, we’ve managed to keep the financial investment at a respectable number for deep mentoring (lifetime access for beta members). The investment is a mid-four-figure investment in alignment with other comparable mentoring programs. If there is a match and you are offered a spot in the program, Dr. Bhattacharya will help you with a flexible payment structure. You can discuss these options with Dr. Bhattacharya if a mutual fit exists.
The price is lower than existing mentoring programs that do not offer the level of high touch and customized support this program offers. Also, this price is meant to reduce your other costs of living with your academic stressors and misalignments. Thus, the price is far less than the ongoing costs (health issues, stress issues, mental health issues, fatigue, and burnout issues) that easily create multiple expensive problems and drain your financial and other resources that cannot even be priced.
What is the price of emotional burden, health consequences, and the toll on your confidence from working all the time for very little return?
You must consider what you are paying for if you want the clarity of a fully dialed-in, purpose-driven, robust professional and/or qualitative research driven agenda.
What is the cost of compartmentalizing yourself instead of being fully yourself and bringing all of your talents to your work and working from the zone of your brilliance?
You can enroll in the program at any time. The weekly Live Mentoring sessions will be announced in advance to you. If you cannot attend those live, you can send your questions or workshop requests, and Dr. Bhattacharya will respond to your questions during the live session.
Here is the breakdown of learning objectives via the modules:
S2S Module Outcomes
Module 0: Orientation, Logistics, and Inspiration for Success
By the end of this module you will
Know exactly how to navigate the S2S program for your academic success
Identify intrinsically motivated incentives for your academic success
Utilize helpful resources to integrate into your mentoring journey
Schedule important dates for synchronous meetings for workshops, questions, and feedback
Schedule personal and community-supported weekly writing time
Module 1: Changing Narratives and Goal Setting
Identify internalized narrative blocks that prevents your academic flow and success
Create long terms goals for your academic success
Create long term goals for your work/life balance
Implement a practice for neutralizing narrative blocks
Implement a practice for handling challenging situations in academia and beyond
Module 2: Examining Barriers and Motivation for Writing
By the end of this module you will
Understand key reasons for personal writing blocks
Pinpoint internalized detrimental narratives
Release attachment to harmful narratives
Identify purpose and passion-driven motivators for academic writing and qualitative research
Module 3: Neutralize the Negative Narratives
By the end of this module, you will
Recognize patterns from previous experiences contributing to your academic identity
Discover and implement personally congruent wisdom, beneficial for your academic identity
Understand the effects of your detrimental narratives in your academic work
Create and execute a plan to neutralize detrimental narratives
Module 4: Create a Mission M.A.P.
By the end of this module, you will
Identify purpose-driven domains of research, writing, and teaching interests
Create a personalized purpose and passion-driven strategic map for academic success
Define a cohesive and personally congruent research and writing agenda
Integrate your strategic map with work/life balance and stress management
Module 5: Enhance your Qualitative Research and Academic Writing Skills
By the end of this module, you will
Identify areas where you want to enhance your professional development skills
Gain necessary skills customized for your research and writing projects
Apply skills in specific research and writing projects
Utilize feedback received on your work to strengthen your research and writing projects
Understand how to create a customized blueprint for your academic path without compromising your purpose or passion or experiencing burnout
Identify how to handle detrimental narratives as they emerge to not create harm to yourself
Identify and neutralize the stuck places in your writing
Enhance your skills in qualitative research and academic writing
Operate from a wholeness-centered perspective in your work
Know exactly how to respond to reviewers' criticism and resistance without feeling drained
