By Vic Cox

Condensed matter physicist James Langer has just had a research grant renewed by the Department of Energy, and anticipates having more flexible time to work with students and postdocs at UCSB. He says the past four years as National Academy of Science vice president has caused him to be off campus more than on, and “retirement seems a sensible way” to control his schedule.

In fact, he is slightly uncomfortable with the term “retirement.” Referring to himself as well as faculty colleagues, Langer says, “Most of us don’t completely leave.”

Former Interdisciplinary Humanities Center Director Porter Abbott, who retires this quarter after 39 years with the English Department at UCSB, and who says he looks forward to “writing every morning,” has agreed to teach part-time for his department. For the next four winter quarters he will “teach my favorite courses.” He adds with a smile, “I still have not gotten some of them right.”

Other senior faculty, including those contacted for this article who have retired or are in the process, confirm that they remain tied to UCSB and academia in general. Even their titles of “research professor” or “professor emerita” underscore this bond.

Despite an uneven pattern of age distribution across campus—53 percent (not 42%, as in the June 15 print edition) of engineering faculty were under age 50 in 2003-04 while 58 percent of the social sciences faculty were above 50 that same year—retirements have edged up slightly in past five years, according to figures from the Office of Academic Personnel. Ten faculty members retired in 2000-01 and 16 retired in 2003-04; the projected total for this year is 18.

While 136 faculty retired or resigned between 1999-2000 and 2003-04, a total of 233 were hired, reports Pat Sheppard, director of academic personnel. She notes that with more than 400 new hires in the past decade, out of 860 total current ladder faculty, “there has been a lot of renewal.”

“We’ve been very successful at recruitment,” says Gene Lucas, executive vice chancellor. “We’ve been keeping up with student enrollment growth, and even filling previously empty positions.” He says that faculty retirement rates, which dropped after three voluntary early retirement programs 10-plus years ago, have “crept back up to pre-1990 levels, as one might expect with an aging population.”

Planning studies project that half of UCSB’s current faculty will reach 65 in the next 15 years. Though faculty tend to stay at least five years longer than traditional retirement age, says Lucas, “it’s going to be a large number who retire.” This is both a concern and an opportunity for campus administrators.

Departments, which have always borne the brunt of recruitment, must decide if upcoming retirements mean that the departing specialists need to be replaced or if shaping a new intellectual facet would enhance the discipline’s strengths. The current crop of junior faculty comes in for high praise.

“They are outstandingly good,” says Ian Rhodes, professor and former chair of electrical and computer engineering. After 26 years at UCSB, he is almost retiring—a consultancy and a promise to teach this summer will keep him around another year—and plans to enjoy “doing things on my terms.” He also vows, “I love being a grandpa—it’s my new career path.”

In their own ways, Abbott and Langer echo Rhodes’ sentiments about junior faculty. The English professor and former humanities dean likes to mention his department’s “brilliant hires,” and observes, “They’re all type A personalities.”

Langer, the former head of the Institute for Theoretical Physics, looks back on 23 years here and smiles at the campus’s progress. “I don’t know exactly how it happened, but UCSB has gone from being one of the relatively minor UC campuses to being one of the best places in the world to do certain things.”

To keep that momentum, he says, “It’s important for the old fuds, like me, to get out of the way of the bright, young people.”