Leveraging Multigenerational Workforce Strategies in Higher Education 9780367713430, 9780367716332, 9781003150381

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“Issues of multigenerational relations have become increasingly important as the US population ages. These issues are likely to become even more pronounced by the impact of the current pandemic. Yet, at least from an applied social justice perspective within higher education, research has been somewhat infrequent and thin. I think the Chun and Evans book has the potential to be a seminal work in this field. Not only is it a superb review of what we currently know, it may help create a more robust surge of examination of these crucial issues.” – Charles Behling, Emeritus Faculty Member, University of Michigan “University administrators frequently discuss issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion, yet ageism is largely overlooked in these conversations. Chun and Evans broaden our understanding of diversity with this comprehensive analysis of the multigenerational workforce. Most importantly, this book provides a powerful combination of detailed research and practical advice for creating an age-​inclusive environment.” – Peter Worthing, Associate Dean, AddRan College of Liberal Arts, Texas Christian University “As president of the No. 2-​ranked university in the nation for conferring baccalaureate degrees to underrepresented students, I am a proponent of inclusive talent propositions that empower us to further diversify our educators to better serve our students. The arrival of Edna Chun and Alvin Evans’ new book, Leveraging Multigenerational Workforce Strategies in Higher Education, fills a long-​vacant hole in this area of study with innovative strategies that will support higher education institutions overcome ageist barriers and develop multigenerational workforces that both reflect inclusive excellence and bolster student success.” – Fram Virjee, President, California State University, Fullerton

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Leveraging Multigenerational Workforce Strategies in Higher Education

The higher education literature on workplace diversity has overlooked the development of multigenerational workforce strategies as a key component of an inclusive talent proposition. While race, gender, sexual orientation, disability and other demographic attributes have gained considerable attention in diversity strategic planning, scant research pertains to building inclusive, multigenerational approaches within the culture and practices of higher education. Now more than ever, there is an urgent and unmet need to identify actionable strategies and approaches that optimize the contributions of multigenerational talent across the faculty, administrator, and staff ranks. With the goal of enhancing workforce capacity and creating more inclusive workplaces, Leveraging Multigenerational Workforce Strategies in Higher Education offers an in-​depth look at multigenerational strategies that enhance institutional capacity and respond to educational needs. This book is the first to address the creation of multigenerational strategies in the higher education workplace based upon substantial empirical studies and qualitative research. Drawing on in-​depth interviews with faculty and administrators, the book examines the broad “framing” of generations that consists of stereotypes, narratives, images, and emotions. Through the lens of these narratives, it describes how ageist framing is magnified by other minoritized statuses including race/​ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation, and can result in structural inequality, process-​based discrimination, and asymmetrical behavioral interactions in the higher education workplace. A major feature of the book is its focus on best-​in-​class HR and diversity policies and strategies that institutional leaders can deploy to overcome generational and ageist barriers and build an inclusive culture that values the contributions of all members. Due to its practical and concrete emphasis in sharing leading-​edge policies and practices that comprise a holistic multigenerational workforce strategy, the book will serve as a concrete resource to boards of trustees, presidents, provosts, deans, diversity officers, department chairs, faculty, academic and non-​ academic administrators, diversity and human resource leaders, and diversity taskforces in their efforts to create strategic, evidence-​ based multigenerational workforce approaches. In addition, the book will be utilized in upper division and graduate courses in higher education

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administration, diversity, human resource management, educational leadership, intergenerational issues, gerontology, social work, and organizational psychology. Edna Chun and Alvin Evans are award-​winning authors and human resource and diversity thought-​leaders with extensive experience in complex, multi-​campus systems of higher education. Two of their books, Are the Walls Really Down? Behavioral and Organizational Barriers to Faculty and Staff Diversity (2007) and Bridging the Diversity Divide: Globalization and Reciprocal Empowerment in Higher Education (2009) were the recipients of the prestigious Kathryn G. Hanson Publication Award by the national College and University Professional Association for Human Resources. They are also the authors of the first book appearing in Routledge’s Critical Viewpoints book series, Diverse Administrators in Peril (2012).Their co-​authored book, The New Talent Acquisition Frontier: Integrating HR and Diversity Strategy in the Private and Public Sectors and Higher Education (Stylus, 2014), received a silver medal in the 2014 Axiom Business Book Awards and is the first book to provide a concrete road map to the integration of HR and diversity strategy. Edna Chun is Chief Learning Officer and Alvin Evans is Higher Education Practice Leader for HigherEd Talent, a national diversity and human resources consulting firm. Edna Chun is also Lecturer in the Human Capital Management Department of the Columbia University School of Professional Studies.

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New Critical Viewpoints on Society Series Edited by Joe R. Feagin

When Rape was Legal The Untold History of Sexual Violence During Slavery Rachel A. Feinstein Latino Peoples in the New America Racialization and Resistance Edited by José A. Cobas, Joe R. Feagin, Daniel J. Delgado and Maria Chávez Women and Inequality in the 21st Century Edited by Brittany C. Slatton and Carla D. Brailey Rethinking Diversity Frameworks in Higher Education Edna B. Chun and Joe R. Feagin Got Solidarity? Challenging Straight White College Men to Advocate for Social Justice Jörg Vianden Love Under the Skin Interracial Marriages in the American South and France Cécile Coquet-​Mokoko Through an Artist’s Eyes The Dehumanization and Racialization of Jews and Political Dissidents during the Third Reich Willa M. Johnson Leveraging Multigenerational Workforce Strategies in Higher Education Edna Chun and Alvin Evans For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/​New-​Critical-​Viewpoints-​on-​Society/​book-​series/​ NCVS

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Leveraging Multigenerational Workforce Strategies in Higher Education Edna Chun and Alvin Evans

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First published 2021 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 Taylor & Francis The right of Edna Chun and Alvin Evans to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data Names: Chun, Edna Breinig, author. | Evans, Alvin, author. Title: Leveraging multigenerational workforce strategies in higher education / Edna Chun and Alvin Evans. Description: New York: Routledge, 2021. | Series: New critical viewpoints on society | Includes bibliographical references. Identifiers: LCCN 2020043929 | ISBN 9780367716332 (Hardback) | ISBN 9780367713430 (Paperback) | ISBN 9781003150381 (eBook) Subjects: LCSH: Universities and colleges–United States–Administration. | Universities and colleges–Employees. | Age discrimination in higher education. | Diversity in the workplace–Management. | College personnel management. Classification: LCC LB2341 .C5456 2021 | DDC 378.1/01–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020043929 ISBN: 978-​0-​367-​71633-​2  (hbk) ISBN: 978-​0-​367-​71343-​0  (pbk) ISBN: 978-​1-​003-​15038-​1  (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Newgen Publishing UK

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To Alexander David Chun “Alex” “Truth, hope, and life woven into fine golden tapestries.” –​ Alex  Chun

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Contents

About the Authors  Acknowledgments  Foreword by Joe R. Feagin 

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Introduction: Forces and Fissures in the Higher Education Landscape  1 Generational Tensions  3 The Impact of Defunding Public Higher Education on Diverse Students  6 The Lack of Workforce Diversity  8 The Perils of Contingent Work  9 Questions the Book Seeks to Answer  11 Methodology and Organization of the Book  11 1 The Value of Intergenerational Diversity  The Benefits of Multigenerational Workforce Diversity  17 Reaching Definitional Clarity  19 An Overview of Age and Generational Status in the Academy  23 Parallels with the U.S.Workplace at Large  26 Conclusion  27 2 The Looming Generational Crisis in Higher Education Employment  Power Dynamics in Relation to Ageism and Generational Status  30 Ageism and Intersectionality  34 Ageism and Relational Demography  37 The Strengths and Limitations of the ADEA  39 Prominent Age Discrimination Lawsuits in Higher Education  41 Conclusion  43 3 Behavioral and Process-​Based Aspects of Ageism and Generational Status  Key Dimensions of Generational and Ageist Framing  45

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xii Contents Recruitment, Hiring, and Ageism  50 Evaluation, Promotion, and Tenure Processes  55 Acts of Social Closure and Pressures to Leave or Retire  62 Conclusion  67

4 Generational Status and Academic Realities  External Pressures on the Academic Department  70 Intergenerational Classroom Challenges  73 Ageism in Student Views of Faculty  78 Generational Differences in Disciplinary, Curricular, and Research Approaches  83 Intra-​Departmental Conflict  85 Generational Views on Diversity  87 Generational Views on Family and Work/​Life Integration  89 Conclusion  90 Multigenerational Case Vignette: Reverse Mentoring at Baldwin Wallace University  91

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5 Counteracting and Resisting Generational and Ageist Frames  94 The Minority Stress Model and Resilience  95 The First Step: Awareness and Gauging the Situation  97 The Next Step: Determining How to Respond  97 Undertaking Multifaceted Coping and Resistance Strategies  98 Conclusion  105 6 Best-​In-​Class Multigenerational Human Resource and Diversity Policies and Programs  Cross-​Generational Mentoring Programs  108 Intergenerational Organizational Learning and Education Programs  112 Intergenerational Committee Structures and Teams  114 Institutional Policies that Strengthen Multigenerational Contributions  116 Workplace Flexibility Programs  118 Predictive Analytics and Early Separation/​Phased Retirement Programs  119 Retirement Transition and Post-​Retirement Programs  123 Conclusion  124 7 Looking Ahead: Opportunities and Recommendations  Closing the Loop  134 References  Index 

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About the Authors

Edna Chun and Alvin Evans are award-​winning authors and human resource and diversity thought leaders with extensive experience in complex, multi-​campus systems of higher education. Two of their books, Are the Walls Really Down? Behavioral and Organizational Barriers to Faculty and Staff Diversity (Jossey-​Bass, 2007)  and Bridging the Diversity Divide: Globalization and Reciprocal Empowerment in Higher Education (Jossey-​ Bass, 2009)  were recipients of the prestigious Kathryn G.  Hansen Publication Award by the national College and University Professional Association for Human Resources. In addition, their co-​authored book, The New Talent Acquisition Frontier: Integrating HR and Diversity Strategy in the Private and Public Sectors and Higher Education (Stylus: 2014) received a silver medal in the 2014 Axiom Business Book Awards and is the first book to provide a concrete roadmap to the integration of HR and diversity strategy. Recent publications include Leading a Diversity Culture Shift in Higher Education (Routledge, 2018) which draws on extensive interviews with chief diversity officers and university leaders to provide a systematic approach to diversity organizational learning, and The Department Chair as Transformative Leader (2015),the first research-​ based resource on the academic department chair’s role in diversity transformation. Other books include Diverse Administrators in Peril: The New Indentured Class in Higher Education (2012), the first in-​depth interview study of the work experiences of minority, female, and LGBT administrators in higher education (2012) and Rethinking Cultural Competence in Higher Education: An Ecological Framework for Student Development (2016), a study that draws on a survey of recent college graduates now working as professionals to offer leading-​edge, integrative models for the attainment of diversity competence. Both authors are sought-​after plenary speakers and facilitators at national conferences and symposia. Their numerous journal articles in leading HR and diversity journals focus on talent management and diversity strategies. Edna Chun is Chief Learning Officer and Alvin Evans is Higher Education Practice Leader for HigherEd Talent, a national diversity and human resources consulting firm. Edna Chun is also a Lecturer in the Human Capital Management Department of the Columbia University School of Professional Studies.

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Acknowledgments

This book is dedicated to Alexander David Chun, better known as Alex, who a close friend, Alice Leake, described as follows: “Joyous, talented, dedicated, professional, free-​spirited explorer Alex Chun remains our guide, our teacher, our mentor.  Young in years, with the understanding of the ancients, Alex showed us how to hold nothing back, how to live completely every feeling, to treasure every moment, every scent, every beauty, every being. His buoyancy transformed tough times into cherished memories and taught us to embrace the pain until we were not afraid of it. He showed us how to make music, to just let loose and dance, until, with Alex as our lens, the whole world smiles through its tears.” We thank all the courageous faculty and administrators who shared their experiences with us for this book. We are grateful to Dean Birkenkamp, senior editor at Routledge, for his vision and great encouragement.We especially thank Joe R. Feagin, Ella C. McFadden Professor of Sociology at Texas A&M University, for his generosity and perceptive insights shared with us throughout the writing of this book. Alvin Evans would like to thank his children, Shomari Evans, Jabari Evans, Kalil Evans, and Rashida VanLeer for their loving support. Edna Chun thanks Jay K. Chun, David S.C Chu and George S.T. Chu, and Alex Chun’s close friends for their ongoing care and encouragement.

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Foreword Joe R. Feagin

Extensive discussions of ageism and multigenerational issues in academia are certainly appropriate in this era of the Covid-​19 pandemic. As an older professor, I now need to fill out a form I got from our associate provost’s office about teaching modifications for faculty fearful about teaching in-​ person in the midst of a pandemic. In many academic institutions older age is, interestingly, an “underlying medical condition” that a college faculty member can assert to avoid face-​to-​face classroom building contacts with students and others likely to be coronavirus carriers. This might be considered one of the “advantages” of being an older faculty member in this challenging era. However, there is the obvious downside that many now reference. For instance, in spring 2020, the ageist term “boomer remover” went “viral” in major social media (on one platform 65,000 mentions by March 2020), as an often joking, yet morbid, reference by younger people to the disproportionately fatal impact of the Covid-​19 disease on older people, in what is an actual viral climate. This deadly possibility disproportionately affects older faculty members and staff, and thus accents the multigenerational reality of higher education these days. Sadly, this deadly reality has too often been ignored by senior administrators at an array of U.S.  colleges and universities. They either do not understand the scientific data on the Covid-​19 disease, or perhaps do not care about the dangers for older faculty, staff, and students of opening higher education institutions in the midst of a pandemic. In the introduction to this book, Edna Chun and Alvin Evans cite controversial commentaries of Mitch Daniels, the former Indiana governor and Purdue University president, who publicly insisted his university would open with face-​to-​f ace classes in the pandemic because most people on campus were relatively young (35 years old or less). According to the scientifically uninformed Daniels, the Covid-​19 disease does not pose a “lethal threat” to that age group. This unduly optimistic view, which one hears from numerous university administrators and politicians, is flatly contradicted by available data–​that is, by national data revealing many people on campus, including half of college faculty, are older than this magical 35 years. Apparently, Daniels and similar administrators think universities are capable of imparting knowledge well

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xvi Foreword to students during pandemic years even if numerous older faculty and staff become disabled or deceased. (We should also keep in mind that nearly two in ten of today’s college students are more than 35 years old.) Currently, these older faculty and staff are among the five different generations, a historically unique number, working or studying together in U.S.  higher education. There is my Silent generation (c. 1928–​1945), the Baby Boom generation (c. 1946–​1964), Generation X (c. 1965–​1980), the Millennial generation (c. 1981–​1996), and Generation Z (c. 1997–​2012). The first four of these populate most faculty and staff positions in higher education, while the last makes up much of the current student population. Additionally, the first three generations currently make up a significant proportion of senior faculty and staff at most institutions but are gradually being replaced by large numbers from the Millennial generation. Significantly, as Chun and Evans point out here, this Millennial generation and its Generation Z successor are more racially diverse than the two oldest generations. It is clear that we now have many multigenerational and more diverse workplaces in this country, including those of higher education. This book foregrounds the many reasons for having, and ensuring for the future, substantial multigenerational diversity on our U.S. campuses. Chun and Evans insist that in this era of increasing economic difficulties for our colleges and universities, the leadership of these institutions must work hard “to strengthen their talent practices and to draw upon the contributions of different generational cohorts in the academic workforce.” They make clear that there is much neglect of the multigenerational talent currently in place. In addition, they accent the significant supply of academic talent among Americans of color, indeed in several age generations, that has long been neglected by most top administrators in historically white institutions. Indeed, for five decades now, I have observed, and fought against, the unwillingness of many such administrators to seriously consider this diverse and extraordinarily important talent pool. Both the multigenerational diversity itself and the racial, gender, LGBTQ, and other diversity within the age generations have very important consequences for our higher education institutions. One of the major issues to constantly keep in mind is that the older faculty generations have developed, preserved, and transmitted much of the knowledge base available to regional, national, and global academic communities–​and indeed to all human communities linked to them. Of course, older faculty members are not alone in this knowledge-​creating and knowledge-​transferring process, but they are universally critical to it. Moreover, the older generations of faculty of color and of white women–​in both cases long underrepresented among senior faculty members in most historically white institutions–​are especially important both to supporting younger faculty from those groups and to perpetuating and providing the distinctive racial and gender knowledges for all students’ comprehensive learning about the actual past and present structures and histories of this country. In general, senior faculty’ knowledges help younger faculty, as well as staff and students, to better learn the lay of the academic

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Foreword  xvii terrain and other societal terrain–​and often to survive and be successful in still difficult racialized, gendered, and other oppressive social environments. This book covers well many aspects of the multigenerational reality and challenges now facing higher education. In the rest of this foreword, I would like to illustrate the importance of their pathbreaking effort here by accenting one critical aspect of the multigenerational reality: the importance of older faculty to academia’s and the country’s necessary knowledge base, broadly defined. Briefly, I will use the case of my intellectual and moral development in academia as an example of the importance of older, and more diverse, faculty mentors to such development. Both of my most important academic mentors were members of what is often called the “Greatest generation” (c. 1901–​1927), the one preceding the five currently dominating U.S. higher education. Both were highly original thinkers and very influential teachers, and both were strongly committed to incorporating broad human rights values into their brilliant professional work. They lived their impactful lives well into their 90s. The oldest by a few years was Professor Melvin Sikes (1917–​2012), born into a black working-​class family in Missouri. He faced much Jim Crow segregation over his many years. He served in the highly segregated US Air Force during World War II, as one of the famous Tuskegee airmen whose success helped to eventually bring desegregation to a very Jim-​Crowed U.S. society. After that war, Mel got a psychology Ph.D. degree at a major historically white university in Chicago, where he faced significant racial discrimination. He later served as an academic dean at two historically black colleges. Later still, he became an educational psychology professor at the University of Texas (Austin), one of the few senior black faculty members there. Initially as a junior social science colleague at that university, I  was fortunate to be mentored by him (then a senior faculty member in his late 50s), and thus to learn much from him over three decades. Always the knowledgeable and patient teacher-​mentor over these decades, Mel helped me gain, among much other knowledge, lasting insights into this country’s white-​racist realities, including empirical, methodological, and conceptual wisdom in this regard.To take just one major example, in a large-​ scale interview project involving 209 middle-​class African Americans that I did with him, he taught me much about how to hear, understand, and assess the realism and meaning of their troubling, painful, and insightful accounts of a systemically racist United States. As part of our project, Mel, then in his early 70s, recorded a long commentary about his own life experience with U.S. racism, both at the University of Texas and over his long life more generally. This included penetrating insights about matters of white racism such as the following: If you can think of the mind as having 100 ergs of energy, and the average man uses 50 percent of his energy dealing with the everyday problems of the world … then he has 50 percent more to do creative kinds of things that he wants to do. Now that’s a white person. Now a

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xviii Foreword black person also has 100 ergs; he uses 50 percent the same way a white man does, dealing with what the white man has [to deal with], so he has 50 percent left. But he uses 25 percent fighting being black, [with] all the problems being black and what it means.1 (Feagin and Ducey, 2019, p. 212) Here we see the importance of his distinctive experiential knowledge, in this case from and about African Americans. Note the profound and painful insight that African Americans, inside and outside of our educational institutions, must expend enormous energy fighting the recurring assaults of whites’ racist actions. Indeed, over long lifetimes such as Mel’s, white Americans on average have a quite major life-​energy advantage. This statement provides essential knowledge for all Americans to hear and know, including those in our array of academic settings. Sadly, at the time of this interview (1989), African Americans of all relevant generations were considerably underrepresented as faculty, administrators, and students at most historically white colleges and universities. In many such places today, they still are. I strongly concur, thus, with the important suggestion of Chun and Evans that the effort to make much better use of multigenerational talents in the current higher education crises must ensure that this multigenerational talent is substantially diverse and inclusive of historically marginalized Americans. My second major mentor in academia was Professor Gideon Sjoberg (1922–​2018), again a member of the “Greatest generation” and friend for more than three decades. Born into a Swedish-​Finnish working-​class family in California, Sjoberg lived a long and often difficult life that required overcoming barriers in being a working-​class immigrant’s child and getting the education he deserved, and later in his professorial decades at the University of Texas. Shaped by broad and diversified reading habits in scholarly and popular media, his maverick and ever-​critical approach to social science research and teaching was honed and sharpened by his difficult life experiences. He became famous for his innovative theoretical and methodological social science approaches, and especially for his insistent human rights approach. Over many years of discussions and other advice-​giving interactions with him, I  learned much about social science research and teaching, and other life matters. He insisted that a form of relatively utopian thinking, which he called counter-​system analysis, should be a principal goal not only of social science, but also of the larger human search for a better social-​moral order. In his view such counter-​system analysis is a means of creating a standard for evaluating what empirically exists, not just in terms of its own categories but also in terms of a morally informed ideal. I have a difficulty placing myself within any major school of sociological thought, for I  know of none that adheres to the view that all social theory (and research) has a moral component, and that one of the main goals of sociology is to advance the cause of human rights.2 (Sjoberg, 1989, p. 483)

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Foreword  xix In advancing the cause of a social science substantially concerned for human rights, Sjoberg further insisted that the views of all those concerned in the relevant social situations had to be included. That is, “by recognizing reflectivity as an essential feature of human nature, one must ultimately consider just how persons often are able, or can be enabled, to take the roles of multiple divergent Others.”3 Sjoberg’s reflective, counter-​system, and human rights approach to social science was often critiqued and resisted by more mainstream social scientists, not only in his own department but also in the sociology profession generally, yet he courageously persisted in his epistemological and methodological pioneering throughout his lifetime. With this dedication to diverse knowledges, he had a profound impact upon several generations of undergraduate students, graduate students, and fellow faculty members at the University of Texas and elsewhere. In both cases, Melvin Sikes and Gideon Sjoberg were brilliant mavericks who symbolize the kind of experiential knowledge, penetrating research insights, and teaching and mentoring capabilities that older faculty members can bring to our college and university settings–​and, thus, to the larger society. These and other diverse elders’ knowledges and interactive talents are essential to making our higher education institutions major places for all who enter to become much better informed, more critical and creative, and indeed more reflective and moral human beings. Even in my brief accounts, we observe how the cases of older faculty members such as professors Melvin Sikes and Gideon Sjoberg help to answer certain educational questions posed by Chun and Evans throughout this book. These include questions about the value of intergenerational knowledge transmission in higher education and about strategies that pathbreaking educators from non-​mainstream generational, racial, and immigrant groups have deployed to counteract negative pushback from more establishment faculty, administrators, staff, and students in their institutions. Like many others, I can attest from much personal experience to the conclusion that multigenerational and other diversity is indeed a major source of new knowledges, advanced insights, and much creativity in higher education, including decisional creativity in dealing with major crises such as the pandemic now facing higher education. In my view, it is especially important to recognize this multigenerational reality of senior faculty as essential to broad knowledge production and transmission and, thus, to resist administrative efforts, often fostered by corporatist and neoliberal considerations, to force unwarranted early retirements and other actions that marginalize or downplay the importance of senior faculty to the intellectual and academic health of our colleges and universities. Moreover, as Chun and Evans explain well, there are other advantages to maintaining and enhancing the talent and knowledge of an intergenerational and diverse workforce: “Leveraging multigenerational talent strategies will enable colleges and universities to strengthen collegiality and cohesion across generational divides and build an environment of interpersonal trust and respect.” Additionally, recognition of the multigenerational talent, including

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xx Foreword that of senior faculty, not only can provide valuable sources of knowledge in many disciplines but also valuable sources of administrative and other leadership skills for departments and divisions across our college and university campuses. I would like to underscore further the emphasis that Chun and Evans give to the frequent neglect in higher education of the multigenerational talents and other resources among Americans of color and other marginalized social groups. Indeed, differential treatment of faculty and staff often involves their cross-​cutting or intersectional positions and identities. As they note, numerous examples of discriminatory treatment that are recounted in this book’s “narratives of both junior and senior faculty and administrators reflect differential treatment based on the intersectionality of age with other minoritized statuses.” For example, being non-​white or being female can often mean one’s academic career is less likely than that of a white male to extend well into one’s later years. In addition, numerous studies have shown that most campus diversity plans not only do not emphasize age, but also do not emphasize other important human differences such as disability and sexual orientation–​or the intersectionality dimensions cutting across these differences. Most definitely, this pathbreaking book makes an excellent case for aggressively addressing these major errors of omission in most diversity and inclusion plans for our colleges and universities. Regularly and critically considering the generational and other diversity dimensions noted previously is highly relevant to solving major challenges that our educational institutions face now and in the near and distant future. Let me conclude by noting one such challenge.This contemporary challenge illustrates well the great need for an intergenerational and diverse array of talents, abilities, and creativities. Today much is being made of actual or proposed shifts in regard in new technologies related to methods of teaching and learning in our often-​difficult educational settings.The extensive online, remote, and protected learning efforts forced on various levels of education by the Covid-​19 pandemic have necessitated a national and international focus on innovative techniques and methods of knowledge transmission and learning. Numerous scholarly, popular media, and school policy discussions have highlighted an array of 21st-​ century digital and hyperconnectivity techniques that can be used for educational purposes–​social media platforms, mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, instructional video games, and types of messaging (e.g., texting). Understanding these techniques well frequently involves a significant generational dimension. Before the pandemic most of these technologies were disproportionately being used, and were often better understood, by younger generations, especially the Millennials and Gen Zers, among the faculty, staff, and students in our higher education settings. As a result, we now have extraordinarily important situations where older and younger generations–​as well as those with other diverse knowledges–​can exchange their learning knowledges and interactively educate one another as they collaborate to solve major educational challenges. In this case, the reverse

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Foreword  xxi of what I accented earlier is now often true. Older members of educational institutions can now learn from the knowledges of younger members of academia.Today, for example, numerous educational discussions involve calls for older faculty to change their curricula, teaching, and research techniques to fit these relatively new media and technology changes. As one contemporary analysis of contemporary medical education put it fittingly, and before the current pandemic, “The challenges to build teams and support interactive learning are daunting, but with challenges come opportunities.”4

Notes 1 For more insights from middle-​class African Americans, many older male and female professionals, see Joe R. Feagin and Melvin P. Sikes, Living with Racism: The Black Middle-​Class Experience (Boston: Beacon Press, 1994). 2 Gideon Sjoberg, “Notes on the Life of a Tortured Optimist,” The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science (November 1989), https://​doi.org/​10.1177/​002188 638902500411 3 Gideon Sjoberg, “Reflective Methodology: The Foundations of Social Inquiry,” in Gideon Sjoberg and Roger Nett, A Methodology for Social Research (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 1997), p. xxii. 4 Philip G.  Boysen, Laurie Daste, and Theresa Northern, “Multigenerational Challenges and the Future of Graduate Medical Education,” The Ochsner Journal 16 (2016): 101–​107.

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I ntroduction: Forces and Fissures in the Higher Education Landscape

Higher education is undergoing rapid change in terms of an increasingly diverse student body, diminished governmental funding, an ageing faculty workforce, declining enrollment, and shifting faculty workforce models. Arguably, the future of higher education depends upon leveraging the multigenerational strengths of the academic and administrative workforce. A return to the halcyon days of sufficient governmental support for public higher education is unlikely. In a climate of economic uncertainty and public questioning of the value of higher education’s mission, it is incumbent upon colleges and universities to strengthen their talent practices and to draw upon the contributions of different generational cohorts in the academic workforce. The luxury of wasting talent no longer exists. As institutions craft inclusive diversity strategies, the development of multigenerational workforce practices has taken on new urgency. Such strategies need to take into account the challenges and opportunities of a resource-​constricted environment while drawing on the talent of seasoned and new faculty, administrators, and staff. Perhaps at no other time in U.S.  history has the necessity for creating age-​inclusive environments been so apparent. As Louise Aronson, Professor of Medicine at the University California, points out, the global Covid-​19 pandemic virus that disproportionately affects senior citizens has exposed the deeply ageist underpinnings of American culture as reflected in medical practices. Aronson believes that ageism has made the pandemic worse, citing the lack of medical protocols for the most vulnerable older populations and the “blatantly ageist” nickname of “boomer remover” for the virus (Aronson, 2020, para 9). In her words, “everyone can help create a less ageist culture and improve individual institutions” (Aronson, 2020, para 12). Aronson’s concerns are well founded, as a Los Angeles Times article in the midst of the pandemic cautioned in its headlines: “It’s open season for discrimination against older adults” (Newberry, 2020). As the economic crisis deepened in 2020 because of Covid-​19, colleges and universities began layoffs of staff and even tenure-​track faculty. In determining which staff to retain, which tenure track or tenured positions to eliminate, and which programs would not be funded, institutions have been

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2  Forces and Fissures in Higher Education faced with choices that could reflect underlying ageist assumptions. For example, university presidents who decided to reopen their campuses for in-​person instruction in fall 2020 offered rationales that focused on revenues rather than the health dangers for the 80 percent of faculty and staff over 40 (Yakoboski, 2018). Take the controversial letter of Mitch Daniels, president of Purdue University and former two-​term Republican governor of Indiana, stating that Purdue was in “a better position to resume its mission” because 80 percent of the population “is made up of young people, say, 35 and under.” Daniels inexplicably added that “all data tell us that the Covid-​19 virus, while it transmits rapidly in this age group, poses close to zero lethal threat to them” (Daniels, 2020). While he did note the “serious danger to other, older demographic groups, especially those with underlying health problems,” he stated that individuals from these groups comprise approximately 20  percent of Purdue’s population (Daniels, 2020). In the words of a columnist for the Indianapolis Star, “Who is going to teach these healthy young people? I would think the university’s faculty and staff would warrant at least a specific mention” (Hackney, 2020). And even in an interview conducted in late summer 2020, Daniels reiterated, “Cases on college campuses have an infinitesimal chance of leading to a fatality, as close to zero as you can get” (Bartlett, 2020, para 2). Given the fact that older adults and individuals with underlying medical conditions are at the highest risk for severe Covid-​19 illness, Daniels’ optimistic view appeared to overlook the fact that national data indicate that approximately half of the faculty are now over 35, while 37 percent are aged 35 to 54, and 17 percent are over 65. Staff have a similar age profile with an average age of 45 (McChesney and Bichsel, 2020; Pritchard, Li, McChesney, and Bichsel, 2019). Similarly, consider the Op-​ed to The New York Times written by Christina Paxson, president of Brown University, who argued that the Ivy League institution needed to reopen in fall 2020 in the midst of the pandemic. Despite the university’s 4.2 billion endowment, Paxson focused exclusively on the loss of tuition revenue and did not mention the dangers to faculty and staff: “The basic business model for most colleges and universities is simple–​tuition comes twice a year at the beginning of each semester … Remaining closed in the fall means losing as much as half of our revenue” (Paxson, 2020). To be clear, multigenerational workforce diversity involves the inclusion of all generational cohorts. And as we shall describe in this book, institutions of higher education can suffer from ageism at both ends of the spectrum, affecting both younger members of the workforce as well as seasoned and more senior individuals. Put in overly simplistic medical terms, ageism is the disease, and multigenerational diversity is the cure and an important avenue to inclusion. With these concerns at the forefront, we now delve into a more specific discussion of the pressures facing higher education that make a

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Forces and Fissures in Higher Education  3 multigenerational workforce strategy an essential aspect of an institution’s strategic diversity planning process. An inclusive multigenerational framework will benefit institutions by strengthening the contributions of different generational cohorts, diminishing stereotypical ageist expectations that can influence institutional outcomes, ensuring equity in employment decisions, projecting future workforce needs, and developing a robust pipeline of diverse talent.

Generational Tensions A vortex of demographic, economic, and social forces is combining to reshape the contours of American higher education. These forces are integrally tied to the educational prospects of a diverse new generation of students and pose seemingly intractable tensions. In the view of Ronald Brownstein, no challenge may be more pressing or perplexing than reconciling the interests of what he terms “two giant generations,” i.e., the gray and the brown (Brownstein, 2011, para 6). On the one hand, four-​fifths of American seniors are white due to limited immigration from 1924 to 1965 with the wave of so-​called “baby boomers” moving into retirement. On the other hand, a diverse youth population is now filling college classrooms and preparing to enter the workforce (Brownstein, 2011). The two generations are fundamentally interdependent.The financial security of the graying generation through programs such as Social Security and Medicare is linked to providing more opportunity for the centennial generation such as through access to higher education (Brownstein, 2011). These dynamic generational tensions are now colliding within the higher education environment. As a diverse new generation of students enters college, a fundamental reconfiguration of the faculty workforce is well underway with the graying of the tenured faculty cohort and the rise of a new employment majority of contingent faculty. At the same time, only nominal progress has been made in the attainment of representational diversity in the faculty and administrative ranks. Minoritized students on predominantly white campuses still find few role models in the classroom and can experience significant isolation and exclusion that affect their social interactions and academic progress. Compounding the tensions, external pressures have tightened the budgetary straight jacket in public higher education because of major cutbacks in state legislative appropriations. Institutions must now rely more heavily upon tuition dollars and private donations. The rising cost of college and sharp decrease in funding are major concerns for boards of trustees. A 2020 survey of 919 board members found that 85 percent were concerned about the future of education compared with 73 percent just a year earlier. More than half worried about the financial status of their own institutions (Association of Governing Boards, 2020). And as college tuition spikes upward, access to higher education has become even more problematic for a diverse generation of students.

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4  Forces and Fissures in Higher Education Just consider the dramatic funding and enrollment challenges faced by public higher education.The Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASHE) comprised of 14 state colleges and universities experienced a 20  percent enrollment decrease in the past decade, leading to increased tuition at all the institutions (Geli, 2019). As of 2019, state support was equivalent to only 27 percent of the funding for each full-​time-​equivalent student (Seltzer, 2019).To cope with these legislative cutbacks, PASHE asked the state legislature for $100 million over a five-​year period to undertake system redesign including consolidation and streamlining of administrative services in order to save money and generate revenue (Snyder, 2019). But financial pressures resulting from the coronavirus pandemic led to a vote in July 2020 by PASHE’s Board of Governors to explore the integration of three pairs of universities in the system: Edinboro and Slippery Rock, Clarion and California, and Lock Haven and Mansfield universities. This integration would focus on shared services among each pair of universities to be implemented by 2022 including business operations, faculty and staff, academic programs, and budgets (Myers, 2020). The three priorities of the comprehensive system redesign are: ensuring student success; leveraging university strengths; and transforming the governance/​leadership structure (Pennsylvania State System of Education, n.d.). In another prominent example, the North Dakota state university system has lost one third of its funding since 2016, leading to forced retirements, staff layoffs, and loss of tenure track lines (Liming, 2019). Similarly, in the state of Alaska, a 41 percent cut of $135 million from state appropriations to higher education was proposed in February 2019 by Alaska’s governor, Michael J.  Dunleavy. The cut was later modified to $70  million over three years (Lederman, 2019). Dunleavy blamed overpaid administrators, overreliance on state funding, and low graduation rates for the situation (Brown, 2019). The coronavirus pandemic only deepened the budget crisis and the Board of Regents voted in June 2020 to reduce or eliminate more than 40 academic programs, including undergraduate majors in sociology, chemistry, geography, and earth science as well as graduate programs in English, management information systems, special education, and biochemistry. In addition, the Board voted to undertake a study of the potential for merging the University of Alaska Southeast with the University of Alaska Fairbanks (Nietzel, 2020). The pandemic exacerbated existing fiscal challenges at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. The state university already was facing enrollment declines and a shortfall of $30 million. Three rounds of budget cuts in 2020 resulted in the elimination of 94 administrator positions, 53 non-​tenure track faculty positions, 140 unionized positions in dining and maintenance, and 81 other administrative and classified positions (Smola, 2020). And at the University of Akron, the Board of Trustees voted in July 2020 to eliminate 178 positions, including 96 unionized faculty members.With previous layoffs and retirements, the university has reduced its unionized, full-​time faculty workforce since the beginning of the pandemic (McLean, 2020).

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Forces and Fissures in Higher Education  5 How then can colleges and universities respond to these dire financial circumstances? In light of looming budgetary and enrollment crises, public institutions have had to resort to drastic cost-​cutting initiatives that include reducing faculty and staff lines, limiting curricular offerings, eliminating academic programs, and even merging or closing campuses. Institutions have sought to shore up scarce budgetary resources with a host of efficiency measures that include freezing salaries, initiating mandatory furloughs, and offering early separation incentives for faculty and staff. In the effort to replace more highly paid positions with early-​career incumbents, colleges and universities have placed increasing value on bringing in “new blood,” while overlooking the importance of intergenerational knowledge. Belt-​ tightening has not been restricted simply to retirement incentives for more senior members of the workforce, but also has involved increasing reliance on a predominantly female contingent faculty workforce. These trends necessarily create tensions between administrative goals and the desires of senior faculty and staff to continue to contribute to academic mission. Interestingly, justifications for the creation of voluntary separation or early retirement programs often reflect the “lump of labor” fallacy that views available positions as fixed and sees older workers as making it difficult to hire younger ones when jobs are scarce (Applewhite, 2016, para 13; Krugman, 2003). The findings of experimental studies simulating resource scarcity indicate that potential generational tensions arise from prescriptive (“should-​based”) age stereotypes of older workers based on concepts of succession, consumption, and identity (North and Fiske, 2016). All three concepts involve perceptions of older workers as limiting opportunities and resources for others. Succession involves the notion of moving aside to make way for younger workers; consumption describes the concept of overuse of shared resources such as healthcare benefits; and identity refers to issues of older generations attempting to invade the perceived territory of younger generations such as through social media usage (North and Fiske, 2013; North and Fiske, 2016). In other words, more senior members of the workforce are seen as inhibiting the potential for hiring new talent, consuming scarce resources, and contributing to spiraling healthcare costs. In light of these mounting pressures, this book offers an in-​depth look at multigenerational strategies that enhance institutional capacity, draw on the breadth of talent resources, and respond proactively to the educational needs of a diverse, new generation of students. In contrast to the lump of labor fallacy, an intergenerational workforce will expand the talent, knowledge, and innovation available to institutions of higher education. Leveraging multigenerational talent strategies will enable colleges and universities to strengthen collegiality and cohesion across generational divides and build an environment of interpersonal trust and respect (Haviland, Jacobs, Alleman, and Allen, 2020). It will foster an inclusive workplace that not only assists new faculty, administrators, and staff in their career trajectories but also respects the desire of senior faculty and administrators to advance academic goals in support of student learning. In essence, intergenerational talent is a

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6  Forces and Fissures in Higher Education strategic resource that will enable institutions of higher education to survive and thrive in a turbulent and resource-​constrained environment. To provide background for the study, we next examine three major trends that epitomize the confluence of troubling tensions in the educational landscape and underscore the need to optimize multigenerational talent resources: 1) the progressive defunding of public higher education and its impact on diverse students; 2) the continuing lack of representational diversity among faculty and administration; and 3) the growth of a predominantly female and largely contingent faculty workforce.

