Faculty and their work are the heart, and thus determine the health, of every college and university and have a lasting impact on the many lives they touch. Well over a million faculty members now teach about 15 million students at over 4,000 colleges and universities in this country. The continued vitality of the academic profession is therefore of concern to a very large number of people and institutions. Since 1940, when tenure was widely endorsed as the uniform model for academic employment, the work life of faculty has changed profoundly. Currently, four forces are affecting faculty work and work places in significant ways, namely: (1) Higher education institutions are experiencing numerous external pressures. They need faculty members who can respond to constrained financial environments and calls for accountability, rise to the challenge of the new educational technologies, deal with expanding knowledge and shifting disciplinary boundaries, and teach an increasingly diverse student population.; (2) New types of faculty appointments have proliferated, and the majority of faculty members are no longer in full-time tenured or tenure-track jobs.; (3) Women and people of color have diversified the faculty, with needs that to some extent differ from those of their white male peers.; (4) New faculty members have certain expectations about the workplace, including that it will enable them to balance work with other responsibilities that are at least as important to them. In this article, the authors look at each of these forces and explore a new framework for thinking about academic careers that they believe is responsive to current faculty and institutional needs. (Contains 11 resources.)