Abstract

Given demographic trends among university and medical school faculty, later-career academicians comprise a growing percentage of the professoriate. Thus, greater attention should be paid to strategies for later-career faculty to enhance their professional and personal success. In this chapter, we consider strategies related to research, teaching, and mentoring, and service activities through the lens of social cognitive career theory, which posits three influences (individual characteristics, contextual factors, and active regulation of career behaviors) on career development. In particular, we emphasize the importance of generativity (i.e., the need to nurture careers of students and earlier career faculty colleagues) at this stage. Based on our discussion, we offer suggestions for early- and mid-career faculty, as they consider their later-career trajectories as well as questions for later-career faculty to consider as they navigate the closing phase of their academic career. Given the dearth of empirical studies related to later-career faculty development, it certainly behooves our field to conduct more research to guide universities and medical schools as well as individual faculty members in developing and evaluating support strategies that will lead to successful and productive faculty activity during this important career phase.