The Impact of Defunding Public Higher Education on Diverse Students While the demographic diversity of college students is increasing, access to public higher education has become vastly more difficult for first generation and minority students due to the progressive erosion of state and federal funding. Between 1967 and 2016, the percentage of white students enrolled in post-​secondary institutions declined from 84 percent to 57 percent, while the enrollment of minoritized students increased markedly. The enrollment of Hispanic/​Latinx students rose from four percent to 18 percent; representation of Asian/​Pacific Islander students increased from two percent to seven percent; and black student enrollment increased from ten percent to 14 percent (National Center for Education Statistics, 2018). A 2018 Pew Research Study indicates that the nation’s post-​Millennial generation of young people aged six to 21, known as Generation Z, is likely to be the most racially and ethnically diverse generation (Geiger, 2018). This generation is only 52 percent non-​Hispanic white and one quarter Hispanic/​Latinx and is enrolling in college at higher rates than Millennials in the previous generation (Geiger, 2018). As shown in Figure 0.1, the decrease in legislative funding for higher education began in the late 1970s with state spending dropping nearly 30 percent during the time period from 1970 to 2000 (Taylor and Cantwell, 2019). From the 1930s to the 1970s, state and federal government funds supported building projects and programs at historically white colleges and universities. Just as more and more first-​generation and students of color have gained access to these institutions, the resources provided to higher education have begun to diminish. This concerning trend has continued unabated to the present, leading toward the increased privatization of public higher education (Mortenson, 2012). In other words, a greater share of private funding must now support the public good that emanates from the research, scholarship, and innovation generated by public colleges and universities. Why has this occurred? While both red and blue states steadily decreased appropriations to public higher education, the most significant cuts since the recession of 2008 have occurred through the actions of conservative legislatures in Arizona, Alabama, Georgia, Oklahoma, West Virginia, and South Carolina (Brownstein, 2018). An “ominous milestone” was reached in

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Forces and Fissures in Higher Education  7

1970

1930 Era of federal and state support

1970

2000 30 percent drop in state spending

2000

Decline in enrollment of white students

2018

Further state cuts: Tuition > government support Figure 0.1 The Progressive Defunding of Public Higher Education

2017 when for the first-​time public colleges received more of their funding from tuition than from government sources (Brownstein, 2018, para 1). This milestone creates the potential for greater economic and social inequality, given the increased enrollment of minority students in higher education (Brownstein, 2018). The dual trends of increasing student diversity and conservative legislative cutbacks appear to be correlated and even can be viewed as substantially intentional (Chun and Feagin, 2020). As Brownstein writes, “But whether resources are shrinking because diversity is growing, or the two trends are proceeding independently, their convergence is still a dangerous development–​not only for higher education, but also for the nation’s economic future” (Brownstein, 2018, para 2). Consider the fact that in the brief period between 2008 and 2017, state funding for public two-​and four-​year colleges decreased by $9 billion. An analysis of 49 states (excluding Wisconsin) reveals that in this time period, 44 states expended less per student in the 2017 school year compared with 2008. (Mitchell, Leachman, Masterson, and Waxman, 2018).The funding per student declined by nearly $2,000 between 2001 and 2018 and had decreased by $1,000 per student from the start of the 2008 recession (State Higher Education Officers Association, 2019). Decreases in state appropriations for public higher education have reached historic lows as tuition in 49 out of 50 states, with the exception of Wyoming, now makes up a greater percentage of total institutional revenue than was true in 2000 (Huelsman, 2018). Legislative cutbacks reflect the distrust of colleges and universities among Republican voters and voters leaning Republican with only 36 percent indicating that institutions of higher education have a positive effect on the country (Pew Research Center, 2017). For many conservatives, college campuses are seen as sources of Democratic activism by liberal-​ leaning

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8  Forces and Fissures in Higher Education faculty and students. Protests around hot-​button issues such as race, gender, and free speech have risen to the fore on conservative news sites, with the implication that colleges are too liberal, may be coddling students, and are following a liberal agenda (Hartle, 2017). The educational level of voters was a critical factor in the 2012 and 2016 elections with white working-​ class voters overwhelmingly voting Republican. For three consecutive years, President Donald Trump proposed major cuts to education spending that included diminishing Federal Work-​ Study funds by more than 55  percent (Kreightbaum, 2019). Further, in revamping the tax code in 2018, the Republican Party’s economic policy focused specifically on higher education through initiatives such as the application of an excise tax on gains in college endowments for institutions with endowments of more than $500,000 per full-​time student. A measure that would have taxed tuition waivers to graduate students was withdrawn after widespread protests (Thompson, 2017). Budgetary pressures in higher education are by no means confined to public institutions. Witness the closing of numerous small private liberal arts colleges due to lack of funding. In Eastern Massachusetts alone, eight small private colleges have closed or merged with larger institutions over the past four years. Just take Mount Ida College in Newton, a 119-​year-​old institution that closed with a few weeks’ notice, putting its students into jeopardy. The closure exemplifies what one writer terms “a slow-​moving emergency” that is sweeping across American universities, with 1.9 million fewer applicants in fall 2018 than in 2011 (Damiano, 2019, para 3). Small private colleges in the Midwest and Catholic universities located away from major population centers have been particularly vulnerable (Seltzer, 2017). A 2018 survey of Chief Business Officers (CBOs) found that 24 percent of the CBOs indicate that discussions have taken place regarding merging with another college, up from five percent a year earlier. And a third or more reported discussions about consolidating academic programs or administrative operations with another institution (Lederman, 2018). To add to the difficult financial picture, over the period between 2011 and 2018, college student enrollment declined by nine percent with 1.7 million fewer college students (Herships, 2018). According to Nathan Grawe, the recession in 2008 and declining birth rates could mean a decrease in the college-​going population of 15 percent by 2026 (Jaschik, 2018). Underlying Grawe’s analysis of lowered enrollment is the decreasing number of white middle-​class students with the ability to pay for college. Clearly, ways must be found to overcome the economic and socially derived barriers that inhibit the access of students from underrepresented groups to higher education (Feagin, 2018).

The Lack of Workforce Diversity The rapid shift in the demography of the postsecondary student population over the past four decades contrasts sharply with the slow diversification of

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Forces and Fissures in Higher Education  9 the faculty, administration, and staff. We have noted the 27 percent decrease in the percentage of white students from 1976 to 2016, while 78 percent of all faculty at degree-​granting institutions are white (National Center for Education Statistics, 2017). As of 2017, only 31 percent of staff holding non-​faculty positions were from minoritized groups, as were 28 percent of graduate assistants (National Center for Education Statistics, 2017). In light of these disparities, one of the imminent challenges for higher education is to enhance the diversity of faculty, administrators, and staff. Unfortunately, the impact of the global recession of 2008 led to the decline of full-​time faculty hires at public master’s and doctoral institutions and the increased reliance of doctoral institutions on part-​time faculty.This trend continued until these institutions once again began to increase new full-​time faculty hires in 2016 (Toppo, 2019). While Ivy League institutions such as Columbia, Princeton, Brown, and Yale Universities recently have invested millions in hiring faculty from underrepresented groups, many public institutions as well as small private colleges have had few opportunities to create new tenure-​track faculty lines. As a result, diversification of the full-​time faculty in public universities and colleges has been affected by budgetary cutbacks.

The Perils of Contingent Work One of the most significant developments for the future of higher education has been the movement of colleges and universities away from the tenure-​ track faculty model and the concomitant rise of a predominantly contingent faculty workforce. This structural shift has resulted in an unequal two-​tier system and the erosion of tenure (Gullette, 2018). As of 2016, nearly three quarters or 73  percent of instructional positions in all U.S.  colleges and universities were off the tenure track, with the highest percentage, roughly 80  percent, at two-​year institutions (American Association of University Professors, 2018). Approximately 20 percent of these non-​tenure track faculty positions are full-​time, while roughly 50 percent are part-​time (Yakoboski and Foster, 2014). At research universities alone, the ratio of full-​time to part-​time faculty shrank from 3.4:1 in 1993 to 1.9:1 by 2013, while the ratio of tenured and tenure-​track faculty decreased from 3:1 to 2:1 (Finkelstein, Conley, and Schuster, 2016). From a macro-​perspective, structural changes in the higher education workplace mirror the growth of precarious work in the U.S. labor market that has led to heightened job insecurity through contingent and non-​ standard work arrangements (Kalleberg, 2007). The vulnerability arising from precarious work is greater for minorities and older workers who have fewer employment options and are more likely to suffer from the effects of job displacement and restructuring (Kalleberg, 2008). Economic pressures can increase efforts to discriminate against ageing workers under the guise of “age-​neutral” rhetoric related to cost-​savings and downsizing (Roscigno, 2010, p. 18). And as demonstrated in a study of 204 ethnographic cases from 158 books, job insecurity leads to increased levels of workplace harassment of

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10  Forces and Fissures in Higher Education vulnerable employees by those in power. In such cases, grievance procedures can serve merely as window dressing rather than substantial protections (Lopez, Hodson, and Roscigno, 2009). In higher education, as contingent teaching positions begin more and more to resemble at-​will positions, minorities and women can experience disproportionate susceptibility to particularistic discretionary judgments with negative career outcomes (Wilson, 2006). With the unbundling of the traditional teaching, research, and service portfolio, the feminization of the academic workforce has largely occurred within the contingent ranks as women have assumed non-​tenure appointments and part-​time faculty positions focused on teaching (Alker, 2017). As a result, the impact of precarious work is felt more acutely by women in the contingent faculty workforce. The unbalanced representation of women in contingent faculty positions is a marker of inequality. Despite the erosion of a historically large gender gap in higher education, due to the decrease in tenure-​track appointments, women’s share of full-​ time tenure-​ track appointments declined from 64.5  percent in 1993 to 55.7  percent in 2013, while women’s part-​time appointments increased from 48.2  percent to 56.1  percent (Finkelstein, Conley, and Schuster, 2016). According to Maria Maisto, president of the New Faculty Majority, a national adjunct advocacy group, the plight of long-​ term adjuncts who are often passed over for younger applicants particularly affects female adjuncts who are more frequently employed as part-​time instructors in the humanities than men. Women are often faced with child and family care obligations and the geographical limitations imposed by family and spousal careers (Flaherty, 2014). In terms of full-​time non-​tenure track appointments, the percentage of women increased from 35.5 percent to 44.3 percent over the two-​decade time period (Finkelstein, Conley, and Schuster, 2016). And between 1993 and 2013, the growth of minoritized faculty in full-​time non-​tenure track lines increased by 143 percent, compared with only a 30 percent increase in tenure-​track and a 60 percent increase in tenured lines (Finkelstein, Conley, and Schuster, 2016). From an institutional standpoint, the expansion of the contingent workforce has been viewed by colleges and universities as a major source of cost reductions. Adjunct faculty are paid on average $3,000 per course, although 60 percent receive less than this amount (Yakoboski, 2018). Compared with the extensive protections and due process rights of tenured faculty, contingent faculty positions have little job security and few, if any, due process protections. As a result, individuals are vulnerable to dismissal if they should offend students, administrators, or legislators, or if students are unhappy with their grades (AAUP, 2018). The reliance on contingent faculty, however, cannot be viewed simply through a budgetary lens. While the budgetary rationale has served as a major legitimating argument for the erosion of tenure-​track positions, the increase in contingent faculty positions permits greater administrative control of employment conditions for a majority of the teaching workforce. As

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Forces and Fissures in Higher Education  11 budgetary issues have loomed larger, concern for the bottom line has led to personnel decisions that can reflect subtle cognitive biases related to ageism and generational status (Wilson and Roscigno, 2017). In some instances, institutions have used financial exigency to erode tenure protections such as in the Vermont Law School where 14 of 19 tenured faculty members were moved to contingent employment status due to the law school’s stated need to close a $2 million budget gap (Flaherty, 2019). Like contingent faculty, administrators who typically work in “at-​will” positions have few due process protections. As a result, conditions of job insecurity heighten the potential for ageism to flourish in the administrative ranks. Further, as we shall discuss in the chapters that follow, the intersectionality of age with other devalued social identities can increase the potential for ageist behaviors and actions.

Questions the Book Seeks to Answer Given the confluence of financial, enrollment, and diversity challenges facing institutions of higher education today, the questions we seek to address in this study include: 1. What is the value of intergenerational diversity in the higher education workplace? How does generational status relate to ageism (positive and negative) in the academic environment? 2. In what ways do generational and ageist stereotypes (both positive and negative) impact behavioral interactions, classroom dynamics, departmental culture, and workplace outcomes for faculty, administrators, and staff? 3. What strategies can members of different generational groups deploy to counteract stereotypical ageist framing and assumptions? 4. What practical approaches will assist academic and non-​ academic administrators, managers, and supervisors in strengthening workplace interactions across generational groups? 5. What specific best practice policies, programs, and practices will enable colleges and universities to leverage multigenerational status in support of institutional diversity mission and goals?

Methodology and Organization of the Book An extensive literature review was undertaken for the book to identify empirical studies on multigenerational workforce strategies and the limited research pertaining to the higher education environment. Since research on intergenerational management in U.S. higher education is sparse, this book can serve as a foundation for future efforts that reinforce the benefits of intergenerational diversity. Throughout the book, we have quoted from a series of 21 in-​depth interviews conducted with faculty and administrators, some of whom chose to remain anonymous. Most of our respondents are still employed in

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12  Forces and Fissures in Higher Education higher education and most are either academic administrators and/​or faculty. Discussion of multigenerational issues in student employment, while an important topic, is beyond the scope of this study. The primary audience for the book is higher education leadership including presidents, provosts, vice-​ presidents, deans, department chairs, human resource and diversity officers, as well as diversity taskforces. Due to the inclusion of first-​person narratives from the academic and administrative frontlines, we also anticipate that the book may be helpful for faculty, administrators, and staff who are experiencing workplace challenges based on ageist and generational framing. Following this introduction, the first chapter discusses how a comprehensive intergenerational talent strategy enhances institutional capacity and creativity. The chapter lays the definitional groundwork for the study by an exploration of the dual concepts of generational status and ageism. It then provides an overview of the dimensions of age and generational status in the academy and discusses experiences of ageism in the context of the U.S. workforce. Chapter 2 focuses on the dynamics of asymmetrical power structures in relation to generational status and age. It examines the ways in which the intersectionality of age with other minoritized statuses increases the vulnerability of targeted individuals and leads to differential treatment and inequality in career-​based outcomes. The chapter then discusses prominent age discrimination lawsuits in higher education and examines the strengths and weaknesses of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA). The third chapter discusses the broad social framing of generational groups with interlocking elements that include stereotypes, biases, narratives, images, and emotions. It focuses on behavioral, structural, and process-​based aspects of generational status in the higher education workplace.The chapter analyzes how behavioral interactions and processes reify the prevailing generational status hierarchy in higher education. Drawing on the first-​hand narratives of faculty and administrators who have faced age discrimination, the chapter explores the impact of generational status and ageism on large-​ scale processes such as recruitment and hiring, promotion, evaluation, tenure attainment, and social closure. Chapter 4 examines the relation of ageism and generational status to key dimensions of the academic playing field including intergenerational classroom challenges, pedagogical models, student views of faculty, and departmental conflict, as well as differences in disciplinary, curricular, and research approaches. In addition, it explores generational perspectives on diversity and work/​life integration. Chapter  5 offers concrete coping strategies that faculty and staff have deployed to counteract generational and ageist frames in terms of stereotypes, behavioral exclusion, and discriminatory processes. Based on research findings and first-​person narratives, the chapter identifies viable approaches that can help faculty and staff counteract everyday ageist behaviors and actions.

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Forces and Fissures in Higher Education  13 Chapter  6 shares specific human resource and diversity programs and policies that contribute to an integrated, multigenerational talent strategy in higher education. We identify seven strategic institutional initiatives that enhance intergenerational workforce strategy with representative best practice examples. The final chapter summarizes the overall findings of the book and offers a set of ten concrete recommendations that will contribute to a holistic, multigenerational diversity strategy. It provides concrete approaches that will enable institutions of higher education to capitalize on valuable talent resources and create an inclusive, age-​diverse workplace.

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1  The Value of Intergenerational Diversity

Research shows us that diverse groups make better decisions than groups that are less diverse. So a motivation for our work around diversity is that we need it to find the truth about things. Rebecca Stoltzfus, President, Goshen College (2019, paras 43–​44)

Intergenerational capabilities are at the heart of the talent equation. As we shall discuss in this chapter, they are a driving competitive force that differentiates organizational performance and shapes institutional outcomes. In addition to racial/​ethnic and gender diversity, intergenerational diversity affects nearly every aspect of teaching and administration in colleges and universities (Booth and Rosa, 2014).Yet a significant gap exists in the literature on intergenerational dynamics in the workplace as a whole and the higher education workplace in particular. Few resources synthesize intergenerational findings in order to develop comprehensive human resource and diversity policies and practices in the higher education environment (Amayah and Gedro, 2014; Chavez, 2015; Cogin, 2012). Nonetheless, 18 empirical studies across all sectors have identified the need to refocus human resources policies due to the potential effect of age stereotypes, both positive and negative, on workplace outcomes (Dordoni and Argentero, 2015). If, as one study of the private sector indicates, talent, learning, shared mind-​set, accountability, and innovation are linked to profitability and productivity, approaches that maximize intergenerational talent will contribute to the success and survival of colleges and universities in a global economy (Huselid, Becker, and Beatty, 2005). Intangible factors such as discretionary commitment, innovation, competence, and shared mindset will lead to future success by enhancing the intergenerational capabilities of the organization (Lev, 2004; Ulrich and Smallwood, 2003). A  mindset of intergenerational interdependency will enable institutions to develop high-​ performance workplaces that capitalize on structural synergy (Chavez, 2015). In other words, not only similarities, but differences, will create the synergy necessary to reach new levels of organizational performance (Chavez, 2015). Rather than clinging to norms of security and stability, an empowered workforce

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The Value of Intergenerational Diversity  15 can move beyond traditional boundaries and narrow mindsets to foster organizational renewal (Beatty and Ulrich, 1991). With the advent of new and unfamiliar workforce configurations resulting from a more mature workforce, a talent revolution is now underway that will benefit from generational interdependence (Taylor and Lebo, 2019). The longevity of seasoned employees is a critical catalyst in this revolution, requiring organizations to abandon concepts of asset-​based talent and instead adopt an equity framework that optimizes the creative contributions of veteran workers beyond simply the transfer of knowledge (Taylor and Lebo, 2019). And the abundance of talent that creative organizations can access will enable institutions to “do more with more” (Taylor and Lebo, 2019, p. 167). Although there are few empirical studies on the impact of inclusive age-​ diverse climates on organizational outcomes, European researchers have taken the lead in demonstrating the value of intergenerational workforce diversity.Take, for example, a study of 18,000 firms in Germany which found that a ten percent increase in age diversity resulted in a 3.5 percent annual increase in productivity as measured in sales in companies that performed creative rather than routine tasks. The increase in productivity was due to diverse problem-​ solving capabilities deriving from different knowledge pools, career incentive structures for promotion of younger workers, and efficient transfer of know-​how and norms from older to younger cohorts (Backes-​Gellner and Veen, 2013). Conversely, a comprehensive study of more than 30,101 employees in 147 diverse German companies revealed that high levels of age diversity in a negative age-​diversity climate had a negative impact on organizational outcomes (Kunze, Boehm, and Bruch, 2013b). However, the researchers found that the indirect negative effect of top management’s negative views of age diversity on diversity climate was moderated by inclusive age-​diverse HR policies (Kunze, Boehm, and Bruch, 2013b). This study validates the importance of age-​friendly HR policies, even when leadership may hold negative views on age diversity. The impact of age-​inclusive HR practices was confirmed in another study conducted by the same researchers in 93 companies with a sample of 14,260 employees. The study found a positive correlation between age-​inclusive HR practices and collective perceptions of social exchange or justice, trust, and confidence in organizational investment and support. Positive employee perceptions of social exchange were, in turn, related to organizational performance as well as a decrease in employee turnover intentions (Boehm, Kunze, and Bruch, 2014). The results demonstrate the benefits of age-​ inclusive human resource practices that solidify employee perceptions of justice, trust, and confidence in organizational support over the long term (Boehm, Kunze, and Bruch, 2014). Consistent with these large-​scale studies, recent research conducted in three organizations in Belgium concluded that high-​quality contact among age groups in contexts of organizational support for diversity led to positive

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16  The Value of Intergenerational Diversity views of older workers as more competent and sociable (Iweins, Desmette, Yzerbyt, and Stinglhamber, 2013). Further, another study of 745 teams with 8,848 employees in the administrative, financial, and car production sectors in Germany identified a positive correlation between age diversity and performance in groups solving complex tasks. The researchers indicated that preconditions for optimizing the benefits of age diversity in teams include a positive climate, low age discrimination, and age-​balanced leadership (Wegge et al., 2012). Nonetheless, a study of 14 organizations, including one university, reveals that age-​diversity strategy is often not clearly defined and the development of integrated, holistic age-​management strategies is still in the evolutionary phase (Roundtree, 2011). One of the perils of generational diversity in the workplace is the existence of demographic fault lines based on ageism and generational status that have the potential to divide groups. Such fault lines can affect interpersonal dynamics and create conflict leading to performance losses of the group as a whole (Lau and Murnighan, 1998; North and Fiske, 2015). At one end of the organizational continuum are resistive intergenerational interactions in which each generation compiles resources and power with detrimental effect on the other generation. At the other end of the continuum are transmitive intergenerational interactions that involve the successful transmission and sharing of organizational resources, knowledge, and skills (Joshi, Dencker, Franz, and Martocchio, 2010).The normative context for interactions as well as the structural makeup of the workplace are dual factors that influence the degree that intergenerational interactions occur and are valued (Joshi, Dencker, Franz, and Martocchio, 2010). Given the organizational advantages of an inclusive talent proposition, academic and administrative leaders need to draw on ideas and perspectives from different generational groups, facilitate collaboration, provide mentorship, and build inclusive talent practices. Through such approaches, they can maximize team interactions, foster learning and knowledge transfer, enrich disciplinary perspectives, sponsor innovative research, and promote positive classroom interactions. An inclusive, intergenerational climate will promote what has been described as “cross-​ boundary collaboration” or horizontal teamwork across institutional silos. Cross-​boundary collaboration sparks innovation and bridges different types of expertise and organizational practices (Casciaro, Edmondson, and Jang, 2019, para 4). Consider the application of these principles to the academic department in the model suggested by Christopher Keys, a white male Professor Emeritus and Department Chair from DePaul University: “If you have a critical mass of good people at each level, and … they appreciate each other and their contributions, then you really have the ingredients of a positive, multigenerational department.” Keys envisions cross-​boundary collaboration among the professorial ranks in an academic department as follows: If you have a good cohort of assistant professors who are active and engaged and they are bringing new research ideas into the department

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The Value of Intergenerational Diversity  17 from their recent graduate training, they can relate more personally to the graduate students who are closer to them in age and the undergraduates as well and create a buzz around their ideas and their teaching … And then the full professors are valuable because they have a perspective on the field and on the university and they can serve in leadership roles around the campus as well as in the department and they have networks and they can help connect assistants and associates with opportunities that otherwise might not come their way. They can edit major books or journals; they will continue to make scientific contributions; they can break some new ground because they are already full professors and don’t have as much to lose … The associate professors are the sandwich generation and they can further connect the assistants and the fulls and sort of hold it all together. They are established in terms of demonstrating that they can do research and make scientific contributions … and that they can, teach effectively and work well with students. They are a source of information and they are still growing and learning as well. In order to facilitate such cross-​boundary collaboration, academic and administrative leaders need to defuse prevailing stereotypes regarding the contributions of different generational cohorts and mediate intergenerational conflict. For example, a 2011 study of 424 U.S. human resource professionals found that 72 percent identified generational conflict as a workplace issue (Gale, 2012). The generational balancing act encompasses every aspect of workplace administration from communications to project management (Gale, 2012). In the academic context, developing cross-​generational partnerships and problem-​solving opportunities will help prevent isolation and contribute to departmental success (Booth and Rosa, 2014). Working together with their counterparts across generational divides, veteran employees can offer deep knowledge, finely honed communication skills, seasoned judgment, and balanced perspectives (Applewhite, 2016).

The Benefits of Multigenerational Workforce Diversity As we have indicated, leveraging the talents of a multigenerational workforce is now an institutional imperative in light of the formidable economic, demographic, and social forces that are transforming the structures and delivery of higher education. Yet, for the most part, higher education diversity strategic plans and initiatives have overlooked the development of multigenerational workforce strategies as a key component of an inclusive talent proposition. While race/​ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, and other demographic attributes are often considered in diversity strategic plans, scant attention has been paid to building multigenerational approaches within the culture and practices of higher education. Omission of ageism in diversity programs reflects an obliviousness to its impact and, as a result, ageism remains below the radar as a secondary civil

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18  The Value of Intergenerational Diversity rights issue (North, 2015). Academic diversity leaders we contacted for this study frequently emphasized that while age and generational status need to be important considerations in diversity strategy, these dimensions have not been incorporated in diversity plans. For example, a study of the mission statements of 80 public colleges and universities found that 59 referenced diversity, but the emphasis tended to be on race/​ethnicity, gender, and international status rather than age, disability, or sexual orientation (Wilson, Meyer, and McNeal, 2012). The authors of the study concluded that “… the reasons for acknowledging and expressing a commitment to diversity seem to focus on diversity as an integration of ‘others,’ rather than ‘a transformation of us all’ ” (Wilson, Meyer, and McNeal, 2012, p. 128). An inclusive multigenerational environment in higher education will optimize the talent of younger faculty, administrators, and staff while recognizing the continued contributions of more senior colleagues. As the literature indicates, the benefits and advantages of intergenerational synergy include the solving of complex, “wicked” problems that require creativity, innovation, and application of different types of expertise and knowledge. As we shall discuss further in Chapter 4, collaborative, intergenerational efforts can lead to intellectual breakthroughs, the discovery of new knowledge, and the development of innovative pedagogical models.Wasting intergenerational talent will mean a loss of valuable resources, diminishing institutional knowledge and knowledge transfer. Building on foundational research in human resources, we theorize that multigenerational diversity is an essential organizational capability that defines institutional identity and reflects the collective ability of institutions of higher education to deploy the breadth of intellectual resources and the depth of intangible assets to enhance student learning and fulfill strategic goals (Huselid, Becker, and Beatty, 2005; Ulrich and Smallwood, 2004).Take, for example, a 19-​year study of 230 judges in nine German courts which found that qualitative performance as measured by confirmation by the appeals court at the next level increased with the average age of the judges, whereas quantitative performance in terms of the number of cases processed declined for older judges (Backes-​Gellner, Schneider, and Veen, 2011). Extrapolating from these findings, intergenerational diversity within an institution will strengthen different performance dimensions and enhance overall organizational capacity. By fostering workplace reciprocity, intergenerational interdependency will improve the internal social structure and facilitate communication leading to increased cooperation (Combs, Liu, Hall, and Ketchen, 2006). It will heighten the potential for increased engagement, competence, and discretionary commitment among members of the higher education workforce. In Chapter 7, we offer specific examples of how inclusive intergenerational practices can be operationalized within the culture and processes of institutions through ten key initiatives that include cross-​generational mentoring, flexible workplace policies, and systematic organizational learning.

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The Value of Intergenerational Diversity  19

Reaching Definitional Clarity To lay the groundwork for the study, we next explore the relation between the attainment of a multigenerational workforce strategy and the phenomenon of ageism which can inhibit the ability of institutions to draw upon intergenerational talent and create a culture of inclusion. To begin, we seek to clarify the separate, yet interrelated, definitional threads of ageism and generational status. Ageism reflects prejudice against or in favor of any age group and has been called the third great “ism” after racism and sexism due to its systematic stereotyping of individuals based on age (Palmore and Maddox, 1999). Duke University sociologist Erdman Palmore refers to ageism as “the ultimate prejudice, the last discrimination, the cruelest rejection” (Palmore, 2004, p. 41). Although age is “a potentially universal experience,” ageism has been understudied in comparison with racism and sexism, perhaps because ageist stereotypes are a more socially condoned form of prejudice (North and Fiske, 2015, p. 160). Research on ageism, particularly in the higher education workplace, has moved at a “glacial pace” compared with other forms of inequality, perhaps because ageism is more institutionalized than racism or sexism and, as a result, less likely to be recognized as a form of discrimination (Nelson, 2016, p. 191). By escaping institutional notice, ageism is often more insidious and subtle than racism or sexism (Raposo and Carstensen, 2015). Unlike sexism, racism, and homophobia, ageism, despite its prevalence, is not an “everyday pejorative,” and as such is rarely named or examined (Gullette, 2017a, p. 1). Most importantly, little research has probed the ways in which the intersectionality of race/​ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, disability, and other salient demographic characteristics with age can differentially affect individuals in the higher education opportunity structure. A major finding of this book is that the impact of ageism in the workplace is intensified when combined with other minoritized statuses including race/​ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation. As a result, the instances of disparate treatment we share in the narratives of both junior and senior faculty and administrators reflect differential treatment based on the intersectionality of age with other minoritized statuses. These experiences frequently arise within the context of workplace culture that shapes normative views of career progression including hiring, tenure and promotion, and expected retirement age. Since university culture is not uniform and consists of distinct departmental and divisional micro-​climates, in Chapter 4 we discuss how differing norms within disciplinary cultures and academic departments can affect the impact of ageism and generational differences on faculty experiences. Age is a key cultural dimension of status in society that can affect positional power and influence behavioral interactions, leading either to protected status or increased vulnerability to discretionary decision-​making (Roscigno, Mong, Byron, and Tester, 2007). Age-​based inequality represents a powerful form of discrimination in the workplace that persists when reproduced

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20  The Value of Intergenerational Diversity in everyday interactions and crystallized in organizational structures and processes. In the next chapter, we share specific instances of the increased vulnerability based on ageism experienced by faculty and staff in situations of asymmetrical power in the next chapter. The conceptualization of an individual employee’s age involves not only chronological age, but also includes four other components: 1) functional age in terms of performance capabilities; 2) psychosocial or subjective age in terms of self-​perception and social perception; 3) work seniority; and 4) lifespan age in terms of the variables that impact aging (Dordoni and Argentero, 2015; Sterns and Doverspike, 1989). These different variables can affect workplace perceptions such as through physical appearance (appearing older or younger than one’s age) and even influence organizational outcomes.Workplace seniority can serve as a form of protection for unionized employees through contractual agreements that favor seniority. From this holistic perspective, age should not serve as a criterion for categorizing workers (Dordoni and Argentero, 2015). The concepts of age and generational status are necessarily intertwined, since generations are based upon birth years.Yet generational status assumes a relatively neutral view of cohort differences, without the assumptions that typically accompany biological age. The popular literature has generated a widely accepted typology of generations that identifies characteristics, preferences, and attitudes of different generational cohorts. Generational status is typically portrayed based on a range of birth years and depicted in terms of formative experiences such as economic and social changes, technological shifts, and world events that shape world views (Dimock, 2019). Generational cohorts have been defined as groups of individuals who were born during a specific time period and have experienced common historical, social, and cultural influences such as during the Great Depression or the Civil Rights period. Drawing on sociologist Karl Mannheim’s (1952) concept of generations as a kind of identity of location that temporally unites related age groups in a common historical-​social process, different generational cohorts are thought to vary in terms of values, behaviors, and approaches that involve a range of preferred workplace characteristics. Mannheim indicates that to form a generation, a concrete bond needs to be formed among its members based on common experiences (Mannheim, 1952). The unifying aspect of group membership depends on chronological succession, unlike other demographic categories including race and gender. Generational identities are associated with both preceding and succeeding generations and chronological interdependency within organizations fosters the transmission of knowledge, experiences, and resources (Joshi, Dencker, Frantz, and Martocchio, 2010, p. 393). Generational nicknames adopted since Mannheim’s conceptualization have been described as a “convenient shorthand,” that, although arbitrary in terms of time spans, attempt to designate different eras and shifts in culture, experiences, events, and behaviors (Twenge, 2018, para 8). Generations can be identified by distinct markers such as traumatic historical events, changes

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The Value of Intergenerational Diversity  21 in demography, privileged eras, leaders who stand in resistance to the dominant culture, and sacred places or geographical locales that help build collective memory (Wyatt, 1993). Among the first generations to be named were the Boomers to designate the generation born following World War II when birthrates increased dramatically. A lack of empirical rigor and consistency has accompanied the rise of American generational nicknames and permeates the marketing research and popular literature. Take the 1991 book, Generations, by William Strauss and Neil Howe that has shaped a great deal of thinking about generational designations. Strauss and Howe identify four generational types, Idealist, Reactive, Civic, and Adaptive, that they posit always occur in fixed order (Strauss and Howe, 1991). Beginning with the 16th century, the authors defined the recurring cycle of generational cohorts as approximating 22 years in length, matching what they term “a basic phase of life” and coinciding with age location in terms of events and time (Strauss and Howe, 1991, p. 34).The authors do not offer empirical data that would substantiate their sweeping generational theory. The book was, however, influential in the adoption of the term “millennial,” although this designation at the time referred to individuals born between 1961 and 1981. Later additions to the generational nomenclature followed the publication of books such as Gen X, a term that took hold after the publication of Douglas Copland’s 1991 book, Gen X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture (Raphelson, 2014). Strauss and Howe’s later book, Millennials Rising (2000) is based upon a survey of 202 teachers and 655 high school students in Fairfax County, Virginia, and describes the millennial generation as unlike previous youth generations and as more diverse, numerous, affluent, and better educated (Howe and Strauss, 2000). Despite the serious methodological shortcomings in generational theory, the Pew Research Center identifies approximate cutoff points for recent generational groups as follows (Pew Research Center, 2019): • Traditionalists or individuals born between 1929–​ 1945 (sometimes called the “Silent Generation”); • Boomers born roughly between 1946 and 1964; • Generation X born between 1965 and 1980; • Millennials or Generation Y born between 1981 and 1996; • Generation Z (also called the Centennial Generation) born from 1997 on. Among the attributes thought to vary among generations in the workplace include preferred communication approaches, teamwork, autonomy, professionalism, flexibility, use of technology, responses to formal authority, involvement, structure at work, organizational commitment/​loyalty, types of rewards/​recognition, professional development or continuous learning, job satisfaction, work/​life balance, valuing diversity, and turnover (Costanza, Badger, Fraser, Severt, and Gade, 2012; Kunze and Boehm, 2013). Dimensions of the psychosocial work environment that can be differentially perceived

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22  The Value of Intergenerational Diversity by generational cohorts include role clarity, supervisory support, decision authority, time and emotional demands, interpersonal relationships, distributive justice, and perceptions of stress (Kleinhans, Chakradhar, Muller, and Waddill, 2015). Significantly, empirical research that substantiates generational differences among cohorts in the workplace is limited at best. Such research is imperative due to the increasingly multigenerational composition of the workplace that now typically encompasses four or even five generations (North and Fiske, 2015). A focus on the convergence of generation, age, tenure (in an organization), and experience (GATE) can offer a more holistic view of issues pertaining to age diversity in the workforce and help understand and even forecast workplace outcomes (North, 2019). To date, however, the literature has remained segregated, rather than understanding the multidimensionality of the constructs involved (North, 2019). For example, generational research has not reached consensus on a number of key questions such as which shared experiences are influential, what commonalities and behavioral outcomes arise from these experiences, and how large the differences are between generations (Costanza, Badger, Fraser, Severt, and Gade, 2012). In fact, an analysis of 20 different studies with a sample of 20,000 individuals finds only small differences among groups in terms of preferences and values, while considerable variation does exist within each group (King, Finkelstein, and Thomas, 2019). Various studies contradict popular stereotypes of each generation and fail to account for differences noted within a given generational grouping that could be due to factors such as race/​ethnicity, education, etc. (Parry and Urwin, 2011). Methodological flaws in generational research include the a priori adoption of existing generational categories (such as Boomers, Gen X, and Gen Y), as well as the frequent use of cross-​sectional data from a point in time rather than longitudinal data sets, leading to confusion between age and generation effects (Parry and Urwin, 2017). And although generational differences do exist, such differences are modest (Deal, Altman, and Rogelberg, 2010). To further complicate the picture, assignment of birth years or generations is rather arbitrary and conceived in terms of a rough cycle of about 20-​plus years, although agreement has not been reached on exactly when a generation starts and ends. Further, generational prototypes have been U.S.-​ centric and based on events in this country (Costanza, Badger, Fraser, Severt, and Gade, 2012). A number of studies of Far Eastern nations including Japan, Taiwan, and China support the existence of differently defined generations based on national contexts (Parry and Urwin, 2011). Due to the lack of unifying theory and clear research findings related to generational membership, as well as the conceptual ambiguity surrounding generational concepts, academicians and practitioners are severely constrained in the application of generational research to the higher education workplace (Cox and Coulton, 2015). Stereotypes regarding generational attributes can even be harmful, when, for example, managers attribute certain abilities

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The Value of Intergenerational Diversity  23 or behaviors to generational stereotypes, such as lack of technological expertise, poor health, etc. (Cox and Coulton, 2015). As a result, only limited research offers insight into different generational cohorts in the higher education workplace based on historical, political, cultural, and social influences, technological advances, and the changing nature of academic work (see for example Kleinhans, Chakradhar, Muller, and Waddill, 2015).

An Overview of Age and Generational Status in the Academy From a macro-​perspective, an important shift has taken place in the higher education workforce with increasing percentages of faculty and staff over the age of 55. The elimination of mandatory retirement in 1994 following implementation of the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) has had major impact on the longevity of faculty and staff. As life expectancies have increased, tenured faculty members now can work well past traditional retirement ages. As originally enacted in 1967, the ADEA set the bar for gauging age discrimination between the ages of 40 and 65, the latter age considered the normal retirement age. But, after further review, in 1978 an amendment to the law removed the age limits on mandatory retirement. Due to concerns raised by colleges and universities about postponing faculty retirements and thereby limiting the hiring of new faculty, between 1986 and January 1, 1994 Congress allowed a temporary exemption for colleges and universities to allow them to enforce mandatory retirement requirements for tenured faculty at the age of 70. Following this brief hiatus, the exemption was removed. As a result, a study of 16,000 older faculty at 104 colleges found that the rate of retirement for faculty who were 70 and 71 years old fell by two-​thirds, indicating the likelihood of an increasing number of older faculty in higher education (Ashenfelter and Card, 2002). By lifting mandatory retirement for tenured faculty, the U.S. became one of the few countries in the world to offer lifetime employment to tenured faculty (Ashenfelter and Card, 2002). And administrators, other faculty, and staff are also covered in terms of the removal of age requirements for retirement (Legal Information Institute, n.d.). The ADEA prohibits the implementation of mandatory retirement ages with two exceptions that have only limited application in higher education: 1) when age is a bona fide occupational qualification such as when safety issues are involved, as for example with firefighters, police officers, and pilots, and 2)  when employees are in bona fide high-​level, executive policymaking positions if they have been in the position for two years before retirement and have retirements of at least $4,000 per year.The latter exemption only applies to top level executives with substantial executive authority usually as heads of divisions or departments of corporations (see U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, n.d.a).

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24  The Value of Intergenerational Diversity

ADEA passed

1967

ADEA

Removes age limit on mandatory retirement

1978

Establishes protected class ages 40-65

1986

Tenured faculty mandatory retirement at age 70

1994

Temporary exemption for higher education

2000

2010 Number of professors over 65 doubles

Figure 1.1 Chronology of the ADEA

As shown in Figure 1.1, following the lifting of age limits on retirement, between 2000 and 2010 alone the number of professors over the age of 65 doubled, exceeding that of all other occupational groups (Kaskie, 2017). By 2003, 80 percent of full-​time faculty and instructional staff were over 40 (Yakoboski, 2018). Data from the last iteration of the National Study of Postsecondary Faculty (NSOPF) (2004) indicated that the average age of faculty had risen from 44 to 50 years since 1988 (Institute of Medicine, 2014). Confirming this major shift, a composite analysis of data further reveals that in 1987, prior to the lifting of mandatory retirement regulations, individuals between 35 and 54 years of age were the dominant group comprising two-​ thirds of the full-​time faculty, while faculty aged 55 to 64 were only one-​ fifth of the total. By 2013, the picture had changed markedly with faculty aged 55 to 64 representing 30 percent of the whole, while faculty aged 35 to 54 had decreased from two-​thirds to slightly above one-​half or 53.1 percent of the total (Finkelstein, Conley, and Schuster, 2016). Among contingent faculty, a survey of 502 adjunct faculty members conducted in 2018 found that 70 percent were over the age of 40 and the average age was 50. This survey coincides with the results of a 2010 survey of adjuncts which indicated that only 33 percent of adjunct faculty were under 45 (Yakoboski, 2018). The professional and non-​exempt staff workforce in higher education reflect an age-​based profile similar to that of faculty. A  survey of 446,844 higher education staff in 540 different positions found that the average age was 45 (Pritchard, Li, McChesney, and Bichsel, 2019). Furthermore, nearly one-​third (29  percent) were over the age of 55, compared with less than one-​fourth (23 percent) in the U.S. population at large. Yet gender and race differentially affect the age equation and ability to extend careers into the later years. By 2013 male faculty were twice

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The Value of Intergenerational Diversity  25 as likely to be over 55 as their female counterparts (Finkelstein, Conley, and Schuster, 2016). Whereas underrepresented minority faculty were only slightly less likely to be under 35 in 1987, they have increased their representation in this younger group (Finkelstein, Conley, and Schuster, 2016). In addition, data indicates that new, younger entrants to the faculty workforce who occupy contingent appointments are disproportionately women, underrepresented minorities, and foreign nationals (Finkelstein, Conley, and Schuster, 2016).The intersectionality of ageism for female staff is compounded by the fact that the wage gap of women compared with men widens with the number of years in the position, with a cumulative annual pay difference of $87,600 over 20 years (Pritchard, Li, McChesney, and Bichsel, 2019). What Robert McKee calls “the ageism of diversity” affects workplace outcomes as younger faculty can be preferred in hiring for the tenure track and older faculty may find assignments narrowed or restricted, such as by being relocated, subject to reductions in appointment lengths, or denied tenure and promotion (McKee, 2014). Due to the six-​year trajectory required to attain tenure, older candidates for tenure-​track faculty appointments can face considerable discrimination. Ageism can impact the career progression of both more senior and junior members of the professoriate and the administrative workforce. As we shall discuss further in Chapter 4, it affects young pre-​tenure faculty and graduate teaching assistants whose competence may be questioned by students or senior faculty, particularly when compounded with the jeopardies of minority status and female gender. With these concerns in mind, consider the following survey findings pertaining to age discrimination in the academy: • A faculty and staff climate survey with 4,461 respondents conducted at the University of Iowa in which half of the respondents reported experiencing overt, blatant, or subtle discrimination in the previous 12 months and the most prevalent discriminatory experience reported was due to age. Twenty-​seven percent of staff and 24 percent of faculty reported instances of age discrimination followed by gender identity and gender expression (University of Iowa, 2018). • A system-​wide survey conducted at the University of California in 2013 found that of the 25,264 individuals reporting exclusionary, intimidating, or hostile conduct, nearly 12 percent indicated that this conduct was very often or often based on age, while 19.3 percent indicated that they had experienced such age-​related conduct sometimes (University of California, 2014). • The 2015 Faculty Survey of Student Engagement (FSSE) reveals that 22 percent of the 2,356 faculty participants reported experiencing discrimination at their institutions, with rank or position cited by 43 percent. For those who selected more than one factor, rank was followed by age, gender, and race/​ethnicity at 27 percent, 23 percent, and 25 percent respectively. Faculty who might be privileged in some areas reported

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26  The Value of Intergenerational Diversity experiencing discrimination based or identity dimensions such as gender and age (Hurtado and BrckaLorenz, 2016). As these examples illustrate, when approximately one-​quarter of the academic workforce expresses concerns related to age discrimination, it is clear that the issue is vastly underestimated and requires concerted institutional attention.

