Before the Year Gets Away From You
Faculty affairs leaders spend most of the year responding. A retention concern here, a stalled associate professor there, a dean who needs a program built by fall. The work is real and it rarely lets up. What gets squeezed out is the quieter work of stepping back and asking what you actually want to move forward for your mid-career faculty this year, and why it matters now.
Mid-career is where a lot of institutional talent quietly stalls. Faculty who were once your most productive can drift into a long plateau, and the cost of that drift shows up years later in leadership gaps and lost momentum. You know this better than anyone. What youF may not have is a dedicated hour to think it through with intention.
This planning tool is that hour. It walks you through five short prompts: your priorities, how they connect to your institution’s goals, what would be different if you acted on them, what you already have to build on, and the challenge you have not yet had the right conversation about. There are no right answers. Download the editable PDF, fill it in on your own device, and keep it however helps.
Take fifteen minutes. The clarity tends to be worth more than the time.
A fillable PDF you can complete on your own computer and save privately. Nothing you type is stored online or sent anywhere.
Mid-Career Faculty Success: Planning for the Year Ahead
Preview the five prompts below, or work through them in the downloadable PDF. Use them to clarify your priorities, connect them to what matters most at your institution, and identify where you have the greatest opportunity to make an impact.
Your Priorities for Mid-Career Faculty This Year
What are the 2-3 things you most want to move forward for mid-career faculty in the coming year?
Be as specific as you can.
What is driving these priorities?
What are you seeing or hearing on your campus that is making this feel urgent?
Alignment with Institutional Priorities
How do your mid-career faculty priorities connect to your institution’s broader strategic goals?
Where is there the strongest alignment, and where might you need to build the case?
Note both: where alignment is strongest, and where you will need to build the case.
What Will Be Different
If you act on your top priority this year, what will be noticeably different for faculty?
Think concretely: what will faculty be doing, saying, or experiencing that they are not now?
What will be different for you and your office?
What Is Already in Place
What structures, programs, or relationships already exist on your campus that support mid-career faculty?
These are assets you can build on.
What is working well that you want to protect or expand?
What Keeps You Up at Night
What is the one challenge in your mid-career faculty work that you have not yet had the right conversation about?
What would it mean for your faculty, and for you, if this challenge went unaddressed for another year?
A fillable PDF you can complete on your own computer and save privately. Nothing you type is stored online or sent anywhere.
