Strategies for Faculty Success

These titles provide information to help faculty members manage all aspects of their academic careers.

Vicki L. Baker et al., eds., Success After Tenure: Supporting Mid-Career Faculty
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.

Wendy Laura Belcher, Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks: A Guide to Academic Publishing Success
Wendy Laura Belcher′s Writing Your Journal Article in Twelve Weeks: A Guide to Academic Publishing Success is a revolutionary approach to enabling academic authors to overcome their anxieties and produce the publications that are essential to succeeding in their fields. Each week, readers learn a particular feature of strong articles and work on revising theirs accordingly. At the end of twelve weeks, they send their article to a journal. This invaluable resource is the only guide that focuses specifically on publishing humanities and social science journal articles.

Robert Boice, Professors as Writers: A Self-Help Guide to Productive Writing
This book is a self-help manual for professors who want to write more productively, painlessly, and successfully. It reflects the author’s two decades of experiences and research with professors as writers—by compressing a lot of experience in a brief, programmatic framework.

Jeffrey L. Buller, The Essential College Professor: A Practical Guide to an Academic Career
This book is about the “how” and “why” of being a faculty member in higher education today. Based on the author’s series of highly successful faculty development workshops, each chapter deals concisely with the most important information college professors need at their fingertips when confronted by a particular challenge or faced with an exciting opportunity. Written both as a comprehensive guide to an academic career and as a ready reference to be consulted when needed, The Essential College Professor emphasizes proven solutions over untested theories and stresses what faculty members need to know now in order to be successful in their careers.

Mim Carlson, Winning Grants Step by Step
Winning Grants Step by Step is the definitive guide to writing persuasive and successful proposals. In easy-to-understand terms, Mim Carlson leads you through creating a proposal—from start to finish—that fulfills the three most important criteria grantmakers demand from a competitive proposal: a clearly stated purpose describing what your organization is trying to achieve, compelling evidence that demonstrates the importance of this goal, and a well-reasoned plan that outlines how your organization will meet the goal in a cost-effective manner.

Wendy C. Crone, Survive and Thrive: A Guide for Untenured Faculty
The experience of an untenured faculty member is highly dependent on the quality of the mentoring they receive. Mentoring relationships that are driven by the mentee’s needs will be most productive, but often the mentee does not know their own needs, what questions to ask, and what topics they should discuss with a mentor. This book provides a guide to the mentoring process for untenured faculty.

A. Leigh Deneef and Craufurd D. Goodwin (Eds.), The Academic’s Handbook, 3rd ed.
Faculty members, administrators, and professionals with experience at all levels of higher education offer candid, practical advice to help beginning academics understand matters including: the different kinds of institutions of higher learning and expectations of faculty at each; the ins and outs of the job market; the tenure system; the challenges of faculty mentoring; the modern research library; the structure of university governance; and the role of departments within the university.

Robert M. Diamond, Preparing For Promotion and Tenure Review: A Faculty Guide
This practical book will help everyone preparing for promotion and tenure review to develop a solid foundation for the process. A guidebook that prepares the candidate and ensures a fair review process, it enumerates important questions to ask, lists factors to consider, and offers suggestions concerning materials to submit.

Frank F. Furstenberg, Behind the Academic Curtain: How to Find Success and Happiness with a Ph.D.
Furstenberg offers a clear and user-friendly map to the sometimes overwhelming maze that is life with a Ph.D. From working through graduate school to earning tenure to easing into retirement, from committee work to research funding to managing teaching loads, he illuminates all the challenges and opportunities that define a scholarly life, whether inside or outside of academia. Comprehensive and practical, it is an essential companion for any scholar, at any stage of his or her career.

William Germano, From Dissertation to Book
This book is the essential guide for academic writers who want to revise a doctoral thesis for publication. The author draws upon his extensive experience in academic publishing to provide writers with a state-of-the-art view of how to turn a dissertation into a manuscript that publishers will notice. Building on the idea that revising the dissertation is a process of adapting from one genre to another, Germano offers advice on such topics as rethinking the table of contents, taming runaway footnotes, shaping chapter length, and confronting the limitations of jargon. He also offers timetables to help writers plan their revision schedules.

Paul Gray and David E. Drew, What They Didn’t Teach You in Graduate School: 199 Helpful Hints for Success in Your Academic Career
What is academic life like? How do you discover its tacit rules? Develop the habits and networks needed for success? What issues will you encounter if you’re a person of color, or a woman? How is higher education changing? In 199 succinct, and often humorous but seriously practical hints, Gray and Drew share their combined experience of many years as faculty and (recovering) administrators to offer insider advice—the kind that’s rarely taught or even talked about in graduate school.

Tara Gray, Publish & Flourish
Many scholarly writers are educated at the School of Hard Knocks, but it’s not the only school, or even the best. Much is known about how to become a better, more prolific scholar and anybody can. This book outlines the specific, research-driven steps that scholars can take.