Parallels with the U.S. Workplace at Large Experiences of ageism are not unique to higher education but are reflective of larger workforce trends. For example, a startling new report by the Urban Institute based on data from the Social Security Administration and National Institute on Aging’s longitudinal Health and Retirement Study (HRS) found that U.S. employment grows ever more precarious with age (Johnson and Gosselin, 2018). Since 1992, the HRS study has followed a sample of 20,000 people from the time they reach 50 through the rest of their lives. In an analysis of survey data from 1992 to 2016, the Urban Institute report indicates that 56 percent of adults who had been employed in a long-​ term position between the ages of 51 to 54 subsequently experienced an involuntary job separation with severe financial consequences. Involuntary job separations included in the analysis involved at least six consecutive months of unemployment or a reduction in income of 50 percent or more following separation. The separations were categorized based on four main reasons: layoffs; quitting due to job dissatisfaction; unexpected retirements; and departures for other unspecified reasons. Voluntary separations for poor health and other personal reasons were not included (Johnson and Gosselin, 2018). These statistics suggest that a substantial segment or approximately 22  million of the 40  million American workers over the age of 50 will experience a layoff, forced retirement, or involuntary job separation (Gosselin, 2018). The Urban Institute study (2018) also found that employer-​related involuntary job separations affected all racial and ethnic groups and all industries including public administration. Workplace separations were devastating financially and only ten percent of individuals were able to find employment that paid as much per week after as they had earned previously. As a result, median household income for affected individuals dropped 42  percent and financial losses continued into later life (Johnson and Gosselin, 2018). The gap between financial earnings of individuals who had experienced involuntary job separation versus the median base line income at the age of 65 was greatest for African Americans and Hispanics (Johnson and Gosselin, 2018). Over the last 15 years, the number of new retirees who have been forced into retirement has steadily increased, rising from 33 percent in 1998 to 55 percent in 2014 (Gosselin, 2018).

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The Value of Intergenerational Diversity  27 The alarming findings of the HRS study reveal the near impossibility for older workers who have experienced involuntary separation to return to the workplace due to the stigma associated with downsizing or dismissal (Gregory, 2001). In the characterization of one commentator in the court case Complete Auto Transit, Inc. v. Regis (1981), they will face what could be termed the “industrial equivalent of capital punishment” (Gregory, 2001, p.  7). Middle-​aged women can encounter such penalties as early as their late 40s, due to social expectations associated with physical appearance and ageing (Gregory, 2001). Further evidence from a recent academic field experiment substantiates gendered and ageist disparities based on 40,000 job applications using artificially created resumes and call-​ backs for interviews. The study found evidence of greater discrimination against older applicants who were near retirement age (64–​66) as compared with middle-​aged workers (49–​51) with older women more likely to experience discrimination than men (Neumark, Burn, and Button, 2017). Amplifying this finding, Bureau of Labor Statistics data reveals that the highest employment rates in the 55–​64 and 65 and older age ranges are held by white and Asian males at every five-​year interval (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2018).

Conclusion Although rarely recognized by institutions of higher education in their diversity statements and platforms, intergenerational diversity is a major source of innovation and creativity. As a strategic institutional asset, a generationally rich workplace has been shown to expand problem-​solving capabilities and lead to tangible gains by drawing from different knowledge pools. Intergenerational diversity is, without question, a bridge to the future. Conversely, ignoring the benefits of intergenerational diversity will result in the waste of valuable talent, institutional knowledge, and expertise. In an era in which many colleges and universities face declining enrollment and constricting budgets, the talents of an intergenerational workforce are integral to institutional success and survival. We have also shared the demographics of the faculty and administrative workforce which reinforce the need for inclusive, age-​diverse institutional practices. Within the academic workforce, the progressive ageing of the faculty workforce following the abolishment of mandatory retirement regulations, reflects a larger share of male workers over the age of 55, while female and diverse incumbents are disproportionately represented in the contingent faculty ranks. Several large climate studies in higher education indicate that age discrimination is a significant, yet largely unaddressed, issue in the academic and staff workforce. In addition, the startling statistic indicating that more than half of the adults aged 51 to 54 who were employed in a long-​term position in the U.S. experienced involuntary job separation underscores the dramatic impact of

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28  The Value of Intergenerational Diversity ageism and its long-​lasting financial, career, health, and familial consequences. Most tellingly, the data reveals that the effects of such employment closure are greater for African Americans and Hispanic/​Latinx individuals. With these insights in mind, in the next chapter we examine the dynamics of the institutional power structure, the impact of the intersectionality of age with other dimensions of social identity, and the strengths and weaknesses of the ADEA.

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2  The Looming Generational Crisis in Higher Education Employment

… a change-​averse population of people, almost all of whom are over 50, contemplating retirement (or not) and it’s like herding hippos. Email from an English as a Second Language (ESL) Program Director, Ohio State University (Span, 2018, para 8)

When a new ESL program director was appointed at Ohio State University in 2010, he described the instructors he supervised as “hippos” on the verge of retirement.The director then proceeded to provide choice assignments to junior colleagues, while older instructors lost their offices, were reassigned to open spaces, and shared computer equipment. His successor continued these policies, describing experienced teachers as “millstones” and “dead wood” (Span, 2018, para 11). Twenty staffers’ positions were eliminated or reclassified downwards. Under severe pressure and fearful of losing their positions and retiree health benefits, Julianne Taaffe and Kathryn Moon, both teachers in the department since 1983, retired early. They filed an age discrimination claim with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which found “reasonable cause” that they and their colleagues had been discriminated against in what one commentator called the “revenge of the angry hippos” (Russell, 2018, para 11). Ohio State then reached a settlement with the teachers, reinstating them in their positions and providing $203,000 in back pay for Ms. Taaffe and $237,000 for Ms. Moon, as well as $325,000 in attorney’s fees (Span, 2018). This costly lawsuit demonstrates the material and long-​lasting damage caused by age-​based stereotypes and the devaluing of generational diversity in the higher education workplace. It also exemplifies the increased vulnerability to age discrimination issues faced by women due to socially derived expectations related to appearance. As we have indicated, the intersectionality of ageism with race/​ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation is a major theme of this book and will be elaborated further in this chapter. When the talents and contributions of experienced members of the workforce are threatened and undermined, the stress and career impact on the targets of such discrimination radiates to the detriment of the organization as a whole. The institution itself suffers from wasted talent in failing to realize the benefits of an intergenerational workforce.

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30  The Looming Generational Crisis The situation at Ohio State is far from an anomaly. To frame the issues, we first explore the dynamics of the power structure emanating from the predominantly white male hierarchy in higher education and the ways that ageism can preclude the attainment of a multigenerational workforce through exclusionary behavioral interactions and decision-​making processes.

Power Dynamics in Relation to Ageism and Generational Status A major feature of power in higher education is that it is always exercised relationally and has long been concentrated in the hands of more senior white males (Feagin, 2006; Feagin and Ducey, 2017; Roscigno, 2011). As evidenced by the leadership of American institutions, the U.S. Congress, and Fortune 500 companies, older white males are viewed as archetypical leaders (Marcus and Fritzsche, 2015, p.  178). In contrast, women and minorities occupy lower-​level and lower-​paid positions and are underrepresented in higher level positions within the administrative and faculty ranks in higher education (McChesney, 2018). In fact, the demographic profile of college presidents has not changed for over the course of three decades: a white male, Protestant, married with children (Cook and Kim, 2012). A 2017 study of 1,500 college and university presidents describes the typical college or university president as a white male in his early 60s (American Council on Education, 2017). Similarly, a survey of 1396 Chief Academic Officers found that 62 percent were men, 86 percent were white, and nearly one-​third were age 61 or older (American Council on Education, 2013). Confirming these findings, a 2019 survey of 475 provosts found that 46 percent were aged 50 to 59, and 32 percent were aged 60 to 69 (Inside Higher Ed, 2019). And in terms of financial control of institutional resources, a survey of 713 Chief Business Officers (CBOs) conducted in 2016 indicated that the typical CBO is a white male, about 56 years old. More than 87 percent of CBOs self-​identified as white and only one-​third were female (NACUBO, 2016, 2020). Ironically, the balance of power in higher education resides in the hands of decision-​makers from dominant groups and can be exercised by institutional gatekeepers to the detriment of senior white male faculty. Status-​based, positional power is central to understanding how ageism and generational status operate in the workplace in two main areas: 1) the discretionary use of power that enables the exercise of differential decision-​ making; and 2) an individual’s status in the institutional hierarchy that leads to either vulnerability or protection against discretionary decision-​making (Roscigno, Mong, Byron, and Tester, 2007). Power is essentially dynamic and asymmetrical, enacted through relationships and interactions among actors based on institutional structures and statuses and transpiring through the medium of historical and cultural contexts (Roscigno, 2011). Based on the results of a nationwide survey of 3,200 respondents aged 19 to 80 conducted by the Center for Creative Leadership, Jennifer Deal concluded that “most intergenerational conflict shares a common point of origin: the issue of clout–​who has it, who wants it” (Deal, 2008, p. 11).

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The Looming Generational Crisis  31 The academic workplace poses unique challenges in terms of power relations and generational status due to the coexistence of different types of interactional relationships. Ageism, both positive and negative, can permeate traditional supervisory-​subordinate relationships, hierarchical academic interactions, peer-​ to-​ peer relationships, as well as departmental and classroom interactions. For tenured faculty, a high degree of insulation from ageism generally pertains due to the protection of tenure. But even this model still involves consequential upward-​facing relationships with the department chair and the academic hierarchy. For pre-​tenure faculty, collegially driven relationships with senior faculty peers can influence tenure attainment. And for department chairs, the high-​level administrative support of deans and provosts is essential for attaining credibility in change efforts, garnering resources, and showcasing departmental work (Gardner and Ward,  2018). Administrators typically face situations of job insecurity since they usually report to a single supervisor and most often operate in “at-​will” status. The lack of employment security and precarious work conditions can create systems of powerlessness for vulnerable individuals due to well-​developed systems of oppression based on race/​ethnicity, gender and age (Feagin, 2006). Employment decisions for “at-​will” administrators are typically made by a high-​level supervisor and lack due process protections. Staff also operate in the traditional supervisor-​subordinate hierarchical model, and may or may not have limited due process protections that arise from union status or other state classified employee requirements. And notably, the large group of contingent faculty that now are in the majority among teaching positions have relatively few due process protections and are more closely aligned with “at-​will” employment arrangements. In analyzing how ageism occurs, it is essential to understand the dynamics of discriminatory encounters that occur within the medium of everyday interactions (Light, Roscigno, and Kalev, 2011). These interactions can reveal underlying assumptions and presage more serious acts of exclusion. Exclusionary treatment “Now that I’ve hit my prime and acts of social closure can be I realize that my colleagues think preceded by outright harassment I’m getting on. I  applied for or creation of unequal working research leave and I was told they conditions such as assignment couldn’t let me go because … of tasks that others may not be they had no one else to replace asked to do (Roscigno, 2010). For me. While I  know that’s true example, in the academic environI  feel if I  had been a younger ment, unusual demands can take male colleague more effort the form of failing to provide the would have been made to find a authority associated with the level replacement.” of a position or limiting resources. (A female academic quoted in As one senior faculty member put Granleese and Sayer, 2006, p. 15) it (Good, 2014, para 23):

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32  The Looming Generational Crisis The assumption about senior faculty seems to be that the future is all behind us. Which leads to the further assumption that we can generally be ignored in the perennial campus scramble for recognition and resources. And ignore us often enough, maybe we’ll give up in frustration and retire. The prospect of replacing us with cheaper labor must set administrative hearts aflutter. Frequently, power dynamics unfold in protected and safe backstage spaces where interactions occur among small groups of white social actors in face-​to-​face interactions characterized by verbal statements and non-​verbal gestures that reflect deep-​seated stereotypes (Picca and Feagin, 2007). On the frontstage, however, the politics of interpersonal politeness governs in the performances of powerful white actors in front of diverse groups (Picca and Feagin, 2007). Take the revelatory example of backstage power negotiations described by Samantha, a white female Education faculty member at a private university. As president of the faculty, she observed and interrupted a white male dean literally engaged in backdoor discussions with senior white male faculty. Samantha indicates that these clandestine negotiations never included women or younger male faculty or gay faculty: But we had a dean who had been a faculty member and then he became a vice-​president. We did a national search and by golly, the most appropriate person was right there in our midst and we just didn’t even know it! Mark had a backdoor, he was on the third floor of our building and my office was also on the third floor, and one day I noticed some men, one man in particular, coming down the back stairwell, I was like, ‘Why would anybody do that?’ The next time I saw somebody do that, I kind of followed him and sort of hid under stairwell, and the person had a secret knock on Mark’s door, and Mark opened the door. I watched a few more times, and there were other men who were doing backdoor deals with Mark. And one day because I had learned the secret knock, I knocked on the door … and Mark opened the door and I think he was going to have a heart attack. It was more gender discrimination I think than it was age discrimination. They weren’t the young male faculty going up the steps; there were no females going up the steps … But I always found that story to be informative for all of us because of the lack of transparency and the backdoor deals which people in power always do. And it was always the older guys. Samantha’s descriptive analysis reinforces the notion of the largely white “old-​boy” networks of power and the ways in which significant decision-​ making occurs in informal, backdoor settings. Power-​based ageist pressures can take the form of day-​to-​day mistreatment, exclusion, psychological abuse, and even bullying interactions, leading to acts of exclusion or closure in formal institutional processes. Bullies may

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The Looming Generational Crisis  33 target not only the vulnerable, including women and minorities, but also individuals who threaten their sense of superiority or increase their own feelings of inadequacy (Roscigno, Lopez, and Hodson, 2009,Yamada, 2000). Favoritism, marginalization, and differential treatment both in favor of and against individuals from different generational groups can escalate through expression in large-​scale processes such as hiring, promotion, compensation and evaluation, tenure denial, and separation. In these circumstances, only the presence of a guardian or protector in the workplace or significant countervailing forces can check the actions of a powerful gatekeeper (Roscigno, Lopez, and Hodson, 2009). The exercise of differential decision-​making by gatekeeping actors frequently occurs under the guise of neutral practices such as financial considerations or business stability that are invoked in discriminatory and targeted ways (Roscigno, Mong, Byron, and Tester, 2007). In such instances, ageist stereotypes, whether conscious or semi-​conscious, in employment contexts tend to be viewed by gatekeeping actors as fair and legitimate and directed toward real or alleged job competencies (Roscigno, Mong, Byron, and Tester, 2007). The psychological and social impact of ageism has high costs for targets and result in “emotional scarring” due to the impact on career outcomes, affordable health and benefits coverage, economic pressures, and the maintenance of family security (Roscigno, 2010, p. 18).The intensity of emotional labor, pain, and cognitive challenges arising from ageism and workplace discrimination are similar to the challenges arising from systemic racism and sexism with long-​term and multifaceted effects on the careers of targets (Chun and Feagin, 2020). Further, ageist mistreatment can have deleterious and long-​lasting psychological effects on stigmatized individuals through a process of “stereotype embodiment” by which the internalization of stereotypes from the culture and workplace can impact individuals’ functioning and health in terms of self-​fulfilling prophecies (Lev, 2004). In this regard, a study based on a sample of 2,766 adults aged 25 to 74, found that individuals who experienced age discrimination reported higher levels of psychological distress and lower levels of wellbeing, with a greater impact on women than men (Yuan, 2007). Given these considerations, the prevailing vocabulary of micro-​aggressions and related micro-​terminology used by researchers over the past few decades to describe contemporary forms of discrimination fails to capture the intense emotional and cognitive labor faced by members of marginalized groups when experiencing inequitable treatment in higher education (Chun and Feagin, 2020). The use of micro-​terminology invalidates the psychological, physical, and career impact of unmeritocratic treatment and can even enable perpetrators to believe that exclusionary actions are inconsequential. Rather, a continuum of macro-​aggressions and macro-​inequalities begins with covert and subtle forms of mistreatment, proceeds to more overt harassment, marginalization, and hostility, and culminates in acts of process-​based discrimination (Chun and Feagin, 2020).

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34  The Looming Generational Crisis

Ageism and Intersectionality A pre-​eminent theme emerging from our interviews and research is the heightened experiences of ageism experienced by women, people of color, and LGBT individuals in higher education. The groundbreaking research of Patricia Hill Collins has illuminated the intersectionality of multiple jeopardies that can disproportionately affect targets of discrimination (Collins, 1993, 2000). From this perspective, members of non-​dominant groups can experience a double layer of conditions that contribute to a chilly climate: the lack of collegiality with its accompanying isolation, as well as the forces of racism, sexism, ageism, and homophobia in higher education (Cooper, Ortiz, Benhamm and Scherr, 2002). In the view of Johanna, an African American female academic administrator in a public master’s-​level university, ageism is a foundational and positional characteristic that combines with other social identities in considerations of diversity and inclusion: Personally and professionally, age is the one positional characteristic that is impacted by life experience, by race, gender, socio-​economic [class]–​ all of those indicators when you are really talking about inclusion and diversity … It’s never viewed the same across the board; it’s homeostatic; it’s consistent with change. Ageism may not simply be an additive ascriptive dimension but can even trump other stereotypes through a process of stereotype inhibition, whereby a dominating stereotype prevails (Kang, 2010). For example, being an old woman versus a young woman can lead to systematic differences and exclusion across the inequal“I can’t quantify some of this. ities of race, gender, sexuality, and I will be 65 this year. One thing social class (Calasanti, Slevin, and that I  noticed is that there is a King, 2006). weird kind of invisibility that A corollary to the intensification I  think happens as women age of ageism due to multiple jeopardy in the academy. It’s just kind is the workplace invisibility that arises of hard to really get your arms from the intersectionality of suboraround. You just feel it when dinate group memberships (Marcus people don’t look at you when and Fritzsche, 2015). Invisibility is you are talking in a meeting; heightened by multiple marginand that could also have someality, since individuals do not fit a thing to do with intersectional particular prototype and can even status; you start to disappear just be marginal within marginalized a little bit.” groups themselves (Marcus and (Eleanor, an African Fritzsche, 2015). It is a form of American female political social non-​ recognition, misreprescience faculty member at a sentation, and cultural domination, private university) whereby a group is simultaneously

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The Looming Generational Crisis  35 stereotyped and yet rendered invisible (Ainsworth, 2002). Recall the theme of invisibility threaded throughout the literature on racial discrimination and powerfully articulated in Ralph Ellison’s classic book, The Invisible Man, written nearly 75 years ago (Ellison, 1995, 1947). In this regard, Diana, a white female sociology professor in a private research university, describes the compounding of ageism with race/​ethnicity and gender as deeply embedded in higher education’s operating assumptions and processes. She identifies the intersectionality of devalued social identities as manifested in what she calls the “invisibilitizing” of faculty of color. Diana astutely observes that female faculty of color are more likely to encounter a dismissive approach at both ends of the age continuum: I think, for example, female scholars of color are more likely to experience a dismissive approach at both ends of the age scale. It compounds the already existing stereotypes and discrimination … I think [ageism] is a compounding contributor: it’s in some ways, so embedded, that … often, it’s just almost like the way things work, and so then you always have to be working against what you know are the underlying operating processes. And so age at both ends, it becomes another justification for the devaluing of points of view of faculty of color, either for younger or older. … the other extreme of not only ‘invisibilitizing,’ but in terms of promotion and retention amongst faculty of color, just being questioned a whole lot more … It was just more of an anomaly where someone was supported and heard, than it was when somebody was discriminated against. The stereotyping was more typical. From a similar perspective, Samantha, who was twice awarded Fulbright fellowships, identifies the existence of systemic forms of exclusion when older female faculty are passed over because they are not viewed as faculty of the future: Because I just turned 70, I was told by a colleague that I really should retire. I don’t think I look 70 … This will be my 50th year in education coming up … I do believe over the years that I have been passed over, because I am not one of the youngsters, I can’t be part of the faculty for the future, because I am the past … I don’t think there is an explicit experience I have had that prevented me from doing what I wanted to do. I think like many women, you take the step forward, and you don’t question why you are not getting what you want because that’s the way the system has worked. I think the specific nature of it is just the exclusion. Most importantly, however, ageism is not limited to senior female members of the academic workforce but affects the experiences of younger female faculty as well. Take the narrative of Meghan, a young, gay, female professor

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36  The Looming Generational Crisis in a southern public research university. Meghan, an Easterner, describes the prevailing heteronormativity in the university’s culture that is reflected in the kinds of invasive questions she is routinely asked: I am actually still acclimating to the culture here: it’s very, very different. I grew up in the Northeast; … moving down here has been a real adjustment. I  think that intersection coupled with ‘You’re also young and you just don’t know how we do things here, and you’re not from here.’ I mean I have had people call me a Yankee repeatedly … part of the reason why I did take this particular offer and not the others ones I was given was I thought that it made more sense in terms of putting myself in a situation, not just regionally, but also just with a student body that probably isn’t as used to being exposed to someone like me … There’s been a lot of that … … early on there were comments like, ‘Well, is your partner on your health insurance? Like how much does that cost?’ Or ‘Where are you looking for housing?’ Just very invasive comments, questions that I don’t think are presented to everyone. So now I sometimes say I’ll say no … instead of having to answer. So I guess I just am a little bit more reserved now, and I put energy elsewhere in other things that I do… and a lot of it is that they just don’t know, but a little self-​reflection would go a long way, but I realize that you can’t force that on people. So I kind of stick to myself … I  have made some connections with people in other departments on campus in other parts of campus and that really helps too. Several large-​scale research studies in the American workplace underscore the intersectional nature of ageism when coupled with race/​ethnicity and/​or gender and sexual orientation can have a deleterious effect on career outcomes. One study based on a longitudinal sample of nearly 2,000 African American and white workers concluded that older African American men and women experienced higher rates of downward mobility or movement to lower-​level occupations as compared with their white counterparts, particularly when individuals had held managerial and professional positions (Wilson and Roscigno, 2017). Such downward mobility occurred late-​career for African Americans who were 55 and above, at a time when higher socio-​economic would lead to greater material loss (Wilson and Roscigno, 2017). A second major study of 2,181 cases between 1988 and 2003 where a probable cause determination of age discrimination was reached by the Ohio Civil Rights Commission (OCRC) found that although no significant differences occurred by race, older women were more likely to experience harassment based on age and gender. Older women were more often viewed as a deficit to the company’s image or as problematic in terms of sociability and customer interactions (Roscigno, Mong, Byron, and Tester, 2007). And a

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The Looming Generational Crisis  37 third large-​scale study based on data from the General Social Surveys (GSS) from 2002, 2006, and 2010 found that among older respondents, more than one-​half of those individuals who faced racial-​ethnic discrimination also reported facing age-​based discrimination (Harnois, 2014). The author of the study concludes that perceptions of race/​ethnicity, gender, and age discrimination were positively correlated in the research sample.

Ageism and Relational Demography The concept of relational demography provides a helpful lens for understanding the role of homophily or the preference for similar others that can occur in dyadic relationships. When ageism permeates asymmetrical power relationships between supervisors and subordinates and violates prescriptive relational norms (i.e., the supervisor is younger than the employee supervised), acts of marginalization and exclusion can result. For example, a study of 335 supervisor–​subordinate dyads in ten U.S. companies found that the quality of the relationship may be worse when subordinates are dissimilar from supervisors in dimensions that reflect typical relational norms. Subordinates who were older than their managers were also found to be rated lower on performance than those similar in age (Tsui, Porter, and Egan 2002). In a similar vein, a study of 185 managers and 290 subordinates in a southeastern multinational corporation identified fewer development opportunities and less perceived potential and promotability when employees were older than their supervisors. For the most part, mismatches of age yielded more negative results (Shore, Goldberg, and Cleveland, 2003). In the academic arena, take the case of a 50-​year-​old woman who had strong qualifications for a tenure-​track position, but was passed over for a candidate who was ABD (all but dissertation). She explains how supervisors tend to dislike having older subordinates (Bronstein, 2001, pp. 189–​190): If you don’t do things on a certain timetable, you get punished.Academia is built to accommodate male career development. Also, people don’t like to have a subordinate who is older than them. Being ‘overqualified’ really means you’re not a little cream puff. I’m not some baby beginner who can just be pushed around. Or consider the clash of traditional career-​related expectations with non-​ traditional career trajectories in a situation related by Katherine, a white female sociology faculty member in a private university. Katherine describes how Lois, a minority female faculty member in her 60s, who had a prior career as a judge, was terminated from her tenure-​track position by a white female dean who viewed career development from a traditional age perspective. The dean apparently felt that Lois was not sufficiently deferential to her authority. As Katherine relates:

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38  The Looming Generational Crisis Being a dean, I think in her mind she was on a traditional career path. She was in an age-​expected position at that point, whereas my colleague had been a judge for some time … She was doing academia as a second career for the love of it, but she wasn’t in this traditional role of some of our younger faculty, who come in and they are very deferent to their chair and dean because they are trying to get tenure. And the dean might have been used to that role. But these two really clashed and it actually ended up in a wrongful termination suit … This dean I think was really affronted; she [Lois] just really was not deferent to the dean, in a way that I think the dean was comfortable with. I do think that age and possibly race, also played a role in that, because it wasn’t even related to her teaching. It was just subtle things as far as collaborating on projects with other faculty and not giving Lois appropriate credit, and maybe doing some community things where she didn’t always put the dean in immediately … Because I think she [the dean] was used to relating to people younger than her and were subservient. And because this person was on the tenure track and not willing to be deferent that way, because she had already done that in her previous life … I don’t think the dean took well to that. In another example of age-​based dissimilarity that runs counter to relational norms, take the case of Mary, a 72-​year-​old sociology department chair who had a stellar teaching record and scholarship credentials. When the university hired a much younger dean, the new dean favored younger faculty and refused Mary’s requests to hire much needed full-​time faculty. He then levied accusations against her for poor leadership and finally informed Mary that he would not approve another term for her as department chair. Mary then filed an age discrimination lawsuit that was subsequently settled (Rikleen, 2016). “We are in such an antisocial Despite the damaging career political climate, such negativity, outcomes experienced by the indithat so many individuals who viduals in these examples, almost would very well be comfortable no scholarly attention has been in diverse settings, are finding directed to the impact of ageism the settings are combative; they and generational status in relaare uncomfortable … it is now tional demography. Because ageism no longer under the surface, it’s often intersects with gender, race/​ in your face. The same thing ethnicity, or other devalued social about age, even though we don’t identities, it can operate below the talk about it … it’s just right on surface as a disguised, yet powerful top of the surface.” factor in asymmetrical, hierarchical (Johanna, an African interactions. American female academic To further unpack the speadministrator) cific manifestations of ageism in

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The Looming Generational Crisis  39 the academic workplace, let us consider now the specific provisions of the ADEA and examine several age discrimination lawsuits in higher education that have gained media attention due to their success or the size of the awards. These cases represent the exception rather than the rule, due to the limited basis for filing claims under the ADEA and the unlikelihood of the EEOC to find reasonable cause. In addition, the unequal matching of power and resources in the legal-​judicial system between an individual and an institution makes the success of an age discrimination unlikely (Roscigno, 2010).

The Strengths and Limitations of the ADEA The odds of proving an age discrimination claim are small. Of the 18,376 claims filed with the EEOC in 2017, 70.8  percent were judged to have no reasonable cause based upon evidence gather in the investigation. Only 2.2 percent of the claims were judged to have reasonable cause and 16 percent were closed for administrative reasons. Some cases did reach monetary and non-​monetary resolution through settlements that occurred before and after a case was filed (U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 2018a). The agency is stretched for resources and funding and has a significant backlog of cases. In fact, the number of complaints relegated to the lowest priority have doubled to about 30 percent of cases since 2008, ensuring that no investigative action or substantive efforts will be undertaken on behalf of the complainants (Jameel, 2019). Despite its positive intent, the ADEA has several distinct limitations. Like Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, enforcement of the ADEA falls under the auspices of the EEOC. Yet unlike cases filed under Title VII based on race, color, sex, national origin, and religion, in 2009 the Supreme Court ruled in Gross v.  FBL Financial Services, Inc. (557 U.S. 167)  that plaintiffs could not succeed is establishing liability under the ADEA if age was simply “a motivating factor” in an adverse employment decision. Instead, they must demonstrate that “but for” consideration of age, an adverse action would not have been taken (Glenn and Little, 2014, p. 44). In other words, unlike other protected class discrimination claims, age must be the sole determinant and not one of several factors in a disparate treatment claim. The decision in Gross has been described as causing uncertainty and inconsistency in employment litigation. It deviates from the mixed-​motive standard of other fair employment laws and does not clearly define the “but for” requirement, leading to conflicting explanations (Noonan 2010). Another problematic aspect of the ADEA may be the relatively low age threshold for establishing employment discrimination as life expectancy increases and more and more workers are postponing retirement. By setting the bar at 40, older workers may have greater difficulty establishing that adverse actions related to age occurred in comparison with the employment trajectories of much younger coworkers.

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40  The Looming Generational Crisis To strengthen its provisions, the ADEA was amended in 1990 to include the Older Workers Benefit Protection Act (OWPBA) that protects older workers from an uninformed waiver of their age discrimination protections upon involuntary termination. Provisions of this act provide some measure of protection when the employer seeks to reach a settlement or severance agreement in which the employee signs a release of age discrimination claims and the right to sue. In such cases, the employer must offer “consideration” or something of value to the employee that he or she is not already entitled to. In addition, OWPBA requires that the employee be advised of the right to consult an attorney and that the employee have 21  days to consider it as well as seven days to revoke his or her signature on the agreement (U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, n.d.b). In 2004, a landmark decision by the Supreme Court in General Dynamics Land Systems, Inc. v. Cline (540 U.S. 581) found that the ADEA does not prevent employers from favoring older employees versus younger employees and essentially holding that the ADEA does not permit reverse age discrimination claims. In this regard, the court distinguished between age discrimination and race discrimination and determined that they should be treated differently. The court’s majority argued on a semantic level that race under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is a general term, while age as described in the ADEA is specific and refers to “old age” (Short, 2005, p. 1067). As a result, Congressional legislation treats age and race in different ways that justify different levels of protection from discrimination (Short, 2005). Although there was a dip in the number of age-​based EEOC claims filed in 2017, recent high-​profile cases have refocused attention on the prevalence of age discrimination in the workplace. For example, in 2019 four former IBM workers filed suit saying that they were among the 20,000 employees over the age of 40 that IBM has discharged over the past six years as it implemented so-​called Resource Actions that exempted early professional hires from layoffs and did not disclose the demographics of layoff actions as required by the OWBPA (Grant, 2019). The litigants claim that IBM sought to replace them with recent college graduates and technologically savvy younger workers and forced them into signing arbitration agreements that would prohibit them from filing ADEA claims (Grant, 2019). Filing a claim of age discrimination has significant legal, financial, emotional, and career risks. Employers tend to view job applicants who have filed suit for age discrimination as troublemakers and as a high risk (Lemov, 2013). With the limited legal options available in terms of claims of age discrimination, individuals who experience ageist attitudes, behaviors, and actions often have little recourse. The lack of awareness of the impact of ageism and its intersection with other devalued demographic attributes can allow acts of inequality to slip below the institutional radar. As we will discuss in Chapter 4, even the protections of tenure can be eroded or threatened in extreme cases. Bullying, harassment, and other behavioral forms of exclusion

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The Looming Generational Crisis  41 can make the workplace so uncomfortable that older individuals will seek to retire or leave the institution.

Prominent Age Discrimination Lawsuits in Higher Education With the graying of the academic workforce, a spate of well-​publicized lawsuits represent merely the tip of the legal iceberg in terms of claims of age discrimination by faculty and administrators who have been passed over for appointments, faced reductions in assignments, or subject to involuntary separation. Age discrimination lawsuits filed by faculty at American University, Clark College, Columbia University, Florida A&M University, Harold Washington College, Ohio State, the University of California at Davis, the University of Oregon, the University of Pittsburg, Florida A&M University, Ohio State, and Vassar College among many others in recent years attest to the impact of overt, covert, and subtle age discrimination. As we have noted, unlike claims related to race and ethnicity, federal courts have not recognized cases of “reverse” age discrimination based on younger individuals citing discrimination in favor of older persons (Cullen, 2003). Age discrimination suits rarely are successful and usually require a “smoking gun” of overt animus to succeed. We share here examples of age discrimination cases filed by female faculty and staff that illuminate the overt statements and types of documentary evidence needed to prove an age discrimination claim to the EEOC and the courts. At American University, two widely publicized lawsuits were filed by female faculty members in their 50s. Loubna Skalli-​Hanna, a Middle Eastern scholar and Assistant Professor at the School of International Service, was recommended for tenure at the program, school, and university level, but was subsequently denied tenure by the white male provost.The provost cited the lack of progress on her third book and failed to recognize her work in interdisciplinary journals (Flaherty, 2015). At trial, Skalli-​Hanni’s lawyers offered testimony that the provost had said he knew “in his gut” when an applicant deserved tenure (Pettit, 2018, para 4). In addition, court documents indicate that former AU president Neil Kerwin wrote “old SIS” in notes that he took in a meeting with the provost about Skalli-​Hanna (Eagle Editorial Board, 2018, para 3). Skalli-​Hanna’s lawyers also presented data showing that younger candidates for tenure and those with lesser publication records were treated more favorably than she was. As a result, Skalli-​Hanna was awarded $1.2  million in damages and $175,000 in emotional distress compensation by the jury. AU’s subsequently filed motion for retrial based on what the institution deemed a “narrow pool of tenure decisions,” but was denied consideration by a Superior Court judge (Gagnon, 2019, para 5). In a similar case at American University under the same provost, Maria Ivancin, a faculty member in the School of Communication, failed to receive tenure on the Professional Achievement Track despite unanimous

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42  The Looming Generational Crisis recommendations from her division and a university-​wide committee. The provost had made prior statements indicating that he preferred younger faculty at a faculty reception, suggesting that older individuals were less productive or words to the effect that “We don’t want to bring in old people who are just going to sit around and do nothing” (Bernabei and Kabat, n.d., para 6; Gagnon, 2018). The tenure denial decision by the provost caused Ivancin’s division director to step down in protest. Ivancin subsequently filed an age discrimination civil suit that was later settled with the university (Flaherty, 2015). In another prominent lawsuit at the University of California at Davis, an age discrimination claim was filed by Carol Mandell, a doctor of veterinary medicine who had been a lecturer in clinical pathology and assistant clinical professor for 15 years. Mandell was not selected for a tenure-​track position she had applied for in 1999 and in 2000 her contract as lecturer was not renewed. Mandell then filed suit in California State Court, claiming that she was discriminated against in the tenure-​track search process based on her age (47) and gender. A  younger male candidate (age 31)  was selected for the position who did not have a Ph.D. Mandell claimed that the male candidate had been pre-​selected for the position by the dean of the School of Veterinary Medicine and a member of the search committee. She also alleged that she had experienced age-​based statements in the search process (Avery-​Washington, n.d.). Remarkably, Steve Drown, the legal counsel for UC Davis indicated, “We wanted to hire someone for an assistant-​professor position, so it would make sense to hire someone who has less experience” (Tremayne, 2004, para 6). Although denied by the State Court, the California Court of Appeals reversed the decision based on Mandell’s age discrimination claim. The Court of Appeals dismissed the gender claim but remanded the age discrimination case to the trial court (Avery-​Washington, n.d.). And in yet another overt age discrimination case, the New Jersey Supreme Court in 2010 found that Mercer County Community College violated a state law that prohibits age discrimination by not renewing the contract of Rose Nini, a dean who had worked at the college for 26 years. At the age of 72, the dean was told in 2004 by the then-​president, Robert Rose, that “she had no right to be working.” She was explicitly told the following year that her contract would not be renewed due to her age (Biemiller, 2010, para 2). In the staff ranks, layoffs due to budgetary cuts can disproportionately affect older workers and preclude their rehiring in other available positions. Such situations attest to the difficulty that individuals over the age of 50 have of finding other positions, even when available at the same university or within a university system. Take the case of Bambi Butzlaff Voss, a 53-​year-​old female, who was laid off from her job as a marketing and communications specialist at the University of Wisconsin, Waukesha, due to budget cuts. Despite her 25 years of experience, she was turned down for an entry-​level job at the systemwide University of Wisconsin (UW) office in favor of a 23-​year-​old candidate with only two years’ experience who had not yet finished college. At first, the system office claimed Voss lacked

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The Looming Generational Crisis  43 experience, but later said she had not thoroughly answered the questions in her interview and was critical of the decision to centralize communications at the system level (Meyerhofer, 2020). When the university refused to settle the claim through conciliation, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued in district court (U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 2018b). The UW Board of Regents subsequently settled the case rather than proceed to trial. These successful lawsuits are, in essence, an exception to the rule in that openly discriminatory statements and actions of university officials as well as comparative data allowed the litigants to provide direct evidence of age discrimination.

Conclusion As we have shown in this chapter, power dynamics in consequential employment relationships can thwart the inclusion of both younger and more senior faculty, administrators, and staff with severe career consequences for those targeted. Furthermore, ageism frequently operates as an intersectional attribute in conjunction with other minoritized social identities. Our interviews indicate that ageism’s negative effects at both ends of the spectrum are substantially greater for women and people of color. In fact, as Diana noted, the intersectionality of ageism with race/​ethnicity and gender is deeply engrained in higher education’s operating assumptions and processes. Invisibility and non-​recognition are everyday manifestations of ageism and can affect minoritized individuals in both behavioral interactions and organizational processes. Ageism when coupled with other devalued characteristics can trump meritocratic processes, resulting in differential treatment and disparate career outcomes. We have also seen that under the ADEA, relatively few complaints based on age discrimination have resulted in favorable consideration from the EEOC. The high legal standard imposed by the Supreme Court in 2009 under Gross v. FBL Financial Services, Inc. requiring that age be the sole determinant in a negative employment decision has made success in age discrimination lawsuits exceedingly difficult. Furthermore, claims of reverse age discrimination were excluded from consideration under the 2004 ruling by the Supreme Court in General Dynamics Land Systems, Inc. v. Cline. As a result, individuals who experience forms of ageist discrimination in the workplace have few legal options available to them. Given our exploration of the power dynamics based on ageism and other demographic characteristics in the academic environment, in the next chapter we probe further into the dimensions of generational and ageist framing in the higher education workplace.

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3  Behavioral and Process-​Based Aspects of Ageism and Generational Status

You would have been hired, but it was your age. We are not supposed to discriminate because of age, but, let’s face it, we do. A department chair to Rosemary Crane, an adjunct at Wilbur Wright College (Jaschik, 2006, para 1)

Consider the situation faced by Rosemary Crane, an adjunct at Wilbur Wright College in Chicago, who applied for a full-​time tenure-​track position four times in her 11  years at the college and was denied each time. She was given an explicit age-​based reason for the denial by her chair. This overt articulation of underlying preconceptions of ageism is not an isolated incident in higher education. Crane’s talents and abilities were subsumed to a broad array of stereotypes and misconceptions deriving from her age and generational status.The fact that both her age and gender were at play in this example illustrates the double jeopardy of intersectionality that intensifies the effects of ageism. The EEOC filed a case on Crane’s behalf and a settlement was reached in federal court that required the English department to undergo age discrimination training and post the resolution of the case for two years on the department bulletin board (Montell, 2007). As we have noted, ageism in the academy is a double-​edged sword, since generational and age-​based biases apply to both older and younger members of the academic and administrative workforce (North and Fiske, 2015). The responsibility of “blunting the double-​edge intergenerational sword” requires proactive efforts by academic and administrative leaders to grapple with the issues, overcome generational boundaries, and build intergenerational collaboration (North and Fiske, 2015, p. 174). Research findings and our interviews substantiate the significant influence of ageism for both younger and more senior members of the academic workforce in organizational processes including recruitment and selection, evaluation, promotion, and tenure attainment, and acts of social closure. Just take the example of Tashni-​Ann Dubroy when she assumed the presidency of Shaw University, a historically black institution in Raleigh, North Carolina. She instantly met criticism based on her youth and plans for the institution.

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Behavioral and Process-Based Ageism  45 Dressed in four-​inch heels and a sleeveless pink dress when she began work at Shaw University, Dubroy recounts the reaction she received, “People told me, what you need to do is wear some Hillary pants. And pearls. And maybe stockings. I can’t tell you how much I ignored that” (Brown, 2016, para 3). We now direct our attention to the content and expression of generational and ageist frames in the higher education environment. Such framing replicates and reproduces existing social presuppositions related to age and generational status, whether transmitted through stylized media portraits in print or digital media or through normative cultural assumptions. This broader, underlying framework is systemic and pervades social interactions and institutional realities (see Feagin, 2006; Feagin and Ducey, 2017). We then further explore how ageism and generational status can impact major process-​based outcomes in the higher education workplace.

