if you’re going to do a Star Wars academia!AU, here are some thoughts:

• leia organa has been department chair for about a decade because every time she tries to step down, the department is unable to find anyone else willing to take the job. it was supposed to rotate after two years. she hates it. 
• han solo goes an leave every other year or so, ostensibly to investigate “new archives” in some sunny, tropical locale
• luke skywalker also goes on leave every other year or so, but is actually going to very unpleasant archives and actually is allergic to dust
• obi-wan kenobi used to be department chair but now when leia comes by to yell at him that it should be someone else’s turn, he pretends he doesn’t know who this “obi-wan” fella is, he’s totally an RA named Ben
• padme is now dean. of everything. they thought you couldn’t be dean of everything, but she totally is. she’s about to retire and there will be one hell of a power vacuum when she goes
  
• her ancient husband anakin has been emeritus for like half of his career. he still teaches grad seminars but usually scares off all the students on the first day. he has one grad he’s mentoring but he’s never letting her leave. she is on her 15th year of grad school.
  
• C3PO is the photocopy code of the department secretary. everyone knows his code, no one knows his name. he complains about the copy machine in every single faculty meeting, but actually deeply loves the thing. he cried when they tried to replace it.
  
• finn is a grad student who did his MA at [real university name redacted to protect the innocent] and was super burned by the competitive atmosphere. it came down to whether he was willing to take funding that had been allocated for foreign languages (and thus end their department) and he couldn’t do it. he had to switch. he has to start from scratch in the new program because they don’t allow terminal MAs here.
  
• rey has been in one of the hard sciences for, like, EVER and has accidentally forgotten to leave her lab for the past month. don’t EVER try to “tidy” her lab. maintenance staff tell horror stories about her.
  
• poe dameron is leia’s favorite postdoc. he lectures for her frequently. he always assigns her book when he does. they spend the first hour just agreeing how great her book is. this happens every time.