This article takes the author's personal experience of being a Head of Department (HOD) in an English University, and frames this experience as a transition narrative. The format draws on the work of Sandra Acker, who framed her own experience as a Head of Department in Canada, in three areas. Utilising literature both on Higher Education…

Limitations come in many forms for educators of color: access, opportunities, networks, but perhaps most crucially, through forms of invalidation. Toward healing, some educators of color have written about the isolation and trauma they have experienced on college campuses. Other have written in the spirit of resistance, boasting about the skills,…

Faculty members in graduate preparation programs and former practitioners in the field often come together to think about issues and trends in the field. A pressing trend noticed lately is the proliferation of self-care. Self-care is often thought of as relaxation tactics one must complete in light of the ongoing stressors, anxieties, and duress…

The author of this article reflects on the question of how academics can increase the joyful and holistic nature of their work, in other words, how to shift from disenchantment to enchantment in the academy. The author argues that this shift is cultivated daily, not only in the "action" and "doing" portion of their work but in…

American Association of University Professors (AAUP) members are likely to be familiar with the 1960 adaptation of Howard Fast's "Spartacus" by Stanley Kubrick and Dalton Trumbo, a rousing Kirk Douglas production widely credited with breaking the Hollywood blacklist. They are a bit less likely to be among the five or six million weekly viewers of…

Antony John Kunnan is a language assessment specialist. His research interests are fairness of tests and testing practice, assessment literacy, research methods and statistics, ethics and standards, and language assessment policy. His most recent publications include a four-volume edited collection of 140 chapters titled "The Companion to…

This author asserts that faculty should publicly and tenaciously support graduate student organizing campaigns. She states this not only from her perspective as a staff member of the largest higher education local in Illinois, University Professionals of Illinois Local 4100, which represents faculty and staff at seven of the state's public…

The job market on North American campuses may be heading for the deep freeze, but hundreds of positions are opening up in the Persian Gulf as American universities scramble to set down roots in those petrodollar-rich states. The combination of money and opportunity on offer may seem hard to resist. But academics who trade the rich intellectual…

In this article, the authors provide a description of the academic climate in New Mexico. Like many other places in the world today, New Mexico is trying to find an identity in an environment that the authors label "increasingly privatized, corporatized, and militarized." New Mexico's higher education salaries are lower than those in…

The politics of dual-career academic couples, and the policies directed toward them, have been dissected and debated at length. Rarely mentioned, however, is how an academic career can be affected by a husband, wife, or significant other who is not on the professorial track. Most pairings of professor and nonprofessor work just fine. The partners…

Back in the 1970s, when the author was an art professor at California State University at Northridge, he had a colleague who absolutely would not say anything about anybody that he would not say to that person's face. Marvin Harden, the African-American artist, originally came to Los Angeles in the late 1950s from segregated Austin, Texas, to play…

The decision to leave a successful career and great earning potential to start over as a novice with new surroundings and expectations is not made without consideration of a wide array of variables. Making the transition to higher education was not an easy one and the transition itself has presented various other challenges and joys that I have…

Notes that while faculty grumble about academic writing in a "publish or perish" atmosphere, many enjoy writing and its inherent discovery processes. Presents methods and suggestions that have helped the faculty/author publish numerous works on the writing process to invite others who publish to reveal their own craft. (HTH)

Supports the assumption that there is a high incidence of stress-related pathologies among college administrators. Defines stress, enumerates seven of its causes, and identifies several strategies that can be used by individuals and organizations to reduce and manage stress. (AYC)

Reviews status of and climate for women in higher education today and presents case for creating strong, carefully constructed and integrated institutional network of women's committees as one way to foster institutional change and create more diverse and responsive educational and work environments which actively support, nurture, and empower…