Key Dimensions of Generational and Ageist Framing Like racism and sexism, ageism and generational framing represent a holistic gestalt that includes both covert and overt behaviors, images, biases, stereotypes, labels, and narratives (Feagin, 2006). This framing involves the reciprocal interaction of cognitive perceptions, affective feelings, and behavioral dispositions that can affect evaluative workplace outcomes (Bal, Reiss, Rudolph, and Baltes, 2011). Identity assignments can be imposed by others based on age or generational status and consist of functional characterizations, psychosocial attributes relating to occupational roles or skills, views of the lifespan, and prototypical career schedules and expectations (Shore and Goldberg, 2005; Urick, 2017). Surprisingly, although selected research studies identify generational characteristics of students, almost no attention has been paid to the impact of ageist and generational framing of faculty, administrators, and staff in the higher education workplace. For example, scholars have sought to establish an empirical profile of millennial students based on national survey data such as the Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP) sponsored by the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) Higher Education Research Institute, as well as the College Student Experiences Questionnaire (CSEQ) (see for example Chang, 2011; Strayhorn, 2011). Such data-​driven efforts to assess generational characteristics provide insight into student preferences, engagement, and demographic characteristics, but do not illuminate the specific workplace challenges faced by faculty and administrators. The lack of available research on ageism relating to faculty, administrators, and staff means that a major source of workplace stratification has been overlooked. In fact, individuals subject to such framing may not even be aware of its significant impact on workplace outcomes. As with racial and gender-​based framing, ageist stereotypes and perceptions can be internalized by targeted individuals with deleterious effects on their

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46  Behavioral and Process-Based Ageism occupational self-​efficacy. Internalization of ageist stereotypes can result in self-​fulfilling prophecies that affect work performance. As shown in a study of 1,500 Italian workers, the questioning of competence related to the ability to fulfill job functions can lead individuals to perceive a lack of reciprocity by the organization that can reduce engagement in work, organizational affiliation, and interest in developmental opportunities (Chiesa, Zaniboni, Guglielmi, and Vignoli, 2019). Samantha, the white female faculty member cited earlier, reflects on the internalization of gender-​ based and ageist stereotypes that leads to a false narrative about one’s own capabilities and acceptance of inequitable circumstances: The coping mechanism I  think for many of us is that process where we believe we are not good enough, you know, society has told you are not good enough and then you believe you are not good enough, and you don’t even question it. At this stage I have no regrets. At some point in my career, when I realized I was stopping myself from being more aggressive and pushing myself forward, it had something to do with that false narrative that I accepted. (Well you know you are just a girl, you didn’t go to that top institution, you can’t compete with the boys, you are not getting any younger, and you are a mom), all those messages we get as women. And so I think the coping mechanism has been just acceptance. Samantha’s narrative reveals how the hegemonic views of dominant groups in power can be projected, normalized, and internalized by targets. Our analysis now turns to examine elements of ageist framing including stereotypes, assumptions, and workplace narratives associated with older and younger workers as well as conflicts arising from how generations perceive each other. Framing of older workers. Ageist stereotypes or cognitive schemas regarding older workers have been described as a barometer of status inequality, but more importantly are the precursor of consequential behaviors and actions that marginalize and exclude affected individuals (Roscigno, Mong, Byron, and Tester, 2007). Workplace research identifies negative stereotypes of individuals from older generations in terms of a plethora of characteristics that include: inflexibility, resistance to change, declining performance and memory problems, lack of engagement, diminished ability to learn, increased costs due to higher salaries and greater use of health benefits, shorter tenure, lack of technological skill, and detracting from company image (Posthuma and Campion, 2009; Roscigno, 2010; Roscigno, Mong, Byron, and Tester, 2007). A meta-​analysis of eight empirical independent research samples examined the content of prevalent stereotypes of older workers in the following six categories: a) lack of job-​related motivation and involvement; b) less likely to participate in professional development; c) more resistant to change including

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Behavioral and Process-Based Ageism  47 adaptable to technological change; “Women, particularly, we don’t d) less ability to develop interperlet our hair go gray, even though sonal trust; e) in poorer health; gray is beautiful … And [for] and f) having greater vulnerability men it is viewed as distinguished, to work/​family imbalance (Ng and as experienced, as handsome. It’s Feldman, 2012). The only variable about the larger societal images found to support these stereocoming to play in a higher ed types was the decreased likelihood environment.” of older employees to participate (Johanna, an African American in professional development. In academic administrator) other words, empirical findings did not substantiate the other five stereotypes of older workers. In addition, this study suggested the need for greater coping mechanisms for older workers to combat ageist stereotypes (Ng and Feldman, 2012). In a surprising finding, a study of 2,981 employees in 93 German firms concluded that younger employees were more resistant to change than older workers, although the difference was statistically small (Kunze, Boehm, and Bruch, 2013a). Researchers theorize that frequent job changes rather than tenure in a single job over a long period of time, as well as holding positions with greater autonomy such as white-​collar jobs are related to the increased ability of older workers to focus on goals and seek ways to expand existing efforts (Kunze, Boehm, and Bruch, 2013a). Although negative stereotypes of older workers are far more prevalent, positive stereotypes do exist and include loyalty, stability, dependability, and integrity (Posthuma, Wagstaff, and Campion, 2011). Research evidence indicates that older workers tend to have greater job commitment and lower rates of turnover and absenteeism than younger workers (Roscigno, Mong, Byron, and Tester, 2007). Due to their longevity, these employees may offer greater experience and expertise in the field and are also bearers of institutional memory that cannot be replicated easily. The unique features of the higher education workplace offer a somewhat different perspective in relation to senior, male, tenured faculty.These faculty may be perceived as having greater stature or political clout, a factor that can counterbalance the effects of negative stereotyping. As Michael, a white male director of a center for innovative teaching in an elite private university, explains: I think there is still, unfortunately, a common stereotype that college faculty members look like a man of a certain age. I  have found that some male faculty members report that the older they get, the easier it becomes for them to fit into that description.That may bring them certain status, and perhaps benefits, because they fit a stereotype that many college students–​and maybe even some colleagues–​still carry with them about what a faculty member is ‘supposed to look like.’

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48  Behavioral and Process-Based Ageism Michael describes how sometimes senior faculty can be viewed as more desirable to work with on projects because of their clout and influence: So yes, the stereotyping shows up, we do a lot of work with innovation in teaching and learning. But it cuts in two ways: on the one hand there is sometimes a presumption that someone who is an older faculty member might not be as innovative or prone to experimentation. In my experience that’s not actually true. But you will sometimes hear comments about those who are involved in that kind of work, various comments here or there or assumptions made about that. And then I think from the other side of things, there is also sometimes a stereotype that those [faculty] are also sometimes the people who are most worth working with, in other words that because they will have some seniority or standing or stature that oftentimes the more senior faculty members are also prioritized in terms of the benefits … That, although there is a stereotype against that group in terms of maybe their propensity to join in innovative projects, there is also a bias in their favor because, when they do want to be part of a project, sometimes I think there can be a stereotype or maybe bias in their favor in terms of favoritism for getting resources for a project. [For example, when] reviewing course development [and] grant applications, sometimes if a more senior faculty member applies for those things, there is a tendency to perhaps want to support that person more than if a junior faculty member were to apply for a similar project, because that person has more political clout or standing on campus, or maybe it is also connected to the idea that [senior faculty] might be perceived as less likely to apply so ‘we had better support this one.’ Similarly, Eleanor, an African American female political science faculty member at a private university, has observed the greater clout associated with senior white male faculty: “Especially as white men start to age, they are seen as wise men, they wear jackets with patches on their elbows.” As a result, a differential standard can apply to older male faculty in comparison with their female counterparts. Reverse ageism. As with older generations, both positive and negative stereotypes pertain to members of recent generations. The phenomenon of reverse ageism refers to the social disadvantage that results from negative expectations of younger members of the workforce, particularly by their older counterparts (Raymer, Reed, Spiegel, and Puranova, 2017). While a significant body of research focuses on stereotypes of older workers, relatively little evidence has addressed beliefs about younger individuals in the workplace (Toomey and Rudolph, 2015). We have also noted that based on the 2004 Supreme Court ruling in General Dynamics Land Systems, Inc. v.  Cline (540 U.S. 581), reverse age discrimination claims have not been recognized under the ADEA.

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Behavioral and Process-Based Ageism  49 Despite the fact that research on reverse ageism is in its nas“I still dress up at the begincent stage, it is clear that younger ning of the term so they can employees can experience lower get it [and] recognize that I’m pay and benefits, fewer opporthe teacher. And then, when tunities for promotion, less access you come in wearing jeans, they to training and development, and kind of like that.” heightened vulnerability to layoffs (Quoted in Kardia and (Marchiondo, Gonzales, and Ran, Wright, 2004, p. 5) 2016). In some instances, younger workers can be relegated to mundane tasks or seen as not having the competencies or established track record needed for attainment of higher positions. In the academic setting, stereotypical views of younger faculty that challenge their competence and expertise can be reflected in classrooms as well in relations with senior faculty. In Chapter  4, we will share specific examples of the strategies younger female faculty have undertaken in the classroom by changing their appearance and dress so as to create the appearance of age differentiation in relation to students. As Jenna, a white female faculty member at an elite university explains: When I was younger in the classroom, I think people kind of disrespected me because I looked like a grad student. And then what I had to do after a while was learn that I  needed to dress up every day and I  couldn’t carry a backpack … I didn’t do that initially. And I don’t think men have to do that and I also think that sometimes older women don’t have to do that, but as a younger woman, I really felt that was necessary. Common negative stereotypes related to younger workers include the lack of experience or expertise, immaturity, a sense of entitlement, lacking professional etiquette, disrespectful, and having difficulties in communication and interpersonal relations (Deal, Altman, and Rogelberg, 2010; Raymer, Reed, Spiegel, and Puranova, 2017). Positive stereotypes of employees from Millennial and Gen Z generations include being more technologically savvy, energetic, open to learning, risk-​taking, ambitious, engaged, dynamic, able to cope with stress, and in tune with current trends (see for example Perry, Hanvongse, and Casoinic, 2013; Toomey and Rudolph, 2015). The influence of intergenerational stereotypes. Intergenerational stereotypes are the views that one generation holds of another that can drive behavior, interactions, and job-​related expectations. A useful framework for understanding intergenerational stereotypes is offered by an interview study of 56 professionals drawn from two different generational cohorts.The study identifies three areas of potential conflict between older and more recent generations: values-​ based, behavior-​ based, and identity-​ based differences. Each area of conflict involves the perceptions held by a given generation of

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50  Behavioral and Process-Based Ageism the opposing generation that, in all cases, tend to favor one’s own generation (Urik, Hollensbe, Masterson, and Lyons, 2017). Values-​ based differences arise from what are perceived as traditional versus progressive approaches such as the tendency to maintain the status quo and comply with formal structures in comparison with the emphasis on instigating change among members of more recent generations. Political attitudes of members of older generations are perceived as being more conservative than those held by members of recent generations. Behavior-​based tensions contrast the attitudes of perceived entitlement and the expectation for immediate results of more recent generations with the values of hard work held by older generations. And identity-​based differences relate to how individuals define themselves and their perception of how others define them, such as in the notion of “me” in younger interviewees versus “we’’ in older participants. Single identity in this study refers to having a single identity at work among older participants versus multiple identities outside of work held by younger participants (Urik, Hollensbe, Masterson, and Lyons, 2017). In actuality, data indicates that actual differences among generations may be small or simply a matter of how they are expressed (King, Finkelstein, Thomas, and Corrington, 2019). Take the large-​scale study conducted by Jennifer Deal with a sample of 3,200 participants indicates that members across the generational spectrum hold similar values but simply express them differently. In comparing the top ten values from her sample of 3,200 participants, family was chosen more than any other value, followed by integrity, and love (Deal, 2008). Deal concluded from the open-​ended questions in the survey that “no one really likes change,” although all generations were concerned about with fewer resources, adapting to shifts in technology, and responding to changes in the internal and external environments (Deal, 2008, p. 100). Generational and ageist framing can influence decision-​making in consequential, organizational processes that include evaluation, promotion, and tenure attainment based on normative expectations regarding career progress. A  recent meta-​analytic study related to older workers found the negative effects of age on outcomes related to recruitment and selection, evaluation, advancement, and interpersonal skills, with positive effects for worker reliability (Bal, Reiss, Rudolph, and Baltes, 2011). We share here troubling examples from both ends of the age spectrum that illustrate how generational and ageist framing can impact significant organizational outcomes.

Recruitment, Hiring, and Ageism One of the most frequent ways that ageism occurs in higher education is during the hiring process, particularly when older candidates are seeking to enter the tenure-​track faculty workforce. Even if applicants have strong credentials and successful careers in other fields, they can be turned away summarily. As Jon, a white male academic administrator in a southwestern

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Behavioral and Process-Based Ageism  51 public research university explains, when hiring for senior positions, the question of age may be in people’s minds: When you are hiring at the senior level, sometimes the question would come up, when hiring either an administrator or a faculty member … if the person is already like 64 or something like that, how much longer would it be likely that he or she would stay before they retired? That conversation would certainly be shut down by the department head or whoever was running the meeting but it was certainly in people’s minds. So this is a very pragmatic matter, if you are going spend a lot of money to hire a senior person, the odds are you will have the younger person around longer, not the older person. But I think that’s just in people’s minds and not something that was part of the discussion and not part of any decision that I am aware of. Katherine, the white female faculty member mentioned previously, describes how behind-​the-​scenes comments on faculty search committees can reflect ageist concerns, particularly when hiring for tenure-​ track positions: But you have the off-​the-​books conversations that take place among faculty, because obviously if it is a tenure-​track job you are investing a lot of resources and such into the person and you kind of hedge your bets. ‘Are they going to stay with us? Is there longevity with this person? Are they going to keep up with these demands of this job in particular?’ … we talk about how we kind of need ‘go getters’ in these positions. I have honestly noticed occasionally some of my faculty colleagues making comments like, are they going to be able to keep up with the energy level required of this position? I  would characterize that as an ageist comment, because fitness levels come at all times of life … there are some people that have low energy when they are young. I think that is a faculty assumption to make. Conversations that reflect overtones of ageism are typically held behind closed doors in backstage settings and can include off-​hand remarks and gestures. Once again, the theme of intersectionality of ageism with gender arises as interviewers can differentially focus on gaps in employment for women and their family responsibilities. Katherine further notes that ageist comments tend to be said more about women, “I feel like it’s said more about women than men. I think we give men more age leeway in a lot of things.” Katherine aptly describes how a priori ageist assumptions influence institutional decision-​making in which valuable contributions from senior faculty can be discounted and minimized. When she recommended faculty members who were perceived as about to retire for committee assignments or other roles, she experienced pushback, even though the individuals had

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52  Behavioral and Process-Based Ageism a great deal to offer including institutional memory, a good attitude, and a willingness to help. As she explains: I have had my higher-​ups pretty much suggest, ‘We don’t want to put him in [that role] because I  think he is about to retire; I  think he is on his way out.’ … people can leave tomorrow for whatever [reason]. Sometimes we shoot ourselves in the foot, by using some of these assumptions to decide a priori. Let them decide if they don’t want to be on it. So those offers aren’t extended, because they are kind of making an assumption. Such workplace ageism has been described as “insidious, rampant, and stifling” (Taylor and Lebo, 2019, p.  56). Feminist scholar, Phyllis Bronstein, relates how the search committee chair at a major university asked her non-​ committally, ‘Well, you’ve been out a long time, haven’t you?’ (Bronstein, 2001, p.  189). Although she had received her Ph.D.  the previous spring and was holding a post-​doctoral fellowship, Bronstein realized the question really meant, ‘You’re a lot older, aren’t you?’ (Bronstein, 2001, p.  190). Women may contend with the stereotype of being a middle-​aged housewife with family responsibilities raising children. Gaps in employment records, regardless of the reason, are not looked on favorably by hiring committees (Bronstein, 2001). Even when women have attained considerable academic stature and recognition, their job applications can be dismissed due to ageism. For example, Christina Economos, a professor at Tufts University and science educator with four decades of experience developing curriculum, describes such experiences (Applewhite, 2016, para 9): I don’t even get a reply–​or they just say, ‘We’ve found someone more suited’ … I  feel that my experience, skill set, work ethic, are being dismissed just because of my age. It’s really a blow, since I still feel like a vital human being. In the view of Johanna, the African American female academic administrator cited earlier, ageism begins in the way position descriptions and advertisements are framed and continues in the marathon-​like rigors of interview processes: You can start by the way we have begun to … rescript position descriptions, even the advertisements, which say, energetic leader, multi-​ tasker. Really embedded in that is ‘young,’ the notion that if they are young, they’re going to be physically fit, they can leap tall buildings … and take care of everything … And there are some institutions that really want to recruit experience, but they see youth or young-​looking as

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Behavioral and Process-Based Ageism  53 being where it’s at, and being a way to connect better with students. While they don’t say that aloud, it’s embedded in some of their actions, starting with the way the position descriptions written, to the way they conduct interviews. Some interviews start at seven in the morning and go to nine at night. And then you can hear the way committees talk, ‘So and so was huffing and puffing by the end of that. Do you think they will be able to work here?’ And behind the scenes, Eric, an African American faculty member and former chief diversity officer at a private research university, describes ageist and gender-​based assumptions comments he personally witnessed during search committee deliberations: I have seen it with search committees … where assumptions were made more often about women, particularly women who have gaps in their career path, both older and younger women for different reasons. These comments have included, ‘I wonder why they didn’t get tenure, or … maybe she is not going to stay with us because she might want to start a family.’ In this regard,Veronica, an African American administrator over“… the issues of older women seeing institutional effectiveness within academia, as in the society and diversity at a private university, at large, remain mostly invisible. has counseled search committees Ageist attitudes and discriminregarding illegal ageist questions. ation go unacknowledged, or are She describes how in one instance viewed as acceptable reactions the committee surmised that a to supposed peculiarities or female applicant was in her late inadequacies of the women 50s or 60s and wanted to ask the themselves … because their conapplicant if it was her last stop fidence has been shaken by years before retiring. of being ignored or discounted, Ageism particularly affects many older women begin to late-​entry academics who apply doubt their own abilities, and for faculty positions either due lower their self-​expectations for to attaining the Ph.D.  at an accomplishment.” advanced age or having raised (Bronstein, 2001, p. 195) a family or worked in non-​ academic settings or in non-​ tenure track appointments (Raghaven, 2018). Take the case of a female academic, who had returned to graduate school in her 50s to earn her Ph.D. in the study of ageism and had a ten-​year track record of teaching, was unable to find tenure-​track work at the age of 65. She concluded (Gullette, 2018, para 9):

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54  Behavioral and Process-Based Ageism Despite a CV that should have given anyone a chance to be considered for a full-​time or tenure-​track job, which I was seeking, I was ignored, told in various ways that, at my age, nothing else mattered but my age. After ten years of teaching required courses and electives in two departments, the female professor was further informed that all her classes had been cancelled, no reason given, and without an acknowledgement or thank you (Gullette, 2018). Due to the impact of this action of social closure, she became ill and wrote (Gullette, 2018, para 10): I felt devastated and I still do. Pathetic as it may seem to those with a lifetime of recognized achievements, I felt stripped of my identity, invisible, disposable, robbed of the occupation I had so recently discovered could give my life such extraordinary meaning. Older male candidates can also experience the penalties of ageism when hiring for tenure-​track positions. For example, Michael Jon Stoil, a 63-​ year-​old tenured Associate Professor of Political and Military Science at the University of Guam, applied for undergraduate teaching positions at the reduced rank of assistant professor. Over a period of three years, Stoil had only one interview and no offers. He was informed by two search committee members that his age precluded him from consideration for attaining an assistant professor position (Stoil, 2014). In another example, Robert McKee, began to apply for sociology teaching positions in 2012 at the age of 57, after having returned to academia to complete his doctorate in 2008. Despite a record of 20 years of part-​time teaching at the university and community college level, publication of a book, completion of seven journal articles, and Vietnam veteran’s status, McKee’s only received two phone interviews after applying for more than 60 positions. As he explains (McKee, 2014, para 5): Just about every job in academia for which I applied required a statement about how I  would be able to contribute to their righteous cause of diversity.Yet, when given the opportunity, they fail time and again to live up to their high-​minded ideals when it comes to hiring those of us over the age of 40. Instead, they continue to hire younger, less-​experienced applicants. Numerous examples demonstrate the difficulty that older applicants, both male and female, face when applying for faculty and administrative positions in higher education. On the opposite end of the spectrum, generational status barriers also apply to newly minted Ph.D.s entering the academic job market. With a glut of Ph.D.s on the job market, budget cuts in higher education, and the shrinking availability of tenure-​track positions, young scholars are faced with what has been called “the bleak job landscape of adjunctopia” (Carey,

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Behavioral and Process-Based Ageism  55 2020). The tight job market, as well as the recent attainment of their doctoral credentials coupled with slimmer publication portfolios, may result in a lack of leverage and feelings of “an imposter syndrome,” especially among women (Kelsky, 2019). Should they even be granted an interview, young faculty may suffer from inexperience when fielding critical questions from senior faculty during the on-​campus interview or when negotiating the terms of their first tenure-​track position. In this regard, consider the experiences of Jennifer Gomez, a young black graduate student, who faced condescension from senior faculty during her on-​campus interview for a tenure-​track position (Gomez, 2018, para 7): … a white male faculty member told me that I had explained my own theory on cultural betrayal trauma incorrectly. Next, a senior white female faculty member described cultural betrayal trauma theory to me as my ‘ideas’ with air quotes and expressed her concern that my work was not scientific enough for that top-​ranked department. She experienced a profound sense of betrayal when a high-​ranking male faculty of color whom she had thought might support her indicated that her research undermined her academic credibility and even suggested that the academic environment might not be for her (Gomez, 2018). Although his comments appeared to be motivated by genuine concern, Gomez writes: “Even though I can sympathize with the compromises he has had to make as an elder in the field, to this day, I have yet to forgive him” (Gomez, para 8).

Evaluation, Promotion, and Tenure Processes The hurdles that can be experienced in performance evaluation, promotion, and tenure processes affect individuals at both ends of the age spectrum. The vague and nebulous language of job evaluation can present an air of objectivity, while casting doubt on competence, expertise, or abilities through subjective descriptions of soft skills (Chun and Evans, 2012; Moss and Tilly, 1996). For minoritized faculty, administrators, and staff, the performance evaluation process can involve the use of differential standards that may be exacerbated by ageism. Older professors, particularly minorities and women, can be evaluated less favorably than younger colleagues, which may impact the distribution of merit salary increases and other rewards (Whitbourne and Montepare, 2017). In this regard, Lisa, an African American administrator at an elite university, describes the use of a completely different yardstick for minoritized individuals that may even predetermine the outcome of the evaluation process (Chun and Evans, 2012, p. 42): What people don’t realize when they’re working with minorities, and in some cases women, is that you are using a yardstick you would never use if it was someone you brought in, that you know, who is just like you. So you changed the yardstick. The person doesn’t know you changed

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56  Behavioral and Process-Based Ageism it, and you probably don’t even know you are doing it. So everything that they are doing, you are judging it on a higher level than you would even judge yourself. So when you do an evaluation, of course they are going to fail. They are probably even going to fail even before you did the evaluation … Age norms can also influence the results of performance evaluation in terms of the expected age for individuals at a given rank or level. As shown by a study of the performance evaluations of 112 entry-​level accountants with an average age of 23.7, age for older individuals (up to the age of 41) was negatively correlated with performance capacity and potential for development (Saks and Waldman, 1998). These results indicate the negative influence of ageism on performance evaluations coupled with an increased unwillingness to invest in professional development. Similarly, in the tenure process, Patricia Matthew, an African American professor, describes the twisting of opaque academic language in relation to the tenure denial of five assistant professors with joint appointments in the same department at the University of Michigan. She shares the example of Andrea Smith, a highly qualified, junior female faculty of color who was a Nobel prize nominee and had given a speech in the United Nations General Assembly (Matthew, 2016, p. xiv): She–​ and by extension faculty in general and faculty of color in particular–​was subject to the feelings and biases of senior faculty and administrators dressed up in the rhetoric of objective evaluations or the maddeningly opaque ‘academic judgment.’ They can deny you tenure and then twist the process and make up reasons along the way. Consistent with a prominent theme of this book, the examples shared in this chapter reveal that the intersectionality of ageism with other devalued social identities can increase susceptibility to ageism in process-​ based outcomes. Challenges for pre-​tenure faculty. Within the academic department, the long road to tenure for junior faculty necessarily involves consequential interactions with senior faculty. For junior faculty, interactions with senior faculty take on particular significance due to the influence on tenure attainment. Socialization with senior faculty has many facets that include mentorship, research sponsorship, and informal sharing of unwritten rules (Evans and Chun, 2007; Kardia and Wright, 2004; Ponjuan, Conley, and Trower, 2011). The department chair’s support, as well as that of senior faculty, are influential factors in tenure attainment. When the departmental climate is not supportive, forms of behavioral exclusion experienced by junior faculty can undermine confidence, create greater uncertainty in terms of the outcomes of tenure, and decrease the sense of belonging and job satisfaction. For example, a junior faculty

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Behavioral and Process-Based Ageism  57 member expressed her concerns about the advice she was obtaining from senior faculty and the competitive atmosphere in her department (Trower, 2008, p. 46): Sometimes I think senior faculty are a bit self-​serving in their advice.You wonder if you’re somehow being manipulated in a bad way–​sometimes knowingly and sometimes not. I’m in a very competitive field “One of the greatest challenges and I wonder if the senior facfor my generation is that we ulty in my department want are never sure whether our the credit and to misguide me. encounters with racism, sexism, or homophobia have really A qualitative study of 19 faculty occurred … we are the indimembers illustrates the challenges viduals to enact the battles of junior faculty socialization and already fought versus waging acculturation (Reynolds, 1992). In a continuous battle over our one instance, Greta, a junior facdifferences … I  believe that ulty member, alienated other facmembers of Generation X are ulty when, as chair of the graduate the first group en masse, to enter committee during her second year, the academy as professionals and she critiqued the way that faculty challenge the perceptions that were supervising students. She various types of people have describes her growing awareness about our differences.” of the differential standard at play (Holloman, 2013, pp. 90, 92) based on her age, gender, and status (Reynolds, 1992, p. 643): What I didn’t realize, and this was my big mistake, was that there are certain things you can pull off as a 6’5” 60-​year-​old male that you can’t pull off as a female that’s only a few years older than most of the graduate students. That was really what I  didn’t understand, and that really was the source of all the problem. It was because there was a lot of resentment. Jeff, another junior faculty member, described his academic department as a “fiefdom system” that lacked collegiality and shared interests, indicating, “I do not have a single senior colleague in this department that I trust at the level of being able to talk to. Not one.” (Reynolds, 1992, p. 642). In some cases, junior faculty and graduate students can be subject to the lack of collegiality and even intimidation from senior faculty due to their uncertain employment status. One female graduate student describes this “top-​down bullying” as follows (Ives, 2019, para 1): The cause of this unnecessary breakdown in collegiality is not merely or exclusively an uncertain job market. Rather, it is the result of a longtime

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58  Behavioral and Process-Based Ageism culture of intimidation and harassment, in which veteran academics treat students and junior faculty members in discourteous, exploitative, and threatening ways. In this regard, consider the findings of a study of 6,882 pre-​tenure faculty members at 80 institutions drawn from the Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education (COACHE) project conducted over a two-​ year period between 2005 and 2007. The study concluded that pre-​tenure female faculty members were less satisfied in vertical, upward-​ facing relationships with senior colleagues. In particular, African American and Asian/​Pacific Islander faculty members experienced less satisfaction with white colleagues in their vertical relationships as well as in peer-​to-​peer horizontal relationships. In contrast, Latino/​ a faculty members did not experience significant differences in the level of satisfaction with either vertical or horizontal relationships, a fact that may in part relate to the fact that some members of this ethnicity may also identify as white (Ponjuan, Conley, and Trower, 2011).The results of the study suggest that the compounding of generational differences with race can lead to a less welcoming climate for junior faculty in terms of gaining the critical support needed to navigate critical tenure hurdles from senior faculty and the department chair. “Normal” pathways to tenure and promotion. Ageism can pose serious hurdles in the tenure and promotion process in terms of the perceptions of what constitutes “normal” career progress. Deeply embedded assumptions based on age compounded by race/​ethnicity, gender, and/​or sexual orientation can impact consequential decision-​making processes through differential scrutiny of tenure and promotion applications. As one female faculty member writes, she has “gnawing concerns” about the age-​based assumptions regarding her role on campus (Anonymous, 2015, para 5). During the tenure review process, she was regularly referred to as wise beyond her years, inexperienced, new, or just starting out. She was further challenged by a staff person when she entered a computer lab, “Are you supposed to be in here without your teacher?” (Anonymous, 2015, para 3). Consider the experiences of Daniella, a white female administrator and full professor, who describes the arbitrariness of institutional timelines driven by traditional expectations: There is a certain kind of arbitrary timeline, whether it’s been created by disciplinary culture or what have you, if you don’t fit in to those parameters, you face more discrimination and scrutiny. I think higher ed is very tradition bound and has a hard time seeing things outside of the box. When Daniella went up for promotion as well as in her administrative roles at a public research university, she was aware of some ageist considerations that were a result of her youthful appearance:

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Behavioral and Process-Based Ageism  59 I think I have also experienced it in other administrative roles I have taken on, that people have implicit biases around maybe how I look, or how I should think based on how I look; I tend to look a little younger than I actually am, so sometimes I feel like that there is a level of disrespect given to me by other folks who might be older, because they think I am younger than I am or that I don’t know as much as I do based on my age. When I went up for promotion for full professor, I think there were some ageist aspects there, I had a couple of different people say things to me like, if you got this you would be the youngest full professor at the university ever. And it’s like, well what does that matter? Have I met the expectations or not? I think sometimes that factors into things as well. I  know it was at least a part of a deliberation like: Why is it so soon? Can’t she wait? But ultimately, I guess for me the proof was in the pudding and how well I have done the work and it doesn’t matter. Daniella also believes that her experiences of ageism were compounded by gender. In her words, So I think for me it is kind of a double jeopardy of being a woman and a perceived younger woman. I think there are some perceptions by some people that I might be inept, or not as knowledgeable, or not as credible, or whatever kind of stereotypes that go along with not just being a woman, but a younger woman. The perception of being a young woman with the ability to wait for tenure attainment also affected Jenna, a white female faculty member at an Ivy League institution. In fact, she was counseled on two separate occasions by the tenure committee that she should allow a more senior white male faculty member to precede her in the tenure and promotion process. As a pre-​tenure faculty member, she felt powerless in the face of this pressure: There were two times where I  was told that I  needed to wait. For example, one of my colleagues was not as strong as me and was going up at the same time and I was told specifically that you are going to need to go up after him–​your presentation and your materials–​because he’s not as strong, and we want to get you both tenured. And what you will do is you will make him look him bad. I was also told there was a person going up for full professor (I was going up for tenure), and they told me that I would have to go up after him as well because his record going up for full wasn’t as strong as my tenure case. In another instance, Eleanor, the African American political science faculty member mentioned earlier, observed the reluctance of faculty in her department to recommend full professor rank to a relatively junior faculty member.

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60  Behavioral and Process-Based Ageism She attributes this reluctance to the fact that the senior faculty had previously been denied promotion to full professor on their own first attempt: For a lot of people who were denied promotion to full when they first attempted it, they sort of are not enthusiastic when people come up at a time that they think is kind of young … This person deserved to be a full and had done more than enough to qualify.There was a little dust up at the departmental level, but age was never mentioned and even time was never mentioned, the phrase I heard was ‘too soon.’ Somehow it’s not enough to check off all the boxes to be a full, they just want more dues paid. Furthermore, Eric, the African American faculty member and former chief diversity officer cited earlier, has noted greater scrutiny of faculty in the tenure process based on race, age, and gender. He has observed the magnification of negatives based on devalued social identities in the tenure process and the lack of gravitas accorded to pre-​tenure faculty. Eric also notes how senior faculty are often less likely to collaborate with junior faculty in conducting research: In terms of tenure and promotion, younger faculty, in my experience, are more highly scrutinized. It happens along racial lines … and less so in terms of age. But I  have noted that that does occur: there are judgments made about what people are capable of based on their age. It affects sometimes how tenure committees consider people in terms of moving forward, and it has obviously an effect on their career, and also in terms of collaboration, it does happen that younger faculty collaborate, but more often it is with other faculty at their same rank. It is not as common, although it does happen, for older faculty to collaborate on an equal plane with their younger counterparts. Although there are a lot of mature non-​tenured faculty, most pre-​tenure and non-​ tenured faculty are far younger than tenured faculty professors. There is a measure of rankism, and this is across the board in higher education, on multiple levels, based on your position in the pecking order. And pre-​ tenure faculty are often not given the kinds of gravitas that they deserve or opportunities that they deserve. Questions can also arise in the tenure process when faculty of more advanced age have spent extended periods of time at the associate professor level after attaining tenure. The delay in applying for promotion to full professor can be viewed as questionable. Michael, the white male director of a center for innovative teaching cited earlier, explains: … a couple of observations around professors who have been at the associate rank for an extended period of time and who have come up for full and have been turned down or not put themselves up for full

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Behavioral and Process-Based Ageism  61 or delayed that … I have heard a lot of discussion about the longer that goes on, the more bias there is against the person. So why they are they so late to be going up for full, or what’s wrong with them, that kind of thing, if they’re 50  years old and still an associate professor, that kind of talk. It’s subtle, not always blatant … And then it’s like a negative observation about people, but also sometimes by people who are trying to support those associate professors. It’s sort of an observation that there is a bias against them, and therefore a concern about what can we do to support those faculty members and help combat that kind of bias. Sometimes just an awareness that such bias exists even among people who are trying to combat the problem, may promulgate it. Additional hurdles based on age combined with other devalued social identities can undercut a faculty member’s scholarly accomplishments. Diana, the white female faculty member cited earlier, describes how despite a significant publication record, there was an attempt to block her from putting a promotion packet together for full professor based on scholarship. Instead it was recommended that she file for promotion based on teaching. She found this recommendation to derive from gendered ageism: They never would have done that to a guy because just by definition, white male affirmation flows … Age is right in there, but it’s almost a marker for a ton of other things … Which is not to say every white male is supported, but that is the starting point. Much of this … I just think it’s an operating process that is so embedded and so standard that the frames become the realities. The recommendation essentially devalued Diana’s scholarly contributions. Taking a stand on this issue was important to Diana and she bravely determined that she would contravene the chair’s recommendation and go forward for promotion to full professor based on scholarship: I was sort of caught in a bind and floored … I said I’d rather go down on scholarship, because for me my life is about taking stands and making a point. And if I moved from scholarship to teaching, what that would say, what about the people behind me? It would say that this is not ok. Because also in this case … it’s highly connected to issues of race, class, gender, and if I  can be taken down so easily, in a sense taken down I think sort of metaphorically, rather than taking the stand that that this is valued and that this is worthy … Another significant barrier faced by women in the tenure process can involve the additional time needed to compile a research record due to family responsibilities and other life circumstances. These delays can lead to protracted time periods after tenure for women seeking promotion to full

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62  Behavioral and Process-Based Ageism professor, often because of the fear that their qualifications will be viewed as insufficient for promotion. Such a delayed timetable can lead these women to feel devalued by their colleagues in terms of their research contributions (Bronstein, 2001). Even sabbatical requests can be affected by gendered ageism. As Valerie, a white female associate dean for research and pathology professor at a master’s level institution, relates: Sometimes sabbaticals when you are up in your 60s, instead of just looking at a sabbatical as taking a sabbatical they look it as, ‘Oh, you are in your 60s, well how many more years are you going to teach?’ Because we do have a ruling that you have to be there at least two years after a sabbatical … they don’t question whether a 40-​year-​old is going to leave in two years or one year after a sabbatical, which they could, but they question when you are in your 60s. I see that happen on a yearly basis, I just kind of intercept and say, ‘you can’t ask those kind of questions unless you ask everyone.’The situations I have experienced all pertain to females. And I don’t think we had a sabbatical by a male in their 60s that somebody questioned their age. These examples illustrate the differential treatment and process-​ based inequities that can arise based on the intersectionality of age with other minoritized statuses.

Acts of Social Closure and Pressures to Leave or Retire Ageism can be manifested in acts of social closure by individuals in power who may pressure older individuals to step down from positions of authority or to retire, or even may instigate involuntary separation when employees serve in at-​will positions. Although direct suggestions to retire would be cause for legal action under the ADEA, discriminatory rationales for at-​will employees are typically cloaked in non-​committal, bureaucratic language such as “the need to go in a different direction.” Eric notes that the push to roll-​out early retirement incentive packages can, at times, reflect an ageist perspective and the desire to bring in younger faculty and administrators: At many institutions of higher education, you will have periods where you will see a rush to do early retirement packages. Institutions will try to package something that is financially beneficial for persons who want to retire … and the institution then can hire younger faculty. I think that also happens in management and in administration. On its face, it does smack of ageism. Not that people should not take advantage of those packages, they should, but the reasoning behind presenting those packages in the first place I think sometimes borders on an ageist perspective.

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Behavioral and Process-Based Ageism  63 In a study of 17 tenured professors over the age of 70 undertaken at the University of Iowa, five of the nine who later retired described decreased congeniality in their departments and three described pressures to retire (Dorfman, 2009). In the words of one faculty member, “Yes. It’s hard to prove it, but there were indications in terms of salary and treatment. That was part of the dean’s treatment for quite a few years before I  retired’’. A  second faculty member indicated, “The university was very interested in getting people to retire and they conveyed that to the people that dealt with it … I wasn’t pleased with that attitude. They were putting pressure on everyone to retire, even though they were experienced people” (Dorfman, 2009, p. 1041). In another example, Jon, the white male academic administrator cited earlier, describes the wish expressed by one dean in a staff meeting to bring new blood into the department through the retirement of older faculty. Jon responded immediately to the dean that encouraging individuals to retire was illegal and indicates that the dean never followed up on this wish in any formal way: One dean actually said at a staff meeting, I wish we could find a way to get these old guys to retire. I vividly recall that because I told him that what he had just said was illegal, you understand that don’t you? He said, ‘What do you mean?’ I said you cannot bring up retirement or encourage anybody to retire, that’s against the law. And he didn’t know that, believe it or not. He made no serious attempts to do anything about it, it was more again just wishful thinking. If he got these five or six people who he didn’t think were that productive anymore, he would have several hundred thousand dollars, and we could hire new faculty, new blood, new life, etc. Jon adds, that “we all recognize that both as administrators and some of our best faculty continue to be productive throughout their careers … ” Consider the case of Tricia, an Asian American female who had worked in administrative positions at a public college for 25  years, who was not reappointed following a budgetary maneuvering process. Tricia, who is in her early 60s, believes the non-​reappointment involved both her race and age as well as administrative dysfunctionality due to budgetary cutbacks and changes in departmental staff: They got rid of me for no good cause. I spoke to the provost about it. The president would not see me.The chief of staff would not meet with me … the dean said the provost would not fund the line; there is no way we could justify with the number of students you have in the department. That department has been in existence for over 40 years, always with … an administrator, and all of a sudden, maybe they have fewer students, maybe that could be a very convenient excuse not to fund my line. What surprised me and didn’t surprise me at the same time was he

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64  Behavioral and Process-Based Ageism [the dean] said the provost made the decision. The provost said she does not make those decisions in an email. I went back and told the provost that he said she had made that decision. She of course did not answer me at that point. Tricia was then advised to file a complaint with the Office of Equity and Diversity, but she realized that it would be difficult to prove age discrimination: The situation was such a circumstance that could not be proven. If you are under an age discrimination situation, often that is why you can’t prove a case … I knew that going in. I said I don’t want to file a case going in; it would be too hard to prove; it’s under circumstantial evidence; it’s under more systemic and structural … if the college is dysfunctional … it can be used as a tool. I believe it’s a case of age discrimination by what I can observe. Despite the illegality of pressuring individuals to retire, covert efforts involving tenured faculty can involve protracted time periods and extensive documentation given the due process protections held by such faculty. Take the systematic ageist harassment from her department chair faced by Stephanie, a tenured white female faculty member who had worked for three decades at a doctoral research university. As she explains, “My chair tried to get me fired and have my tenure reversed for six years, maybe seven.” She adds,“Mine was a battle. I knew it was a battle, and I was constantly fighting.” The chair, a white male, who was only four or five years younger than her, wanted to turn the department into a grants-​producing, money-​making enterprise with a quantitative research orientation and pushed out half of the department of 20 faculty members. Stephanie describes the intense pressures the chair placed on her and two older faculty members to leave: He forced two older people like myself to retire early. So he used the same techniques on me that he used on them. But they gave up their tenured positions and they just retired early. In one sense, it wasn’t early in the sense that they were over 65, but in another sense they had intended to keep working and they liked working. So they intended to teach, but that ended when they retired. She further explains, “So I just felt I had to survive on every dimension. He thought he could push people out by making our lives so miserable that it would be preferable to be retired than to put up with it. But I didn’t want to retire.” Further, the chair’s discriminatory actions were fully supported and even rewarded by the college: The college was delighted because they wanted to get rid of a lot of older faculty and bring in new people that would be recruited basically to be bringing in money and young blood. The administration believed

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Behavioral and Process-Based Ageism  65 older people were tired and not as good … It was a general ageing discrimination by the college as well as the chair. So he was encouraged by the college to do this. He was so rewarded, that at the time when hiring was frozen, he was able to force decisions where people were denied tenure and some faculty retired early. We got them replaced by new hires. So we were the only ones who basically in the whole college that were getting replacements. The administration really thought he was doing great … they were very pleased with him. They wanted him to apply his techniques with other departments and push out other older faculty and get them into a forced retirement. Stephanie describes the chair’s harassment of her as “kind of a constant changing target of new categories of insults as he could think of them.” As she states: Some of the insults that the chair would throw at me: he would say things like I was too old; the students wouldn’t relate to me; that I used to be a good researcher, but that was in the past, because I didn’t have the ability any more … and things like that. It was definitely ageism. He forced these other two people to retire who were over 65. It was clear that he was trying to clear people out of the department who were older. The chair’s efforts to dislodge her from the department ranged from direct insults and bullying to attempts to revoke her tenure by manipulating the evaluation process. He then documented in the official record a host of unsubstantiated charges: He started writing me annual review letters that would say things like I wasn’t coming to class and I wasn’t keeping my office hours and I was insulting my students. I mean he just made up crazy stories every year and so then I had to make up a letter that would answer each of these charges. And of course his charges were all made up! He had no names of students who complained; he had no names of persons that I  had ever insulted; he didn’t have any documented evidence that I didn’t go to class. He didn’t have any of those things. So each year there would be a new attack in my annual letter. And so then I had to go through some big long process to prove that this was a false accusation. It took me about a week every year to write that letter to respond to his letter. The discriminatory acts of the chair took a significant psychological and emotional toll on Stephanie on a daily basis over a period of six or seven years. Unlike her two older faculty colleagues, Stephanie endured these pressures due to financial needs and the potential impact on her pension. In a similar case involving Ruth, an older white female faculty member, another chair undertook efforts to revoke her tenure and thus force her to

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66  Behavioral and Process-Based Ageism retire. Because a faculty member’s tenure could be revoked if an unsatisfactory rating were not addressed within a two-​year time period, the chair, a white male, deliberately rated Ruth unsatisfactorily on service twice, since it was a more subjective category than the categories of research or teaching. Fortunately, she had published continuously, although he repeatedly downgraded the ratings based on the types of journals in which her work appeared or the focus of her research. He also virtually ignored the repeated awards and accolades she received in her field. The chair violated policy protocols by sitting in on tenure committee meetings when he was supposed to receive the recommendation of the tenure committee on her evaluations. By sitting on the committee and writing a letter, he doubled his influence on the outcome of her evaluations: He sat in on the meetings, which was illegal because that gave him double power in rating me; he would intimidate the assistant professors who knew they would be coming up for tenure. They would go like, ‘Well how can you vote this way and ignore service performance?’ and at the last minute they would kind of inch out of the decision by giving a slightly higher rating than the chair wanted.They saved me twice from unsatisfactory reviews. So I would have these little talks with the chair about how I was really unsatisfactory and I just scraped by, and so I had to prove my sincerity of being a good person … One of the upshots was that he required me to have double the committee assignments from anybody else on the faculty, which I did. And in a different case, an older white female faculty member, Susan, endured another chair’s egregious discriminatory actions designed to pressure her to leave. The white male chair loaded her teaching assignments with undergraduate required courses, keeping her completely out of the graduate course rotation for five years. He then accused her of refusing to work with graduate students. To top it all off, he would pace in front of her office every time she had office hours to try to catch her saying something inappropriate to a student that would enable him to charge her with misconduct.This harassment was a surveillance technique to increase her sense of being judged which he employed several times a week: He would pace in the hall and listen to everything I said to the students. So I was under constant visual and auditory surveillance by him every time I had office hours … He had a lot of hours to pace in the hall in front of my office and try to catch me doing something illegal, which he never did … I had to experience that for a long time, the constant pacing in front of my office. It was incredibly stressful … Susan’s ordeal only ended when she began the process of filing a formal complaint and the chair left the department. She concludes: “A lot of it was ageism. He wanted to have the only authority and he didn’t want to have any

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Behavioral and Process-Based Ageism  67 counterforces; he didn’t want to have different perspectives …” Similarly, she notes his discriminatory treatment of an African American faculty member who was denied tenure, remarking, “So his biases reflected combined issues of authority and age and sexism and racism.” These examples demonstrate the ways that influential gatekeeping actors can cloak process-​based ageist acts of closure with facially neutral rationales. Differential ageist standards can be invoked with impunity against women and minority targets even through efforts to falsify information or create untenable working circumstances. In these examples, manipulative behaviors and concerted political maneuvers were undertaken by those in power in the attempt to drive these female faculty members from their tenured positions. Further, the institutions played a complicit role in overlooking and even legitimizing such acts of closure. Despite the great pain and stress the faculty members endured over a prolonged period, they were able to withstand the pressures to retire. But only the due process protections of tenure enabled them to survive, protections that would not have been available to individuals holding at-​will positions.

