Today’s opening note is authored by W/A’s Ted Eismeier.

I grew up in a higher education household. My dad was a political scientist. My mom retired as a chief business officer. Both spent their careers in higher education. I know firsthand that academic life isn't insulated from burnout, and two recent pieces are worth reading together on this theme.

In University Business, Erin Andrews of Uwill starts with a premise that should be obvious but rarely gets stated plainly: you can't support students if the people supporting them are burned out. Campuses have invested heavily in student mental health over the past several years. The parallel investment in faculty well-being hasn't happened. Recent data from Geoff Watson's team at NCFDD quantifies the gap: nearly two-thirds of faculty say their well-being has declined over the past year, more than three-quarters say they need support, and just 10% say their institution is delivering it. Erin's piece offers four concrete steps, but the hardest one comes first: institutions need to actually define what falls within the faculty role and what doesn't to ensure faculty aren't absorbing responsibilities that belong elsewhere.

In The Hechinger Report, Janelle Jennings-Alexander of Complete College America makes the same argument from the completion side. Colleges have spent the last decade building out advising infrastructure, data systems, and student supports — and those investments have mattered. But faculty professional development hasn't seen the same focus. It's still treated as optional at most institutions: a one-off workshop, a conference here and there. Janelle's case is straightforward: how faculty design and deliver instruction is one of the most powerful levers we have for student persistence, and we keep leaving it on the margins.

Read together, these two pieces make the same point from different angles. We've built a lot of infrastructure around students. We haven't built much around the people teaching them.

-Ted

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