Opportunities for Late Career Faculty
Late-career faculty are often in reflective mode about their professional life. Faculty that are well into the rank of full professor can maintain a highly active, rigorous, and enjoyable academic career. Late-career faculty often continue to impact the life of the university in substantial ways, including as department heads and in senior leadership positions. These faculty are a helpful resource for each other, and colleagues at all stages of academic development.
Montana State University has a subscription to NCFDD resources*. The following webinars
hosted on theNCFDD site focus on mid-career topics.
"What I Wished I Would Have Known after Becoming a Full Professor"
“Becoming a full professor represents a remarkable achievement. It also can represent the beginning of a new chapter of a faculty member’s life as they (re)consider their professional and personal goals, explore diverse career paths, and consider new opportunities. In this session, a panel of full professors from different disciplines and institutions will share their experiences, insight, and advice to support the success of soon-to-be and new full professors.”
How to Be a Strong Sponsor and Advocate for Faculty
“In this webinar, Dr. Yacobucci explains the important role that sponsors and advocates can play in supporting their diverse faculty colleagues’ career advancement. She highlights the barriers that prevent marginalized faculty from receiving effective sponsorship and explores how sponsors and advocates can act as allies for their colleagues. Eight essential sponsorship strategies are introduced, with numerous specific actions related to each one. Common pitfalls to avoid are also highlighted.”
So You’re Thinking of Retiring: Imagining Life after the Academy
“This webinar will discuss various approaches to retirement, thus helping you set your personal and, if you want, professional goals for this new time of life.
Understanding the context in which you will retire is critical, including such things as different institutional policies; personal choices, and financial matters.”
Coming Soon!
This is not meant to be an exhausted list of reading on this topic. We will update
this page as new materials are identified.
Articles
Baldwin, R.G. and Zeig M.J. (2013). 'Gray'-cious Conclusion to a Career.Inside Higher Ed
Baldwin, R.G. and Zeig M.J. (2013). The Potential of Late-Career Professors.Inside Higher Ed
Trower, C. A. (2011). Senior faculty satisfaction: Perceptions of associate and full professors at seven public research universities. Research Dialogue, 101. TIAA-CREF.
Kennedy, J.T., & Jain-Link, P. (2019), Sponsors need to stop acting like mentors. Harvard Business Review. https://hbr.org/2019/02/sponsors-need-to-stop-acting-like-mentors
Patton, E.W., Griffith, K.A., Jones, R.D., Stewart, A., Ubel, P.A., & Jagsi, R. (2017). Differences in mentor-mentee sponsorship in male vs female recipients of National Institutes of Health grants. JAMA Internal Medicine 177(4): 580-582.
Seehusen, D.A., Rogers, T.S., Achkar, M.A., & Chang, T. (2021). Coaching, mentoring, and sponsoring as career development tools. Family Medicine 53(3): 175-820.
Would you be willing to share your advice and connect with early career faculty? We are always looking for mentors for ourFaculty Mentoring Program. If you are interested, email cfe@montana.edu or submit a mentor survey to let us know what areas you are interested in mentoring.
Fill out the Mentor questionnaire
Join a Writing Group
The Center for Faculty Excellence created writing groups using a research-based model beginning Spring 2013 and they have been extremely successful! We will conduct an information session at the beginning of each semester on the model we have used and put people into groups.
Email cfe@montana.edu if you are interested in joining a group.
Strong mentorship has been linked to enhanced mentee productivity, self-efficacy, career satisfaction, and is an important predictor of the academic success of scientists in training.