• Patricia Spakes, chancellor of the University of Washington at Tacoma since 2005, announced that she would step down from her post next year, The Seattle Times reports.

• The Hartford Courant reports that Connecticut legislators might hold hearings to investigate the coming departure of Cheryl J. Norton, president of Southern Connecticut State University, who was apparently forced out shortly after Connecticut State University's chancellor, David G. Carter, was granted the authority to fire campus presidents with only a nod from the governing board's chairperson. Norton signed a separation agreement on December 9, 2009, and two days later handed in a resignation letter stating that she would leave her post on May 31, 2010. Documents obtained by the newspaper, however, show that Carter had informed Norton in a letter dated November 17 that her presidential appointment would be...

•  Harvard University has picked one of its own—Nitin Nohria, a professor of business administration—to become the next dean of its business school, The Boston Globe reports. Nohria will succeed Jay Light, who is retiring on July 1.

• The Chronicle of Philanthropy reports that average salaries for fund raisers in the United States jumped by 7.4 percent last year, to $76,482, according to preliminary findings from the Association of Fundraising Professionals’ annual compensation survey.

• Central Washington University will let go of 10 to 15 workers and trim the hours of an additional 175, in an effort to reduce it's budget, the Associated Press reports.

• Seton Hall University's search for a new chief has resumed, says The Star-Ledger. Last month, the search for a successor to the departing president, Msgr. Robert Sheeran, was interrupted after one of the finalists—the Rev....

• Carleton College, in Northfield, Minn., has chosen Steven G. Poskanzer, president of the State University of New York at New Paltz, as its new leader, the Northfield News reports. He will succeed Robert A. Oden Jr., who is retiring as president, on August 2. 

• The next president of the University of Mary Washington, in Fredericksburg, Va., is Richard V. Hurley, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports. He has been executive vice president since July 2008 and acting president (for the second time) since April 1. He'll assume the post permanently on July 1.

• An interim associate vice president in charge of capital building projects at the University of Connecticut, Jeffrey Reynolds, has been placed on paid leave following an investigation into whether he was living at an on-campus hotel at the state's expense, the Hartford Courant reports.

• Lafayette College, in Easton, Pa., will fork...

Over at Historiann, an anonymous guest blogger—an assistant professor in a humanities department at a large, public university—tells the hair-raising story of her months-long (and, at eight-months pregnant, still unresolved) struggle to secure paid maternity leave. She describes how her chair first attempted to deny her leave on a weird technicality, even though she was told that her university had paid maternity leave, and then tried to make it conditional on her continuing to do service work while she was out:

The chair listened to my request and then said that he would mention it to the dean during their next meeting. Shortly thereafter the chair came back to me and said: "There's a problem!" Two problems, actually. The first "problem" was that my child is due in the late spring or early summer, so there was a question about whether or not I qualified for leave in the fall, since...

Unbalanced Reaction, who is enjoying her first year on the tenure track, describes the thing she misses most from her former job as an visiting assistant professor — namely, that it came with "all the advantages of being on the tenure track without most of the crap." She elaborates:

- Committees. It is very rare to be assigned to a committee as a visitor. Do I really need to elaborate?

- Advisees. Yes, we all love advising students on how to find a path other than pre-med (insert eye roll here). They are also a huge time suck. It is very, very rare for Visiting Vixens to be given formal advisees.

- Faculty meetings! While some schools might think it's a good idea to attend, the presence of Visiting Ass.es is not usually required. Again, I don't think I need to explain why not having to attend faculty meetings is AWE-SOME.

- Research pressure! Research is rarely an expectation for a...

Faculty members at Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge are seeing red over the administration's decision to yank a tenured biology professor from the classroom last month for grading too harshly, The Ticker reports. According to the university's student newspaper, The Daily Reveille, Dominique Homberger, who has taught at the university for nearly three decades, was removed from teaching a Biology 1001 section after giving the second of four exams for the course. Her replacement hiked students' grades on the first exam 25 percent.

The Louisiana State University chapter of the American Association of University Professors submitted a written complaint to the system president, John V. Lombardi, on Monday, calling Ms. Homberger's removal and the subsequent changing of student grades a "violation of academic freedom and faculty rights," the Reveille notes.

Kevin Carman, dean of the...

• The longtime chancellor of the University of Wisconsin at Superior, Julius E. Erlenbach, has announced that he intends to retire on August 1, the Duluth News Tribune reports. Christopher Markwood, the university's provost, is expected to take over as interim chancellor when Mr. Erlenbach steps down.

• John Burness, a former senior vice president for academic affairs at Duke University, will assume the post of interim president of Franklin & Marshall College this summer, The Ticker reports. He'll replace president John A. Fry, who is leaving for the top job at Drexel University.

• The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio has picked Francisco González-Scarano, chair of the department of neurology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, to become dean of the School of Medicine and vice president for medical affairs on August 1. See a university press...

Have you ever gotten an offer you couldn't refuse? Bittersweet Girl, an assistant professor of literature at Unnamed U., was on a roll in her research, preparing to go up for tenure in the fall, and starting to dream about life with tenure—"I've been really looking forward to that moment: the opportunity to reconsider my commitments, how I spend my time, what I want my tenure years to be dedicated to, etc.," she writes—when the offer came:

Wouldn't you know it? It's like administrators can smell a slight cessation in productivity, an anticipated period of peace and self-reflection. And they pounce. They say: Now that things are looking so good for your tenure case, now that your professional reputation is established, now that you are so familiar with how things work at Unnamed U., now that you've proven yourself capable of balancing service, teaching, and publishing ... now we'd like...

• Western Kentucky University officials announced last week that the university will offer health-care benefits to employees' domestic partners starting next year, The Courier-Journal reports. That will make Western Kentucky the fourth public university in the state — the others are the University of Louisville, the University of Kentucky, and Northern Kentucky University — to provide health coverage to same-sex partners, the newspaper notes.

• The University of Maine is preparing to eliminate 74 positions, including 21 faculty jobs, as part of a plan to plug a projected $5.9-million budget hole next year, the Bangor Daily News reports. Most of the cuts will come from retirements, resignations, or positions left unfilled; however, eight layoffs are included and 15 positions are "listed as reductions," meaning workers' hours will be trimmed, the newspaper notes. 

In a recent post, Lesboprof chides herself for having been reticent about pursuing a leadership position in academe and wonders if traditional gender norms have been holding her back:

I was looking at the candidates for what could honestly be my dream job in the future, and I had a sudden realization. I might have been a contender for the job … right now! Not in five years, not after promotion to full professor, not after an intermediate administrative post, but right freakin' now! Not a shoo-in, by any means, but the pool is looking a little shallow if these candidates are the best for the job. Of course, I hadn't applied, thinking it was beyond my current standing.

Yet perhaps this is a particularly female way of looking at moving up. Many male leaders I see have no compunction against reaching for a much higher position, skipping steps along the way. There seems to be a different...