I use the intersectionality framework to understand how processes of tenure and promotion operate as a system that systematically advantages members of some groups while systematically disadvantaging members of other groups. Empirically, I examine how gender, race, ethnicity, and nativity combine to structure the institution of tenure and…

Faculty job satisfaction is critical to the success of students and institutions of higher education. Satisfaction of faculty has often been tied to the autonomy of faculty to complete their work with many faculty viewing themselves as independent contractors whose roles and identities are separate from the institution's, but the implications of…

While interdisciplinarity has been promoted in universities for decades, research suggests that untenured faculty struggle to receive recognition for their interdisciplinary research. Informed by the microfoundations of institutional theory and discursive legitimation, we examine how members of academic departments participate in the legitimation…

Utilizing the concepts of time and academic capitalism in the neoliberal university, this qualitative study examined 12 tenured faculty members' sensemaking of productivity from their sabbatical leaves from one research university in the United States. The commodification of time and outputs from the sabbatical in remunerative terms as well as…

In tenure and promotion denial lawsuits against historically White institutions, Black professors submit evidence of discrimination based on implicit and explicit bias and gendered racism, yet legal redress rarely occurs because many courts will not recognize structural inequities as a persisting reality in academia. Informed by intersectional…

The decades between tenure and retirement constitute the longest yet least understood period of a faculty member's career. Previous research depicts the midcareer as fraught with reduced job and career satisfaction, lowered productivity, and even stagnation. However, we suggest a reframing of this period. Drawing on data from surveys and…

Numerous observers and critics of higher education, including some policymakers, have suggested that hiring and maintaining faculty on tenure lines is a primary source of inefficiency in colleges and universities. These "disrupters" argue that reducing commitments to tenure will lead to cost savings and more effective adaptations to…

U.S. universities are fraught with institutional barriers that challenge Black faculty members' ability to thrive in academia, while they also make attempts to broaden access and participation in fields like engineering and computing. The diversity-related service requested of Black faculty members can negatively complicate their chances for…

Over the last three decades, interdisciplinary cluster hiring programs have become popular on research university campuses as an approach to fostering interdisciplinary collaboration. These programs have not yet been rigorously evaluated across multiple institutions and multiple thematic fields. The paper reports the results of a survey of 199…

Based on the job demands-resources model and role conflict theories, we developed and tested hypotheses to elucidate the consequences that work-to-life and life-to-work conflicts have on job satisfaction and how affective, normative, and continuance professional commitment moderate these relationships. Using data collected from German academics,…

University presidents face a variety of competing demands and pressures to successfully lead their institutions. We sought to better understand these issues by studying unsuccessful presidencies ending in an involuntary turnover. We collected data on 1,029 presidential terms across 256 institutions with Division I athletics from 1988 to 2016. Our…

Network formation is a key element of newcomer socialization; however, little is understood about how newcomer networks are formed in higher education. Drawing on a series of interviews with 34 new pre-tenure faculty members, we propose that just as individual and organizational socialization tactics interactively influence newcomer adjustment…

With the aim of advancing the growing research literature on faculty development, a model of pretenure faculty success in teaching and research was proposed. Building from the early-career faculty literature and self-determination theory, we hypothesized that balance, clear expectations, and collegiality predict success by supporting autonomy,…

Kimball begins this essay by comparing the start of the "golden age" of liberal arts education as the period between about 1950 and 1975 when American higher education's revenue and enrollments of colleges and universities grew enormously. During the subsequent silver age of academe, ending in the Great Recession of 2008-2009,…

Collegiality, which indicates respect, a voice in decision making, and a commitment to the common good, is central to academic governance and faculty culture. However, as faculty work is increasingly unbundled, little is known about how concepts traditionally applied to tenure-track faculty, such as collegiality and the collegium (to which access…