How does a successful associate professor with a distinguished publication record, a visible leadership role among women scientists on campus, and prestigious grant funding for interdisciplinary initiatives in graduate and undergraduate training as well as research feel about seeking promotion to full professor? In the course of the authors'…

The scholarship of teaching has received a considerable amount of attention in recent years, with new recognition that faculty members' research does not necessarily exclude their pedagogy. But research and teaching are not the only parts of their lives as faculty members. Much of what they do on their campuses comes under the heading of service.…

In summer 2003, two of the contributors to this article--Andrew Hershberger, a third-year assistant professor, and Dan Madigan, a faculty development director--met to talk about "balance" in the lives of junior faculty. How, for example, can faculty in the early stages of their careers better negotiate their roles as teachers and scholars at…

Provoked by the tendency of contemporary college faculty to spend substantial time at the computer, the author consults the writings of an eighteenth-century physician, Bernardino Ramazzini, on the illnesses of workers for insights into the physical illnesses of sedentary scholars and for the preventive measures he prescribed. (MSE)

College faculty are offered ways to assess their time management practices, recognize common time traps, keep urgent matters from overtaking their schedules, prioritize activities based on a matrix of importance and urgency, build on important-but-not-urgent areas of activity, and find balance between professional and personal aspects of life.…

Both terrors and pleasures of college teaching come from the teacher's relationship to time, fluid and structured. Teachers sometimes linger over preparation because they find there a major satisfaction of their work: time to read, think, and prepare for conveying their knowledge to students. The evanescence of the work itself and the permanence…

Young college faculty who have received their first job offer are given advice on negotiating terms of the position, including salary, moving expenses, teaching load, and fringe benefits. Approaches discussed include knowing oneself, gathering information, negotiating, becoming informed about campus resources, and keeping track of decision…

To address the sources of stress in academic life requires an understanding of the multiple worlds within which faculty work and which create the complex tapestry of their lives. The use of short-term and long-term strategies can help faculty gain more control over the elements in their lives. (MLW)

Three myths about tenure are discussed: (1) that tenure is responsible for the increasing cost of education; (2) that the solution to increasing costs is to run a college like a business; and (3) that university presidents and administrators need flexibility to hire and fire professionals to achieve both cost containment and their new vision of…

The American Association of University Professors statement concerns policies and practices that open senior academic appointments to persons with reduced workloads and salaries without loss of status. (MSE)

A profile is presented of Michael Flachmann, professor of English at California State University at Bakersfield and one of four 1995 Professors of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. The discussion includes his teaching philosophy, professional and personal activities and interests, and students' comments. (MSE)

The focus on the debate over college teaching vs. faculty research productivity, although important, ignores the central issue of the need to restore proper funding for higher education. Underfunding higher education ultimately destroys both quality and access and affects the public sector the most. (MSE)

Discusses "National Labor Relations Board v. Yeshiva University," which ruled that college faculty were managers and thereby excluded from collective bargaining, focusing on why the Supreme Court classified professors as managers, whether the Court did something unusual in this case, or whether faculty is simply the unlucky vanguard of a…

A new generation of young academics, known as gypsy scholars, find themselves hired temporarily, drawing the worst teaching assignments, having the heaviest workloads, and having the lowest pay. Tenure is seen as academia's brass ring. The threat to tenure in Nevada is discussed. (MLW)

This article argues that the common legislative response to rising cost of higher education, asking faculty to take on additional teaching responsibilities, is both inconsistent with maximum-work-week law and short sighted, since it does not account for the preparation needed to teach effectively and deprives the next generation of quality…