Donald E. Hall, The Academic Self: An Owner’s Manual
Donald E. Hall offers a self-help book designed for academics, from graduate students to tenured faculty. He helps readers engage in an active process of career management, goal setting, prioritization, and reflection on the norms that constitute what he calls “academic selfhood.”

Edward M. Hallowell, CrazyBusy
Being in a state of constant frenzy saps us of creativity, humanity, and mental well-being. But as Dr. Hallowell argues, this hectic condition can also be an opportunity. Through quick exercises, focused advice on everything from lifestyle to time management, and examples chosen from his extensive clinical experience. Dr. Hallowell goes step-by-step over the process of unsnarling frantic lives. If you find yourself pulled in a million different directions, here at last is the opportunity to stop being busy, start being happy, and still get things done.

Janice Harper, Mobbed! What to Do When They Really Are Out to Get You
Mobbing is a patterned and predictable form of group aggression that happens when someone in a position of leadership sets out to eliminate someone and persuades the rest of the group to go along. In Mobbed! What to Do When They Really Are Out to Get You, anthropologist Janice Harper explains how and why mobbing happens and suggests steps you can take to protect yourself once it’s underway. Drawing on research in animal behavior, group psychology, gossip and false memory, Dr. Harper demonstrates how current approaches to eradicating “bullies” in the workplace are more likely to backfire than help the mobbing target. In this book, she presents an entirely new way to understand collective human aggression and heal from its devastating impacts.

Michele Lamont, How Professors Think: Inside the Curious World of Academic Judgment
In the academic evaluation system known as peer review, highly respected professors pass judgment, usually confidentially, on the work of others. But only those present in the deliberative chambers know exactly what is said. Michele Lamont observed deliberations for fellowships and research grants, and interviewed panel members at length. In How Professors Think, she reveals what she discovered about this secretive powerful, and peculiar world.

Anna Neumann, Professing to Learn: Creating Tenured Lived and Careers in the American Research University
Drawing on interviews with seventy-eight professors in diverse disciplines and fields at five major American research universities, Anna Neumann describes how tenured faculty shape and disseminate their own disciplinary knowledge while attending committee meetings, grading exams, holding office hours, administering programs and departments, and negotiating with colleagues. By exploring the intellectual activities pursued by these faculty and their ongoing efforts to develop and define their academic interests, Professing to Learn directs the attention of higher educational professionals and policy makers to the core aim of higher education: the creation of academic knowledge through research, teaching, and service.

Cal Newport, Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World
Deep work is the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task. It’s a skill that allows you to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in less time. Deep work will make you better at what you do and provide the sense of true fulfillment that comes from craftsmanship. In short, deep work is like a super power in our increasingly competitive twenty-first century economy. And yet, most people have lost the ability to go deep—spending their days instead in a frantic blur of e-mail and social media, not even realizing there’s a better way. Instead of arguing that distraction is bad, Newport instead celebrates the power of its opposite. Dividing this book into two parts, he first makes the case that in almost any profession, cultivating a deep work ethic will produce massive benefits. He then presents a rigorous training regimen, presented as a series of four “rules,” for transforming your mind and habits to support this skill.

Sydney Phlox, Academaze: Finding Your Way through the American Research University
Academic life can be wonderful, but also daunting. This collection of essays and cartoons on life in academia provides an “insider’s guide” to the tenure track and beyond in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields at a major US research institution. Sydney Phlox, a pseudonymous tenured professor, takes the reader through the maze of academic life: from the job search, through the research, teaching, and service that form the core of academic work to the quest for work-life balance and the unique challenges faced by women in STEM. Along the way, Phlox shares the joys and tribulations of working with students and collaborators and navigating academic politics while trying to get papers published and grants funded.

Douglas Reimondo Robertson, Making Time, Making Change: Avoiding Overload in College Teaching
Lack of time may be the single most commonly experienced problem among American faculty. The objective of this book is to elevate our awareness of how we use our time and how we might improve that use of time. In Making Time, Making Change, author Douglas Reimondo Robertson leads you on the road to a more rewarding, and less harried, teaching life!

Susan Robison, The Peak Performing Professor: A Practical Guide to Productivity and Happiness
Drawing on research from the fields of neuroscience, faculty development, work productivity, positive psychology, and resilience, The Peak Performing Professor is filled with techniques, strategies, and practical tools for managing the complexities of academic life while maximizing professional potential. This much-needed resource reveals the four skill sets (PACE) that enhance peak performance and shows faculty step-by-step how to power their work and lives with purpose and meaning, align all of their activities with that purpose, connect with mutually helpful colleagues and intimates, and energize themselves to thrive in this interesting and engaging career.

