But usually, little is done to bridge the transition from an active academic career to the vacuum that occurs when the keys to the office and lab are turned in to the departmental secretary. In the retirement process, the important step of breaking the umbilical cord that connects one to that vibrant mass of young protoplasm, that we call the student body, is left to the individual.

Along with the separation from the classroom, there is a considerable severance from the formal world of ideas. It is no longer possible to check out something in the lab, to run to the library to check a point, to attend a seminar, or even better yet to run something past a colleague. Those things are usually not conveniently available. One’s academic exposure, such as exposure to ideas, has been dramatically reduced. This is the nature of the retirement process. For one who loves learning, these losses are hard to bear.

There is no physiological law that states that the academic juices shut down at an arbitrary retirement age. This fact presents an interesting challenge to the field of faculty development, for a good faculty development program is an engine that is designed to deal with faculty members holistically, which certainly includes the period after retirement.

A good faculty development program keeps its members intellectually alive and growing. Its affiliates do not rationally “close up shop” at mid-career and coast into a retirement and become buried in the ruts and out of touch with their fields. An active faculty person having reached the host institution’s statutory retirement age still can bring much to the table in terms of experience, accreted wisdom, and productivity, and needs to be a part of the total picture of the academe.

The period following formal retirement can be a golden age of scholarship for the retiree who has planned appropriately. This is a time for unstructured activities. Research and writing projects can be undertaken that would not have been prudent when salary, promotion, and tenure were serious considerations and evidence of production was a necessity. It is a time when good counsel can be given to young faculty on matters of teaching, research, and professionalism; encouragement offered to graduate students to ease the pains of graduate work; and the beauties of “the field” explained to the undergraduates.

A properly orchestrated engine of faculty development can provide complete avoidance of the culture shock experienced by a retirement that often consists of stepping off the stage of a well-structured academic program into an abyss that too frequently is stocked with little or no preparation. Proper planning can convert the post-retirement period into the highlight capstone of an academic career.