How Do You Measure the Health of Your Faculty Career?

Peter Weddle's case for and method of evaluating the health of your career are excellent. However, there are many different career paths faculty members take. These paths often vary based on discipline, institution and desires. Most uniquely, faculty may have tenure as a part of their employment. As I read through Work Strong, I found myself wondering how many different ways faculty measure their career fitness, and particularly how the changing nature of the profession, and tenure, make those career vital signs different. In order to do an honest evaluation of a faculty member's career fitness, I would suggest that you need to consider the following:

Natural Passion, Calling, Avocation: As with any profession (and measured well in Work Strong's fitness test), it is important to love what you do in order to be career fit. Many professors love their research, others love teaching and many love both. After years of education and obtaining professional experiences, professors don't often become faculty by accident. However, how do the realities of being a professor meet with the expectations you have formed over the years during or prior to entering academia?

Business of Higher Education: It is easy to recognize that decreases in endowment values and state funding have changed the way positions are funded and retained. Online education has changed the delivery of education. More positions are non-tenure track, part-time, adjunct, independent contract, or a combination of these. How does the budget and delivery of higher education change your views on how being a faculty member fulfills your career ambitions?

Tenure: In the thirty years ending in 2005, the percentage of tenure track positions decreased from 56.8 to 31.9%, but the overall aggregate number of tenure track positions actually increased. This topic is not offered to describe the changes in tenure or to debate its merits, but rather as the rare species it is in the world of work. In theory, it has the effects of being a federally appointed judge -- job security for life. In addition to the academic reasons for it, tenure had both status and benefits. It may have represented movement on the corporate ladder. Does tenure motivate faculty careers today and how have the changes in tenure changed your views on what it means in an academic career?

THE Opportunity: I have a certificate hanging in my office from a one day "child raising" course my wife and I completed prior to the birth of our first daughter. Often when I look at it, I think that I spent nine years in post-secondary education and one day on how to raise a child. When I was reading the first diary entries of the career activist in Peter's book, I was struck with the exact same feeling, but realized that faculty members have the unique chance to lead by example and help young people at one of the most critical times in their career development process. Should faculty help students start forming the origins of their career desires?