In 1969, he left to become Professor of Semiotics at Milan Polytechnic, spending his first year as a visiting professor at New York University. In 1971 he took up a position as Associate Professor at the University of Bologna, spending 1972 as a visiting professor at Northwestern University. Following the publication of "A Theory of Semiotics" in 1975"," he was promoted to Professor of Semiotics at the University of Bologna. That same year, Eco stepped down from his position as senior non-fiction editor at Bompiani.