Second Career Professionals: Transitioning to the Faculty Role.

Abstract

With midlife career transitions becoming more common, and colleges and universities needing to replace retiring faculty more professionals who have attained doctoral degrees may be transitioning to a second career in the academy. While their practitioner-based knowledge and leadership skills might be welcomed, especially in applied degree programs, they could face unanticipated challenges, as may their colleagues. Themes that arose from reflective sessions between two such faculty members and a mentoring colleague are shared, along with recommendations for those considering such a transition, their campus colleagues and for faculty developers and administrators. Mid-life career transitions are now common, even expected. We hear about how over the course of our lives, we may not only have many different jobs, but also make several career moves. For those of us working in the academy, this trend has largely gone unnoticed. However, faculty members beginning a career in the academy after years in professional positions are now being sought as colleges and universities begin to replace retiring faculty and strive to meet the accreditation requirements of professional schools. This may be most common in applied fields such as education, human services, business, and management. These professors are appreciated for their depth of experience and the expertise in practicing their profession. However, when they arrive, they may experience an orientation and initiation that does not meet their particular needs, as it is designed for the newly minted Ph.D. As we welcome and orient faculty colleagues, what might we need to consider regarding their various career paths to the professoriate? In what ways do second career professionals transitioning to the academy have similar or different issues, concerns and challenges as someone direct from a traditional doctoral program? How might their years of experience in their profession positively influence or inhibit their transition to work roles, organizational cultures, and career challenges? Do their transitions pose challenges that may go unnoticed? Do we make assumptions about their ability to make a successful transition? Perhaps how we respond to the needs of colleagues requires an awareness and sensitivity to generational cohort and career stage. Reviewing the faculty development literature we find a wealth of information on faculty, including research, theory and strategies (Gillespie, Hilsen, «Sc Wadsworth, 2002; Gray & Birch, 2008; Seldin, 2006). However, the majority of this literature focuses on the recent Ph.D. graduate. When Garner (2005) considers the future of faculty preparation and speaks to its reformation, she concentrates on the curriculum of graduate education and the preparation of traditional career path Ph.D.' s . While her focus on improved preparation for teaching and for academic service, as well as learning to be a competent researcher, is well taken, she only sees this in the context of a traditional path to the professoriate. Sorcinelli (2007) in a recent issue of Peer Review assigns new faculty development as a critically important area to (p. 5). She and her colleagues provide an extensive look at working with faculty, but with little attention to career transition colleagues (Sorcinelli, Austin, Eddy «Sc Beach, 2006). If we are to take seriously Austin and Wulffs (2007) conclusion that, given the changing context in higher education, creative attention should be directed to the preparation of the next generation of faculty members, we cannot neglect this significant population of faculty (p. 13). To address this issue, we present experiences of two faculty members who had extensive experience in their professions prior to entering the academy, along with perspectives of their colleague, a senior faculty member who as part of an informal mentoring relationship, sought to understand their concerns and challenges. …