Our Supporting Mid-Career Faculty & Librarians program is focused on faculty and librarians who are past tenure or on continuing appointments but are still shaping their next directions. From our own institutional research and from national research, we know that transitioning to mid-career can be difficult. Yet being at mid-career also offers the opportunity to grow and re-imagine your work. Having established a record of research, teaching, service, librarianship, and/or public impact, mid-career faculty and librarians have the agency to assess and plan the next stages of their career. OFD is here to help you navigate this time of transition so that you can purposefully build a sustainable career that reflects your own goals and intentions.
Whether you are tenure-track faculty, non-tenure-track faculty, or a librarian, OFD offers resources to help you with the transitions that come with the next stage of your career. OFD offers online resources to point you to awards that recognize your accomplishments. We are here to help you find support to build upon your existing work and chart your pathway.
Workshops are held to assist mid-career faculty and librarians with sabbatical planning, the transition to associate and full professor, promotion to senior lecturer II, scholarly and research productivity, and leadership skills. OFD also offers the OFD Scholars program that focuses on helping mid-career faculty and librarians move their careers to the next stage. Please also check out the Sabbatical & Professional Development Fellowships page as well as our Supporting NTT Faculty and Leadership Essentials programs to set and navigate your pathway.
OFD Scholars
Each year OFD offers annual support for a unique cohort of scholars, typically at mid-career, for one semester.
Mid-Career Post-Tenure Fellowship
This bargained, competitively awarded fellowship provides a research-intensive semester to associate professors whose service and teaching responsibilities have exceeded the norm. Award recipients are provided with one semester of release from teaching responsibilities, department obligations, and college service (CBA Article 15.16).
Professional Development Fellowships
Professional Development Fellowships provide a paid one-semester release for non-tenure-track faculty (not including those with access to sabbaticals or those who are funded entirely on grants or contracts) who have completed six years of service to support professional development activities that directly relate to the faculty member’s job responsibilities and/or advance important initiatives for their department or college.
Crafting Your Mid-Career Development Plan
Held every other year, this workshop focuses on defining your career mission, evaluating your values and priorities, and evaluating time allocation. You will work to map out your short and mid-term goals and strategize the steps, resources, and mentors you need in order to achieve your career mission.
This workshop is open to all faculty and librarians — it is intended for post-tenure and post-continuing appointment faculty and librarians.
Your Mid-Career Mentoring Network
Mid-career goals are often more diverse, more ambitious, and less clear compared to the early years of establishing your career. Thus, (re-)developing your network of mentors, sponsors, and coaches at mid-career is vital for continued success. In this workshop, held every other year, you will evaluate your short- and long-term goals, your mentoring needs to achieve your goals, and make a plan to (re-)develop your network of mentors, sponsors, and coaches.
This workshop will help you develop the network you need to pivot in your career, whether it be navigating the path to your next promotion, moving into leadership, becoming a community engaged scholar, or shifting your research focus.
This workshop is open to all faculty and librarians—it is intended for post-tenure and post-continuing appointment faculty and librarians.
Planning for a Productive and Restorative Sabbatical
Sabbaticals are a time to rejuvenate your research and yourself. This workshop, offered every other year, addresses strategies for identifying funding, productively using your time, managing sabbatical with family obligations, and incorporating practices for well-being so you can return refreshed.
This workshop is open to all faculty and librarians—it is intended for faculty and librarians planning their first sabbatical.
Successfully Navigating the Transition to Associate Professor
Associate professors often have to balance a "new normal" of increased teaching and service while maintaining and growing their research profile. In this workshop, offered every other year, full professors will discuss ways to successfully navigate this transition and thrive while working towards the rank of full professor. Panelists will discuss their own paths to promotion and engage in a Q&A discussion of how to successfully navigate the transition, recover from the tenure process, manage service loads, and set yourself up for a sustainable career.
This workshop is open to all faculty and librarians—it is intended for assistant professors currently up for tenure and associate professors in the first four years after tenure.
Lecturer Promotion Writing Group
In the weeks leading up to the first day of the spring semester, OFD offers an annual Promotion Writing Group for lecturers and senior lecturers preparing for promotion. Faculty gather to share ideas and strategies while working on their materials. Meetings are facilitated by OFD senior fellow and associate director Jason Hooper (hooper@umass.edu).
For more information on promotion for non-tenure-track faculty, please visit the MSP's webpage for workshops and relevant resources: https://umassmsp.org/workshops/
This workshop is open to all NTT faculty —it is intended for lecturers and senior lecturers preparing for promotion to senior lecturer or senior lecturer II.
Mid-Career Resources
Recent News
You shared your voice, and we listened! This set of resources was developed in response to your needs as expressed in recent surveys and UMass-led institutional research on faculty satisfaction and success including the COACHE survey (Tenure and Promotion Report and Mentorship Report); Mid-Career Report 2020—Transitions and Promotion: How to Support Mid-Career Faculty; Mid-Career Report 2018—Mid-Career Malaise and Interventions: Scope of Problem, Intervention and Prevention Ideas, and Responses from College Leadership. If you have more feedback on mid-career programming or would like access to these reports, please contact Angela below.
Associate Provost for Faculty Development, Professor of Resource Economics