The recent issue of Liberal Education highlights the growing mental health crisis in academic environments, emphasizing the need for institutions to enhance student well-being. However, it points out a disparity in support for faculty, suggesting that while student well-being is prioritized, faculty support is largely neglected. The author, an experienced dean, seeks to encourage administrators to implement strategies that focus on faculty wellbeing, citing the increasing pressures faced by universities. By addressing this gap, the aim is to foster a more holistic approach to well-being within academia.
As a dean in the middle of his eighth year in that role, I want to address this gap by sharing tangible steps and practices administrators can use to systematize support for faculty well-being.
While our deans' responsibilities document calls on us to provide 'recognition, encouragement, and support for the work faculty are doing,' the emphasis is on the labor produced by faculty rather than on their well-being.
This elision has been especially acute over the past half decade, as universities and colleges wrestle with a brutal collision of challenges, including enrollment pressures, budget cuts, student unrest, attacks on DEI, program prioritization, AI challenges and so on.
When faced with such a list of horrors, though, I conclude that support of faculty well-being has never been more important, given the weight of the pressures.
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