Conclusion The interviews shared in this chapter provide powerful examples of how generational status and ageism can lead to exclusionary behaviors and process-​based inequality. On the one hand, junior female faculty members experienced efforts to delay them in promotional processes based upon their age and youthful appearance, essentially causing them to stand back in favor of more senior candidates. On the other hand, we have shared accounts of senior female faculty who have been pressured to leave the institution over a sustained time period and sometimes may do so rather than endure mistreatment, bullying, and harassment. Exclusionary ageist behaviors and practices may evade institutional notice, subsumed under the cover of vague, legitimizing rationales or even actively endorsed by upper-​ level administration. As shown in the narratives, the administrative hierarchy can reward and validate the actions of academic and non-​academic administrators who provide the opportunity to bring in new blood, create new lines, and garner needed funding. But for targeted individuals, involuntary departure from the workplace can have substantial impact on financial outcomes including diminished pension calculations and other benefits. The emotional, psychological, and physical toll on affected individuals can be severe, with long-​lasting career, personal, financial, and familial consequences. In sum, while both members of younger and older generations may experience both negative and positive forms of ageism, negative consequences clearly are decidedly more pronounced for individuals from older generations, particularly when coupled with gender, race/​ ethnicity and other devalued social identities. Positive ageism, by contrast, can result in differential treatment for younger members of the workforce such

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68  Behavioral and Process-Based Ageism as through increased compensation, expanded responsibilities, professional development, and opportunities for development or promotion. In the next chapter we will explore in greater depth the dynamics of intergenerational experiences in the academic department with a view to understanding the specific contexts and conditions that promote intergenerational collaboration or exacerbate generational divides.

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4  Generational Status and Academic Realities

Movements they’re like waves, they just keep washing ashore and you wait for the next one … Whether it is anthropology, history, or philosophy, it just seems there’s always two factions, one that’s moving in one direction, and one that’s moving in the other, or trying to hold fast and that leads to lot of tension. Jon, a retired white male faculty member and academic administrator

Since the academic department is at the core of the student academic experience, generational differences among the faculty cohort have the potential to influence curricula, research, pedagogical styles, and classroom experiences. As Jon explains, generational differences in an academic discipline are endemic to higher education. Senior faculty members often have disciplinary perspectives based on different theories or paradigms that may be at variance with the approaches of a new wave of academicians. Further, the disciplinary landscape is far from uniform.The norms of disciplinary cultures and academic departments vary considerably and affect the ways in which generational differences come into play in terms of faculty orientation (Ward and Wolf-​Wendel, 2012; Wolf-​Wendel and Ward, 2015). For example, Jon describes how tensions came to a head in the English department over the hiring of new faculty: … in this case in academe a new wave of people who were trying to see the discipline differently. It’s something that’s new and that’s exciting. That means that the people who were there before them sometimes are viewed as being as out of touch, antiquated … And then the older people or older style or theory or paradigm feeling threatened by the newer ones … It’s how you define the discipline. We had a major fight in our department, kind of nasty because the department wanted to hire a literary theorist that would teach our graduate students. Some of the traditional (they were older, not old maybe in the 50s people) really did not want that hire to be made. They thought this would be in a way of contaminating our graduate students’ minds, leading them in the wrong direction.

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70  Generational Status and Academic Realities In this chapter, we discuss a number of key ways in which generational differences can influence faculty and student experiences and interactions within the academic department. The narratives shared in this chapter reveal that members of non-​dominant groups have a greater likelihood of experiencing the effects of ageism, whether positive or negative, in the academic department and classroom.

External Pressures on the Academic Department As we have noted previously, higher education is undergoing significant external pressures that have reshaped institutional priorities and influenced the culture and practices of the academic department. In this regard, Daniella, the white female academic administrator cited earlier, explains that individual conflicts within the department really derive from large-​scale, systemic shifts in higher education: I think often it’s something that will come up in individual disagreements or conflicts, but the reality is it’s because higher education is changing, and the expectation that colleges and universities have put upon them externally and internally because of money, etc., those have changed. But it often becomes this interpersonal dynamic, of ‘you do this, but I didn’t have to do that or you shouldn’t do that.’ We put the onus on individuals because of expectations. We are a product of the system some of us were acculturated in when rewards were different. It’s problematic because of the nature of who gets to decide, a group of senior faculty member deciding on [requirements for] newer faculty based on a certain lens or framework. One of the major changes affecting universities is that the boundaries between the public and private sector have shifted with the advent of “academic capitalism” in which new networks of researchers cross institutional lines to work with private industry (Slaughter and Rhodes, 2004). The increasing privatization of public universities has involved increased reliance on private revenue sources, as well as a tendency to view faculty intellectual capital as a revenue stream (Powers, 2009). These trends have reshaped research expectations for faculty in the science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields and deepened generational divides. Institutional context also plays a major role in the intergenerational dynamics of the academic department, including the size and type of the institution, the degree of structural diversity, the presence or absence of unionization, the size of the department, and the strength of academic governance. Furthermore, the leadership and power dynamics in the institution, division, and department influence the degree to which ageist behaviors and actions can occur. Corporatization and research expectations. The increasing corporatization of the university and pressures to gain research funding have created

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Generational Status and Academic Realities  71 divergence among faculty generations, particularly in the STEM fields. Eric, the African American faculty member cited earlier, describes the shift toward research as “perhaps the most stark generational change in the United States.” In his view, “the whole process has changed” and has resulted in different standards for faculty. As he explains: If you were a faculty person years ago at a college that emphasized teaching, although in the past you were expected to do research, it was not the thing most emphasized. Teaching was emphasized, if you did good research. That has changed dramatically … In today’s world, I  don’t know an institution whether it is a teaching institution or a research institution or Ivy League where research is not the coin of the realm. And you see it a lot again on search committees, so it’s not surprising to me that generationally speaking that younger faculty are held to a higher standard at least in the context of research and scholarship in many institutions than the older faculty. Take the case of a lawsuit filed in 2019 by eight tenured professors in the basic sciences who had worked at Tufts University from 20 to 50 years. In 2017, the university added a requirement that they obtain 40  percent of their salaries from research grants and external funding. Professors who do not obtain such funding are subject to cuts in pay and hours, as well as the closing or downsizing of their laboratories. Court documents indicate the professors were concerned that the university was trying to force them to leave, a move that jeopardized their ongoing research and threatened their economic stability and retirement (Fernandes, 2019). In recent decades, the “valorizing” of research and scholarship with great weight placed on grant funding and national reputation has often resulted in less emphasis on teaching and service (Cooper, Ortiz, Benham, and Scherr, 2002, p. 82). David, a white male retired psychology faculty member from a private research university describes how talented senior faculty from his graduate alma mater were “treated negatively by the younger faculty because they were not getting grant funding for their research.” David underscores the difference in generational expectations for obtaining research funding as follows: The reality was that in their era such funding was not expected or needed to do psychological research to the extent it is today. In the process the senior faculty contributions to build programs with national reputations, create knowledge, and educate of doctoral students and thousands of undergrads was cast aside and not acknowledged. In support of this perspective, another male STEM faculty member describes the shift in academic work over the past decades with increasing emphasis placed on obtaining grants coupled with an atmosphere of greater surveillance and bureaucratic auditing. He believes that he escaped the worst

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72  Generational Status and Academic Realities part of this change by being promoted to full professor before these new constraints were established (Martimianakas and Muzzin, 2015, p. 1457): There is no doubt that in the days when I was an assistant professor … there was less money available, but I  had less constraint and less time wasted also; and once I  got the money it was really wonderful [as a] creative person, to be able to do what you wanted to do. Increasingly now … to be successful at the university … you have to apply for many grants … find companies to support your proposals [and] find matching funds. You have to find students who will do the things that the companies want to be done … to justify the money … So … if I look at it from the point of view of my past experience, the beauty of being an academic was that I didn’t have all those constraints in my life. Yet these generational changes are viewed differently by a STEM faculty member who found the earlier departmental emphasis on teaching and serving the interests of department made it difficult for him to set up a research lab (Martimianakis and Muzzin, 2015, p. 1458): [It] was like you were trying to start a cell of Al Qaeda. They thought you were threatening … Nobody did [things like] try[ing] to get a room for your lab. The answer was ‘we’re not here to build empires’ … [They said,] ‘He should be looking out for the interests of the department, paying more attention to undergraduate teaching’ and things like that. I mean personally I have many, many bitter experiences. As highlighted in these examples, the evolution of academic institutions toward greater corporatization has accentuated generational differences in certain fields. Another factor that has played a role in counteracting ageism in public institutions is unionization due to the protection it provides for more senior members of the workforce. Unionization and seniority. In public higher education, unionization is a force that can mitigate the effects of ageism, due to the typical contractual emphasis on seniority. Marc Thomas, a white male dean in a small, rural-​ serving community college, who formerly served as faculty grievance chair at a large urban/​suburban community college, highlights the impact of unionization on seniority in faculty teaching assignments, schedules, and wages: Because there was a strong faculty association there tended to be a natural tendency to favor seniority. So in that case it appeared that, in general, more senior faculty had higher wages and got the first preference on teaching assignments. So both salaries and teaching schedules were guided by seniority … The faculty contract when I started teaching 20 years ago included salary and benefits; it included provisions on how you develop

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Generational Status and Academic Realities  73 curriculum, how you prepare a teaching schedule for a faculty member for a particular semester. Seniority was a factor in [how much leverage you had about] what you taught and when you taught. Because I was an elected faculty association leader and was involved in the statewide organization for our faculty union … I saw at a variety of institutions the effect of having a strong faculty association on faculty responsibilities and rights. So it is possible that with a strong faculty association, I didn’t see much ageism there, I fact, I saw the opposite. Perhaps to some extent, the more senior faculty member you were, the more rights you had. Thomas also observes that intergenerational mentoring of junior faculty by their senior counterparts further solidified the faculty position in union negotiations: And the senior faculty tended to provide guidance to newer faculty, and reminded them, ‘In 1985 we had to walk out to get our rights.’ There was really an effort from senior faculty to make sure that newer faculty understood the importance of sticking together and the importance of having a strong faculty association. At the same time, he identifies the diminishing role of labor unions in the United States as well as the implementation of two-​tier faculty systems in both unionized and non-​unionized environments. For example, Thomas has noted a recent trend in several community colleges to hire new faculty at lower salaries than their counterparts a decade ago, as well as the implementation of more restrictive working conditions. Such conditions include the implementation of 12-​month contracts for new faculty and the expectation of working from 9am to 5pm. Disparities in working conditions between new and senior faculty can cause disconnection in the distribution of teaching assignments, since contracts for faculty with nine-​month contracts do not include summer teaching. We now consider a number of other areas in which intergenerational differences can affect departmental interactions and work with students including classroom challenges, ageism in students’ views of faculty, intradepartmental conflict, and differing views on diversity and work/​life integration.

Intergenerational Classroom Challenges A myriad of challenges can arise in college and university classrooms based on similarities and differences in generational status between professors and students. These challenges are two-​way: i.e., involving both student perceptions of faculty and faculty approaches to students. Among the areas that affect intergenerational classroom experiences are the impact of technology on student preparation and engagement, the emergence of new hybrid pedagogical models, and ageist views of the faculty by students.

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74  Generational Status and Academic Realities The influence of digital technology on student preparation and engagement. One of the most immediate and recognizable changes that has affected students’ college preparation and classroom engagement is the preeminence of digital technology and social media. The omnipresence of smartphones and digital media has created an expectation of immediacy and quick results among members of recent generations in forms of communication (Cohen, 2019). Over the past decades, Marc Prensky has identified the characteristics of students growing up in a ubiquitous environment of social media, video games, and smart phones as “digital natives” who think and process information fundamentally differently from their predecessors (Prensky, 2012). In Prensky’s view, the differences between so-​called digital natives and their digital immigrant teachers are at the heart of many of today’s educational problems (Prensky, 2012). Among the characteristics associated with students in the digital age are fluency in multiple media, multitasking capability, and experience in a culture of information sharing through constant connectivity (Corrin, Lockyer, and Bennett, 2010). Even the use of email and Facebook is decreasing, with greater reliance on more rapid and terse forms of communication such as text messaging and Twitter (Brown, 2017). At the same time, research indicates that use of technology may not be simply a generational issue, since faculty and students have varying capabilities ranging from basic skills to sophisticated usage (Corrin, Lockyer, and Bennett, 2010; Harris, 2012). Nonetheless, students from recent generations tend to be less oriented toward the use of books and written materials and are more receptive to the ready accessibility of internet-​based and social-​media resources (Gose, 2017). In general, undergraduates arriving on campus have read fewer books before they enroll in college than students in prior decades and sharp decreases have been experienced in the circulation of books from college libraries (Cohen, 2019). In this regard, Eleanor, the African American professor of political science cited earlier, confirms the lack of reading background she has found among her students: They simply don’t read nearly as much as I read at their age. I read not only assignments, but reading was also a source of entertainment and relaxation for me. Every year, I throw out books that I think they should have read … literary writers that I think they should have been exposed to … but they haven’t read any of these things. And when I ask them what they did read to determine if there is a new sort of canon in high school that I missed, most of them can’t remember what they read in literature, some can vaguely recall a plot or story line … But that’s a real problem. With the widespread proliferation of technology, a shift has also taken place in terms of student learning styles and preferences. For example, a survey of 1,300 middle and high school students representing Gen Z indicates that

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Generational Status and Academic Realities  75 students valued educational technology such as websites with study materials, DVDs, digital textbooks, and online videos (Barnes & Noble College, n.d.). The majority of students identified learning by doing, such as by working through examples, as the most useful way of learning, while 38  percent found reading helpful, and only 12 percent felt listening, such as listening to classroom lectures, to be effective (Barnes & Noble College, n.d.). Consistent with the 24/​7 availability of technology, this survey supports the notion that learning can take place anywhere at any time (Kozinsky, 2017). The technology gap can represent a generational divide within faculty cohorts with senior faculty expressing the need to keep up with current trends and even some junior faculty who are less conversant with technological developments. David Perlmutter, Dean of Texas Tech’s College of Media and Communication, sees technology as a potential wedge issue among faculty (Perlmutter, 2011): Many senior professors are embracing this revolution. But clearly the young are digital natives from the start. There is a real danger of a technology gap becoming a wedge issue between faculty members–​in the same way standards of promotion and tenure, the job market, and salary compression have been divisive issues–​at a time when professors need to be more united than ever in addressing the challenges of higher education. Oliver Dreon, the white male director of the Center for Academic Excellence at Millersville University, finds that some senior faculty may find a greater challenge in dealing with students who bring multiple internet devices into the classroom: Because this connecting generation, the non-​traditional students who are coming into our classrooms with three to five internet devices, that’s a little foreign to some of our experienced faculty, and they see that to a degree to be a nuisance, a distraction in the classroom, and they don’t always know how to use it to their advantage. But I would say that’s true of some of our younger faculty too. Yet Valerie, a white female associate dean for research in her 60s, recognizes the potential of individual devices such as smartphones and tablets in the classroom to disrupt the learning process. In her medical pathology course for physician’s assistants, she has taken what some might consider to be a revolutionary step by prohibiting the use of smartphones and tablets in order to foster more interactions, critical thinking, and retention of knowledge by students. This approach has cause pushback among younger faculty, some of whom are in their 30s, and caused her to justify her approach: We have a department that has 30-​year-​olds; I am in my 60s. I think sometimes experiences in older generations are not appreciated in my

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76  Generational Status and Academic Realities department. I actually had younger faculty come down and talk to more about how I would be setting the students up for failure: nobody has ever done this before. And actually they were very upset about me not letting students using the computer during the classroom time, and did not really respect my experience in what I saw through the generations of kids coming out, of how the students are not retaining things … I tried to tell them that this is not a new technique. It was something that was done before and has good result. If you want to come listen to my lectures. It wasn’t until the students actually said, ‘This is pretty cool; I pay attention better.’ And they are not having to study as much at home. At times, they don’t respect or listen to experience of people that are older. I had to really justify it more than I should have. They want students to always have the computer in their pocket and look things up. I want them to think. One of the emerging questions for faculty is how to incorporate technology into their course designs in order to enhance the learning process. While face-​to-​face learning approaches remain an integral part of the educational process, hybrid learning that combines classroom with online resources has emerged as an effective method of incorporating technology within current institutional structures (Kamenetz, 2010). As Anya Kamenetz writes, “learning to teach with technology is less about ‘how does it work’ and more about ‘why should I  use it’ ” (Kamenetz, 2010, p.  103). In the reverse mentoring case vignette presented at the close of the chapter, we examine a successful model for enhancing the ability of faculty members at Baldwin Wallace University to incorporate technology in the teaching process. New pedagogical models and approaches. A major generational shift that has taken place in the educational process is the movement away from the lecture format. In the view of Paul Harvey, Professor of Management at the University of New Hampshire, the standard lecture format may be nearing its end (Brown, 2017). The classroom environment today offers greater emphasis on student engagement, active learning, and collaborative approaches. Faculty members from more recent generations have realized the importance of active learning and that “you can’t stand in front of the classroom and yak at them for an hour and a half ” (Brown, 2017, para 23). Some research suggests that the preference for active, experiential learning by younger generations could be a reflection of greater individualism and positive self-​ views as shown in a comparative research study spanning 1966 to 2000 based on a sample of 6.5 million college freshmen (Twenge, Campbell, and Gentile, 2011). The rise in agentic self-​evaluation suggests a generational shift towards increased individualism, self-​ expression, and greater expectations in planning for the future. Interestingly, the study did not identify a generational increase in understanding others and cooperativeness, while self-​evaluations of spirituality, emotional, and physical health decreased (Twenge, Campbell, and Gentile, 2011).

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Generational Status and Academic Realities  77 To address the expectations of students who are more steeped in technology, new teaching models have focused on experiential, interactive types of instruction that strengthen active learning and student engagement. Such models capitalize on the availability of electronic resources and digital media through both online and blended or hybrid (face-​to-​face and online) courses. Rethinking modes of student learning has led to the evolution of the flipped classroom model in the new millennium. The flipped classroom model is a student-​ centered approach that inverts traditional teaching approaches and delivers lecture content prior to class through electronic media or readings that can be absorbed outside of class. Emphasizing that “higher education today does not have to look like the higher education of yesteryear, or even of a decade ago,” Robert Talbert sees the change from the lecture format as enabling students to learn on their own and apply new skills that are necessary in today’s competitive work environment (Talbert, 2017, p. xiv). The flipped classroom encourages students to engage with concepts during class time through discussions, case studies, and problem-​solving applications and activities with peers (Garza, 2014; Gillespie, 2016). Class time is used to build relationships so that faculty have meaningful contact with each student or group of students at every class meeting (Lederman, 2017, Talbert,  2017). Oliver Dreon views adoption of innovative pedagogical approaches as more a function of the risk-​taking disposition of faculty members, rather than their generational status: It’s a mixture, it’s almost like disposition: it’s more about how they believe people learn and if they are risk-​takers, and so that risk-​taking disposition cuts across all generations. People who are willing to take pedagogical risks in support of their student learning. That crosses generations. The thing is how do you foster that risk taking? I  have some new faculty who are fresh out [of graduate school] who are stand and deliver people: they just go up and lecture; I have very experienced faculty who are throwing out their syllabus and doing all kinds of really cool things in their classrooms. Dreon emphasizes the importance of recognizing the contributions of more experienced faculty and creating space for them to have voice in order to help inform innovation and avoid repeating strategies that were not successful: They [the more experienced faculty] believe some of the junior faculty think they are inventing the wheel, whereas in reality they are just reinventing it.These are some things that I think our experienced faculty want to voice and say, ‘we did something like this five years ago; here’s what we learned from that.’ Rather than repeating mistakes that have been made, providing that space to be heard, to draw on that experience … it’s learning from history. We have some experienced faculty, who are naysayers, like ‘Oh that will never work.’ We have experienced

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78  Generational Status and Academic Realities faculty who are willing to use their experience to help inform innovation, inform practice, and progress. Consonant with this perspective, Valerie, the associate dean for research mentioned earlier, has observed that students, rather than her younger colleagues, appreciate the generational perspectives that experienced senior faculty bring to the classroom. In her view, this appreciation is based upon students’ exposure to historical knowledge of how medical knowledge and practices have evolved. In contrast, she views younger faculty as sometimes over-​reliant on facts presented through standardized PowerPoint presentations: It’s interesting how students appreciate the generational aspects of what people have to offer in the classroom, more than the colleagues that are roughly the same age as the students. I think the students appreciate the maturity and the experiences, and bringing things with examples in the classroom. I am not sure that faculty appreciate that. From a historical perspective, the students appreciate how medicine changes; they appreciate how things are now and how they got there. I think sometimes telling that process of how you treat dehydration today versus yesterday is important. You can understand why it transitioned, they [the students] are going to keep changing how they practice. I think in a lot of our health programs, the younger faculty are just ingrained with, ‘Oh, this is how we do things today, that’s all we need to know.’ I think some of our older faculty are more into showing different approaches for different things, and how things have changed when it comes to teaching content. Our younger faculty in their 30s and 40s, they love just PowerPoints with here’s the facts, here is the next slide … I think most of our older faculty want to sit down and talk about this, instead of just, here’s just five symptoms.

Ageism in Student Views of Faculty Student perceptions of faculty can be affected by the intersectionality of faculty demographic characteristics including race, age, and gender. We have indicated that often older white male professors do not appear to pay a penalty for age, due to the stereotype of what a college professor looks like. In fact, white male senior faculty who have not faced challenges based on age and gender may be puzzled by the reactions of younger female faculty and faculty of color to classroom issues and may believe that faculty in subordinate categories lack competence or are creating imaginary problems (Chesler and Young Jr., 2007).Yet the examples shared in this chapter clearly demonstrate how ageism and generational status can affect student perceptions of faculty. In particular, female faculty may suffer from expectations related to their looks and attractiveness at both ends of the age spectrum, as well as from stereotypical views of their family-​related roles.

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Generational Status and Academic Realities  79 Student evaluations play an important role in decisions relating to faculty promotion, tenure, compensation, and retention, often with significant career consequences (Wallace, Lewis, and Allen, 2019). Researchers have documented the strong correlation between gender and race/​ethnicity on student perceptions and the particular challenges faced by women of color in terms of student evaluations of their perceived competence, legitimacy, demeanor, physical attractiveness, and interpersonal skills (Bavishi, Hebl, and Madera, 2010; Wallace, Lewis, and Allen, 2019). Despite the sparse research on the impact of ageism in student evaluations, one study of ratings on the controversial RateMyProfessors.com (RMP) website using a sample of more than 3,600 tenure-​track professors from 58 colleges and universities found that ratings for professors over the age of 45 consistently fell. Older males, however, were rated more highly than older females (Stonebraker and Stone, 2015). Several studies using simulated experiments rather than actual course evaluation findings identify the intersectional impact of age and gender on student perceptions of faculty. These studies reveal stereotypical views based on demographic characteristics that influence student evaluations of instructor effectiveness, organization, enthusiasm, and attractiveness as follows: •

A study of 231 students at a southeastern university using electronically aged photographs found that while age played a role in evaluations of both male and female professors, older females were rated more negatively in terms of their attractiveness and expected organization of the course (Wilson, Beyer, and Monteiro, 2014). • A study of 308 introductory psychology students using photographs and audio tapes similarly found that students viewed male professors as more effective compared with female professors of all ages. Students reported greater rapport and attractiveness in relation to younger faculty versus older faculty, although females were rated higher than males on these attributes (Joye and Wilson, 2015). • A study of 352 introductory psychology students revealed the existence of pre-​existing stereotyped views of instructors based on age and gender. Four groups of students listened to an identical, neutral lecture and were then asked to rate the lecture when told the professor’s age and gender. Attribution of a young male professor resulted in higher ratings compared with designation of a young female. In addition, students rated the supposedly young male professor higher than both old male and old female professors in terms of their enthusiastic speaking style and meaningful voice tone (Arbuckle and Williams, 2003). As can be seen from these findings, the intersectionality of faculty demographic characteristics can influence student evaluations and affect departmental perceptions of faculty teaching effectiveness.

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80  Generational Status and Academic Realities Classroom and collegial challenges. Both in classroom and departmental settings, junior female faculty and younger faculty of color can experience difficulties in projecting authority and competence. In a study of 64 faculty, both younger female faculty and younger faculty of color reported greater challenges in the classroom related to their expertise and experienced more pain and discomfort in the effort to address these challenges. As a female African American scientist reported (Chesler and Young Jr., 2007, pp. 13–​14): It’s a little different now that I’ve got a little more maturity and a few gray hairs … It was most challenging when [I was] green, just starting, and it’s easy for students to kind of dismiss faculty of color … or to discount your knowledge and your experience. Students may also demonstrate a lack of deference in how they address female and minority faculty, although with increasing faculty age this issue can diminish or become easier to manage (Chesler and Young Jr., 2007). A  female Latina scholar reported that students often call her by her first name, rather than “professor.” She explains: “It has everything to do with how old I am, my gender, my race. The reality is I’d prefer if they’d call me Professor XXX. But they don’t usually. They call me by my first name” (Chesler and Young Jr., 2007, pp. 14–​15). Another female faculty member describes the lack of respect she encountered in the classroom: (Kardia and Wright, 2004, p. 5): [I told] students to call me by my first name, but instead I  got, ‘Miss [Name]’ and people asking me midway through the semester, ‘So are you a professor or are you a graduate student?’ … I went in with this sort of ideal that they would call me by my first name, and now I’ve got to put ‘Professor’ on everything. Furthermore, young female faculty can be subject to the triple jeopardy of ageism, gender, and “lookism” in which physical attractive and appearance can heighten the impact of age discrimination, both positive and negative (Granleese and Sayer, 2006). Female academics may even downplay their attractiveness in order not to stand out. As one young female academic explained (Granleese and Sayer, 2006, p. 18): If you stand out you seem like a threat to others, or others feel uncomfortable of your image and that makes you feel uncomfortable. So the more you blend in because it is a male-​dominated environment … with color, with style, the more you are like others, the more others feel comfortable towards you. Race enters the equation with gender and age in terms of how scholars of color are perceived in the classroom. For example, an Asian American female scholar described how being kind and generous in the classroom is difficult

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Generational Status and Academic Realities  81 for a young female minority professor of shorter stature who is trying to project authority. Ironically, she feels that she has to portray herself as older in order to offset the lack of deference related to her physical appearance (Chesler and Young Jr., 2007, p. 16): I always admired professors who were kind of older–​senior men usually … They have a lot more authority, but also they’re able to be kinder in the classroom or be more generous to their students … Whereas I’m kind of a small person, right? And a woman and Asian, right? So it’s almost the opposite of the ideal teacher. So I would like to be kind and generous and be perceived to be that way. But often I feel like the only way that I can do that is if I appear very old as a way to kind of offset those things. Consider the tactics a female faculty developed as a 23-​year-​ old adjunct to demonstrate her expertise to her mature adult students. Teaching early on Saturday morning, she would arrive in formal office attire that contrasted with the sweats or casual dress of her students.When her authority was challenged, she learned how to respond in a stern but supportive manner to show that she knew what she was talking about (Reynolds, 2016). In another example, Eleanor, the African American female faculty member cited earlier, describes how a young Asian American female faculty member who looked younger than her age experienced difficulties in controlling a large lecture classroom. Eleanor explains that the intersectionality of race and gender with the faculty member’s age affected student perceptions:

“One of the things that I  have personally observed as a teacher in front of a classful of people [in a non-​credit course] who were several decades older than me … they weren’t sure that I knew enough to really teach them anything new. I  remember specifically one person getting up and saying in front of the class, ‘What can you teach me?’ … my response was, I  have been studying medieval literature, medieval culture for quite a while … I  framed it around my credentials that I had at that point. I fell back into credentials and the formality of credentials in this moment and that seemed to manage things.” (Vivian, a white female academic administrator in a private university)

She showed me some emails that I thought were inappropriate, like very few students would call her doctor or professor, they would call her Miss something or they would call by her first name … Some of the emails said things like, ‘I love the pants you had on today,’ or ‘Where did you get that blouse?’, as if she were a peer. I knew that it probably had to do

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82  Generational Status and Academic Realities with ageism. Intersectionality is really important, too. Ageism was part of it, but I do think there was a racial and gender aspect. Eleanor sagely counseled the young faculty member to adjust her presentation and appearance, advising her: There is nothing wrong with students liking you, [but] this is not the kind of posture you should have in large lecture classes. You are going to have to stop dressing your age, start suiting up, pulling your hair back, and you have got to distinguish yourself. … let’s just adjust the way you present in class, come up with a persona that shows up in lectures, that is not necessarily the authentic you, but is the professorial you, that can help mitigate this casualness that I am seeing in some of these emails and that is bothering you so much. Similarly, Jenna describes how due to her youthful appearance both students and other faculty members repeatedly assumed she was an assistant professor although she was a full professor. She also notes how students would often not complete the work for her class and younger white male students would call her a “chick” in front of everyone: Gender-​wise I dealt with quite a bit of things. Like for example, when I was younger, I had a lot of men typically white men … call me a chick in front of everybody. Like ‘What’s a chick like you doing teaching this class?’ So that was really hard and it was embarrassing. I had an African American man stand up for me when that happened to me and say, ‘Hey don’t talk to her that way.’ That can be really difficult. Jenna further explains: I got tenure when I was 38 and I was a full professor by the time I was 39  … I  looked really, really young. And so whenever I  would go to meetings, first of all students all assumed that I was an assistant professor, and faculty who had voted on me for tenure and voted on me for full would call me an assistant professor … They would say, this meeting is only for full professors. Over and over I had to say … even when I was holding endowed professorships, I  am not an assistant professor. With students it didn’t happen that much, but it definitely happened. These narratives demonstrate some of the challenges that younger female and minority faculty can face in the classroom and academic department in relation to their knowledge, competence, and qualifications. The “mom” syndrome. While female faculty may struggle to project authority as newcomers to the professoriate, at later stages of their careers, they can be typecast as on-​campus “moms.”This labeling in nurturing rather than professional roles likely results from the fact that these faculty have

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Generational Status and Academic Realities  83 not been traditionally granted faculty status in the academy (Chesler and Young Jr., 2007). Take how Michael, the white male director of a center for innovative teaching, describes the emergence of this stereotypical view of mid-​career female professors: One story I often hear is that faculty members who feel like they are transitioning from a time when they were closer in age to students, when they are … no longer seen as in that same generational range. That [stereotype] definitely I think shows up in a gendered way. There are many female faculty members who report that when they’re first starting out in the professoriate, they are sort of fighting to gain the respect of students, and they feel like they often don’t fit that stereotype of what a faculty member should look like.They are fighting that prejudice. As they get older and progress in their careers, some report being perceived as shifting into kind of a mom modality … a shift from having to worry about projecting authority to having to project a different kind of professionalism to students, so they are not treated like sort of an on-​campus mom. As shown in these examples, the influence of socially driven, ageist, and generational stereotypes can affect student perceptions and evaluations of faculty. As relative latecomers to academe, female professors may be taxed with the need to project their professional identity and competence at different stages of their careers. Youthful appearance at one end of the age spectrum can cause questioning of expertise by both faculty colleagues and students, while, at the other end, relatively youthful looks may be necessary to offset ageist stereotypes and pressures to retire. And faculty women of color, in particular, may be subject to greater scrutiny in terms of their competence and authority.

Generational Differences in Disciplinary, Curricular, and Research Approaches As noted earlier, generational differences can arise within the academic department in terms of views of the discipline, approaches to curricula, teaching styles, and research foci. Even so-​called standard definitions and terminology may have changed in some disciplines based on cultural trends. For example, Daniella, who oversees a women’s gender and sexuality studies program, describes how even the definition of “woman” has evolved: There are a lot of generational differences there, when we say a woman, what are we talking about, how does that turn up in the classroom? There are some conflicts there that I  think are very generational. In some feminists’ minds, when we talk about a woman we might be talking about somebody who was assigned a woman gender at birth, and has particular body parts, and has a particular identity that goes

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84  Generational Status and Academic Realities with that, whereas I think there is a newer generation of feminists who believe anybody who feels they are a woman is a woman. So those kind of definitions when you are teaching in a program that includes women, what does that mean in a classroom? What are you teaching and what aren’t you teaching, depending on how you perceive it? Jenna, the white female faculty member cited earlier, describes generational differentiation in a variety of areas including the type of curriculum taught, the types of sources cited, as well as teaching methods: … not everybody, but maybe the older generation as a whole is more kind of filling the empty vessel, there is some of that. I  think there are differences methodologically. Whereas some of the older generation might be very wedded to the methods they have been using and feel very comfortable, while the younger generation is very critical and calling into question those methods. I see a lot of that right now. In some departments, the responsibility for curricular development can rest disproportionately on the shoulders of junior faculty. Michael, the director of a center for innovative teaching, observes that this delegation of responsibility can create tensions in terms of the relationships of junior faculty with the senior faculty who will play a decisive role in their tenure decisions. As he explains: I think it’s generational, almost like a biased assumption that somebody who has been there for a while will continue doing what they are doing and so therefore the energy, the obligations for change is put on that new hire or recent hire, which often puts them in a very tricky position, right? Because they are being judged for their tenure by the senior faculty members who might be opposed to a particular change or a new curricular direction and yet the junior faculty are expected to take that on. We have seen this in a couple of different areas … We tend to have the expectation that the newer faculty will be the ones to take on this newer form of teaching, and yet there also may end up being a bias against them, because they are teaching in a way that senior faculty may not have been teaching. In Jenna’s experience, the responsibility for curricular development is more likely to be assumed by younger to mid-​career faculty, especially newly tenured faculty: I think the younger to mid-​range faculty tend to do the bulk of the work on curricular change. This is in my experience. The older faculty tend not be around as much and don’t participate in curriculum building in faculty meetings, while the younger to mid–​in terms of age–​ those are the people who tend to be doing the bulk of work. I think the

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Generational Status and Academic Realities  85 bulk of the work is done by people who are newly tenured, but I also see a lot of new professors creating new classes and adding vibrancy to the curriculum. Oliver Dreon, who serves as Chair of the Undergraduate Curriculum Committee at Millersville University, views the responsibility for curricular development among different faculty generations as mixed: The perception is that our new faculty are the ones bringing new ideas to campus. And I think that is not always the case. We have very connected people who have been on campus for 20 or 25 years who are the ones pushing for change. It’s a mix. While institutional contexts differ, intergenerational collaboration among faculty cohorts can facilitate meaningful curricular change and innovation.

Intra-​Departmental Conflict Little research attention has focused on intergenerational communication in relational contexts that include the academic department (McCann and Giles, 2002). Nonetheless, conflicts within the academic departmental can arise from power relationships and differing generational expectations related to disciplinary goals, curricula, and resources. Political infighting can occur among faculty or between faculty and the department chair that can be exacerbated by demographic differences. In contrast, interdependence and interactions among diverse individuals within the department can reduce the impact of surface demographic dissimilarities of age, gender, and race (Riordan, Schaffer, and Stewart, 2005). The literature on workplace conflict identifies three major domains in which conflict occurs: relationship-​ based, task-​ based, and process-​ based (Hearn and Anderson, 2002). One of the few exploratory studies of process-​ based conflict in academic departments examined split votes on promotion and tenure (P&T) held between 1977 and 1986 in 62 academic departments in a large research university (Hearn and Anderson, 2002). This case sheds light on the differences resulting from generational perspectives. On average, 13  percent of the decisions were very split and conflicts occurred more frequently in larger departments with greater instructional volume and greater programmatic specialization. Of greatest relevance to this study is the suggestion that departments with a larger group of senior faculty and lower percentages of female faculty experienced lower levels of conflict.The reasoning offered by researchers is that when a large group of senior faculty shares common backgrounds, research perspectives, and longer working relationships, the potential for conflict can be reduced. With more heterogeneous seniority distributions, generational conflict can arise due to issues related to resource distributions among faculty ranks or the differing ways in which faculty were trained and socialized (Hearn and Anderson, 2002).

