Conceptualizing a vision of the good life among mid-career faculty.

This qualitative study examined how mid-career faculty defined and pursued the good life and what they perceived as helping or hindering that quest. Using Charmaz’s constructivist grounded theory within a critical realist ontology, the research sought to uncover the conceptual structures and generative mechanisms that shaped their vision of the good life. Thirty post-tenured faculty from diverse institutions across the United States participated in semi-structured interviews designed to elicit both personal and professional understandings of the good life. Analysis followed iterative coding, memoing, and constant comparison, culminating in a grounded conceptual framework composed of seven ends and five means. The ends represented valued states and pursuits that faculty sought to achieve or sustain, including good work, peace, community, family, happiness, expression of faith and hobbies. The means represented the antecedent methods and conditions that enabled those outcomes, including agency, balance, self-care, stress reduction, and intellect. Viewed through a critical realist lens, the means functioned as generative mechanisms operating in the deep domain of social reality, activated in the actual domain through contextual interactions, producing the ends as observable outcomes in the empirical domain. The resulting framework is humanistic and descriptive, depicting the good life as a dynamic integration of state and pursuit. Situated within philosophical, psychological, and higher education theories, it provides a theoretically grounded and empirically rich account of how mid-career faculty enact flourishing as whole persons within academic life.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Doctoral

Grantor

Baylor University.

Year dc:date.issued

2025

Author dc:creator

• Abel, Hina, 1978-

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Glanzer, Perry L. (Perry Lynn)

• Work-life balance in academia.
• University faculty.
• Faculty professional identity.
• Mid-career faculty.
• Ends and means.
• Flourishing framework.
• Good life framework.
• Faculty agency.
• Work-life balance.
• Higher education.
• Thriving framework.
• Academic career.
• Well-being.
• Symbolic interactionism.
• Constructivist grounded theory.
• Critical realist ontology.
• Post-tenure.
• Midlife.

Statement dc:rights

• Baylor University works are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. Contact libraryquestions@baylor.edu for inquiries about permission.

Language dc:language.iso

en

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/2104/14082

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:baylor-ir.tdl.org:2104/14082