Education Researcher Trower To Depart

Few understand life for faculty inside academia better than Cathy A. Trower, a researcher and writer, who is departing the Harvard Graduate School of Education Tuesday after 16 years at the forefront of research on the tenure system and the faculty experience.

Trower spent time as a university administrator and classroom instructor before beginning research on faculty. Her work as co-founder and research director of the Collaborative on Academic Careers in Higher Education at the Education School has vastly expanded knowledge of faculty satisfaction and the tenure process, colleagues said.

Trower is leaving Harvard to focus on her work with Trower & Trower, a consulting firm she co-founded with her husband, which focuses on nonprofit governance.

Trower said that she is “really excited to be focusing on board governance consulting,” and explained that she is interested “in how power is shared and distributed and how leadership unfolds in the non-profit sector.”

At the same time, Trower said it will not be easy leaving Harvard. “I have mixed emotions–it’s been great. I loved every day,” she said.

Few know Trower better than Education School professor Richard P. Chait, the co-founded of COACHE, who said Trower’s work has been very influential in higher education reserach. Their relationship stretches back to Trower’s time as a doctoral student under Chait at the University of Maryland. Their original research focused on the personal experience of pre-tenured professors.

“Cathy pioneered the effort to get these voices, and more than anyone else, analyzed the results,” Chait said. After conducting extensive surveys of junior professors, the pair discovered the importance of an institution's culture and climate to professor satisfaction. Trower has continued to research tenure systems throughout her career.

At COACHE, Trower also led the initiative’s transition from a small pilot project to a large member organization, according to the program’s current director Kiernan F. Mathews.

“Her biggest contribution overall is to remind everyone in higher education...that whereas students are the purpose for higher education, faculty are the agents for change,” Mathews said.

While Trower’s research has never focused specifically on Harvard, her experience has given her insight into the unique nature of Harvard’s tenure system.

“Because Harvard is so idiosyncratic, every school at Harvard does things differently. Even within FAS, [there are] so many different policies that it’s hard to make an overall judgement,” she said. “I would hope that we are looking more toward a model where we keep our fantastic junior faculty.”

Although Trower has been a significant part of COACHE for well over a decade, she has been steadily lessening her role with the program in recent years. “Cathy set that ball rolling so that this is not a shock to the system—it’s a natural progression and evolution,” Mathews said.

Trower said that she will miss working with “really smart people who were really dedicated,” but said she looks forward to keeping busy traveling, skiing, reading, gardening, and, of course, keeping up with her work, including a new book.