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86  Generational Status and Academic Realities Ageism can play a significant role in committee work in terms of conflicting perspectives between older and more recent faculty generations. Diana, the white female faculty member cited earlier, describes how, as the only faculty member over 40 years’ old on a university committee, the ageist remarks of younger faculty betrayed a level of condescension toward her, causing her to feel isolated. She compares the mistreatment she experienced due to ageism as similar to how white supremacy and racism function: I was easily a good 20 or 25 years older than everyone else and have been teaching for longer than that. The conversations were totally different kinds of conversations. The things that I was concerned about were not what any of the other folks were concerned about, and this was in relation to teaching. I raised a question about how I might approach an aspect of teaching, I was looking for best strategies, best practice, creative ideas. Someone turned to me and said, ‘I can give you the syllabus template, and you can just follow that to learn how to create a syllabus.’ I am in the room and I am the only person over 40. I didn’t know what to say, honestly. Because here I am and I am isolated! And then it functions in many ways like white supremacy and racism.Then you raise something and say, ‘Actually folks I have been teaching for x years, I am not asking about how to do a syllabus, I am trying to continuously hone my teaching skills.’ As the committee discussion continued, another faculty member accused her of leaving out a major area in her approach to subject matter which has been the basis of Diana’s scholarship and life’s work. The implication embedded in the faculty member’s comment was “how could you know, you are outdated.” Diana felt that, had there been others in the room in her age group or if the perspectives were more thoughtful, she would not have felt so alone and less of an outsider, adding: I haven’t thought deeply about ageism, but that was a deeply ageist, arrogant, condescending, patronizing thing to say to someone who has been studying this … for several decades. This is my life work. What happened is, I felt very defensive, and you know what, there were tears welling in my eyes, which meant how deep this is … [It was] such a different way of treating me that I was already the outsider in the space. She indicates that the balancing of generational perspectives in committee discussions and other departmental work is rarely raised as an important issue. Rather, the perspectives of older faculty may be discounted or viewed as less relevant: When do we hear, oh we should balance generationally? We never would hear that we should make sure that there are folks have been teaching a long time, and folks who have been teaching less … To me

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Generational Status and Academic Realities  87 we are stronger together, but what happens is that we get bumped off I think at this stage. Conversely, in some departments the views of recently hired faculty can be discounted in an effort to maintain the status quo. Consider the perspective of Meghan, the young, gay, white female professor cited earlier, who describes the efforts of senior faculty to maintain the status quo rather than finding new creative ways to approach issues. At the same time, she finds students to be more receptive to her because she is closer to them in age and could share examples that resonate contemporaneously with their experiences: I am one of the younger faculty members here in the school, and so what ends up happening is a lot of harkening back, ‘Oh, you know, you weren’t here when 24 years ago, we used to do it this way. And you don’t have this institutional memory, but basically we don’t do it like that here.’ And so it’s like a way to justify not engaging with new ideas or perhaps finding new solutions or being creative. It’s sort of this idea that the way things are being done here are assumed to be the best way to do them because that path is so worn, so trodden basically … I haven’t been here as long, because I am younger. But the fact of the matter is that I finished my terminal degree more recently. So if anything, it may be that what I have to offer might actually be more relevant in a way that they’re not seeing. And on the flip side of that, I would say my students have written in my evaluations they actually like what I say, it seems relevant to their lives, and I am closer to being with the pulse than others in terms of social media use and things like that. And because I am in my 30s, I think we are closer to understanding each other. In that way the age thing has worked to my advantage, because I can still reference music and movies that they are familiar with. My examples aren’t antiquated yet. So I’m sort of riding that wave while I can. The experiences of faculty shared here reflect tensions that can arise in the academic department among generational cohorts and at both ends of the age continuum in terms of communication, collaboration, and day-​to-​day behavioral interactions.

Generational Views on Diversity Consistent with generational theory, some evidence exists of the influence of legal rulings and major events on views of diversity by faculty and staff. Research findings point to the impact of the commonality of experiences in generational cohorts, leading to the positionality of individuals with respect to historical events. For example, a large-​scale study of 38,580 faculty from 414 colleges and universities conducted in 2004–​2005 presents an interesting finding, indicating that diversity advocacy may even be stronger among senior faculty. Older faculty were more likely to embrace diversity

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88  Generational Status and Academic Realities advocacy, perhaps due to the impact of the Civil Rights movement,Vietnam War, and other political events may have shaped their commitment to racial understanding (Park and Denson, 2009). This study indicates that views of diversity among generational faculty cohorts may reflect consciousness arising from major social or political crises.Validating this perspective, Diana, the white female faculty member, explains: I think folks in my generation, not across the board, many folks came out of movement spaces, activism, and came through multiculturalism, diversity … after all the pressures in the 60s and 70s and then the 80s. The [later] scholars … came into the world where affirmative action played maybe a little role, so it’s differently activism oriented [than] where I  stand or where I  entered. I  think more older faculty have at least the question of who do I stand with in how they have navigated their life in terms of their scholarship. And then there is the generation under those folks, the newer faculty that have a different generational perspective, [i.e.] what is their relation to the social world? Am I speaking up for the most vulnerable, is that what my scholarship is about, or is it scholarship in a more traditional sense … Is my work dedicated to service or is it something abstract about scholarship? At the same time, contemporary events such as the legalization of same-​sex marriage can lead to greater openness to diversity in recent generational cohorts. Supporting this perspective, a study of 35,000 adults participating in the General Social Survey between 1972 and 2012 revealed significant increases in tolerance for homosexuality, particularly among individuals who had attended college. Individuals who identified more individualistic, non-​traditional, and egalitarian views and who were more highly educated expressed greater tolerance in terms of controversial views and lifestyles (Twenge, Carter, and Campbell, 2015). The liberalization of views on gender identity is also symptomatic of a generational shift as reflected in the increased use of non-​binary pronouns and recognition of gender fluidity. Consider the perspective offered by a survey of 920 teens born after 1996 (Gen Z) compared with 10,682 U.S. adults aged 18 and older. The survey concluded that 35 percent of Gen Zers know someone who uses gender-​neutral pronouns, compared with 25  percent of Millennials and only 12  percent of Baby Boomers (Parker, Graf, and Igielnik, 2019). A  number of faculty from recent generations include preferred pronouns in their email addresses and on their syllabi. Yet Rachel Levin, Associate Professor of Biology and Neuroscience at Pomona College, warns against inadvertently outing students by requesting students’ gender pronouns on the first day of class (Levin, 2018, para 6): … questions about pronoun use can be painful to the very people to whom we are trying to signal support. So why do many institutions and their faculty members persist in the wholesale practice of requesting

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Generational Status and Academic Realities  89 pronouns on the first day of class, especially with young adults who are in the process of figuring out who they are? The result of this practice is that students whose gender presentation may not match their gender identity are forced to lie or to out themselves in a new and possibly unsafe environment, while those who are unsure of their gender identity are made to feel uncomfortable and forced to choose a pronoun. Despite the apparent gains in openness to diversity, universities and colleges themselves are still struggling to create inclusive and welcoming climates and to implement cultural and structural changes in the working environment. As Daryl Holloman, a gay black male professor notes, the passage of Civil Rights legislation and age-​related laws has given rise to more covert and ambiguous forms of discrimination in the academic workplace (Holloman, 2013). Perspectives shared by lesbian and gay faculty members in the sciences and engineering indicate ongoing concern about the difficulties of gay undergraduate and graduate students in dealing with “clueless” faculty (Bilimoria and Stewart, 2009).

Generational Views on Family and Work/​Life Integration Generational differences have made a significant difference in the growing recognition of work/​family integration. One of the major and long-​overdue changes in the academic workplace has been the amelioration of conditions for recognizing motherhood and paternity through policies such as work/​ family programs, leave programs that allow for extension of the tenure clock for childbirth or adoption, and reduction in teaching loads for family care. Views on combining an academic career with motherhood “I think that from the top reflect generational differences as down the university is hostile shown in a longitudinal study of and works on a very old and women assistant professors with very patriarchal model of what children who were newborn or an employee is because they all up to five years old. The authors had wives … or they don’t have of the study, Kelly Ward and Lisa children themselves.” Wolf-​ Wendel, found generational (A mid-​career female assodifferences relating to motherhood, ciate professor, quoted in including a self-​referential mindset Philipsen, 2010, p. 19) among women who expressed the sentiment “I did it (or didn’t) and you should (or shouldn’t) too” (Ward and Wolf-​Wendel, 2012, p. 104). This mindset caused rifts between senior and junior faculty, particularly in the social sciences which have larger percentages of female faculty. Senior women in the social sciences who had forgone having children in order to succeed did not always have a positive reaction to junior women who were pursuing a different path in their personal lives and careers. By contrast, more recent generations of female

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90  Generational Status and Academic Realities faculty were more likely to want to “have it all” versus sacrificing family or children for their careers (Ward and Wolf-​Wendel, 2012). Similarly, a study of 19 female professors at a Canadian university describes the few maternity benefits available for pre-​tenure women in the mid-​1980s, resulting in senior faculty not taking maternity leave either because it was too risky or such leave did not exist (Armenti, 2004). Megan, now a full-​time faculty member, described the advice she received from a female professor close to retirement (Armenti, 2004, p. 71): … she gave me the best advice she knew how to give at the time, which was try to be more charming at parties to win their hearts and don’t have a child. Given her own experience that was the only advice she could give … She just knew them well enough to know … if I walked around pregnant that would be my doom and I’m sure, at that point, she was right. Even with significant policy changes, due to the priority accorded to faculty over staff, greater institutional emphasis tends to be placed on work/​life balance for full-​time or tenure-​track faculty compared with other employment groups (Lester, 2013). Still some pre-​tenure faculty and administrators may be hesitant or fearful of using existing policies without strong departmental or institutional support. Although policies on motherhood and paternity in higher education have received considerable research attention, work/​life balance or integration is a broader subject that involves the ability to balance professional and personal lives (Denson, Szelenyi, and Bresonis, 2018). As more and more female faculty have entered the academic workforce, one of the challenges facing early-​career faculty is the dual-​career issue, when their partners who are academics may not find a position in the same location due to the highly competitive job market (Philipsen, 2010).

Conclusion The academic department presents a number of generational challenges both structurally and culturally. Clearly, status and power differentials between pre-​tenure and tenured faculty, as well as the two-​tier system for tenured and contingent faculty, influence intergenerational interactions. At times, bullying and harassment can result from these generational differences. Within the department itself, differing pedagogical approaches and disciplinary perspectives coexist and offer the potential for conflict in terms of contrasting views on curricular development and research emphases. In addition, student perceptions based on faculty age, race, and gender can affect classroom interactions in terms of the questioning of competence and expertise for faculty at both ends of the age spectrum. In the area of diversity, consistent with generational theory, faculty perspectives may vary considerably based on past experiences and legal developments.Yet the generational

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Generational Status and Academic Realities  91 changes evident in the evolution of family-​friendly policies such as stop-​ the-​clock policies for maternity and paternity leave, can allow for greater integration of faculty work/​life goals. From an overall perspective, the examples shared in this chapter indicate that differential ageist perceptions of women, minority, and LGBT faculty persist in the academy. Further, power structures continue to be dominated and controlled by senior white male faculty, department chairs, and deans. The proliferation of contingent faculty positions now predominantly held by female faculty further reinforces the potential for structural inequality within the academic workplace. We conclude the chapter with a vignette describing a reverse mentoring program at Baldwin Wallace University in Berea, Ohio. In Chapter  5, we share first-​person narratives that illustrate coping and resistance strategies undertaken by both younger and more senior minoritized faculty in the face of ageist mistreatment in the academic workplace.

Multigenerational Case Vignette: Reverse Mentoring at Baldwin Wallace University Using a Student Tech Coach Model to Strengthen Faculty Technological Skills For the past five years, Dr. Susan Finelli-​Genovese, Associate Dean of the K-​12 Master Programs, has been adviser to the BW Tech Club which consists of undergraduate education students in the School of Education at Baldwin Wallace University in Berea, Ohio. Having served as a tech coach herself in the public school system, she realized the importance of incorporating technological integration across all areas of the education curriculum in order to prepare teachers for the competencies needed in K-​12 teaching. She also recognized the value of intergenerational mentoring by deploying the skills of undergraduate students as digital natives in mentoring veteran professors who might be more comfortable with pedagogy, but less fluent in technological integration. In 2016, Genovese introduced her undergraduate students to the model of tech coaching which is similar to the master of education program she supports at graduate level. She assembled a group of pre-​teachers/​students and worked with them as a cohort to hone their advanced technological skills with an emphasis on the Google suite used in K-​12 schools. She then contacted professors in the school of education and soon eight of the ten teaching faculty indicated an interest in the program. Genovese gave students the opportunity to pick the professor they were most comfortable working with or had recently taken a course with. She ensured that students were with a professor in the same program so that the application of tools would be compatible with program goals. The mentoring program was instantly successful. The professors who joined the program were motivated to work with their students in

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92  Generational Status and Academic Realities one-​to-​one mentoring and subsequently were able to incorporate the skills learned into their classroom pedagogy. Genovese sees the program as a “win-​ win,” empowering both students and professors. The coaches feel that their work is making a difference in the classroom experiences of other education students. And, as part of their scholarship endeavors, education faculty are excited to be learning many of the new technologies being used in today’s classrooms. After a pilot of the program in the first year, the tech mentoring program became more formalized. Genovese called together the tech coaches and began a more systematic rollout of modules. One semester, the coaches focused on formative assessment tools, another on iPad applications, and, in the third year, on the Google Suite. Every other week, she would offer a learning module to the students that they would work through and then share with the professors. In terms of rewards for participation, the program serves as a leadership opportunity for students and students receive badges each time they complete a learning module and an informal certificate. The tech coach role has been a motivational tool since coaching is voluntary. In addition, students who later proceed into the master’s program are well prepared for earning an educational technology endorsement in Ohio and becoming official tech coaches in K-​12 settings. This advanced program is part of the university’s formal accreditation which follows the coaching standards of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE). Among the participants in the program is Maureen Loudin, Associate Professor of Literacy, who has worked in the field for 40  years. For the past two years, she has been coached by the same female student. Loudin indicates that the program has helped her to grow professionally and believes that students will not be responsive to learning when professors fail to keep current with real-​world technological skills. She notes that “the people who want to keep current do work really hard,” adding, “I think it is vital that we work as hard as the students do and keep up with the new knowledge.” One of the learning outcomes of the program in Loudin’s view is enabling students to gain confidence in terms of their teaching ability. Heather Sanderell, a senior majoring in early childhood education, has been working in the tech coach program with a professor who is approximately 15 years her senior. Sanderell feels the tech coach program empowered her to gain greater confidence in explaining technology. She sees the benefit of working with someone who is “more of an authority figure,” since as a professional she will be soon be working with other educators older than herself. As she explains, “it helps me to know what will work with actual students.” She also describes how the program can enable professors to gain “fresh, new ideas” about how to incorporate technology in the classroom, respond to curricular change, and refresh their course syllabi. Neither Loudin or Sanderell have experienced any communication barriers or defensiveness in the mentoring process. Both describe the main difficulty as scheduling meetings and Sanderell has used digital virtual

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Generational Status and Academic Realities  93 meetings as another way of communicating. Heather Sanderell concludes, “I have seen a lot of positivity surrounding the tech coach program in BW’s education department.” In her words, “I think it’s a very beneficial program for both parties, the student and the professor, because it allows both of us that opportunity to communicate with someone from a different generation, some who comes from a different background and perspective of learning …”

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5  Counteracting and Resisting Generational and Ageist Frames

This is oppression, being controlled or treated unjustly … [ageism] is still a new idea to most. And unless social oppression is called out, we don’t see it as oppression. Ashton Applewhite (2000, p. 13)

Throughout the book, we have seen examples of how ageist and generational framing of both younger and more senior members of the higher education workforce can lead to exclusionary behaviors, actions, and processes, especially when compounded with race/​ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation. In academe, as in the U.S. workplace at large, systemic ageism coupled with racism, sexism, and heterosexism can undergird informal normative assumptions and permeate formal structures and processes.Yet as with racial and gender discrimination, little research deals with coping strategies related to ageism in everyday work environments in higher education (Chun and Feagin, 2020; Grima, 2011). The lack of attention to coping strategies is all the more surprising since ageism, like racism, is a powerful psychosocial stressor with the potential to lead to inequitable access to resources and blocked career opportunities (Brondolo, Gallo, and Myers, 2009). Discriminatory situations can result in the heightened vulnerability of targets to psychosocial stressors resulting in differential health outcomes due to the lack of access to or control of material, social, and psychological resources (Myers, Lewis, and Parker-​Dominguez, 2003). Notably, a large-​scale study with a sample of 6,456 participants based on three waves of data from the National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States (MIDUS) found that age discrimination had significant direct and indirect effects on physical health through the avenues of psychological, emotional, and social wellbeing (Stokes and Moorman, 2017). Similarly, an earlier study of 2,766 respondents using MIDUS survey data from 1995 to 1996 confirmed the relation between age discrimination and increased psychological stress as well as lower positive wellbeing (Yuan, 2007). A  prominent finding of this study was that perceived age discrimination has a greater impact on women’s wellbeing than on men’s (Yuan, 2007).

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Counteracting and Resisting Ageist Frames  95 These research findings demonstrate that the costs of ageist oppression are severe with the potential for long-​lasting psychological, health, economic, and career consequences. Further, as we have shown, age discrimination can affect not only late-​career individuals but also can occur during mid-​career. Margaret Morganroth Gullette, an expert on ageism and resident scholar at Brandeis University, points out that such discrimination differentially affects women in their 40s, ten years before their male counterparts. Women in their 40s are the first cohorts to reach the higher professional level positions in organizations. As she explains, “Losing midlife people from the workforce has dire consequences, and not only for them. It ruins the expectations of the young. It shreds the American dream of making progress over the life course (Gullette, 2011, para 1). Indeed the huge expenditure of personal energy required to offset such oppression could instead be used for the betterment of families, communities, and institutions of higher education (Feagin, 2006).

The Minority Stress Model and Resilience The minority stress model developed by Ilan Meyer (2003) at the University of California, Los Angeles, has particular relevance to experiences of ageism. Meyer posits that prejudice and stigmatization based on minority identity or multiple minority identities are unique stressors that can compromise the psychological and physical health outcomes of targeted individuals (Meyer, 2015). He identifies a continuum of distal to proximal factors in minority stress. Distal stressors involve factors and events outside the person such as everyday discrimination, micro-​aggressions, and life events. Proximal stressors involve the internalization of negative social attitudes and expectations of discrimination (Meyer, 2003; Meyer, 2015). Translating these concepts to the workplace, research on occupational stress indicates when an imbalance occurs between job demands and lack of control, individuals can suffer from physical and psychological effects that can lead to stress-​related illness (Zsoldos, Mahmood, and Ebmeier, 2014). The sheer unpredictability of discriminatory behaviors and actions can result in increased vigilance by targets, leading to the continuous activation of stress responses with deleterious effects on health and wellbeing (Sapolsky, 1998). In this regard, consider the results of a study of 189 sexual minority older adults that explicitly links the minority stress model to ageism and heterosexism. Ageism and social norms of heterosexism were shown to be significantly related to psychological distress and quality of life of the subjects and internalized homonegativity was also related to psychological distress (Detwiler, 2015). As an antidote to minority stress, Meyer offers the pivotal concept of resilience or the ability for targeted individuals to weather adversity and even thrive. In his view, “… resilience really has meaning only in the face of stress, and therefore, it is an essential part of understanding minority stress” (Meyer, 2015, p. 209). Although both coping strategies and resilience serve as buffers to discrimination, Meyer makes a clear distinction between coping as simply

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96  Counteracting and Resisting Ageist Frames involving efforts to deal with adversity, while resilience represents successful adaptation to adversity (Meyer, 2015). Integral to the concept of resilience is self-​efficacy or the belief that one has the ability to cope with adversity, solve problems, adapt to environmental demands, and achieve results in terms of workplace performance (Trouillet et al., 2009). A community study of 153 individuals ranging from age 22 to 88 is that self-​efficacy is unrelated to age. The study indicates that individuals with high self-​efficacy tend to draw more on problem-​focused coping resources whereas those with lower levels of self-​ efficacy draw more on emotion-​focused resources (Trouillet et al., 2009). Consonant with these findings, a survey of 438 unemployed job-​seekers demonstrated that regardless of age, individual coping resources affected positive reemployment expectations and were a function of the variables of networking comfort and job search confidence. Length of unemployment, however, did have a negative impact on these expectations (Petrucci, Blau, and McClendon, 2015). Yet in situations of unequal power, opportunities for individual resilience can be severely limited for members of disadvantaged groups, due to the underlying inequality of social structures (Meyer, 2015). As we have discussed, limited policy and legal avenues of redress are available for individuals subject to age discrimination. Given these limitations, Meyer identifies a resilience continuum ranging from individual responses to community interventions that involve norms and values, role models, social resources, and policies that provide access to opportunity (Meyer, 2015). In essence, community resilience requires collective efforts such as through the policies and practices of institutions. Interestingly, although it is commonly assumed that generating positive social relations with coworkers can mitigate toxic work situations, a study of 100 book-​length ethnographies reveals that in situations with limited ability to alter the source of stress, such as when supervisory conflict is present, coworker relationships can fail to increase self-​efficacy and even intensify the lack of self-​efficacy (Chamberlain and Hodson, 2010). Merely discussing negative aspects of the workplace with co-​workers without the opportunity for positive collective action or concrete alternatives can increase frustration and a sense of powerlessness (Chamberlain and Hodson, 2010). In light of the constraints present in asymmetrical power relationships, we seek to identify strategies that can assist targeted individuals in coping with consequential forms of ageist mistreatment in the higher education workplace. Such situations involve what has been termed “relational powerlessness” due to the ability of perpetrators to isolate more vulnerable targets in situations of employment insecurity (Roscigno, Lopez, and Hodson, 2009, p. 1563). The interviews offer the powerful testimonials of senior female faculty and administrators who were subject to systematic and calculated exclusion and mistreatment designed to force them from the workplace.

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Counteracting and Resisting Ageist Frames  97

The First Step: Awareness and Gauging the Situation One of the principal difficulties with ageism in contrast to racism and sexism is that individuals are often not aware of the powerful and hidden role it can play in workplace dynamics.The neglect of discussions of age discrimination in the public space, among social scientists, and in the popular press means that individuals can overlook the role of ageism in behavioral interactions and consequential forms of exclusion (Roscigno, 2010). When behavioral signals are ambiguous, targets can misread them or attribute them to other causes in situations of attributional ambiguity (Crocker,Vole,Test, and Major, 1991). Not decoding ageist cues through the ambivalent behavior of institutional gatekeepers can prevent targeted individuals from recognizing the causes of mistreatment and taking appropriate countermeasures. Psychological research indicates that contraindications such as the smiles and overly effusive and disingenuous behavior of institutional gatekeepers can disguise threatening, biased motives (Kunstman,Tuscherer,Trawalter, and Lloyd, 2016). We have described instances in which ageist and generational stereotypes emerge in search committee meetings in the form of offhand and indirect comments. In the workplace, seemingly innocuous comments can be directed toward senior administrators or faculty with questions like “When are you planning to retire?” or casual queries about what pension system individuals may have selected. Such comments take on ominous meaning when articulated by powerful gatekeepers and can presage more consequential behaviors and actions. As a result, decoding subtle or even overt ageist behaviors is a critical first step.

The Next Step: Determining How to Respond A well-​established literature on coping describes the process of cognitive appraisal by which an individual evaluates an event and its potential harm, threat, or challenge (primary appraisal) and determines the availability of coping options and resources (secondary appraisal) (Lazarus, 1990; Lazarus and Folkman, 1980).The literature also differentiates between two major categories: problem-​focused and emotion-​focused strategies. Problem-​focused strategies involve actions to restructure situations or minimize the impact of the problem through direct measures that can involve the self, others, or the situation (Lazarus and Folkman, 1984). Emotion-​focused strategies assist the individual in regulating or controlling emotions in order to more successfully manage the impact of stress that the problem or situation creates (Lazarus and Folkman, 1984; Crocker and Major 1989). Most strategies draw on elements of both approaches. As a result, appraisal and coping strategies are assessed repeatedly over time in response to changing circumstances and differing encounters (Brondolo, Pencille, Brady, and Contrada, 2009; Folkman and Lazarus, 1980; Lazarus, 1990). Problem-​focused strategies are invoked when situations are viewed as solvable, whereas emotion-​focused strategies are deployed when situations are viewed as less changeable (Beriot

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98  Counteracting and Resisting Ageist Frames and Gillet, 2011; Folkman and Lazarus, 1980). Although emotion-​focused coping may increase across the lifespan as a passive method of addressing stressful situations, it is a risk factor for depression (Trouillet et al., 2009). Minoritized individuals must draw on a range of coping resources to meet day-​ to-​ day forms of exclusion and also anticipate negative and demanding events in relation to perceived ageism. Due to the universality of age as a dimension of diversity across cultures, a number of research studies conducted outside the U.S. offer insight into adaptive strategies that blend both problem-​focused and emotion-​focused approaches: • A study of 398 unionized store and office workers in Iceland found that while males were more assertive than females in confronting bullying directly rather than seeking help from other sources. There was an increased tendency with age to do nothing or to employ passive avoidance strategies that might reflect a loss of faith in the system and its ability to address issues (Olafsson and Johansdottir, 2004). • Another study of 40 workers over the age of 45 in three job sites of a state-​owned company in France facing demographic transition identified three types of coping management strategies: 1) standing back (a passive and reflective tactic that enabled some degree of emotional detachment); 2) facing up to events (a complex form of adaptation that began with informing the institutional hierarchy of concerns that led to resignation and withdrawal; and 3) the absence of constraint (drawing on social support and implementing proactive strategies to manage careers) (Grima, 2011). • A study of ageism involving 613 young and older employees in a local government authority in the United Kingdom found that while discrimination reduced affective commitment to the organization, employees tended to continue in their roles perhaps due to the perceived disadvantage they faced in the labor market (Snape and Redman, 2003). As this research demonstrates, older employees may be aware of the difficulties they face in the labor market and the limited legal alternatives available to them, leading to the adoption of more passive avoidance strategies.

Undertaking Multifaceted Coping and Resistance Strategies We now turn to specific coping strategies that can help defuse ageist situations and counteract behavioral and organizational forms of exclusion and marginalization. In seeking to take direct action in response to exclusionary or differential treatment, individuals can deploy an array of strategies that enable them to restructure the situation, counterbalance power, neutralize antagonists, and even take the offensive. Because tenured faculty have considerable due process employment protections, they have been more willing to discuss their approaches to coping with ageist discrimination. These

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Counteracting and Resisting Ageist Frames  99 individuals have courageously shared their stories with us in confidence with the altruistic goal of helping others. In some instances, these faculty members have faced severe and prolonged discriminatory situations in which their competence, worth, and contributions were continuously challenged. Preemptive strategies. While research on coping strategies in higher education is limited, a study of 192 women administrators in higher education with 52 percent of the sample in student affairs found that difficulty with management identified by 17 percent of the respondents was the sole workplace factor viewed as stressful 100 percent of the time (Kersh, 2018). This factor can increase a sense of job insecurity and control, as well as heighten ambiguity (Kersh, 2018). Fewer opportunities exist for administrators to offset acts of exclusion and marginalization, due to the at-​will nature of their employment. The study found that, for some women, acting quickly was a proactive approach in order to assess, analyze, and interpret a situation, develop a plan, and move ahead (Kersh, 2018).This approach emphasizes the need to preempt a particular situation before it develops further and take some kind of counteraction. A problem-​focused strategy more available to tenured faculty is to outlast one’s opponent due to the frequent turnover in higher-​level administrative positions such as provost and dean. An allied strategy is simultaneously to engage in other validating professional endeavors and take the initiative to undercut exclusionary actions including by taking a temporary leave. Take the case of Margie, a white female faculty member in a public research university, who began her teaching career in her late 40s, having returned to obtain her master’s and doctorate at the age of 39, following many years of teaching in the public schools. Margie describes the situation in her department where she felt she was not valued and had to seek other avenues for professional attainment. To navigate the political dynamics within departments, she recommends that faculty establish other professional avenues and connections outside the department within the institution that tap on their expertise and interests. She particularly suggests focusing on academic writing and publishing: Because deans come and go and department chairs come and go, leadership always changes so it is best not to get too bogged down in politics. The key to faculty success is writing. If you are writing, you will survive. Because I now coach faculty on academic writing, I tell them that writing and publishing are the best insurance policies for an academic career. Margie thus advises, “You can fight campus politics for a while, but, then, stop, step back, close your door and write. Find something to write about that you care about. Find something that is affirming, exciting and engaging.” She emphasizes the need to take initiative as well, “I think you can’t wait for the institution to be responsive: you are going to have to go out and create opportunities for yourself.” Margie created her own writing support

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100  Counteracting and Resisting Ageist Frames program and gathered a small group of faculty colleagues to discuss academic writing and support each other’s work. She called it her own cross-​ disciplinary “satellite writing program.” After a year, she realized how much faculty appreciated these opportunities and then approached the campus faculty teaching and learning center to create a partnership with that unit. The center was eager to adopt and expand the writing program as part of their offerings. Over the last seven years the program has reached out to faculty all across the campus and created a large community of writers. Some departments now even use the faculty writing program as a recruitment tool. Even though Margie taught a very popular doctoral level class for years, her department chair refused to put her on the doctoral program committee. She took another tack and applied to become the doctoral program director. Subsequently, the faculty elected her to the directorship and she earned an automatic seat on the doctoral program committee. Another strategy Margie adopted was to attend conferences and make connections outside of the university. In her words, You have to go to conferences; you have to have those outside connections, because these feed your soul. Find some friends off campus that you can talk to. You can find people who will write recommendations for your promotion and tenure file and whom you will bounce ideas off of; you will feel affirmed. Even if you cannot get much financial support to attend from the university, try to get to two or three conferences a year. If you just stick around your own department, academic life can be very discouraging. These external connections ultimately led Margie to take a sabbatical that would allow her to exit a tense political situation. After connecting with a colleague at a conference who was seeking someone to start a program at a university overseas, over the objections of her dean, Margie took a year’s leave, followed by a yearlong sabbatical. The overseas program included 50 seminars where she worked in the community and developed new approaches to teaching and assessment. Realizing it was best to “write about what you do,” Margie’s assessment work subsequently led to the writing and publication of a major book that later sold 40,000 copies. She sums it up by stating: “And that book came out of a disaster where I felt like I was not valued, so I got out of Dodge. Exit stage right. My dean said, ‘You can’t go.’ I said, ‘I need to go’ and I left.” Margie also recognizes, however, that having tenure was a deciding factor that enabled her to be more outspoken and to take decisive action: I am not always good at playing politics. I often offer alternative solutions to problems. I am not afraid to speak my mind. I question authority at times … when I see something that doesn’t make sense to me and it seems like a bad idea, I tend to say something about it … I believe in leadership with a big L. Leadership with a big L takes risks, and seeks to

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Counteracting and Resisting Ageist Frames  101 make change from within and with courage and integrity … Certainly, I was even more noisy after tenure.Yet, even though I had some troubles in my department, strangely enough, whenever I raised my hand in a meeting, my chair always called on me. Margie’s proactive approach in “getting out of Dodge” enabled her to create alternative sources of recognition and solidify her professional accomplishments in lieu of receiving institutional support. Although the potential for taking a sabbatical or leaving the workplace temporarily may not be a viable option for many faculty and administrators, the importance of taking some form of preemptive action can allow the individual greater distance and control over the situation. Accessing available institutional resources. Seeking support through both informal and formal avenues can help individuals offset ageist actions and determine appropriate countermeasures. Informal and confidential avenues of institutional support such as through an ombudsperson, the Employee Assistance program, or the human resources, affirmative action, or diversity offices can provide an opportunity to go on record to share situations without filing formal grievances. A clear advantage of early informal consultation is to seek advice before irreversible turning points have occurred (Keashly and Neuman, 2010).Yet even so, individuals must weigh the potential for possible reprisal should confidentiality be breached, even when safeguards against retaliation are addressed in institutional policy. Take, for example, Marianne, a white female faculty member who experienced a male administrator who was sabotaging her work and denigrating her personally. She took action to protect her professional reputation and standing. Marianne contacted the university ombudsperson who gave her advice on next steps and assured her that her story mattered.This support made a difference to her both psychologically and in terms of her institutional standing, since the ombudsperson had “the ear of people who were keeping track of these kinds of things” (Chun and Feagin, 2020, p.  184). Further, establishing a contemporaneous record within the institution of incipient situations can create a documentary trail should the situation escalate. In public institutions, when faculty or staff are represented by a union, filing a grievance or a class action lawsuit can afford the opportunity for employees to address disparities in institutional processes such as compensation. Veronica, the African American administrator cited earlier who formerly served as a sociology faculty member at a public research university, describes a grievance filed by the faculty union that resulted in corrective action by the institution: During my faculty career I was at a public institution, so we did take action through our faculty union, and the institution did put in some corrective measures in response to try to equalize salaries. It partially solved some of the issues, but of course they can’t address the long-​ standing issues, some of the legacy salaries. But having a faculty union

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102  Counteracting and Resisting Ageist Frames and being able to grieve almost through a class action grievance, we were able to show the disparities and the institution put in corrective salary benchmarking strategies … I think indirectly [age], because hiring an assistant and associate professor, and they tended to be younger … I don’t think … [age] was the primary variable, but I think it was an unintended consequence that all the new hires were at lower ranks, and they tended to have lower salaries and that also correlated with more diversity, racial/​ethnic diversity, sex diversity, and age, so it tended to be diverse and young. Veronica also notes, as a woman of color, that she personally experienced being offered salaries at the bottom of the range compared with the salary offers of white males at her institution. The creation of advisory committees and commissions on the status of women with a direct line to the president or chancellor at a number of public and private institutions has resulted from pressures by faculty women to provide a forum for addressing systemic issues of exclusion and disparate treatment. Concealment, impression management, and counteracting “lookism.” Recall our discussion in Chapter  4 of how “lookism” can intensify the impact of age discrimination, both positive and negative, for female faculty and administrators. Erving Goffman’s description of stigma and identity reveals how impression management or what he terms “strategic control” over self-​image can enable individuals to controvert the influence of ageist social norms by creating a more desirable social identity (Goffman, 1963, p.  130). As shown in a qualitative study of 30 individuals aged 45 to 65, one of the major strategies adopted to counteract perceived age discrimination is concealment and impression management by altering one’s physical appearance (Berger, 2004, 2009). Female faculty and administrators are particularly subject to socially derived images of youthfulness, leading to the need to disguise their age such as by dyeing gray hair. In contrast, gray hair for male faculty is viewed as a distinguished and even desirable characteristic. The impact of gendered ageism is demonstrated in a study of 44 women aged 50 to 70 who felt they needed to engage in beauty work such as dyeing hair, make-​up, or cosmetic surgery in order to counteract the invisibility they experienced both in the workplace (Clarke and Griffin, 2008). The women felt compelled to disguise their chronological age through beauty work in order to “maintain credibility, power, and social currency” and, ironically, to overcome the invisibility associated with their visibly older appearance (Clarke and Griffin, 2008, p. 654). As a 59-​year-​old woman explained (Clarke and Griffin, 2008, pp. 662–​663): You disappear off the map once you hit 45 or 48, and absolutely positively by 50. If you can’t get a job, you don’t exist … You can go and apply for a million jobs and you might as well be invisible because they’re not going to take you; they’re going to take the young woman.

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Counteracting and Resisting Ageist Frames  103 On the other end of the age spectrum, we have seen how more youthful-​ looking faculty have donned professional attire and adopted hair styles more consistent with a mature appearance to dispel negative stereotypes related to competence and expertise. Consider the startling feedback received by Lori Varlotta, the first female president at Hiram College, from a search firm consultant regarding a previously unsuccessful presidential interview (Varlotta, 2019, para 10):

“When you look around you and you see the faces getting younger and younger, you know you’ve got to keep it up. Even if you can’t afford it, that’s the one thing you need is your bottle of dye.” (Female employee, aged 58, Berger, 2009, p. 327)

• Even though I  was almost 50, I  still “looked” too young to be a president. • My navy pinstripe business suit (six years old at the time) was not particularly chic. • My uncoiffed hair could be tamed a bit, and my face, bare except for a little lip color, could be more “made up.” • At the very least, my lipstick could “pop a little more.” • One more thing, she added: “Don’t rely so heavily on data and facts when answering questions. When interviewing women, most search committees want to see their soft side–​be a little lighter and less intense … sprinkle some fluff in with your facts and data.” Although Varlotta later did make minor modifications to her make-​up, hairstyle, and approach to speaking, she concluded that she needed to seek a post where the institution wanted her. Nonetheless, her experience clearly reflects the differential standards applied to women in terms of their age and appearance as well as the socially driven, sexist stereotypes that create pressure to conceal age-​related characteristics. Building psychosocial resources through networks and external support. Irrespective of generational status, reliance on external social networks and supportive family resources can serve as a major source of strength in the face of discriminatory treatment in the higher education workplace. Social integration and a sense of belonging are integral to facing employment challenges, especially among individuals from older generations. Older individuals tend to be at increased risk of social disconnectedness and isolation due to the unintentional loss of partners or allies and decreased size of social networks (Stokes, 2019). As a result, when facing such situations, individuals may lose confidence in their coping abilities and resort to more passive, emotion-​focused strategies (Trouillet et al., 2009). In conversations about the impact of family support on coping strategies, one female faculty member speaks about how the loss of a partner or close family member created a void in terms of vital social support:

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104  Counteracting and Resisting Ageist Frames Being an older widow, the experience that I  have had in spaces, committees, and so forth, is twofold. I think it goes to both ends of the spectrum. On the one hand, I feel like I have respect, on the other hand, I feel as if I were invisible. What I find is that it’s very rare that people think through the lens of someone who has been through that kind of experience, or even someone who is single. People don’t register when they are talking, what the experience is. Generally the assumption is that one is partnered, has a family around which one’s life revolves. It’s a whole different dimension … what it means to experience something like that, and go home to an empty house. Stephanie, the white female faculty member cited earlier who suffered harassment and pressures to retire from her department chair, similarly describes the support of her life partner as a critical coping asset.While at times within families there may not be recognition of the severity of the stress arising from continuous workplace bullying and mistreatment, Stephanie explains how her partner’s awareness of what she was facing grew as he noticed her chair’s pettiness in avoiding greeting her in the hallway: I had a very supportive life partner, although he found my descriptions exaggerated at first, like the first year or two … he would say, ‘Try to get along with him.’ … One day I was walking down the hall [with my partner] and my chair saw me and he did an about face and walked in the opposite direction and went all the way to another exit to get out [of the building] … And so my partner saw that and he said, ‘That’s unbelievable, your chair won’t pass you by and say goodnight.’ And I said, ‘That’s just one typical example of what it’s been like.’ My partner said, ‘But I can’t believe that anybody would be that petty. Why would he do that?’ After this incident, he started looking at things [differently]. Her partner’s awareness of these challenges increased as Stephanie began to receive annual review letters from her chair laden with unsubstantiated accusations. Stephanie contrasts her situation with that of another female faculty member who was also bullied by the chair, but did not have a supportive partner to help her mitigate the harassment. As she explains, “I think that was very difficult for her and made the whole situation more difficult. Whereas I  had somebody who always said, ‘You’re doing a good job …’ That was a big help with my coping, just knowing that I had that kind of support.” Jenna, the white female faculty member at an elite university cited earlier, realized the importance of curtailing her socializing with other faculty in the workplace and seeking trusted sources of support outside academia. Jenna’s multifaceted approach to coping with stressful conditions involves a recognition of the potential for other colleagues in the workplace to undercut her achievements and the resulting need to seek external sources of support. Being more guarded at work and offsetting stressful situations through

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Counteracting and Resisting Ageist Frames  105 writing, traveling, and external contacts have enabled her to maintain balance. Like Margie, she found a positive outlet in writing and publishing: My life and my career over the years–​because I am a very outspoken person especially around like racial issues–​has been filled with an enormous amount of stress. So for example … I have dealt with quite a bit of academic bullying over the years that has come my way and a lot of it has to do with when you are successful and when you might outperform other people. Even if you are not aware of it, people can be very, very jealous. I think the way that I have coped with it … I have a really, really good, close tight groups of friends, that involves academics and non-​academics … I take vacations and I use them. I love to write and so writing has helped me immensely to get through most things, and when I am really, really stressed, I write a lot, it helps me to escape. Over the years, I have moved away from most socializing with faculty … But part of it is that I trusted people a lot in the beginning, I just kind of moved away from that. I should have listened to my mom a long time ago who told me, ‘Be careful who you tell your secrets to.’ I had to find things outside of academia in order to maintain my sanity. Meghan, the gay, white female professor cited earlier, drew strength from therapy and from other healthier outlets in determining whether or not to respond to insensitive questions related to her sexual orientation and family status. She now picks her battles, responding to some questions such as those about how she spent her holiday breaks. Like Jenna, she also has become more circumspect and reserved in her workplace interactions: I started going to therapy. And I think that I have some outlets that are a little bit healthier. Now sometimes I actually do say something back. I pick my battles. Sometimes I will say, ‘Oh, have you thought about [the fact that] everyone’s break might not be spent with family?’ I don’t really talk a lot about my family. A lot of it has to do with gender and sexual orientation: just assuming that people are all busy with kids and family is one of those things. I started going to therapy. And I think that I have some outlets that are a little bit healthier. Now sometimes I actually do say something back. These examples demonstrate how the external support provided by family, colleagues outside the workplace, and therapeutic outlets have bolstered the ability of these female faculty members to cope with everyday ageist mistreatment and discriminatory situations.

Conclusion Efforts to attain dignity and workplace justice remain the goal of individual strategies of resistance and resilience.Yet from the narratives shared by those

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106  Counteracting and Resisting Ageist Frames who have faced ageism coupled with racial, gender-​based, and/​or heterosexist exclusion in the higher education workplace, avenues for addressing exclusionary situations are quite limited. As we have shown in the examples here and throughout the book, ageist situations are decidedly worse for women, minorities, and LGBT individuals. Nonetheless, coping approaches that enable successful adaptation and resilience range from building external networks and support, contacting internal institutional resources, outlasting opponents, exiting difficult circumstances, and creating external opportunities for professional recognition and fulfillment. Importantly, early recognition and identification of challenges can assist individuals in developing proactive and anticipatory coping strategies.We know that the stress of everyday ageist behaviors and actions can undermine professional commitment with significant psychological, physiological, familial, and career costs. Ultimately, ageist mistreatment and disparate workplace outcomes including social closure and forced retirement result in the loss of valuable expertise, talent, and intergenerational knowledge to the educational process and the institution. In the next chapter, we identify proactive human resource and diversity approaches that will help reduce workplace ageism, build generationally inclusive cultures, and ensure greater equity in institutional processes.

