Should academic careers always unfold in exactly the same way? Is there one best way of being an academic? This book says no. Assumptions about who academics are and what they should do are becoming increasingly narrow and focused on achieving so-called ‘excellence’ in teaching and research above anything else. This book problematises this and explores the scope for doing academic careers differently. Authors paint individual or group portraits of their academic careers, working with metaphors which challenge the dominant discourses of how academic careers should be led. From rejecting the pressure to focus on ‘one big thing’, to prioritising nurture and care, transcending disciplinary boundaries, reshaping own daily practice, connecting with communities, and being academics outside academia, the chapters in this book offer those considering, starting, or developing an academic career a treasure trove of many alternative possibilities. Presented as a portrait gallery through which readers are encouraged to meander at will, this compilation of insights into alternative academic lives will help to inspire and encourage current academics to re-think and take ownership of their careers in their own terms, according to their own strengths, weaknesses, and circumstances.

Bringing together international perspectives, this book demonstrates the importance of reframing time in higher education and how we can view it as a resource to support wellbeing and self-care. Time is a central part of our lives and structures our days, and yet often we don’t think about the socially constructed nature of time or how we might reframe our relationship with time and our work in ways that support our self-care and wellbeing. Exploring Time as a Resource for Wellness in Higher Education suggests an alternative way to look at how we structure our time to better support our wellbeing. Drawing on a range of theoretical and personal perspectives, the authors advocate for a reconsideration and reconceptualization of our relationship with time. By sharing their experiences, the authors encourage readers to notice how they spend their time and offer strategies for an intentional focus on the relationship between time, self-care, and wellbeing. Whether it's making time, having time, or investing in time, this book explores strategies and reflections necessary to grow, maintain, and protect wellbeing. This book is a valuable resource for those working in higher education, offering individual, collective, and systemic suggestions and strategies for navigating the ways we see time and wellbeing.

Tracing the evolution of women's role in university education from the 19th century to the present day, this book captures the complexity of women's position within the academy and poses the critical question: Have women made a difference?

This volume connects career making to the general social context in which it takes place, careermaking individuals to the large institutional establishment in which they operate, and specifically career academicians to the overall knowledge enterprise from which they draw their intellectual inspiration, on which they build their career achievements, and to which they contribute their personal talents. The main purpose is to explore what academic institutions, the knowledge enterprise, and the society as a whole can and ought to do to enhance productivity, facilitate performance, and improve experience of individual academicians in their career-making endeavor. Although various innovative ideas are presented to improve normal procedures or standard processes throughout academia, answers to this focal question often lie in different levels of organizational units involved in academic operation. That is, what should a department do for its faculty, a college for its departments, a university for its colleges, an association for its member organizations, or a government for its academic institutions, in the best interest of the latter? Similarly, although reformative measures are proposed to the attention of established entities or institutionalized systems, change within the existing situation or practice to a large degree depends upon how people in various social roles relate to each other, in attitude as well as in behavior, when they perform their specific job. In other words, what should a professor do for graduate students, a senior scholar for junior colleagues, a chair for faculty members, a dean for chairs, a university chancellor for deans, an editor for authors, or an association president for the general membership, from the due perspective of the latter? The logic or legitimacy of examining this focal question and its organizational unit and social role is clear: a shining academician owes much to the support of his or her assistants, students, and followers, a rising university builds on the productivity of its individual divisions, and a thriving knowledge enterprise depends upon the success of individual career-making scholars. Beyond its own functionality and success, by division of labor, the higher level or the larger system has an inescapable responsibility to ensure that individual players or components therein grow, develop, and perform to the best of their potential. In content, this volume consists of sixteen chapters. Chapter 1 identifies main pathways and stages in academic careers. Chapters 2–5 focuses on the career process, exploring major requirements that an academician has to work on and fulfill in his or her career-making endeavor. These requirements include educational preparation, job search, institutional placement, and professional networking. Chapters 6–15 centers on the career structure, examining essential elements that a scholar has to build and maintain in his or her career identity. These elements range from the academic degree, position, publication, teaching, presentation, service, grants, awards, and membership in academic associations, to tenure. The last chapter capitalizes on the curriculum vitae as a miniature of the academic personality that a career professional must present to the community of scholarship.

What can we learn when we follow people over the years and across the course of their professional lives? Joseph C. Hermanowicz asks this question specifically about scientists and answers it here by tracking fifty-five physicists through different stages of their careers at a variety of universities across the country. He explores these scientists’ shifting perceptions of their jobs to uncover the meanings they invest in their work, when and where they find satisfaction, how they succeed and fail, and how the rhythms of their work change as they age. His candid interviews with his subjects, meanwhile, shed light on the ways career goals are and are not met, on the frustrations of the academic profession, and on how one deals with the boredom and stagnation that can set in once one is established. An in-depth study of American higher education professionals eloquently told through their own words, Hermanowicz’s keen analysis of how institutions shape careers will appeal to anyone interested in life in academia.

Our culture and media often simplify the choice educators face-stay in or leave classroom teaching. Written for teachers and other educational professionals, this book dispels this simple dichotomy by representing the range of responses and career pathways that enable educators to make a difference. Based on interviews with hundreds of change-minded educators, the authors share career stories and insights against a backdrop that maps out the complexities, roles, and structures that define professional advancement in education. All of the teachers in this book have taught in challenging urban contexts, fought hard to exercise their professional autonomy and responsibility to serve students well, navigated social networks of educators, friends, and family who buoy or dampen their reform spirit, and remain committed to changing society through schooling. Their stories are as instructive as they are inspiring and offer roadmaps for the current generation of change-minded educators.

This book provides a theoretical exploration of the meaning of intellectual leadership with particular reference to university professors and other senior academics. It draws on new international research data (online survey and interviews) and provides a practical series of ideas and recommendations for defining the role of a university professor.

Lifelong learning is a key feature of society today, and is apparently embraced by a wide range of educators and trainers, as well as by governments and employers. In this wide-ranging book, Sue Jackson shows that universities have been slow to embrace a lifelong learning agenda, and argues that the lifelong learning experiences of women – and especially of working-class students – are seldom welcomed in the academy. In its unique considerations of the experiences of women students and academics, this book expounds an innovative and critical analysis of women in higher education. It will give a clear indication of alternative strategies for learners, teachers and policy makers. This book will be of key interest to anyone working in the fields of lifelong learning or continuing education who is interested in making learning accessible and meaningful for disadvantaged groups. It will also appeal to students of education, women's studies, gender studies and sociology; and to those interested in issues of gender, social class, feminist theory and feminist research.

This timely Research Handbook provides a broad analysis and discussion on how academics are managed. It addresses key issues, including the changing nature of academic work and academic labour markets, issues of power, leadership, ageing, human resource management practices, and mobility.