Due to the current COVID-19 pandemic, faculty stress in higher education is high as a result of the transition from face-to-face to alternative teaching modalities. Excessive stress significantly decreases employee productivity and costs organizations an annual estimated $300 billion in medical bills and lost productivity. In higher education, research has focused more on student rather than faculty stress, and a comprehensive stress management model for faculty is conspicuously missing from the literature. We propose a new conceptual framework that incorporates two otherwise disparate concepts: Social Ecological Model (SEM) and Feldman’s employee socialization stages. At each socialization stage and SEM level, we advocate that higher educational institutions reduce faculty powerlessness that leads to dysfunctional stress. We offer implications for faculty health, productivity and efficacy, as well as higher education organizational effectiveness.