Preparing for Life after Administration: Stepping Away

There are many reasons why a tenured faculty member takes on an administrative role—a desire to help, the ability to influence the campus as a whole, a fear of who will take on the job if they don’t—but at some point, it is time to leave. Academic leaders either move on to another leadership position on their campus or at another institution or return to the faculty. My purpose here is not to rehearse the reasons why a leader may leave their position, though I do like Kent Syverud’s concise phrasing: “They get fired, hired, or tired.” Instead I want to focus on the extremely thoughtful and useful discussion of how to navigate a return to the faculty—whether by choice or not—in Lisa Jasinki’s Stepping Away: Returning to the Faculty after Senior Academic Leadership (Rutgers University Press, 2023).