Tonette Rocco, Tim Hatcher, and Associates, The Handbook of Scholarly Writing and Publishing
The Handbook of Scholarly Writing and Publishing is a groundbreaking resource that offers emerging and experienced scholars from all disciplines a comprehensive review of the essential elements needed to craft scholarly papers and other writing suitable for submission to academic journals. The authors discuss the components of different types of manuscripts, explain the submission process, and offer readers suggestions for working with editors and coauthors, dealing with rejection, and rewriting and resubmitting their work. They include advice for developing quality writing skills, outline the fundamentals of a good review, and offer guidance for becoming an excellent manuscript reviewer.

Kerry Ann Rockquemore and Tracey Laszloffy, The Black Academic’s Guide to Winning Tenure—Without Losing Your Soul
For an African American scholar, who may be the lone minority in a department, navigating the tenure minefield can be a particularly harrowing process. Kerry Ann Rockquemore and Tracey Laszloffy go beyond standard professional resources to serve up practical advice for black faculty intent on playing and winning the tenure game. Addressing head-on how power and the thorny politics of race converge in the academy, The Black Academic’s Guide is full of invaluable tips and hard-earned wisdom. It is an essential handbook that will help black faculty survive and thrive in academia without losing their voices, or their integrity.

A. Clay Schoenfeld and Robert Magnan, Mentor in a Manual: Climbing the Academic Ladder to Tenure, 3rd ed.
This professional handbook is designed to help pre-tenure faculty successfully navigate their way up the academic ladder. The authors provide practical advice about broader issues like acquiring an academic frame of mind as well as more specific issues like learning how to assimilate yourself into individual department cultures.

Susan Scott, Fierce Conversations
Success increasingly hinges on engaging colleagues, customers, friends, and family in conversations that interrogate reality, provoke learning, tackle tough challenges, tap our deepest aspirations, and enrich relationships. This book provides principles, examples, tools, stories, and exercises to take you step-by-step through your first fierce conversation—with yourself—on to the most challenging and important conversations facing you.

Franklin Silverman, Collegiality and Service for Tenure and Beyond: Acquiring a Reputation as a Team Player
This book is the third in a series of candid handbooks intended to provide assistant professors and graduate students contemplating a career in academia much of the practical information they’ll need to maximize the likelihood of being tenured and promoted to associate professor. This book deals with collegiality and service.

Paul J. Silvia, How to Write a Lot
In this practical, lighthearted, and encouraging book, Paul J. Silvia explains that writing productively does not require innate skills or special traits but specific tactics and actions. Drawing examples from his own field of psychology, he shows readers how to overcome motivational roadblocks and become prolific without sacrificing evenings, weekends, and vacations. After describing strategies for writing productively, the author gives detailed advice from the trenches on how to write, submit, revise, and resubmit articles; how to improve writing quality; and how to write and publish academic work.

Paul Silvia, Write It Up: Practical Strategies for Writing and Publishing Journal Articles
Your academic writing will be more influential if you approach it reflectively and strategically. Based on his experience as an author, journal editor, and reviewer, Paul Silvia offers sage and witty advice on problems like picking journals; cultivating the right tone and style for your article; managing collaborative projects and coauthors; crafting effective Introduction, Method, Results, and Discussion sections; and submitting and resubmitting papers to journals. This book is for anyone writing an empirical article in APA Style, from beginners facing their first article to old dogs looking for new writing strategies.

Emily Toth, Ms. Mentor’s Impeccable Advice for Women in Academia
Ms. Mentor’s readers will find answers to the secret queries they were afraid to ask anyone else. They’ll discover what it really takes to get tenure; what to wear to academic occasions; when to snicker, when to hide, what to eat, and when to sue. They’ll find out how to get firmly planted in the rich red earth of tenure.

Emily Toth, Ms. Mentor’s New and Ever More Impeccable Advice for Women and men in Academia
From the ivory tower that affords her an unparalleled view of the academic landscape, Ms. Mentor dispenses her perfect wisdom to the huddled masses of professorial newbies, hardbitten oldies, and anxious midcareerists. She gives etiquette lessons to academic couples and the tough-talking low-down on adjunct positions. She tells you what to wear, how to make yourself popular, and how to decode academic language.

Lois J. Zachary and Lory A. Fischler, Starting Strong: A Mentoring Fable
In Starting Strong, mentoring experts Lois J. Zachary and Lory A. Fischler weave a compelling tale that exemplifies the concepts, highlights the dynamics, and outlines the issues involved in mentoring relationships. The authors use the form of a fable to tell the story of a budding mentoring relationship filled with possibilities, problems, and triumphs. The story of Cynthia, a seasoned professional, and her new mentee Rafa, brings to life Zachary and Fischler’s wealth of mentoring suggestions and best practices and each episode of the fable is accompanied by reflection questions, key learnings, and strategies that readers can apply to their own mentoring relationships.

Kenneth J. Zahorski, The Sabbatical Mentor: A Practical Guide to Successful Sabbaticals
The Sabbatical Mentor makes concrete the planning, execution, and follow-up necessary for successful sabbaticals. By breaking the process into logical and manageable segments, the author demystifies it and thereby encourages individuals to participate in this unique, enjoyable and professional rewarding benefit of academic life.

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