Mid-Career Faculty: Trends, Barriers, and Possibilities is designed for faculty leaders, administration, policymakers, and anyone concerned with the future of higher education. This text offers an examination into an often overlooked period of academic life, that of post-tenure mid-career faculty.

The definitive career guide for grad students, adjuncts, post-docs and anyone else eager to get tenure or turn their Ph.D. into their ideal job Each year tens of thousands of students will, after years of hard work and enormous amounts of money, earn their Ph.D. And each year only a small percentage of them will land a job that justifies and rewards their investment. For every comfortably tenured professor or well-paid former academic, there are countless underpaid and overworked adjuncts, and many more who simply give up in frustration. Those who do make it share an important asset that separates them from the pack: they have a plan. They understand exactly what they need to do to set themselves up for success. They know what really moves the needle in academic job searches, how to avoid the all-too-common mistakes that sink so many of their peers, and how to decide when to point their Ph.D. toward other, non-academic options. Karen Kelsky has made it her mission to help readers join the select few who get the most out of their Ph.D. As a former tenured professor and department head who oversaw numerous academic job searches, she knows from experience exactly what gets an academic applicant a job. And as the creator of the popular and widely respected advice site The Professor is In, she has helped countless Ph.D.’s turn themselves into stronger applicants and land their dream careers. Now, for the first time ever, Karen has poured all her best advice into a single handy guide that addresses the most important issues facing any Ph.D., including: -When, where, and what to publish -Writing a foolproof grant application -Cultivating references and crafting the perfect CV -Acing the job talk and campus interview -Avoiding the adjunct trap -Making the leap to nonacademic work, when the time is right The Professor Is In addresses all of these issues, and many more.

Few things are more essential to the success of an academic institution than vital faculty members. This book is a rich combination of findings from the literature and practical tools, which together assist academic leaders and faculty in implementing and participating in a successful formal mentoring program that can be used as a strategy for maintaining the vitality of a diverse faculty across all stages of an academic career. In Faculty Success through Mentoring, the authors describe the tangible benefits of formal, traditional mentoring programs, in which mentor-mentee interactions are deliberate, structured, and goal-oriented. They outline the characteristics of effective mentors, mentees, and mentoring programs, and cover other models of mentoring programs, such as group and peer mentoring, which are particularly suited for senior and mid-career faculty. Also included are tools that institutions, mentors, and mentees can use to navigate successfully through the phases of a mentoring relationship. One of the unique features of this book is its explicit attention to the challenges to effective mentoring across genders, ethnicities, and generations. No matter what role one plays in mentoring, this book is an invaluable resource.

Video games have long been seen as the exclusive territory of young, heterosexual white males. In a media landscape dominated by such gamers, players who do not fit this mold, including women, people of color, and LGBT people, are often brutalized in forums and in public channels in online play. Discussion of representation of such groups in games has frequently been limited and cursory. In contrast, Gaming at the Edge builds on feminist, queer, and postcolonial theories of identity and draws on qualitative audience research methods to make sense of how representation comes to matter. In Gaming at the Edge, Adrienne Shaw argues that video game players experience race, gender, and sexuality concurrently. She asks: How do players identify with characters? How do they separate identification and interactivity? What is the role of fantasy in representation? What is the importance of understanding market logic? In addressing these questions Shaw reveals how representation comes to matter to participants and offers a perceptive consideration of the high stakes in politics of representation debates. Putting forth a framework for talking about representation, difference, and diversity in an era in which user-generated content, individualized media consumption, and the blurring of producer/consumer roles has lessened the utility of traditional models of media representation analysis, Shaw finds new insight on the edge of media consumption with the invisible, marginalized gamers who are surprising in both their numbers and their influence in mainstream gamer culture.

The definitive resource for mid-career professionals in the academy, this book provides a step-by-step guide to re-imagining the mid-career stage, regardless of career goals, whether aiming for full professorship or an administrative path, drawing on higher education, organizational studies, and human resource fields. Essential guidance for scholars of faculty work, faculty developers, mid-career faculty members, and institutional leaders to build a strong foundation to design a diversified portfolio of mid-career stage programming is assured. The stories, examples, literature, and resources shared throughout this comprehensive work will provide inspiration, and reality checks, to mid-career faculty and the individuals charged with better supporting them. Readers will be able to: Identify their career (or departmental/institutional) goals and next steps Determine the gaps in needed skills, tools, and experiences to support goal achievement as next steps are pursued Manage the process of taking newfound skills, tools, strategies, and resources to arrive at the intended destination. Higher education faculty, administrators, and other academic leaders will be empowered to take control of the mid-career stage by using the resources, strategies, and tools offered throughout the book to build, implement, and assess a robust mid-career faculty development program.

This book brings together leading practitioners and scholars engaged in professional development programming for and research on mid-career faculty members. The chapters focus on key areas of career development and advancement that can enhance both individual growth and institutional change to better support mid-career faculties.The mid-career stage is the longest segment of the faculty career and it contains the largest cohort of faculty. Also, mid-career faculty are tasked with being the next generation of faculty leaders and mentors on their respective campuses, with little to no supports to do so effectively, at a time when higher education continues to face unprecedented challenges while managing continued goal of diversifying both the student and faculty bodies.The stories, examples, data, and resources shared in this book will provide inspiration--and reality checks--to the administrators, faculty developers, and department chairs charged with better supporting their faculties as they engage in academic work. Current and prospective faculty members will learn about trends in mid-career faculty development resources, see examples of how to create such supports when they are lacking on their campuses, and gain insights on how to strategically advance their own careers based on the realities of the professoriate.The book features a variety of institution types: community colleges, regional/comprehensive institutions, liberal arts colleges, public research universities, ivy league institutions, international institutions, and those with targeted missions such as HSI/MSI and Jesuit.Topics include faculty development for formal and informal leadership roles; strategies to support professional growth, renewal, time and people management; teaching and learning as a form of scholarship; the role of learning communities and networks as a source of support and professional revitalization; global engagement to support scholarship and teaching; strategies to recruit, retain, and promote underrepresented faculty populations; the policy-practice connection; and gender differences related to key mid-career outcomes.While the authors acknowledge that the challenges facing the mid-career stage are numerous and varying, they offer a counter narrative by looking at ways that faculty and/or institutions can assert themselves to find opportunities within challenging contexts. They suggest that these challenges highlight priority mentoring areas, and support the creation of new and innovative faculty development supports at institutional, departmental, and individual levels.

Individuals in mid-career positions in higher education typically feel that they are faced with fewer engagement endeavors and new initiatives with which they can participate in as institutions tend to find them not as new and their ideas no longer as cutting edge, even though they very well may be. For women in academia, this phenomenon is even more complex. Typically, by mid-career, women have survived the sprint to tenure while juggling family/caregiver responsibilities. Post-tenure they may find themselves in a space where they have more control over their work and can engage at a more comfortable pace. However, without institutional support and personal determination to remain engaged, women may find themselves facing stagnation in their career development. Thus, it is essential that mentorship opportunities are established and career trajectories put in place for mid-career women. Women in Higher Education and the Journey to Mid-Career: Challenges and Opportunities considers specific challenges, issues, strategies, and solutions that are associated with female academics during mid-career phases. The book includes a variety of emerging evidence-based professional practice and narrative personal accounts as written by administrators, faculty, staff, and students. The book considers strategies for remaining vibrant and productive and suggestions from successful mid-career women academics and reflections from women who have passed the mid-career phase. Covering topics such as tenure, self-care, and academic leadership, this reference work is ideal for administrators, faculty, policymakers, academicians, scholars, researchers, practitioners, instructors, and students.