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6  Best-​In-​Class Multigenerational Human Resource and Diversity Policies and Programs

HR and talent management professionals must include the effects multiple generations have in the workplace to their diversity and inclusion initiatives. Multigenerational workplaces create unique challenges and opportunities for employers who leverage each generation’s talents and strengths to benefit their organization’s bottom lines. Dan Bursch and Kip Kelly (2014, p. 2)

The academic, mission-​centered case for of a multigenerational workforce in higher education is built upon the bedrock of inclusion that supports student learning, academic innovation, and research excellence.Yet higher education has been slower to implement strategic HR and diversity practices in higher education compared with private industry (Chun and Evans, 2014). While corporations have prioritized the importance of intergenerational diversity, academic institutions have not typically thought about or developed a strategic approach to the characteristics, needs, and contributions of different generations (Williams and Wade-​Golden, 2013). As discussed in Chapter 1, European scholars have been at the forefront in documenting the relation of inclusive, age-​ diverse workplace practices to enhanced organizational performance. Cultural change is at the heart of institutional diversity transformation and such change can encounter resistance due to the prevailing dynamics of power, the lack of structural diversity, and the presence of differing norms and constraints arising from the employment conditions of faculty, administrators, and staff (Chun and Evans, 2014, Kezar, 2008). Our interviews shed light on the ways that ageist and generational framing can permeate organizational culture and influence institutional outcomes. Consequently, HR and diversity leaders must be concerned that the institution draws on the talents of all its members through engaging and empowering practices that foster discretionary commitment (Chun and Evans, 2014). What promising, best-​in-​class programs, policies, and practices will accelerate the attainment of multigenerational inclusion in the workplace? Given the fact that most colleges and universities have not operationalized an integrated multigenerational workforce strategy, in this chapter we discuss a

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108  Best-In-Class Multigenerational HR concrete set of initiatives that will help overcome generational barriers, promote collaboration, and retain key talent. Although some institutions have established intergenerational service-​ learning programs for students, few have directed their attention to multigenerational workforce programs. Our analysis of multigenerational practices necessarily takes into consideration all stages of an employee’s career. From a recruitment perspective, institutions will be viewed as employers of choice due to the policies, practices, and programs offered throughout the career cycle (Duranleau and McLaughlin, 2014). By providing an inclusive environment that values the contributions of different generational cohorts at each stage of an employee’s career, colleges and universities can foster enhanced engagement and retention of talent.While retirement transitions are often seen as extraneous to the talent acquisition and development process, the culminating stage of faculty, administrator, and staff careers does require significant institutional investment in order to ensure the continuity of talent, maintain the affiliation of retired employees, and allow individuals to continue to contribute in their post-​retirement roles (Duranleau and McLaughlin, 2014). With this overview of the talent cycle in perspective, we offer seven strategic initiatives with best practice examples that will enhance multigenerational inclusion. The initiatives are: • • • • • • •

Cross-​generational mentoring programs; Intergenerational organizational learning and education programs; Intergenerational teambuilding; Institutional policies that strengthen intergenerational contributions such as post-​tenure review; Work/​life and workplace flexibility programs; Predictive analytics and early separation/​phased retirement programs; Retiree programs that build connections back to the institution.

Cross-​Generational Mentoring Programs Mentoring programs are the most highly developed intergenerational practice in higher education, although generally not identified as such. Extensive formal mentoring programs have been developed in the faculty sphere with particular emphasis on the mentoring of early-​career faculty by tenured faculty. These programs typically involve generational differences and rely on the transmission of expertise and institutional knowledge from more senior faculty to junior faculty. As individuals from more recent generations are thought to seek greater ongoing feedback, collegiality, and transparency in their work environments, these programs have taken on greater significance in creating a supportive culture that supports retention (Kiel, 2019). Mentoring programs can offer valuable psychosocial and professional career support to mentees, enabling them to navigate hidden barriers, understand unwritten rules, and build supportive networks. Most notably, the National Science Foundation has provided significant support for the development of

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Best-In-Class Multigenerational HR  109 faculty mentorship programs through ADVANCE grants (Advancement of Women in Academic Science and Engineering Careers). These grants have given rise to extensive mentorship programs for faculty in higher education. Best practice examples of junior faculty mentoring programs include the University of California at San Francisco’s formalized, structural approach to mentoring with facilitators appointed to each department, div“There is research to show that ision, and organizational research faculty who have been mentored unit. This one-​on-​one mentoring are retained longer than those program involves all junior/​ new who do not receive mentoring faculty members in the four proand many go on to take on fessional schools (dentistry, medileadership positions in academe cine, nursing, and pharmacy) and … In part, effective mentors features a mentoring partnership may be acting on what Erikson agreement and development plan. described as generativity … a The program also includes an concern for establishing and evaluation process and mentoring guiding the next generation.” awards (Regents of the University (A university administrator, of California, 2017). Another Kansas State University, innovative model is a grant-​funded Thurston, Navarrete, and faculty/​ external mentor program Miller, 2009) at the University of Oregon that supports the mentorship of early, mid-​ career and underrepresented faculty by pairing individual faculty members with a scholar at a peer institution who is in the same field of scholarship (University of Oregon, n.d.). Mentoring programs are, however, distinct from sponsorship opportunities in which individuals with significant organizational clout and power have the ability to advocate for their protégés, help them attain promising assignments, and protect them from negative feedback at the highest levels of the organization (Ibarra, Carter, and Silva, 2010). A  study of 40 high-​ potential men and women found that women had fewer sponsorship opportunities and even overworked their mentorship channels, although their mentors had less organizational clout (Ibarra, Carter, and Silva, 2010). As a result, sponsorship programs in which leaders provide opportunities for members of non-​dominant groups at various career stages can enhance the potential for actualizing and retaining valuable talent. Mid-​career faculty mentoring programs. A  number of universities have recognized the need for mentoring middle-​career faculty who may feel stuck on a post-​tenure pathway. The definition of mid-​career faculty can be construed as including individuals who have received tenure and been at the associate professor rank for at least five years (Canale, Herdklotz, and Wild, 2013). A study of 39 institutions found that only 18 had developed support for mid-​career faculty, whether in the form of mentoring or other development opportunities (Canale, Herdklotz, and Wild, 2013). As Kerry Ann Rockquemore writes “I’m increasingly asked to work with ‘mid-​career’

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110  Best-In-Class Multigenerational HR faculty. I’m never exactly sure what “I believe in mentoring. We that means, but I  typically end up have a new provost on our with a room full of exhausted women campus, who wouldn’t be who range from recently tenured able to mentor me: he has no to long-​ term associate professors” publications; he got the pos(Rockquemore, 2011, para 2). ition because he is an inside; Recall how Michael, the dirhe’s a nice guy, he’s not been a ector of an innovative teaching and chair … I think because of my learning center, described ageist age, there is an assumption that pressures relating to “normal” career I don’t need any advice … progress and the differential scruI think because I  am old, tiny that can arise for faculty who I  think my age doesn’t allow remain for a long time at the assome to be encouraged to grow, ciate professor rank. In this regard, a to change, it’s like, ‘you’re COACHE survey using three cycles already there, it’s fine.’ I  think of data found that faculty dissatisin its own way it is discrimfaction is particularly pronounced ination. I  am still very active. for individuals who have been at I just had a book come out. But the associate rank for six or more there is no expectation for that. years (Matthews, 2014). As a result, It does feel like ‘she’s done, just mid-​ career faculty mentoring can put her in the nursing home, help overcome obstacles to proshe’s finished. We don’t need motion and facilitate further career to bother with her anymore.’ progression. In a way, it’s a form of discrimMentoring programs and ination. In the minds of some intersectionality. In light of the disfolks, I should have retired, and tinct challenges faced by women and therefore I can’t contribute so minoritized faculty, specialized facwhy would they ask me too?” ulty mentoring programs have been (Samantha, a white female implemented to address the barriers Education faculty member) of tokenism, isolation, and marginalization within academic departments and institutional cultures. As we have discussed throughout the book, multiple jeopardies can create situations of inequity through the intersectionality of age, race/​ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation among other demographic attributes. From this standpoint, intersectionality is an essential part of the praxis of mentoring in order to understand the ways in which systems and processes problematize minoritized identities (Weiston-​Serdan, 2017). Following the attainment of tenure, women and faculty of color who are fewer in number in some disciplines may be asked to serve on more committees, advise more students, and also have less access to informal networks that can help with promotion processes (Matthews, 2014). But often it is assumed that older minoritized faculty do not benefit from mentoring. For example,

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Best-In-Class Multigenerational HR  111 Samantha believes that because of her age it is assumed she does not need mentoring advice and is simply expected to retire and be put in a nursing home. She finds this exclusionary attitude to be a form of discrimination. An example of a mentoring program for minoritized faculty is the Mentoring Program for Diverse Faculty implemented by New  York University’s Office of Global Inclusion. Focused on early-​career faculty, this multifaceted program includes one-​on-​one mentoring, group mentoring, sponsorship, and creation of safe spaces for discussions and topics related to faculty development and progression (New York University, n.d.). According to Fred Meyers, Silver Professor in the Department of Anthropology (New York University, n.d.): After many years as a faculty member, I understand that younger faculty can benefit from the experience of those who have been around longer … It’s not a one-​way street, either. I have learned many things about what younger and diverse faculty face in the university as well as how things might have changed since I first began teaching. Meyers’ statement reinforces the intergenerational benefits of mentoring in terms of fostering deeper understanding of a new, more diverse generation of faculty. Mutual mentoring models. While many mentoring programs offer a more traditional, one-​on-​one approach, alternative mentoring models have emerged in recent years that draw upon networks of mentors. The mutual/​ network mentoring model is designed to create non-​hierarchical collaboration among a group or network of faculty members at different career stages. One of the benefits of such models is intergenerational collaboration among faculty whether representing the breadth of a given discipline or from an interdisciplinary perspective. A leading-​edge example of mutual mentoring is the program designed, implemented, and evaluated between 2006 and 2014 at the Institute for Teaching Excellence and Faculty Development at the University of Massachusetts Amherst with support from the Andrew Mellon Foundation (Yun, Baldi, and Sorcinelli, 2016). This program enables both mentor(s) and protégés(s) at different career stages to benefit from interactions with more than a single mentor (University of Massachusetts Amherst, n.d.). One of the unique aspects of the mentoring partnerships is that the networks include both academic and non-​academic mentors such as librarians and administrators, as well as students.With the establishment of the program, the award of micro-​grants allowed early-​career faculty to be the agents of their own career development process by developing individualized networks (Yuan, Baldi, and Sorcinelli, 2016). In another example, the Coaching and Network Resource Program (CRN) at the Susan Bulkeley Butler Center for Leadership Excellence at

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112  Best-In-Class Multigenerational HR Purdue University is a hybrid mentoring and networking program specifically designed to build community among assistant and associate professors. Any assistant or associate professor can participate in the program and interact with at least two mentors from the CRN. Mentors receive a stipend, training on mentoring, and a two-​year appointment (Purdue University, n.d.). Other best practices include Northeastern University’s fully featured mentoring programs developed as a result of ADVANCE funding. The university sponsors full-​time non-​tenuretrack faculty mentoring circles that provide group mentoring of four to six faculty who meet to exchange ideas and opportunities during the academic year (Northeastern University, 2019a). Northeastern also offers a program for faculty titled “The Mutual Mentoring Advancement Program-​M2AP,” in which grant recipients receive a stipend for professional advancement and form networks of from three to six mentors that can include students, faculty, post-​docs, and others from both inside and outside the university (Northeastern University, 2019b). Administrator mentoring programs. Administrator mentoring programs are far less common and are sometimes incorporated as part of leadership development institutes. Such programs allow individuals seeking administrative advancement the opportunity to work closely with senior university or college leadership and help bridge institutional silos through intra-​organizational assignments. In one example, the Duke University Research Administration Mentoring Program (RAMP) in the School of Medicine that provides contact and grant administrators a three-​month mentorship led by senior personnel with the goal of facilitating intra-​ organizational relationships and collaborative learning (Duke University School of Medicine, n.d.). Mentoring resources. A  number of well-​ researched and extensive mentoring guides have been developed to support the development of institutional, school, and departmental mentoring programs. One of the most comprehensive resources is Columbia University’s Guide to Best Practices in Faculty Mentoring that includes a discussion of effective mentorship for junior faculty across the dimensions of race/​ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and culture (Columbia University, 2016). Michigan State University’s Faculty Mentoring Toolkit: A Resource for Faculty and Administrators is another helpful resource developed with funds from ADVANCE (Michigan State University, 2011). Of particular note is Michigan State’s faculty mentoring policy that requires each college to implement a formal mentoring program that, at minimum, provides mentoring to pre-​tenure and tenure faculty (Michigan State University, 2011). The establishment of mentoring policies and protocols ensures that faculty at different career stages can obtain concrete guidance and networking resources in order to promote their success.

Intergenerational Organizational Learning and Education Programs Like other aspects of multigenerational workforce planning, the concept of intergenerational learning (IGL) in the academic workplace has only received

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Best-In-Class Multigenerational HR  113 limited research attention and resulted in limited initiatives in U.S. universities. In contrast, European scholars have undertaken both empirical studies and practically oriented initiatives, perhaps due to the commonality of issues pertaining to an increasingly ageing workforce in more homogenous cultures. The Age-​Friendly University (AFU) initiative which we shall discuss further in the next chapter is a prominent initiative begun at Dublin City University and now involves the promising work undertaken at a number of U.S. universities. In another example, an IGL toolkit designed to help organizations strengthen the capabilities of older workers (55 and up) was developed over two years and tested in more than 40 European organizations. The focus of the project was on assisting human resource development trainers, policy advisers, and researchers (Ropes, 2013a). While the benefits of IGL education programs are important for individual growth, IGL improves organizational capacity by increasing the knowledge and skill levels of employees and strengthening organizational processes (Ropes, 2013a). Congruent with the philosophy underlying mentoring models, learning is not just hierarchically transmitted from older to younger generations, but is bi-​directional and leads to reciprocal competence development (Ropes, 2013a). One of the primary goals of IGL is to dispel negative stereotypes, increase engagement across generational divides, and address behavioral and process-​ based age discrimination such as in hiring, promotion, and professional development. IGL education programs foster knowledge transfer and retention; promote innovation by applying knowledge in new ways; and lead to increased intellectual and social capital (Ropes, 2013b). In addition, education programs will increase communication and enhance socialization among generational groups. A number of U.S. business or management schools offer short courses on leading a multigenerational workforce, but these programs are usually geared to external audiences, such as through executive education, rather than presented as in-​house learning opportunities. One of the most prominent university-​based institutes that promotes intergenerational education is the Boston College Center for Work and Family. This academic center seeks to bridge academic research and corporate practice for member organizations in the area of talent management, inclusive workplace cultures, enhancing employee wellbeing, and creating innovative workplace flexibility systems (Boston College Center for Work and Family, n.d.). The Center conducts extensive surveys involving large corporations focused on generational differences in the workplace and offers a rich array of resources on work/​ life balance, managing a multigenerational workforce, and employee engagement and workplace experiences. Examples of multigenerational workforce education programs in higher education are scarce, but include the 2017 University Leadership Forum offered for faculty, staff, and graduate students at the University of Kentucky titled, “Leading across Generations” (Ivey, 2017). This program focused on strategies for engaging a multigenerational workforce and building understanding of each generation’s perspectives on leadership,

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114  Best-In-Class Multigenerational HR communication, technology, and work (Ivey, 2017). At Carnegie Mellon University, a seminar on “Maintaining a Cohesive Intergenerational Workforce” is offered as an integral part of its Inclusion Training Resources for faculty and staff (Carnegie Mellon University, n.d.). Collaboration between HR and diversity offices in concert with academic affairs can lead to substantive initiatives in IGL education that focus on overcoming behavioral barriers and addressing generational and ageist stereotypes in institutional processes, such as recruitment and hiring, promotion, tenure attainment, and compensation. In the faculty arena, these programs can offer concrete approaches that will help diffuse ageist stereotypes (both positive and negative) in the classroom and ensure deeper understanding of generational cohorts.

Intergenerational Committee Structures and Teams The value of intergenerational diversity in committee and team structures is twofold: it can reduce stereotypical ageist perceptions among participants and enhance the performance of committees and teams in solving complex problems. Well-​established intergroup contact theory posits that the reduction of prejudice can occur through direct contact by ingroups with outgroups. The leading proponent of this theory, Gordon Allport, identified four conditions necessary for prejudice reduction: the groups need to have common goals, equal status, intergroup cooperation, and support from those in power (Allport, 1954). A later meta-​analytic analysis of 515 studies found that these four conditions formed an “interrelated bundle” that were not essential for prejudice reduction, but did lead to greater reduction. The meta-​analysis also indicated that the positive effects of intergroup contact could be extended beyond racial or ethnic targets (Pettigrew and Tropp, 2006, p. 751). Research findings validate the reduction in prejudice between ingroups and outgroups through the development of a common, superordinate ingroup identity (Gaertner and Dovidio, 2000). As a result, when committee structures involve participants from different generational groups working together on an equal footing toward a common goal, ageist and generational stereotypes can be reduced. Rather than relying upon hierarchical top-​ down decision structures, diverse work teams can serve as a major source of competitive advantage in accelerating innovation and addressing complex issues. The research of the Harvard scholar, Amy Edmondson, has identified teaming as a verb, a dynamic activity, not tied to traditional group structures, that combines collective learning with high performance in the process of execution-​as-​ learning within the context of everyday work (Edmondson, 2012). Translating the benefits of teaming to higher education, intergenerational synergy can occur through interactions among generational cohorts in governance structures as well as on committees and advisory groups. Such committees range from university or collegewide advisory groups to departmental search committees. Since diversity in one strata of the institution

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Best-In-Class Multigenerational HR  115 can instigate changes across the organization, diverse committee structures have the potential to call attention to inequities, model positive organizational citizenship, and help root out discrimination and bias (Farris, 2020). As the most visible instruments of institutional governance, “microcosmic” committee structures can help transform institutions of higher education into inclusive organizations by reinforcing the value of diversity and inclusion in their work (Farris, 2020, p. 52). The participation of women, people of color, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered (LGBT) individuals from different generational groups in committee assignments will enhance group processes and problem-​ solving. Recall, however, how Diana, the white female faculty member, pointed out that mere presence of members of different generational groups on committees is not sufficient. Individuals need to be recognized on an equal footing and have voice in decision-​making. Further, when institutional politics intrudes within committee proceedings, individuals can be more cautious and reluctant to voice opinions that deviate from cultural norms (Farris, 2020). The lack of intergenerational diversity in governance bodies such as boards of trustees can hamper decision-​making and even backfire when decisions do not take into account the perspectives of different generational groups on campus. From a structural perspective, a recent survey of board membership reveals that the composition of boards of trustees in higher education tends to lack balance among generational groups. Approximately 66.2 percent of public board members and 67.2  percent of independent board members were from the Baby Boomer generation between the ages of 50 and 69 (Association of Governing Boards, 2016). Furthermore, only 44.9  percent of public universities and 9.7  percent of independent institutions have voting student representatives, while only 10.9 percent of public institutions and 15.4 percent of independent institutions have faculty representation (Association of Governing Boards, 2016).These statistics indicate that the potential for intergenerational contributions is diminished when different constituencies do not have a voice in decision-​making processes. As a case in point, take the contentious selection in 2018 of the president of the University of South Carolina by the Board of Trustees. One critic of the presidential search process, James Anderson, points out that the skewed makeup of the board comprised mainly of white male Baby Boomers could explain why the search was mishandled (Anderson, 2019). For more than a quarter of a century, the board has lacked diversity, with only one or two minority members and at most four females, while the president has always been a white male (Chun, 2017). A gap between the Board’s perspectives and those of younger students and faculty led to disagreement over the qualities desired in a university president. The Board of Trustees did not select a single female finalist and apparently succumbed to pressures from the governor, Henry McMaster, to select Lieutenant General Robert Caslen (Anderson, 2019). Protesters

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116  Best-In-Class Multigenerational HR viewed Caslen as lacking experience at a research university, not holding a doctoral degree, and having expressed a view that reducing binge drinking could help curb sexual assault (Daprile, 2019). Students and faculty from younger generations protested the lack of gender diversity and after Caslen’s selection, the faculty voted no-​confidence in the president. Following the new president’s selection, the university’s accrediting agency, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS), sent a letter indicating it would conduct a formal review of the search to determine if there had been undue external influence in the decision-​making process (Hecker, 2019). The analysis offered by James Anderson indicates that the results would have been different had the composition of the Board reflected greater intersectional diversity of race/​ethnicity, gender, and age.

Institutional Policies that Strengthen Multigenerational Contributions Policies and procedures that prevent age discrimination, foster inclusive talent practices, and ensure equitable outcomes form the architectural foundation of an intergenerational workforce strategy. To build buy-​in from the campus, policies need to involve different constituencies in their development and be clear and transparent (Van Ummersen, 2014). A study of 147 German companies based on a survey of 30,101 employees and the self-​ reports of 491 managers, found that diversity-​friendly HR policies coupled with the low negative ageist stereotypes among top leaders served to prevent the negative impact of age diversity on organizational performance (Kunze, Boehm, and Bruch, 2013).Yet institutions of higher education have few policies that ensure equity in workforce processes for all generational cohorts in the academic workforce. The lack of institutional safeguards coupled with increasingly pressing budgetary needs mean that inappropriate pressures can be brought to bear on senior members of the workforce. Non-​discrimination policies. By far, the most common policy references relating to age discrimination in colleges and universities are subsumed under the umbrella of general non-​discrimination and anti-​harassment policies. These policies typically contain procedures for informal resolution of complaints, as well as formal complaint procedures and appeal processes, clauses identifying protection against retaliation, references to applicable statutes, and a listing of campus resources. As we have pointed out earlier, the likelihood of winning a case under the ADEA is slim, given the onerous requirements of demonstrating that “but for” consideration of age, an adverse action would not be taken (American Bar Association, 2017). As a result, age-​ discrimination policies represent more of a formal requirement rather than an actual deterrent to ageist behaviors and actions. Post-​ tenure review policies. One of the problems that institutions of higher education have struggled with is sustaining faculty contributions after the attainment of tenure. In some cases, post-​tenure review policies have been perceived as threatening the concept of tenure and undermining

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Best-In-Class Multigenerational HR  117 employment stability, organizational commitment, and academic freedom due to inconsistencies in their implementation and lack of clearly defined objectives (Obeng and Ugboro, 2019). In this regard, a study of 150 academic staff in 74 universities validated the decrease in affective or emotional commitment to the university and normative commitment to the organization when post-​tenure review policies are viewed as a threat to tenure (Obeng and Ugboro, 2019). As a result, when such policies are not focused on sustaining faculty contributions in light of academic mission but are viewed as methods of increased administrative control, they will not enhance workplace commitment. In light of these findings, consider the protest by faculty at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville (UTK), following the revised policy for post-​ tenure review passed by the University of Tennessee (UT) system Board of Trustees in March 2018, requiring comprehensive peer review every six years as well as automatic performance reviews of faculty from underperforming units (Ohm, 2018, June, 2018c). This policy replaced the existing system of review that triggered such review after poor performance ratings or upon the request of a faculty member (June, 2018c). The new UT post-​tenure review policy was developed without significant faculty input and designed to replace existing campus post-​tenure review policies. Concern was expressed by faculty at UTK regarding the inclusion of a statement of the Board’s right to review “some or all tenured faculty of a campus, college, school, department, or division at any given time or at periodic intervals, as the Board in its discretion deems warranted” (Caron, 2018, para 6). This policy change was viewed as a threat to faculty tenure and academic freedom. Further, as Beauvais Lyons, President of the UT Knoxville Faculty Senate and Chancellor’s Professor of Art, indicated, the policy falsely equated program performance with individual contributions and even could lead to situations of retribution “based on data that are not rooted in the academic mission” (Caron, 2018, para 12). Such data could include student enrollment, number of majors, cost of instructional delivery, and other factors that need to be considered in light of institutional mission (Flaherty, 2018). Under considerable pressure, the UT system later indicated that each campus was to come up with a plan consistent with the overall template created by the system (Kast, 2018). Subsequently, revised post-​tenure review procedures were reviewed and adopted by the UTK Faculty Senate. Contrast this contentious policy approach with the collaborative, faculty-​ led effort at the University of Denver. The University of Denver, a private research institution, created a faculty-​led committee that shifted the focus from concentrating on post-​tenure review to systematic faculty development. According to Kate Willink, President of the Faculty Senate and Associate Professor of Communication Studies, “Why create this huge policy where everyone has to jump through hoops to change the behavior of a few people who may not change their behavior in the end?” (June, 2018b, para 5). In 2017, the Faculty Senate passed “Policies and procedures for faculty development, job responsibility distributions, and peer-​to-​peer conversations” to

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118  Best-In-Class Multigenerational HR address the academic interests of faculty during their career and allow for academic career changes that could alter the mix of teaching, service, and scholarship responsibilities (University of Denver, n.d.). The new policy also encourages peer-​to-​peer conversations to strengthen faculty contributions. As Arthur Jones, a former Faculty Senate president and teaching professor of music, culture, and psychology, explained:“Once you’ve got tenure you can antagonize people or bring them in.You can get the most out of them rather than force them to fit a cookie-​cutter mold” (June, 2018a, para 26). In the view of Scott Leutenegger, also a former president of the Faculty Senate, such a post-​tenure review policy may not be achievable at public institutions: “I don’t have a lot of faith that state institutions would be able to pull this off if their state legislature is one of those screaming for the need for post-​tenure review” (June, 2018b, para 6).

Workplace Flexibility Programs Unlike other areas of intergenerational diversity in higher education, workplace flexibility and work/​life integration programs have been developed as integral components of a total rewards strategy designed to enhance workplace success, engagement, and retention. Flexible workplace policies that address the time and place of work and offer workplace options can help offset the lack of financial rewards when budgetary resources are limited and provide an outlet for job stress. Among the workplace flexibility policies developed by institutions of higher education are dual-​career policies, leave policies that stop the tenure clock for childbirth or adoption, parental leave, teleworking, and compressed work-​week policies. Minoritized faculty, administrators, and staff may be particularly susceptible to work/​life imbalance and stress due to the pressure caused by inequities in the workplace (Denson, Szelényi, and Bresonis, 2018). Individuals with the multiple jeopardies of gender, race/​ethnicity, and age facing employment insecurity may be less likely to avail themselves of work/​ life programs, due to the fear of being penalized or perceived as less productive than their peers. The Higher Education Research Institute survey of 20,771 full-​time undergraduate teaching faculty at 143 four-​year colleges and universities institutions reveals that both women and minority faculty believed that they had to work harder than their colleagues to be perceived as legitimate scholars. More than half of female faculty of color reported that discrimination was either somewhat a source of stress or an extensive source of stress, compared with 13.9  percent of white male faculty (Stolzenberg et  al., 2019). Without institutional guardrails for programs such as tenure extension, a culture of fear may prevent individuals from utilizing these options (Ward and Wolf-​Wendel, 2012). As a leading-​edge best practice, since 2003 the American Council on Education (ACE) has partnered with the Alfred P.  Sloan Foundation to launch a national challenge focused on retaining a 21st-​century workforce and strengthening institutional commitment to faculty career flexibility.

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Best-In-Class Multigenerational HR  119 This initiative recognizes the need for flexible policies and practices due to the needs and expectations of different generations in the higher education workplace. ACE identifies the difficulty of retaining members of more recent generations who tend to have more frequent job changes and have placed increased emphasis on balancing family and career interests.The ACE challenge also addresses the potential for burnout due to work stress and the need for revitalization of senior faculty to enhance workforce contributions (ACE, n.d.).

Predictive Analytics and Early Separation/​Phased Retirement Programs As institutions of higher education grapple with reconciling diminishing budgetary resources with future workforce planning needs, HR analytics (HRA) can help address the viability or need for retirement incentives, changes in retirement plan design, and succession planning. HRA, also known as workforce or human capital analytics, is an essential tool in aligning university or college strategy with desired outcomes. As a form of predictive analytics, HRA is forward-​looking and involves scanning the environment, workforce planning, analyzing processes, and predicting future trends (Fitz-​Enz, 2010). Although the concept of HRA dates back to the 1970s, research studies on HRA are relatively recent and very limited, beginning in 2003–​2004 (Marler and Boudreau, 2017). As a strategic practice, HRA involves sophisticated analysis of data from different functions and sources in order to connect HR processes with organizational decision-​making and outcomes (Marler and Boudreau, 2017).Yet as scholars Thomas Rasmussen and Dave Ulrich warn HRA should not begin with preconceived approaches or data, but with the business challenge, which is contextual, linked to the stakeholders served, and aligned with overall strategy (Rasmussen and Ulrich, 2015). HRA and voluntary separation plans. For more than a decade, voluntary separation programs have been implemented in a wide range of public and private institutions as an entrepreneurial strategy designed to achieve cost savings while replenishing and retaining talent resources (Evans and Chun, 2012). A survey of 250 colleges and universities found that 61 percent had implemented an early retirement buyout to faculty since 2007 (Yakoboski and Conley, 2013). These programs offer the opportunity for eligible faculty, staff, and administrators to leave the institution and receive a monetary incentive.Voluntary separation plans can be used to address budget shortfalls and generate salary savings by not refilling existing positions or hiring new employees at lesser salary levels. But voluntary separation plans can also fulfill an important academic purpose by allowing colleges and universities to realign vacant positions in response to changing curricular and programmatic needs. In accordance with designated academic goals, provosts and academic leaders can reallocate lines to strengthen curricular offerings. Furthermore, voluntary separation plans also provide the opportunity to pursue strategic

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120  Best-In-Class Multigenerational HR diversity goals through new hires who bring new perspectives and diverse backgrounds to the institution. In projecting the potential for implementation of voluntary severance programs, HRA can help predict the likelihood of employees to select the program, determine the length of the window for enrollment, identify desired employee groups for the incentive, set eligibility requirements, and establish incentive parameters. Communication with the campus community about the reasons for implementing a voluntary separation program, as well as the goals of future workforce planning, is critical. An example of miscommunication of programmatic intent can be discerned in the comment of a retired faculty member at Loyola University Chicago. As Hugh Miller writes (Miller, 2019, paras 4, 6, 8): Early this year, administrators put together a secret task force to figure out how to save money by lowering faculty compensation costs … This August the wraps came off the plan, now called ‘TF-​VTIP’ (Tenured Faculty Incentive Plan), a mini-​master class in euphemism. In plain English, here’s a lump sum payment and goodbye, as of next June. The university takes a one-​time hit, paying all this out, but profits in the middle term … We’ll lose a lot of our most experienced faculty, and a lot of institutional memory. But most disturbingly, the bean-​counters upstairs will push with all their might to replace as many tenure-​track positions with non-​tenure-​track ones, either full-​or part-​time. Faculty in such contingent positions can be paid much less, and worked much harder, than tenure track ones. Voluntary separation programs can be positive for faculty or staff who may be actively considering retirement or embarking on a new phase of their life. Ruth, a white female faculty member who had faced considerable pressures from her chair to retire, withstood his mistreatment for a number of years until the chair finally left the department. Subsequently, a new female chair helped her when a faculty buyout was announced and ensured her attainment of emeritus status: When I notified my chair that I was thinking about retiring, she [the chair] told me that they were going to do a buyout. So I’m thinking, ‘a buyout, yay!’ That all got put in place very quickly. She pushed through my getting emeritus status the semester when I retired. So I still had another eight months when I  was technically still on the faculty, so I kind of resented being made emeritus when I wasn’t yet retired. But I was also glad, because I has come close to losing my tenure, let alone being emeritus. It all happened really quickly. In addition, my pension bounced back from its recession low point. It was all a happy ending. Examples of recent voluntary separation incentive programs related to financial constraints include the University of Kansas’ (KU) 2018 program

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Best-In-Class Multigenerational HR  121 implemented to mitigate the impact of a $20  million budget cut. The program was designed to offset reductions in hiring budgets by replacing higher-​paid faculty positions with new tenure-​track junior faculty at lower salary levels (Korte, 2018). Applications for the voluntary separation incentive were accepted during a short three-​month window between August and October 2018 for faculty with ten years of service in benefits-​eligible positions who were at least aged 62 at the time of separation. Eligible faculty received a lump-​sum cash payment equal to their annual base salary, subject to required payroll deductions (University of Kansas, 2018a). 65 of 267 eligible faculty on the KU-​Lawrence and Edwards campuses were approved for the program, with more than half at full professor levels (University of Kansas, 2018b). Deans were given flexibility to determine whether positions would be eliminated, held open for one or two years, or filled by junior, tenure-​track faculty (University of Kansas, 2018b). Other recent programs implemented at public research “And yet, the decision to phase universities facing diminished into retirement is one I fear my state funding and declining junior colleagues do not view enrollments include the University with such equanimity. What of Missouri’s Voluntary Separation I see as a way to address energy Program that offered an incenlimits while I do the emotional tive of 1.5 x the annual benefits-​ work that should precede retireeligible salary not to exceed ment they may perceive as a lack $200,000 for tenured faculty aged of interest and lowered prod62 and above with five years of seructivity. Without a university vice and University of Nebraska’s acknowledgement that faculty Voluntary Separation Incentive members need to let go in stages, Program for faculty aged 62 and my colleagues are not able to older with ten years of service with both include transitioners and an incentive equivalent to 80 perfind ways to support the process cent of base salary (University of of retiring.” Missouri System, 2019; University (Jones, 2016, para 14) of Nebraska, 2019). The University of Washington has offered a variant of the program through the voluntary retirement incentive option (VRI) that provides a tax-​free health reimbursement account when faculty agree to relinquish their vested right to partial (40 percent) reemployment. The university’s contribution to the account is based on 25 percent of the five-​year value of their employment, with a $25,000 minimum and $100,000 maximum for full-​time tenured faculty (University of Washington, n.d.). Maximizing talent contributions through phased retirement plans. From an institutional standpoint, phased retirement options allow the continued contributions of more senior employees, while capitalizing on their knowledge and expertise, and planning for future workforce needs. From an employee perspective, these options represent a change in career ownership

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122  Best-In-Class Multigenerational HR from employer-​driven models to alternative pathways that enable senior faculty and staff to evaluate their own career needs and redefine their relationship with the institution (Taylor and Lebo, 2019). We provide here a brief overview of these programs in order to highlight the ways in which colleges and universities can sustain existing talent resources, while ensuring continuity and succession planning. Two main types of retirement programs are designed to maximize employee choice while facilitating workforce planning: a) phased retirement plans; and b) deferred retirement option plans. The availability of these programs is often linked to the types of pension plans offered at an institution: defined benefits (DB) plans and/​or defined contribution (DC) plans, as well as hybrid plans. DB plans provide a fixed monthly stipend following retirement, while DC plans or optional retirement plans essentially are tax-​ deferred savings annuities to which both employers and employees contribute. Most private universities offer primary DC plans while the majority of public universities offer both DB and DC plans (Sibson Consulting, 2016; Yakoboski and Conley, 2013). Due to the long-​term and unpredictable costs of DB plans, a number of state systems now only offer defined contribution plans such as the University System of New Hampshire and the states of Nebraska and Alaska (Evans and Chun, 2012). Nonetheless, as funding of pensions at public institutions becomes more problematic, public colleges and universities struggle to fund DB plans through benefits reductions, increasing the retirement age, and adjustments to both employer and employee contributions (Keller, 2010). States such as Georgia, Washington, Oregon, and Indiana have switched to hybrid DB/​DC plans for new hires in order to mitigate costs and financial risks of underfunded plans (Keller, 2010). Because defined contribution plans function like tax-​deferred savings annuities and usually involve a portfolio with investments in stocks, the volatility of the market can influence retirement decisions. For example, Stephanie, the white female faculty member cited earlier who endured discriminatory pressures from her chair to retire over a period of six years, describes how the recession affected her incentive to counteract his efforts: If I had retired, my whole savings from my pension would have been lost. I was trying to work the maximum before retirement. So, by the time I retired the stock market had in fact rebounded. I got about twice as much money to retire on by holding on for this period of time, six years. I was adamant with myself that I would hold out until I got the best pension possible. That worked. I knew that at some point the stock market would rebound, and that was a big incentive for me. Phased retirement programs allow individuals of a certain age with a given threshold of service to reduce their workload and FTE over a defined time period. These programs are twice as likely to be offered by institutions with defined contribution plans, since defined benefit plans are based on

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Best-In-Class Multigenerational HR  123 a formula related to salary, age, and years of service (Lord, 2005). Deferred retirement option programs offer individuals vested in a defined-​benefit pension plan the ability to retire and continue to work for a certain time period during which time they receive salary and benefits, as well as their monthly retirement pension set aside in a separate, interest-​bearing trust account. A prominent example of this incentive-​based plan is the State of Florida’s Deferred Retirement Option Program open to employees who are vested in the state’s defined contribution plans and eligible for normal retirement (Florida Retirement System, 2019). Cutbacks in retiree health insurance. Despite the importance of retiree health insurance to individuals planning to retire, a 2019 survey of 359 colleges and universities found a decline in the number of institutions offering retiree health insurance over the past two years (Bichsel, McChesney, and Pritchard, 2019).This decline is concerning, since continuation of health insurance coverage can motivate more senior employees to retire early, especially when retirement occurs prior to Medicare eligibility (Karoly and Rogowski, 1994). Although fewer than one in five Americans receives retiree healthcare, 90 percent of the respondents in a 2013 survey of 304 colleges and universities offer retiree health benefits (Yakoboski and Conley, 2013). But even among these institutions, half made changes to their plans since 2008 (Yakoboski and Conley, 2013). Changes to retiree health insurance were triggered by the publication of accounting standards by the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) in 2008 and 2009 that requires states to report other post-​ employment benefits (OPEB) in their financial statements and track liabilities for past and current employees has led to adjustment of these benefits in some states (McNichol, 2008). The new requirements have brought to light major and often unfunded liabilities on college and university balance sheets, leading to tuition increases and cost containment measures (Marcus, 2015). In the state of Illinois alone, the unfunded liability for retiree health insurance reached $56.4 billion in 2013 and is expected to increase to five times that level over the next 30 years (Ingram, 2013). Reassessment of these liabilities led five states to end the institution’s health premium contribution for some retirees, while over a dozen states made changes to service or minimum-​age requirements for retiree health benefits (Pew Charitable Trusts, 2016). Although retiree health benefits offer a competitive advantage and can increase the incentive to retire, the dramatic cost of retiree health insurance has resulted in significant reconfiguration of these programs.

Retirement Transition and Post-​Retirement Programs Retiree programs that provide a smooth transition to retirement and maintain the affiliation between retired employees and the institution are an essential aspect of an inclusive talent proposition. As Claire Van Ummersen, Senior Adviser to the American Council on Education, points out, if campus cultures are strained and fractured, they will have a difficult time addressing

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124  Best-In-Class Multigenerational HR retirement transitions and the sensitivity associated with the culmination of careers (Van Ummersen, 2014). The business case for retirement planning involves ensuring continued connection with the institution, using faculty and administrative talents in creative ways, and maintaining a positive institutional affiliation (Van Ummersen, 2014). Many institutions have formalized post-​ retirement benefits and options in policy statements and protocols and offer retirement counseling. Major aspects of post-​retirement programs include retiree health insurance for benefits-​eligible employees, financial counseling, faculty emeritus programs, library and email privileges, ability to audit courses, discounted parking fees, use of office space, workshops and seminars, transition leave and grants, and other benefits. The University of California at Los Angeles’s (UCLA) Pathways to Retirement program is a prominent example of a fully featured faculty retirement planning program. Established in 2008, the program allows tenured faculty to map their retirement pathway two years in advance and negotiate perquisites that can involve support for research after retirement or the granting of the title of “research professor” rather than an emeritus title in order to facilitate grant applications (Patel, 2016a). Due to the potential of retirement to disrupt a sense of identity, Carole Goldberg, former vice-​ chancellor for academic personnel indicates that “the most important thing was to reconceptualize retirement not as an end of the relationship but as a reconfiguration of faculty members’ relationship with the university” (Patel, 2016a, para 7). To assist faculty in the transition, UCLA has also appointed a faculty retirement liaison who assists faculty in working with department chairs to provide flexibility in the process and address faculty post-​retirement needs (Patel, 2016b).

Conclusion Despite the fact that most institutions have not implemented integrated multigenerational talent practices, we have shared seven key dimensions of an intergenerational workforce strategy. The presence of well-​developed practices in the area of pre-​tenure faculty mentoring and workplace flexibility are encouraging, but other areas such as IGL would benefit from further development. We have also described the value of HRA in analyzing future workforce needs in light of budgetary shortfalls and developing responsive programs. Since cultural change is integral to the development of multigenerational practices, HR and diversity leaders can help facilitate the development of an integrated approach that operationalizes the inclusion of intergenerational talent and ensures that equity and social justice are reflected in behavioral interactions and organizational processes. In the final chapter, we offer recommendations that can help overcome the gap in age-​diverse higher education practices compared with the private and non-​profit sectors and accelerate the development of an inclusive intergenerational workforce strategy.

