“I have long believed that careers should have chapters,” says LSA dean Anne Curzan. The English prof will begin her next one in July, when she steps down to return to the faculty.
“I love teaching. I love my research. And I actually really enjoy administration,” she says. “But you cannot do all of them full speed at the same time. If you continue to do administration at a hundred percent, you get further and further from the research and the teaching, and with each year, it gets harder to go back.”
Curzan says she “came into the role focused on many things—clearly, our research and educational mission, and DEI work and well-being and purpose.” New mental health and well-being advocates are exploring changes at systemic, structural, and community levels to help students work better within the university setting, she adds. An events team hosts frequent events for LSA undergraduates, including “a big welcome party/picnic the first week in front of Angell Hall,” and pie and hot chocolate for students stuck on campus over Thanksgiving.
Curzan won’t return to teaching right away: She starts her first sabbatical since 2007–08 in July. She’ll use some of the time to promote her new book, Says Who?: A Kinder, Funner Usage Guide for Everyone Who Cares About Words. (There’s a local launch at Greenhills School on April 18.) Like her weekly That’s What They Say segment on Michigan Public (formerly Michigan Radio), she hopes the book will “spark curiosity about language and help people be comfortable with the fact that language changes—and be interested in that, as opposed to condemning it off the bat.”
What’s next? “I threw my whole self into these five years as the dean, and I wouldn’t have wanted to do it any other way,” Curzan says. “I’m giving myself this next chapter to see where the book takes me, to return to teaching—and to then figure out what the next chapter will be after that.”
