March-April 2004

« AAUP Homepage

Retired Faculty Members Stay Active

As the time for retirement approaches, many faculty members worry about how they will fill their newly found free time. The AAUP’s Committee on Retirement, assuming that most professors want to continue to contribute to their campus or community, interviewed three recently retired faculty members about the solutions they had discovered.

William Burgan stepped down from his position as an English professor at Indiana University in 1998, after which he left Bloomington, Indiana, for Washington, D.C. Unlike retired faculty members who continue their association with their campuses, Burgan had no choice but to seek an alternative postretirement activity. He decided to become involved with College Bound, a program of the District of Columbia’s public schools for students from the eighth to twelfth grades who aspire to attend college. Together with a former public school teacher, Burgan developed a writing program in which students must write at least one essay, including a second draft, during each semester.

He says the program has given him a chance to work with some wonderful people and challenged him intellectually. “It takes energy and inventiveness,” he says. “And it’s a way to avoid wasting thirty years of teaching experience.” The program has also been highly successful; 97 percent of the seniors participating in 2002–03 enrolled in college last fall. “I don’t mean to say that none of those kids would have been accepted otherwise,” Burgan adds. “Their participation is voluntary, so they’re motivated, and some are excellent writers. But the program helps.”

Physicist Donald Holcomb retired from Cornell University in 1995. Most years since then, he has taught one course at the university, usually introductory physics. He also teaches a seminar every three years for Cornell graduate students who are interested in college teaching. The seminar stems from Holcomb’s association with the American Association of Physics Teachers, which aims to improve physics instruction and encourages collaboration between college faculty and secondary school teachers. Holcomb also continues his research program at a reduced level and evaluates the dossiers of Cornell students who need a recommendation from their institution, including an assessment by a faculty member, to apply to medical school.

Holcomb says he views his various forms of service to Cornell as a way to “pay his office rent.” He explains that Cornell has supported faculty members who want to retire by encouraging departments to find office space for emeritus faculty and to provide them with secretarial services and computer access. Holcomb says his activities also allow him “to have a good time.” “I began at Cornell in 1954,” he comments. “A lot of my life is woven into the people and programs at the institution, and it just seems natural to continue the association.”

When William Dando retired from the Department of Geography, Geology, and Anthropology at Indiana State University, he devised a retirement program not only for himself but also for his colleagues. The Senior Scholars Academy, of which Dando is director, was launched in 2002 to connect retired ISU professors to opportunities to contribute to the campus and the surrounding community. The academy, which now has 525 members, has since expanded to include faculty retired from other institutions in the region.

ISU provides the academy with a modest budget and a suite of offices, and it supplied seed money that has permitted the academy to write grant proposals, in cooperation with university departments, to support projects in which its members participate. One such project, for which the academy received an $800,000 grant, brings retired science professors into grade schools once a week to work with teachers and students. The grant also permits teachers to attend an academic seminar and pays for parent education.

Other members of the Senior Scholars Academy mentor junior faculty who want help writing grant proposals or articles and lead seminars in which participants travel to other countries. “We have a lot of people with talent,” Dando explains. “And we’re trying to tap that talent. My hope is that the academy will help stimulate economic growth and im-prove the quality of life in the region.”

The AAUP’s retirement committee is now developing a questionnaire to determine which colleges and universities with AAUP members have established campus associations for retired faculty.