Tactics to cultivate research leaders and sustain research activity
To retain faculty talent and produce quality research, university research leaders must provide professional development opportunities to faculty members throughout their careers. While early-career faculty often work under clear expectations, are protected from service obligations, and have multiple supports, faculty later on in their careers face many potential stall points.
After being awarded tenure, faculty may experience a post-tenure slump due to new teaching and service duties, a lack of clear expectations, and the time needed to ramp up new research programs. Faculty who never recover from this slump become perennial associate professors who may shift their interests due to frustration and the lack of promotion. And after age 55-60, many faculty members risk becoming disengaged, waiting for a better retirement package and worrying about life after retirement.
This resource is part of the Build a Comprehensive Faculty Research Development Program Roadmap. Access the Roadmap for stepwise guidance with additional tools and research.
Furthermore, there is little evidence that post-tenure reviews improve faculty productivity. Post-tenure reviews might happen years after a problem first occurs, and they assume the problem lies entirely with the faculty member rather than the larger organization. Administrators also have few levers to punish under-productive faculty and are rarely willing to use them—and even when they do, punitive measure usually don't make faculty more productive.
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