Chuck Kerchner

June, 2006

A Change of Venue...

I am pleased to report that the provost and dean at The Claremont Graduate University have approved my request for a change in academic status. I will accept an appointment as Senior Research Professor and leave the regular faculty on December 31, 2006. After that time, I will continue working with students who have started qualifying examinations or dissertations with me, but for the most part I will not be accepting new students or teaching regular seminars.

I sought this change in status because I feel the time is right. In the fall of 1956, I walked into the offices of the Barrington (Illinois) Courier-Review to complain about their sports coverage and walked out as the sports editor, thus taking on my first adult-responsibility job. After 50 years, I would like to shed some of that responsibility, and fortunately, due to the wonders of TIAA-CREF, I can.

I also made this decision because I think it is good for the school. It provides budget relief and the capacity to hire a younger scholar to join our process of institutional growth.

At the end of the fall semester I will have completed 31 years on the education faculty, and I have been blessed by the most eclectic and exciting set of colleagues that exists in any education school in the country. I have been privileged to know dedicated and impassioned students, and perhaps help a few of them. For all that: thanks.

I should hasten to add that I am by no means retiring from academic life. My current work is among the most satisfying of my career, and, I believe, the most important. New ideas and new ventures beckon. But there will be some welcome work habits and lifestyle changes. As a Stanford colleague put it after making a similar decision, “Think of it as a permanent sabbatical.”

More about Chuck's academic career here