Home Programs & ServicesEffective Leadership Sloan Awards for Faculty Career Flexibility

The Alfred P. Sloan Awards for Faculty Career Flexibility

Background

Research, conducted over the last decade and by a range of institutions, provides compelling evidence that higher education institutions can demonstrate a strong business case for providing flexibility for their tenure-track and tenured faculty. Flexibility constitutes an effective tool for recruiting and retaining talented faculty. Career flexibility is especially critical to retaining some of the most qualified female PhDs in academe. Acquiring the best talent is essential to an institution's ability to achieve excellence and maintain its competitive advantage in a global environment.

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation has played a vital role in developing the field of work-family scholarship through its Workplace, Workforce, and Working Families program. In 2003, the Foundation partnered with the American Council on Education (ACE) to raise awareness throughout higher education of the need to create, implement, or enhance policies and procedures designed to support faculty lives throughout their careers.

Creating Options

In February of 2005, ACE developed An Agenda for Excellence: Creating Flexibility in Tenure-Track Faculty Careers. ACE and the national panel of presidents and chancellors outlined an ambitious agenda to reform and enhance the academic career path for tenured and tenure-track faculty.

"Colleges and universities face a compelling need for change in the current rigid structure of the traditional academic career path," said David Ward, former president of ACE. "In order for American higher education to sustain its leading role in a diverse and changing environment, we need to create greater flexibility in the tenure-track career path. Flexibility is central to recruiting and retaining the most talented scholars and critical to preserving excellence in teaching and innovative research."

The report was the first product of a grant to ACE from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to fund the project: Creating Options: Models for Flexible Tenure-Track Career Pathways. Through the project, ACE and the national panel strove to: raise awareness of faculty work-life issues, spark a national dialogue to encourage change in the career cycles of tenured and tenure-track faculty, and to generate thoughtful, tested approaches to assist campuses in adapting promising practices to address faculty work-life issues.

First Round of Sloan Awards—Research Universities

Building on the successes of ACE's Creating Options: Models for Flexible Faculty Career Pathways project, and the Families and Work Institute (FWI) When Work Works project, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation partnered with ACE and FWI to develop The Alfred P. Sloan Awards for Faculty Career Flexibility. The purpose of this Awards program was to push institutional efforts toward broader implementation and evaluation of structural and cultural changes needed at research universities to create more flexible career paths and to make academic careers compatible with family care giving responsibilities. In September of 2006, five universities were granted these awards; Duke University, Lehigh University, University of California (Berkeley and Davis campuses), University of Florida, and University of Washington.

Each award included a $250,000 accelerator grant that enabled the universities to expand and enhance flexible career paths for faculty. In addition, Iowa State University and the University of Wisconsin, Madison, each were awarded $25,000 grants in recognition of innovative practices in career flexibility.  To read about best practices from these institutions, please visit our Toolkit.

Second Round of Sloan Awards—Master's Large Institutions

Building on continued success from the first round of awards, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, ACE, and FWI conducted another round of awards to master's large institutions, as designated by the 2005 Carnegie Classification. Six universities of this type received $200,000 accelerator awards, enabling them to continue creating flexible career paths that advance their institutional goals. These institutions were Boise State University (ID), Canisius College (NY), Santa Clara University (CA), San Jose State University (CA), Simmons College (MA), and the University of Baltimore (MD). Benedictine University (IL) and Plymouth State University (NH) also received $25,000 awards in recognition of innovative practices in career flexibility.

These institution received their awards in 2008 and will finish their projects in early 2011. Information from this two-year project will be available then.

Third Round of Sloan Awards—Baccalaureate Colleges (Arts & Sciences)

A third round of awards was recently conducted for institutions which were designated as baccalaureate colleges by the 2008 Carnegie Classification. The six recipients of the 2009 Alfred P. Sloan Awards for Faculty Career Flexibility are Albright College (PA), Bowdoin College (ME), Middlebury College (VT), Mount Holyoke College (MA), Oberlin College (OH), and Washington and Lee University (VA). Each award of $200,000 will enable the institutions to expand and enhance flexible career paths for faculty.

In addition, Dickinson College (PA) and Smith College (MA) received $25,000 awards in recognition of innovative practices in career flexibility.

Faculty Retirement—All Institutional Types

Over the next two years, ACE will select nine leading colleges and universities (three each from research, master's large, and baccalaureate-arts and sciences institutions) to collect data about how to best support faculty transitions into retirement while supporting institutional needs. ACE will then analyze the data and disseminate the findings to academic leaders—first through a series of conferences and later through the wide release of a monograph

For more information contact Jean McLaughlin, Research Associate, at the American Council on Education: (202) 375-7531 or jean_mclaughlin@ace.nche.edu.

Please direct questions about this page to:
jean_mclaughlin@ace.nche.edu
This page last updated on 10/05/2010