Creative approaches to academic retirement can yield benefits for retirees, their institutions, and society at large.

Academic retirement is evolving in a larger context where coalescing demographic, economic, social, and policy trends are calling standard practice into question.

This concluding chapter reviews salient points raised in the volume. It considers what stakeholders should play a role in reinventing academic retirement. The chapter also identifies a number of issues each individual retiree must address in order to achieve a successful transition from work life to retirement.

Implementing retirement innovations requires careful attention to the organizational change process.

This chapter reviews discourses about "senior" and retired faculty. These discourses suggest a deficit or burden-based view that shapes the values and practices of faculty and department chairs. Yet retired faculty can be valuable resources and help with teaching, service, and research. A process for changing departmental views to create…

This chapter describes the types of organizations that have been established in recent years to enhance the experience and engagement of retirees from higher education institutions. Using the University of Southern California as an example, it also introduces a range of strategies institutions can employ to ease the transition into retirement.

Those who address questions about phased retirement policies should see them in a larger context of needs for flexibility in the terms of faculty employment. (Contains 2 figures.)

Phased retirement policies are more or less attractive financially and more or less accommodating of individual differences. They are also implemented in varying ways, variations that especially affect departments and academic programs.

The implications of the policy choices made in setting up a phased retirement system are demonstrated by its variety of outcomes. (Contains 5 tables.)

Late-career decisions are made by faculty who vary widely in career achievement, personal circumstances, and now, retirement patterns. (Contains 10 tables.)

Individuals who retire have widely varying needs and differ also in their preparedness for their new conditions.

Faculty now have the task of using retirement options creatively, and institutions, of finding common purpose with faculty.

The successful Career Redirection Program of Regis College is described and placed in the context of a multiple-option faculty development program, with its accompanying theoretical rationale. (Author/MLW)