Reframing Faculty Engagement: Leadership Strategies for a Changing Academic Landscape

The past few years have been particularly turbulent for higher education—including  post-pandemic return-to-work initiatives, diminished public trust in higher education, the spread of campus protests, and the introduction of generative AI, which challenges so much of the work we do, to name only a few—so it is no wonder that there has been an increased focus on faculty burnout (Pope-Ruark, 2022; Vyletel, et al., 2023) and, subsequently, ways to improve faculty engagement (Kimmel et al., 2024). While initial post-pandemic reports concluded that faculty had become increasingly disengaged (McClure & Fryar, 2022; Musgrave, 2022), more recent reports suggest that working conditions, especially those beyond the classroom, have not improved (Lu, 2025; McClure, 2025; McMurtrie, 2025).