Faculty Career Paths: Multiple Routes to Academic Success and Satisfaction (review)

A recent article in the Chronicle of Higher Education (Gravois, 2006) reported that 65% of U.S. faculty members now work in positions off the tenure track. This statistic is symptomatic of the dramatic transformation in the academic profession that is currently underway. This major transformation explains the recent spate of books examining the condition and future prospects of faculty in American colleges and universities. For example, The American Faculty: The Restructuring of Academic Work and Careers (Schuster & Finkelstein, 2006) and Rethinking Faculty Work: Higher Education's Strategic Imperative (Gappa, Austin, & Trice, 2007) each illuminates key changes in the work and lives of faculty and considers the implications of these developments for educational policy and practice. The reader who thumbs through either volume will quickly conclude that business as usual is no longer an option in postsecondary education. The days of the contemplative, pipe-smoking college professor are over. The challenge is to figure out where to go from here. How can we adapt faculty work to meet the needs of a complex, dynamic society? How do we shape a work environment that nourishes both the personal and professional lives of faculty members far more diverse than the professors for whom the traditional academic employment system was designed?

Faculty Career Paths: Multiple Routes to Academic Success and Satisfaction by Gretchen Bataille and Betsy Brown provides a helpful response to these questions. This book is a valuable complement to The American Faculty and Rethinking Faculty Work. Bataille and Brown were motivated to write by the same transformational forces that stimulated Schuster, Gappa, and their coauthors. In making its case for action, Faculty Career Paths covers some of the same issues as these other recent books on faculty. The distinctive contribution of Bataille and Brown's book is the wide range of concrete examples and best practices that it provides to readers concerned about effective strategies for meeting the needs of an increasingly diverse faculty. The rich array of policies and practices that the book reviews are by themselves worth the price of this volume. The book shows how specific higher education institutions and multi-campus systems have addressed key challenges such as dual-career couples, partner accommodations, promoting early career faculty success, and helping faculty transition into retirement. In the process, the book provides the perspective both of scholarly experts and frontline administrators. This approach balances academic idealism with a healthy dose of realism, resulting in a book that is forward-thinking but also practical. Anyone looking for ideas to address the needs of a diverse faculty across the academic career cycle will find concrete suggestions in this book. In fact, each chapter concludes with a list of specific best practices that institutions can employ to support the type of faculty discussed in that chapter. This "to do list" makes the book's recommendations easily accessible and will enhance its value as a reference to which deans, department chairs, and professors can return repeatedly for inspiration and practical problem-solving tools.

The book should be especially useful to academic leaders who have an obligation to look ahead, think creatively, and help their institutions adapt in a time of rapid change. The final chapter, "Leadership for a New Academic Environment: Developing Policy and Making Change," pinpoints many of the most vexing challenges that academic institutions confront today (e.g., the technology revolution, developing a culture of entrepreneurship, and internationalization) and provides concrete illustrations of strategies for addressing these issues. This chapter functions like an administrators' retreat where supportive colleagues identify a list of current problems and go about the room sharing practical solutions that have worked on their campuses.

Readers seeking a comprehensive overview of the faculty career and specific examples of alternative paths through academic life might be surprised by the segmented structure of Faculty Career Paths. Although the book discusses sequential phases of academic life (e.g., graduate students and postdoctoral scholars...