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7  Looking Ahead: Opportunities and Recommendations

The need for more age-​friendly campuses is plain and clear. Joann M. Montepare (2019, p 139)

As an essential aspect of diversity strategy, a multigenerational talent proposition offers the opportunity for institutions to draw on the rich and diverse contributions of faculty, administrators, and staff from across generational divides. In a highly competitive national and global environment, an inclusive, age-​diverse climate enhances the capacity for knowledge sharing, innovation, and complex problem-​solving. Given the mission of higher education to promote student learning, colleges and universities can gain substantial intellectual and academic advantage by maximizing intergenerational collaboration whether in classrooms or boardrooms. If indeed as Taylor and Lebo suggest, a talent revolution is underway in which generational interdependence is key, then colleges and universities will benefit greatly from rethinking the prevailing talent proposition (Taylor and Lebo, 2019). The question remains as to how institutions of higher education can make concrete progress in building an intergenerational diversity workforce strategy. One prominent approach in higher education today is the Age-​Friendly University (AFU) initiative launched in 2012 by Dublin City University (DCU) in Ireland. This initiative was an outgrowth of the age-​ friendly cities initiative begun by the World Health Organization and the American Association for Retired Persons (AARP) (Eisenberg, 2019). DCU then joined with Arizona State University and Strathclyde University as the world’s first Age-​Friendly Universities (AFUs), with 51 universities worldwide now participating in the expanding Age-​Friendly University Global Network (Gerontological Society of America, n.d.). Each of the institutions in the AFU Global Network has adapted the ten age-​friendly university principles developed by DCU in terms of their own institutional contexts (Eisenberg, 2019). Of particular relevance to this study are the following principles (Dublin City University, n.d.): •

To promote intergenerational learning to facilitate the reciprocal sharing of expertise between learners of all ages.

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126  Opportunities and Recommendations • •

To increase the understanding of students of the longevity dividend and the increasing complexity and richness that ageing brings to our society. To ensure that the university’s research agenda is informed by the needs of an ageing society and to promote public discourse on how higher education can better respond to the varied interests and needs of older adults.

Consider this leading-​edge example of how to implement an AFU initiative initiated by a faculty-​led workgroup at the University of Rhode Island (URI), a medium-​size state institution. The workgroup led by the Director of the Program in Gerontology consisted of faculty members and representatives of campus programs, including the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (Clark and Leedahl, 2019).The group realized that in order to obtain the support of senior administration they needed to work “from the bottom up” and survey university programs that already supported the ten AFU principles (Clark and Leedahl, 2019, p 168). Because the group was cognizant of the political hurdles and resource requirements involved in recommending new initiatives, it developed a strategic plan based on models of institutional change such as Kurt Lewin’s force field analysis. Their organizational change strategy was built upon the following key elements: 1) work to reduce opposition to change; 2) match strategy development to the stages identified in research-​ based change models; 3)  invoke external forces and trends to reinforce the need for change; and 4) conceptualize change as an ongoing cycle of activity (Clark and Leedahl, 2019). Most significantly, the workgroup realized that the AFU framework does not simply refer to the two ends of the age spectrum, but involves lifelong learning or learning over the life course. URI’s strategic plan for an AFU has focused on two primary goals: 1) intergenerational learning that involves reciprocal sharing of knowledge between and among generations; and 2) a research agenda that addresses the needs of an ageing society and promotes public discourse on how higher education can meet these needs (Clark and Leedahl, 2019). In another example, at Lasell University, a small private university in Newton, Massachusetts, the Rosemary B.  Fuss Center for Research on Aging and Intergenerational Studies seeks to promote intergenerational collaboration through grant-​funded research, curriculum and teaching practices, international exchange, student internships, and Talk of Ages web-​based resources (Lasell University, n.d.). A continuing care retirement community located on campus that promotes lifelong learning was part of the impetus to join the age-​friendly university initiative (Mullaney, 2019). While the focus of the age-​friendly university is on older adults, bringing the importance of an age-​friendly campus climate to the forefront is a critical step in broadening perspectives and shifting workplace norms. Other institutions that have joined the AFU global network include the University of Southern California (USC), the first university to join

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Opportunities and Recommendations  127 in California. USC has stated its commitment to an age-​friendly working and learning environment through interdisciplinary research and through training a global workforce to address the world’s ageing population (University of Southern California, n.d.). More than half of USC’s faculty are aged 50 and above, and more than 30 percent of its staff is aged 50 and above. The university’s AFU initiative website offers an array of resources for employee support including learning opportunities, research, medical and wellness, work and family life, and retirement (University of Southern California, n.d.). With these prominent best practices in mind, we offer ten concrete recommendations that will accelerate the process of cultural change and help create a systematic policy and programmatic infrastructure that supports the inclusion and success of a multigenerational workforce.

1.  Following the example set at URI, form a stakeholder workgroup to develop a strategic plan for the implementation of the AFU initiative and identify concrete strategies for building an age-​inclusive workplace culture. As mentioned earlier, in our outreach to chief diversity officers and other institutional leaders for this book most stressed the need for attention to multigenerational workforce strategies, but indicated this area has not yet gained institutional attention. Age and generational status have obtained only passing references in mission and diversity statements, but rarely are discussed in depth. A major first step is to develop a strategic plan to implement an AFU initiative and to use that designation to further communication and engagement around inclusive multigenerational workforce policies and practices. While a number of colleges and universities have implemented intergenerational learning programs for students through community-​based service opportunities and living arrangements, similar programs have not been developed for faculty, administrators, and staff. The framework of an age-​friendly campus will broaden the focus to incorporate multigenerational practices across the educational spectrum including scholarship, student learning, community outreach, and workforce engagement.

2.  Ensure that diversity leadership competencies involve an understanding of the value and contributions of intergenerational talent. It would not be an exaggeration to say that 21st-​century leadership competencies in both the academic and administrative spheres of higher education require an understanding of the value of generational diversity in the workplace. While diversity leadership competencies are typically viewed as encompassing race/​ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, and

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128  Opportunities and Recommendations disability, generational status and age are frequently omitted from serious consideration. In addition, the prevalence of popular literature on generational differences creates a rather superficial view of the preferences and priorities of different generational cohorts. As a result, academic and administrative leaders will benefit from more nuanced, research-​based perspectives on the contributions of a multigenerational workforce. Within the academic context, we have noted examples of cross-​ generational tensions, both in relationships and in organizational processes. These tensions require skillful leadership to coalesce differing viewpoints and ensure collaborative resolution. Recall how Jon, a white male academic administrator, described the conflicting generational perspectives on the discipline. As he explained: You can be an older faculty member and still do cutting-​edge work. There are plenty of them around. But I  think that does generate tensions. I  wrote a book that focused on a drama professor … who was very much a favorite of the realists … internationally acclaimed; unfortunately, modernism came along. And in his letters he was often complaining about the young Turks, the kind of wars that occur in academic departments. Department chairs may be called upon to mediate rifts among faculty cohorts due to divergent views on the curriculum, pedagogical approaches, and research orientations. We have also documented the ways in which ageism can affect normative career expectations for both younger and older faculty in the tenure process. Just as Jon described how he counseled the dean regarding the illegality of his comments about encouraging people to retire, academic and administrative leaders may need to intervene to disrupt ageist stereotypes that can arise in everyday situations and within committee deliberations. By actively endorsing the value of intergenerational collaboration, leaders can help create an inclusive, age-​ diverse culture within departments, schools, and divisions. We have pointed out the relatively slow pace of higher education in recognizing the importance of the competencies needed to lead a multigenerational workforce.The healthcare field with its emphasis on clinical outcomes and patient relations has taken significant steps that directly link multigenerational workforce competencies to patient care and cost reduction. Take, for example, the work of the American Hospital Association (AHA) with its focus on culture in relation to managing an intergenerational workforce in order to be successful in what is described as “second-​curve, value-​based environment” (American Hospital Association, 2014, p. 7). Intergenerational competencies are an essential part of the equation needed to achieve second-​ curve outcomes, defined as optimal experience of patients, optimal clinical outcomes, and reductions in the overall costs of care (American Hospital Association, 2014).

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3.  Conduct a systematic HR/​diversity assessment of intergenerational factors and use the results to develop responsive education programs and benefits offerings. One of the major building blocks in creating a successful intergenerational workforce program is to conduct a workplace assessment designed to improve programmatic offerings that include benefits offerings and professional development initiatives. For self-​ insured benefits providers, for example, focus groups of faculty, administrators, and staff from different cohorts can provide input to the ways that benefits programs can be more responsive to generational needs. In a best practice example, at the Scripps Health System in San Diego, California, a private non-​ profit health system with five acute-​ care hospitals, 29 outpatient clinics, and more than 15,000 employees, a major intergenerational initiative was launched in 2001. A  comprehensive intergenerational assessment was undertaken due to high attrition from the nursing staff, labor difficulties, and communication breakdowns (Murphy, 2007; Jackson, 2012). Based on the results of a workplace survey, the Scripps Health System created a life-​cycle benefits program that provides monetary allowances toward generationally focused benefits such as childcare, eldercare, or health and wellness classes. Scripps also undertook an education program on intergenerational benefits, redesigned work areas to reduce the need for physical exertion, and revised new hire orientation to include multigenerational training (Jackson, 2012). These programs were designed to enhance retention and respond to the specific needs of different generational cohorts.

4.  Launch intergenerational learning programs that demonstrate the value of cross-​generational collaboration and build awareness of the subtle influence of ageist and generational framing. The importance of intergenerational collaboration in the workplace is rarely discussed in higher education circles and its positive outcomes are consequently overlooked. At the same time, generational and ageist framing with its narratives, biases, images, stereotypes, and interpretations can exercise a normative influence on organizational culture. Even individuals subject to such framing may not be aware of the role it plays in everyday behaviors, exclusionary interactions, and processes, especially when ageism intersects with other minoritized identities. Further, as Samantha has pointed out, ageist stereotypes can be internalized in false narratives and lead to self-​ fulfilling prophecies and acceptance of inequitable circumstances by targeted individuals. Consider also the large-​scale campus climate surveys cited in Chapter 2 with significant percentages of employees reporting age discrimination including hostile, exclusionary, and intimidating workplace conduct.

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130  Opportunities and Recommendations These results speak to the urgent need to address systemic forms of ageism through organizational learning programs for executive leadership, academic leaders, managers, and supervisors. And, as we have noted previously, few institutions offer in-​house educational programs on leading a multigenerational workforce. Why is organizational learning a channel for institution-​wide change? According to Estela Bensimon, Director of the Center for Urban Education at the University of Southern California, organizational learning can make the invisible visible and the undiscussable discussable in order to overcome inequitable outcomes (Bensimon, 2005). Organizational learning represents the medium through which institutions can change by developing new cognitive frames and mindsets that enable individuals to perceive “equity oriented awareness” (Bensimon, 2005, p.  105). In other words, equity-​ oriented awareness can lead to the reframing of exclusionary frameworks that have pervaded formal and informal processes and networks (Chun and Evans, 2018). But organizational learning programs do not exist in a vacuum and require leadership support, a cultural willingness to change, buy-​in from both the administrative and academic communities, and effective diversity strategy (Chun and Evans, 2018). Institutions will benefit from the collaborative work of HR and diversity leaders in offering research-​based diversity education programs on hiring, developing, and engaging a multigenerational workforce. Faculty-​led programs for deans and department chairs can offer concrete practices and approaches that are germane to school and departmental leadership.

5.  Expand the range of mentoring programs to include administrators, staff, and full-​time contingent faculty with special attention to sponsorship of members of minoritized groups. We have seen how formal mentoring and sponsorship programs offer valuable instrumental and psychosocial support and facilitate career progress.Yet the view that the careers of older faculty, administrators, and staff are almost over and that professional development is not needed can preclude investment in such programs. In contrast, meritocratic professional development policies provide equitable access to opportunities for career-​based growth and development across the generational spectrum. Such approaches involve an understanding that more senior members are not a monolithic group and also will benefit from support and opportunities for further growth (Martin, Dymock, Billett, and Johnson, 2013). In addition, sponsorship programs for members of non-​dominant groups can address barriers to inclusion and provide career support through access to influential leaders who can advocate for them and protect them from negative feedback. Since most mentoring programs focus on new, tenure-​track faculty, the creation of mentoring programs for faculty at all career stages, as well as for

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Opportunities and Recommendations  131 administrators, staff, and full-​time contingent faculty, will enable institutions to develop the full range of talent resources. In particular, we have cited Northeastern University’s mentoring circles for full-​time non-​tenure track faculty as a best practice. Another important feature of mentoring programs is the allocation of institutional resources such as through the use of stipends and micro-​grants that allow participants to chart their own career development.

6.  Develop systematic policies, procedures and practices that incorporate checks and balances on decision-​making and ensure intergenerational equity. In Chapter 6, we highlighted well-​developed institutional policies that can foster inclusive multigenerational practices. Compliance-​ related policies such as non-​ discrimination and grievance policies are merely threshold requirements. Prevention of age discrimination needs to be addressed explicitly in policies related to large-​scale organizational processes that include hiring, compensation, promotion, evaluation, and tenure. Close monitoring of processes such as hiring, compensation, evaluation, and employment closure will help prevent differential treatment based upon age and other intersectional characteristics. A system of checks and balances will strengthen institutional accountability for age-​ inclusive practices. Consistent with the role of guardian and protector cited earlier in the book, boards of trustees can serve as a countervailing force on powerful institutional gatekeepers and check the potential for disparate outcomes (Roscigno, Lopez, and Hodson, 2009). For example, a black member of the board of trustees at a large community college described how he proactively reviewed the award of faculty sabbaticals (Chun, 2017, p. 92): I looked at the policy and I  looked at how many minority individuals were allowed to go on sabbatical. To the extent that there was a response from the administration about the limited minority faculty taking sabbaticals, the answer was they are not being presented, because they don’t want it. So my question was, ‘Are we providing the minority population with the education and information that this is a benefit for them to take advantage of?’ That wasn’t really answered. Without such active review, inequitable outcomes can be ignored or simply be dismissed as isolated instances.

7.  Review the composition of taskforces and committees for diverse, multigenerational representation. When forming taskforces and committees, the inclusion of multigenerational perspectives is rarely considered as an important factor. Yet the interviews

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132  Opportunities and Recommendations reveal how comments regarding age and generational status can arise in departmental search committees and even during tenure review processes. Consistent with Allport’s (1954) theory on the value of contact in reducing prejudice, high quality contact and interactions among members of different generational groups will help reduce ageist stereotypes. Due to the greater likelihood for ageism to occur in conjunction with other minoritized identities, representation on committees needs to include women, people of color, and LGBT individuals from different generational cohorts. Yet the mere presence of minoritized faculty, administrators, and staff on committees is not sufficient. Collaboration across generational boundaries requires democratic participation in an environment of psychological safety (Edmondson, 2018). In what Amy Edmondson terms “the fearless organization,” individuals need to have the ability to express and be themselves, share ideas, and thrive in team-​based settings to produce significant results (Edmondson, 2018). By creating an egalitarian environment with commitment to common goals, intergenerational committees and teams can facilitate reciprocal knowledge sharing for innovation (Tempest, 2003). Committees can draw upon the latent knowledge of experienced individuals, while younger employees can serve as catalysts for introducing new ideas and leveraging knowledge bases that could have been overlooked or underutilized (Tempest, 2003).

8.  Develop flexible workplace practices that address the needs of different generations in the workforce. Colleges and universities have made some headway in adopting creative, flexible workplace options that strengthen the employee value proposition. Such practices are especially important when the ability to address financial compensation may be limited. A study of 22 companies with nearly 50,000 observations concluded that workplace flexibility positively predicted engagement for all employees, but was an even stronger predictor of engagement for employees age 45 and older (PittCatsouphes and Matz-​Costa, 2008).Yet a sample of 1,583 white-​collar professionals in the U.S. found that while 96  percent desired flexible workplace policies, only 47  percent had the flexibility they felt they needed. Only 34 percent of women reported that they had access to the flexibility they need (Dean and Auerbach, 2018). Formal flexible workplace policies, rather than informal arrangements, will facilitate the equitable administration of these workplace practices and increase the institution’s attractiveness to potential applicants. We have identified a number of prominent workplace flexibility practices including leave policies, stop the tenure clock policies, parental leave, teleworking, and compressed work weeks. However, minoritized individuals in situations of employment insecurity may be less able to take advantage of these programs (Laursen and Austin, 2014). Review of policy implementation by HR and diversity offices will help ensure that flexible work options are offered on an equitable basis across divisions and departments.

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9.  Develop a strategic, institutional approach to voluntary separation and phased retirement programs. In the prior chapter, we discussed how Human Resource Analytics (HRA) can inform workplace planning and help predict future workplace needs. The widespread implementation of voluntary separation plans that allow eligible faculty, administrators, and staff to leave the institution on their own timetable and receive a monetary incentive serves a dual purpose. Because these retirement options emphasize employee decision-​making, they offer a winning employment proposition. The plans also permit colleges and universities to make needed adjustments in response to budgetary constraints by aligning vacant positions with academic priorities. Phased retirement and deferred retirement programs facilitate the continued contributions of senior faculty and staff during their transition to retirement.

10.  Enhance programs and policies that strengthen retiree affiliation with the institution. Most colleges and universities have recognized the importance of maintaining a positive affiliation with retired employees. Ongoing communication, and connections with retirees create “an engaged retirement ecosystem” that is mutually beneficial to retirees and universities or colleges and provides value to the community as well (Bryan, Cardona, Pitta, and Schneller, 2014, p.  129). Institutions can tailor retiree programs to the specific desires for continued educational growth of their employees. For example, with the assistance of an award from the Alfred P.  Sloan Foundation, a retirement transition program for faculty at the University of Baltimore (UB), was developed using focus groups of current and retired faculty to identify faculty interests and develop a retiree recognition program in alignment with UB’s strategic plan (Bryan, Cardona, Pitta, and Schneller, 2014). The creation of emeritus colleges is a recent innovative practice that enables faculty to continue research and scholarly contributions and help institutions maintain a flow of intergenerational academic talent (Baldwin and Zeig, 2013). These colleges typically are overseen by a dean or director with an advisory council and can receive financial subsidies from their home institutions supplemented through dues and endowment funds (Baldwin and Zeig, 2013). These colleges provide two-​way intellectual stimulation through interactions among current and retired faculty. Examples of emeritus colleges now in operation include the Academy at Hopkins developed by Johns Hopkins University, the University of Southern California’s Emeriti Center College, as well as Emory University’s and Arizona State University’s (ASU) Emeritus Colleges. ASU’s Emeritus College consists of more than 500 retired professors and a fully developed catalogue of lectures and course that members can teach outside the boundaries of the campus (ASU Emeritus College, 2019). At Johns Hopkins, members receive the title “Academy professor,” a part-​time unpaid title, and conduct ongoing research with a small

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134  Opportunities and Recommendations research allowance and a healthcare stipend for eligible, retired faculty from the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences (Johns Hopkins University, n.d.). While a great deal of emphasis has been placed on faculty retirement within colleges and universities, similar attention needs to be given to the retirement privileges and affiliation of administrators and professional staff. Some institutions offer the title of administrator emeritus to administrators at executive levels or those who have offered continuous, meritorious service.

Closing the Loop To close the loop on the main themes of the book, an inclusive talent proposition in higher education has mutual benefits: it will facilitate the success and viability of colleges and universities while strengthening the commitment and affiliation of faculty, administrators, and staff. By drawing on knowledge, creativity, and expertise across the generational spectrum, institutions of higher education will be positioned to compete in today’s highly resource-​ constrained and competitive educational environment. Inclusive workplace practices will solidify the employee value proposition, increase retention, and foster increased commitment to institutional mission and goals. As institutions strive to become more efficient and cost-​effective, a strategic vision for maximizing talent capabilities and building an inclusive and empowering working environment has become a necessity in order to ensure institutional success and survival. Yet in situations of resource scarcity such as we currently face, macro-​ level generational tensions can limit collaboration, networking, and investment in more senior members of the workforce (North and Fiske, 2016). Over the past decades, conservative lawmakers have dramatically curtailed funding to public higher education and consequently limited the funds available for diversity program efforts and intergenerational innovation. As we have discussed, severe financial constraints and declining enrollment have led institutions to prioritize the hiring of new and younger employees, while in some cases pressuring more senior employees to retire. Further, the two-​tiered faculty system has created separate but unequal employment conditions for a new majority of contingent faculty who lack employment security and have been the first to experience layoffs in the economic downturn. At the same time, an equity calculation, although a flawed one, tends to favor individuals who are viewed as most likely to contribute in the future and grants them a greater share of scarce and highly coveted resources (Wallen and McClure, 2020). Given these conditions, the pandemic crisis has raised the potential for economic chaos to serve as a smokescreen for actions that might not succeed in “normal” circumstances which include closing departments, terminating senior tenured faculty and staff, and weakening employment safeguards (Burmila, 2020). In such instances, faculty and staff can be treated simply as market assets in a business enterprise rather than in terms of the talents they bring to the teaching and learning environment (Fusarelli, 2020). Research

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Opportunities and Recommendations  135 in the U.S. workplace documents the downward mobility that often follows acts of employment closure for older individuals. Due to the limited possibility of success in filing age discrimination claims, targeted individuals may have few viable courses of action available to them. We have shared the narratives of senior female faculty who only managed to survive ageist mistreatment and harassment over a sustained period due to tenure protections. Administrators who work under “at-​will” conditions and contingent faculty do not have even these protections. The stark accounts of ageism for both junior and more senior members of the workforce included in this book underscore the observation that ageism is the least noticed and most acceptable form of workplace discrimination (Gullette, 2018). In fact, the value of generational and age diversity in the higher education workplace has barely gained institutional notice. And absent pressure from major, unbalancing forces, the prevailing power structure in higher education will sustain and reproduce the status quo, resulting in social inertia and the perpetuation of persistent hierarchical and ageist norms (Feagin, 2006). Compounding the problem, as we have discussed, college and university leadership structures have not kept pace with the increasing racial diversity of the student body. Our book has revealed the disproportionate impact of ageism upon women, people of color, and LGBT individuals within the culture and processes of higher education. When subject to ageist mistreatment, harassment, and discrimination, vulnerable faculty, administrators, and staff can experience severe career consequences with long-​lasting psychological, physical, financial, and familial effects. In contrast, the goal of an integrated intergenerational talent approach is to forge collaborative strategies in the workplace that build synergy among cohorts, tap into the wealth of generational expertise, build organizational capability, foster cross-​generational learning, and strengthen innovation. Although colleges and universities have made progress in acclimating new tenure-​track faculty to the workplace, few institution-​wide programs address the ongoing career needs of an increasingly multigenerational workforce. Without careful oversight of key organizational processes by boards of trustees, academic and administrative leaders, and human resource and diversity officers, ageist actions such as those documented in this book can evade institutional notice, resulting in inequitable outcomes and a loss of talent. By leveraging the breadth and depth of multigenerational talent resources, colleges and universities will not squander valuable human capital and can fulfill their educational mission of educating and inspiring a diverse, centennial generation of students.

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160

Index

Note: italicised page references indicate illustrations. “academic capitalism” 70; see also corporatization and research expectations administrators 11, 31, 99, 112, 130–​1, 134, 135 ADVANCE grants (Advancement of Women in Academic Science and Engineering Careers) 108–​109, 112 African Americans 26, 28, 34, 36, 48, 55–​6, 58, 80 Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA) 12, 23, 24, 28, 39–​41, 43, 48, 62, 116; see also lawsuits Age-​Friendly University (AFU) initiative 113, 125–​7 ageism 1–​2, 17–​18, 19–​20, 26–​8, 31–​3; behavioral and process-​based 44–​68; and multiple jeopardies 34, 118; psychological effects of 33, 65, 67, 94–​5; race/​ethnicity and 19, 24–​5, 29, 31, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 40, 43, 58, 61, 63, 67, 80, 81, 94; reverse 40, 41, 43, 48–​9, 58–​60, 78, 80–​2, 103; sexual orientation and 19, 29, 36, 58, 94, 105, 110; and stereotypes 5, 14, 17, 19, 22–​3, 29, 33, 34, 45–​50, 79, 97, 114, 128, 129, 132; student evaluations and 79; student views on 78–​83, 90; women and 25, 27, 29, 32, 33, 34, 35–​6, 44–​5, 46, 51, 52–​4, 94–​5, 102–​103; workplace invisibility 34–​5, 43, 102; see also intersectionality ageist framing 45–​50, 94–​106, 107, 129–​30 Alabama, state of 6 Alaska, state of 4, 122 Alfred P. Sloan Foundation 118, 133 Allport, Gordon 114, 132

American Association for Retired Persons (AARP) 125 American Council on Education (ACE) 118–​19, 123–​4 American Hospital Association (AHA) 128 American University 41–​2 Anderson, James 115, 116 Andrew Mellon Foundation 111 Applewhite, Ashton 94 Arizona, state of 6 Arizona State University (ASU) 125, 133 Aronson, Louise 1 Asians, Asian-​Americans, Asian/​Pacific Islanders 6, 27, 58, 81 asymmetrical behavioral interactions 12, 30, 37, 38, 96 at-​will positions 10, 11, 31, 62, 67, 99, 135 Baldwin Wallace University 76, 91–​3 behavioral and process-​based ageism 44–​68 Belgium 15–​16 Bensimon, Estela 130 Boomers 3, 21, 88, 115 Boston College Center for Work and Family 113 Bronstein, Phyllis 52, 53 Brown University 9 Brownstein, Ronald 3, 7 Bureau of Labor Statistics 27 Bursch, Dan 107 California 129 Canada 90 Carnegie Mellon University 114 Caslen, Robert 115–​16 Catholic universities 8

16

Index  161 Centennial Generation (Generation Z) 3, 6, 21, 49, 74–​5, 88 Center for Creative Leadership 30 China 22 classroom challenges 49, 73–​8, 80–​2, 90 Coaching and Network Resource Program (CRN) 111–​12 cognitive appraisal 97 Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education (COACHE) 58, 110 College Student Experiences Questionnaire (CSEQ) 45 Collins, Patricia Hill 34 Columbia University 9, 112 committees 51–​2, 86, 104, 110, 114–​16, 128; search 42, 51, 52–​3, 54, 71, 97, 103, 114, 131–​2; tenure 59–​60, 66, 131–​2 compensation see salaries/​compensation Complete Auto Transit, Inc. v. Regis 27 contingent faculty workforce 3, 5, 6, 9–​11, 24, 25, 27, 31, 91, 120, 130–​1, 134, 135 Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP) 45 coping and resistance strategies 46, 47, 91, 94–​106 Copland, Douglas 21 corporatization and research expectations 70–​2 Covid-​19 (coronavirus) 1, 4, 134 Crane, Rosemary 44 curricula 83–​5; curricular change 84–​5, 92; curricular development 84–​5, 90; curricular offerings 5, 119

Dublin City University (DCU) 113, 125 Dubroy, Tashni-​Ann  44–​5 Duke University Research Administration Mentoring Program (RAMP) 112 Dunleavy, Michael J. 4

Daniels, Mitch 2 Deal, Jennifer 30, 50 deferred retirement 122, 123, 133 digital technology 74–​6 discrimination see ageism; gender identity; heterosexism; institutionalized discrimination; mistreatment; racism; sexism diversity 2–​3, 8–​9, 27, 85, 102, 111; benefits of 14–​28, 114–​15, 119–​20, 125; generational views on 87–​9, 90; impact of defunding on 6–​8, 7; intergenerational 2–​3, 11, 14–​28, 107, 114–​15, 118, 125; leadership competencies 127–​8; policies and programs for 107–​124, 125–​35; racial 3, 6–​8, 7, 27, 102, 115–​16; sex/​gender 27, 102, 115–​16; of student body 1, 3, 5, 6–​8, 7, 21, 135 Dreon, Oliver 75, 77–​8, 85 Drown, Steve 42

GATE (generation, age, tenure, and experience) 22 gatekeeping actors 30, 33, 67, 97, 131 gender disparities in higher education 10, 24–​6, 27, 32, 116; see also women gender identity 17, 25, 83–​4, 88–​9, 127–​8 General Dynamics Land Systems, Inc. v. Cline 40, 43, 48 General Social Surveys (GSS) 36–​7, 88 Generation X 21, 57 Generation Y (Millennials) 6, 21, 45, 49, 88 Generation Z (Centennial Generation) 3, 6, 21, 49, 74–​5, 88 generational/​ageist stereotypes 5, 14, 17, 19, 22–​3, 29, 33, 34, 45–​50, 79, 97, 114, 128, 129, 132 generational framing 45–​50, 94–​106, 107, 129–​30 generational status 11, 12, 16, 18, 20, 23–​6, 30–​3, 44–​68, 69–​93, 127–​8, 131–​2

Economos, Christina 52 Edmondson, Amy 114, 132 Ellison, Ralph 35 emeritus: colleges 133; status 120, 124 Emory University 133 emotion-​focused strategies 96, 97–​8, 103 Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) 29, 39, 40, 41, 43, 44 equity-​oriented awareness  130 Europe 15–​16, 18, 46, 47, 98, 107, 113, 116, 125 evaluation 50, 55–​62, 65, 66, 79, 83, 131; and tenure attainment 12, 44, 50 Faculty Survey of Student Engagement (FSSE) 25 family responsibilities 10, 46, 51, 52, 53, 61–​2, 78, 89–​91, 132 family support 103–​104 Feagin, Joe 7, 8, 30, 31, 32, 33, 45, 94, 95, 101, 135 flexible workplace policies 118–​19, 124, 132 flipped classroom model 77 Florida, state of 123 force field analysis 126 France 98

162

162 Index Genovese, Susan Finelli-​ 91–​2 Georgia, state of 6, 122 Germany 15, 16, 18, 47, 116 Goffman, Erving 102 Goldberg, Carole 124 Gomez, Jennifer 55 Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) 123 Grawe, Nathan 8 Gross v. FBL Financial Services, Inc. 39, 43 Gullette, Margaret Morganroth 95 Harvey, Paul 76 Health and Retirement Study (HRS) 26–​7 healthcare benefits 5, 123, 129, 133–​4 healthcare field 128, 129 heterosexism 94, 95 Higher Education Research Institute 118 Hiram College 103 hiring/​recruitment 5, 9, 108, 129; ageism in 25, 42, 44–​5, 50–​5, 71, 97, 113, 114, 121, 131–​2, 134 Hispanic/​Latinx 6, 26, 28, 58, 80 Holloman, Daryl 57, 89 homophily 37 Howe, Neil 21 Human Resource Analytics (HRA) 119–​20, 124, 133 hybrid learning 76, 77 IBM 40 Iceland 98 identity 5, 102; devalued 11, 35, 38, 56, 60, 61, 67; gender 17, 25, 83–​4, 88–​9, 127–​8; imposed 45, 50; intersectional 34, 35, 43, 44, 82, 110, 131; single and multiple 50, 95 Illinois, state of 123 Indiana, state of 122 institutionalized discrimination 19 intergenerational conflict 17, 30 intergenerational diversity 2–​3, 11, 14–​28, 107, 114–​15, 118, 125 intergenerational interdependence 14, 15, 18, 125 intergenerational learning (IGL) 112–​14, 124, 125, 126, 129–​30 intergenerational stereotypes 49–​50 intergroup contact theory 114 intersectionality 11, 12, 19, 25, 29, 34–​7, 38, 40, 43, 44, 51, 56, 62, 78, 79, 81–​2, 106, 110–​11 invisibility 34–​5, 43, 102, 130 involuntary separations 27, 41, 62

Ireland 113, 125 Italy 46 Ivancin, Maria 41–​2 Japan 22 Johns Hopkins University 133–​4 Jones, Arthur 118 Kamenetz, Anya 76 Kelly, Kip 107 Kerwin, Neil 41 Keys, Christopher 16–​17 Lasell University 126 lawsuits 12, 29, 38–​9, 41–​3, 71, 101 leadership competencies 127–​8 Lebo, F. 125 lecture format of teaching 75, 76, 77, 82 Leutenegger, Scott 118 Levin, Rachel 88 Lewin, Kurt 126 LGBT community 34, 35–​6, 88–​9, 91, 106, 115, 132, 135 “lookism” 80, 102–​103 Loudin, Maureen 92 Loyola University Chicago 120 “Lump of labor” fallacy 5 Lyons, Beauvais 117 macro-​aggressions  33 Maisto, Maria 10 Mandell, Carol 42 Mannheim, Karl 20 Massachusetts, state of 8 Matthew, Patricia 56 McKee, Robert 25, 54 McMaster, Henry 115–​16 Medicare 3, 123 mentoring 16, 56, 73, 124, 130–​1; administrator 112, 130–​1; cross-​ generational 18, 91, 108–​112; diverse faculty 110–​11; junior faculty 73, 108, 109, 112, 124; mentoring circles 112, 131; mid-​career faculty 109–​110; mutual 111–​12; reverse 76, 91–​3; sponsorship 56, 109, 111, 130 Mercer County Community College 42 Meyer, Ilan 95–​6 Meyers, Fred 111 Michigan State University 112 micro-​aggressions  33, 95 Midlife Development in the United States (MIDUS) 94 Millennials (Generation Y) 6, 21, 45, 49, 88 Miller, Hugh 120

163

Index  163 minoritized status 12, 19, 43, 62, 98, 110, 129, 130–​1; administrators 19, 55, 118, 132; faculty 10, 19, 55, 91, 110–​11, 118, 132; staff 9, 118, 132; students 3, 6, 55 minority stress model 95–​6 mistreatment 32, 33, 67, 86, 91, 96, 97, 104, 105, 106, 120, 135 “mom” syndrome 82–​3 Montepare, Joann M. 125 Moon, Kathryn 29 Mount Ida College, Newton, MA 8 multigenerational diversity strategies 1, 13, 17–​18, 125, 130; inclusion 2, 19, 34, 43, 107–​108, 115, 124, 130; policies and practices 107–​124, 127, 131; representation 3, 6, 10, 25, 131–​2; talent strategies 1, 5–​6, 12, 13, 14–​15, 16, 17–​18, 107–​108, 109, 113, 121–​2, 124, 125, 127–​8, 130–​1, 133, 134–​5; workforce competencies 15–​16, 18, 25, 33, 49, 55, 78, 79, 80, 82, 83, 90, 99, 103, 113, 127–​8; workforce diversity 2, 17–​18, 22; workforce education 44, 114, 126–​7, 129, 130; workforce planning 112–​13, 119–​23, 133; workforce strategies 2–​3, 11, 127 National Science Foundation 108–​109 National Study of Postsecondary Faculty (NSOPF) 24 Nebraska, state of 122 New Hampshire, University System of 122 New York University  111 Nini, Rose 42 normative assumptions/​expectations 16, 19, 45, 50, 94, 128, 129 North Dakota, state of 4 Northeastern University 112, 131 occupational stress 95 Ohio Civil Rights Commission (OCRC) 36 Ohio State University 29, 41 Ohio University 4 Oklahoma, state of 6 Older Workers Benefit Protection Act (OWPBA) 40 Oregon, state of 122 organizational capability 18, 113, 135 organizational learning 18; and change 130; educational programs 112–​14, 130; equity-​oriented awareness 130; intergenerational 108, 112–​14 Osher Lifelong Learning Institute 126

Palmore, Erdman 19 patriarchal model 89 Paxson, Christina 2 pedagogical models 12, 18, 69, 73, 76–​8, 90, 128 Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education (PASHE) 4 pensions 67, 97 Perlmutter, David 75 Pew Research Center 21 policies, institutional 14, 15, 89, 90–​1, 96, 108, 112, 116–​18, 131 pre-​tenure faculty 25, 31, 58, 59, 60, 90, 112, 124 preemptive strategies to counteract ageism 99–​101 Prensky, Marc 74 privatization of public higher education 6, 70 problem-​focused strategies 96, 97–​8, 99 process-​based inequality and discrimination 33, 44–​68 productivity 14, 15, 121 professional development 21, 46, 47, 56, 67–​8, 113, 129, 130 promotion 15, 19, 25, 33, 35, 49, 50, 55–​62, 113, 114 psychological effects of ageism 33, 65, 67, 94–​5; psychological stress 33, 66, 67, 94, 95, 106 psychosocial stressors 94 Purdue University 2, 111–​12 race/​ethnicity 8, 17, 18, 19, 24–​5, 29, 31, 34, 35, 36, 37, 39, 40, 43, 58, 80–​1 racial diversity 3, 6–​8, 7, 27, 102, 115–​16 racism 19, 33, 34, 57, 67, 86, 94 Rasmussen, Thomas  119 RateMyProfessors.com (RMP) 79 recruitment see hiring/​recruitment relational demography 37–​9 “relational powerlessness” 96 research institutions 9, 70–​2, 133–​4 resilience 95–​6, 106 resistive intergenerational interactions 16; see also coping and resistance strategies retirement 5, 23–​4, 26, 35, 39, 97, 119–​24, 134; of administrators 134; deferred 122, 123, 133; defined benefits (DB) plans 122–​3; defined contribution (DC) plans 122–​3; forced 4, 23, 26, 27, 29, 40–​1, 42; hybrid plans 122; involuntary separation 27, 41, 62; Other Post-​Employment Benefits (OPEB) 123; phased 108, 121–​3, 133;

164

164 Index post-​retirement programs 123–​4, 133–​4; pressures towards 62–​7; voluntary/​early separation 5, 26, 108, 119–​21, 133 reverse ageism 40, 41, 43, 48–​9, 58–​60, 78, 80–​2, 103 reverse mentoring 76, 91–​3 Rockquemore, Kerry Ann 109–​110 Rose, Robert 42 Rosemary B. Fuss Center for Research on Aging and Intergenerational Studies 126 sabbaticals 62, 100, 101, 131 salaries/​compensation 5, 55, 63, 67–​8, 71, 72, 73, 75, 101–​102, 119, 121, 132 San Diego, California 129 Sanderall, Heather 92–​3 Scripps Health System 129 search committees 42, 51, 52–​3, 54, 71, 97, 103, 114, 131–​2 self-​efficacy 45–​6, 96 seniority 20, 48, 72–​3 sexism 19, 33, 34, 57, 67, 103 Shaw University 44–​5 Silent Generation 21 Skalli-​Hanna, Loubna  41 Smith, Andrea 56 social closure, acts of 31, 44, 54, 62–​7 social media 5, 74, 87 socialization 56, 57, 113 South Carolina, state of 6, 115–​16 Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) 116 sponsorship 56, 109, 111, 130; see also mentoring STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) 70–​2, 108–​109 stereotypes 32, 34–​5, 44, 59, 78, 79; ageist/​ generational 5, 14, 17, 19, 22–​3, 29, 33, 34, 45–​50, 79, 97, 114, 128, 129, 132; intergenerational 49–​50; internalization of 33, 45–​6; positive 47, 48, 49; prescriptive 5; of women 52, 59, 78, 79, 83, 103 Stoil, Michael Jon 54 Stoltzfus, Rebecca 14 Strathclyde University 125 Strauss, William  21 stress responses 95; occupational stress 95; see also psychological effects of ageism: psychological stress structural inequality 9, 91 student evaluations 79, 87; and ageism 79; and gender 79; and instructor

effectiveness 79; intersectional impact 79; and race/​ethnicity 79 Susan Bulkeley Butler Center for Leadership Excellence 111–​12 Taaffe, Julianne 29 Taiwan 22 Talbert, Robert 77 Taylor, L. 125 teaching methods 84 teams, intergenerational 16, 114–​16, 132 technology 74–​6, 91–​3 tenured faculty 1, 3, 9–​11, 23–​5, 24, 40, 55–​62, 79, 84–​5, 90, 100–​101, 116–​18, 120; and ageism 31, 41–​2, 46, 50, 51, 53–​4, 55–​62, 98–​9; retirement of 23, 24, 63, 64, 65–​6, 67, 134; tenure attainment 12, 31, 44, 50, 56, 59, 114; tenure denial 33, 42, 56; and women 10, 53, 61–​2, 67, 82, 89–​90, 110, 135 Thomas, Marc 72–​3 transmitive intergenerational interactions 16 Trump, Donald 8 trustees, boards of 3, 4, 115–​16, 117, 131 Tufts University 71 Ulrich, Dave 119 unionization 4, 20, 31, 70, 72–​3, 101–​102 United Kingdom 98 University of Baltimore (UB) 133 University of California 25 University of California at Davis 42 University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) 45, 124 University of California at San Francisco 109 University of Denver 117–​18 University of Guam 54 University of Iowa 25, 63 University of Kansas 120–​1 University of Kentucky 113–​14 University of Massachusetts Amherst 111 University of Michigan 56 University of Missouri 121 University of Nebraska 121 University of Oregon 109 University of Rhode Island (URI) 126, 127 University of South Carolina 115–​16 University of Southern California (USC) 126–​7, 133 University of Tennessee at Knoxville (UTK) 117 University of Tennessee (UT) system 117

165

Index  165 University of Washington  121 University of Wisconsin (UW) 42–​3 Urban Institute 26 Van Ummersen, Claire 123–​4 Varlotta, Lori 103 Vermont Law School 11 Voss, Bambi Butzlaff 42–​3 Ward, Kelly 89 Washington, state of 122 West Virginia, state of 6 white: colleges and universities 6; male hierarchy in higher education 30, 32, 48, 61, 78, 82, 91, 102, 115, 118;

students 3, 6, 7, 8, 9; voters 8; workforce outside academia 27, 30, 36 Wilbur Wright College 44 Willink, Kate 117 Wolf-​Wendel, Lisa  89 women 11, 83–​4, 110, 118; ageism and 25, 27, 29, 32, 33, 34, 35–​6, 44–​5, 46, 51, 52–​4, 94–​5, 102–​103; classroom challenges 79–​83; family responsibilities 10, 46, 51, 52, 53, 61–​2, 78, 89–​90; “lookism” 80, 102–​103; “mom” syndrome 82–​3; stereotypes of 52, 59, 78, 79, 83, 103; and tenure 10, 53, 61–​2, 67, 82, 89–​90, 110, 135; see also gender disparities in higher education; intersectionality

16