The age-old challenge of navigating the academy to gain tenure still persists. While today more doors are open for a diverse talent pool, successfully breaking down barriers requires understanding how to maneuver around pitfalls throughout all stages of one's career. While tenure continues to be the major priority for junior professors, long-term…

While women have been increasingly finding their place as STEM professionals, that has been an unsteady trend. Some have enrolled in Ph.D. programs but dropped out. Others, meanwhile, are left to ask: After gaining tenure, what to do next? How does one thrive as a tenured professor with the same ease, efficiency, and longevity of career as their…

Despite decades of research and recommendations, a revolving door continues to cycle Black and Hispanic faculty into and out of predominantly White higher education institutions. Interviews with the scholars and researchers who have examined this issue in recent years suggest that, although some institutions have ramped up their recruitment and…

It used to be that newly minted Ph.D.s had to establish themselves and cut their academic teeth at less competitive colleges and universities. That was certainly true for young Black scholars. The prospects of landing a coveted teaching position at one of the nation's eight Ivy League institutions were dim. In the years leading up to the Civil…

This article discusses how a Harvard-educated scholar of English and poetry, Dr. M. Lee Pelton puts a prominent face on changes that are underway at Boston's Emerson College. Faced with a public controversy over its limited faculty diversity, Emerson College has responded with a spate of hirings and promotions of minorities, capped by the…

Women's numbers in coveted tenure positions and leadership posts--while growing--still lag behind those of men. From the implementation of family-friendly policies to aggressive diversity initiatives, many universities are trying to change that. The American Association of University Professors reported in a 2006 study that women are being hired…

Despite U.S. higher education facing a wave of retirements by older baby boomer and World War II-era born professors, there remain large pockets in the academic work force, such as life science faculties at research universities and humanities/social science faculties across all of academia, where tenure-track jobs are scarce and the market is…

This article discusses an online-only tenure track program at Georgia Perimeter College (GPC) where full-time online-only professors achieve tenure under the same conditions as classroom professors. That means teaching for five years at the rank of assistant professor, or higher, before being eligible to apply for tenure. The professor then is…

It's been 21 years since the nation's first Ph.D. program in African American studies was established at Temple University. One of only 10 university departments in the U.S. that trains doctoral students in Black studies, the Temple program is the top producer of Ph.D. recipients in the field with 160 doctoral graduates. This fall semester, Dr.…

Several recent studies examining campus employment patterns over the last 10, 20 or 30 years show an increasing dependence on adjuncts and a large expansion of support staff, the latter driven by the need to comply with government regulations, provide information technology services and meet student demand for creature comforts on campus. Among…

As the new vice chancellor for student affairs at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1971, Dr. Randolph W. Bromery had not given any thought to moving up to chancellor. But the president of the UMass system, Dr. Robert C. Wood, had contemplated the possibility. Then he made it happen. Indisputably, Wood's gamble worked out. For eight…

After two college presidencies, Dr. James Hefner is taking time to pursue his avocations, while still in demand within academia. The average college president's tenure lasts around five years. In 2005, Dr. James Hefner had served more than four times that long in the position: seven years as the president of Jackson State University and 14 years…

Tenure or baby? Motherhood or Dr. Mom? Many women in higher education still view family and career as an either/or proposition, while the institutions they work in profess to be making strides that would lessen their burden. The nation's colleges and universities are addressing the situation with programs that allow women, and sometimes men who…

There's some good news in the academy regarding Black women: They occupy a number of high-profile executive posts in higher education. But whether Black women scholars want to follow in their footsteps or continue in a teaching or research capacity, the bad news is that many feel they are left to navigate the personal and professional politics of…

It was the kind of crisis most universities dread. In November 2006, a group of minority student leaders at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) threatened to sue the university if administrators did not heed demands that included providing more funding for multicultural student groups. This article discusses how this threat…