White Paper: The Academic Profession in Public Research Universities: Challenges, Changes, and Opportunities

These essays highlight provocative questions about academic work in response to a shifting context and offer possible new visions for shaping academic work and careers. The suggestions woven through the essays highlight flexibility, belonging, mentorship, and preparing future scholars in new ways. We hope the ideas in these essays will prompt you and your colleagues to consider whether we in the public research university need a new understanding, a new compact, to frame and define the academic profession—and, if so, to envision key elements within that framework that would enable faculty members to meet the challenges and do the innovative and impactful work that society deeply needs.

Essay contributors include: 

• Emily Miller, Vice President for Research and Institutional Policy at the Association of American Universities. In partnership with AAU member research universities, she is responsible for initiatives to advance transformational organizational change initiatives in undergraduate and graduate education and in the research enterprise.

• Noah Finkelstein, Professor and Vice Chair of the Physics Department at the University of Colorado Boulder. His research focuses on physics education and educational transformation in higher education. He is very engaged in work pertaining to higher education policy and serves as a member of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Board on Science Education, and he is also a Trustee of the Higher Learning Commission.

• Kimberly Griffin, Professor of Higher Education, Student Affairs, and International Education Policy, and Dean of the College of Education at the University of Maryland. Her research focuses on diversity and equity in graduate education and the professoriate, diversity in the Black higher education community, and mentoring and career development.

• Leslie Gonzales, Professor of Higher Education and Department Head of Education Policy Studies and Practice at the University of Arizona, and Director of the Center for the Study of Higher Education at Arizona. She studies faculty evaluation processes, the contexts in which academics work, and the experiences of historically minoritized and marginalized academics.