FACULTY CAREERS

"...so ought we also move away from the unrealistic "super-faculty" model, which asserts that all faculty should always be excellent in, and by implication be able to devote unlimited time to, research, service, and teaching."

Tomorrow's Professor Msg.#359 GFACULTY CAREERS

Folks:

The excerpt below looks at the needs of faculty at various career stages and how universities, particularly land-grant and metropolitan institutions, can best meet these needs. It is from: METROPOLITAN UNIVERSITIES: AN EMERGING MODEL IN AMERICAN HIGHER EDUCATION; Compiled and edited by: Daniel M. Johnson and David A. Bell; forward by: Ernest A. Lynton, University of North Texas Press, Denton, Texas. Copyright (c) University of North Texas Press 1995, all rights reserved. Reprinted with permission.

Regards,

Rick Reis
reis@stanford.edu

UP NEXT: The Research-Teaching Nexus - A Priori Truth or Myth

Tomorrow's Academic Careers

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FACULTY CAREERS

In Part III: Faculty Roles and Responsibilities, in FACULTY AND SCHOLARSHIP: THE NEED FOR CHANGE, pages 104-109 -Gordon A. Haaland, Nell R. Wylie, and Danial A. DiBiasio.

The faculty, form the core of the university enterprise. They are the source of energy and stability in university programs and represent a long-term commitment and institutional investment. It is not uncommon for a faculty member to serve in one of our institutions for three or even four decades, and since in the course of a faculty member's career, many new issues can be expected to arise that cannot be predicted at the beginning of it, we must create an environment for our faculty where flexibility is the norm and where scholarship in new areas is as valued and encouraged as continuing scholarship in old ones.

The traditional model of the academic profession is derived from the most successful national research universities, and the fit with most academic careers at other academic institutions is awkward. Faculty careers are conceptualized as generally linear, following a single specialized research area, wherever it leads. However, we know that faculty members often go through a number of different phases in their careers:

1. The enthusiasm of a new faculty member just emerging from graduate school may be tempered through experience, resulting in new perspectives on his or her discipline.

2. Priorities for scholarship may change-at one time for teaching graduate seminars and pursuing a single line of research, at other times for more direct public service, exploring new scholarly areas, or teaching more undergraduate courses.

3. New discoveries or new perspectives in the discipline may require new scholarship and necessitate changes in service programs and in undergraduate teaching.

To realize the best return on their investment in their faculties by sustaining faculty vitality over the long run, institutions must actively encourage flexibility within academic careers. To achieve the greatest levels of faculty productivity and responsiveness necessary to address the emerging problems of society, it may be necessary to invest university resources in faculty in new ways and to eliminate or alter some university practices that tend to inhibit flexibility in faculty careers.

Faculty Learning Styles.

David A. Kolb has developed a scheme for describing the learning styles of different people, which may help us to understand the changes that occur in faculty careers. Learning style preferences develop as a result of experience, and people in widely different disciplines typically exhibit different preferred modes of thinking and learning. For example, many engineers are individuals who prefer to deal with abstract concepts and apply them to real world problems. On the other hand, people in humanities disciplines often prefer learning opportunities that permit them to reflect and form conclusions based upon individual concrete experiences. According to Kolb, it is a normal part of human development for learning style preferences to change as people mature and for individuals to want to seek different types of intellectual challenges.

A period of specialization emphasizing a particular learning style typically extends through formal education and the early years of a professional career. Specialization is succeeded in mid-career by a stage of integration in which the individual begins to undertake activities that use ways of knowing other than those characteristic of his or her early professional life. Because faculty come to seek integration and undergo changes in preferred learning styles over time, anticipating that these changes will occur may make it possible to more effectively maintain faculty vitality over an entire career.

Faculty Career Stages.

Certain types of dilemmas are characteristic, even if not universal, of faculty members at various career stages. The following characterizations may apply to faculty at various career stages at the land-grant and comprehensive metropolitan universities:

1. All faculty probably struggle with defining what it means to be professional at their institutions. Because the professional model taken from the national research universities is not completely satisfactory, lacking as it does a broader conceptualization of scholarship that includes teaching and service, tensions between the expectations of the university and of the profession commonly arise.

2. New untenured faculty may in some ways experience the greatest professional tension between disciplinary and university expectations. Since they are at the pinnacle of their formal professional training, they may also be the most specialized, of all the university faculty, in terms of preferred learning style. Although very good at their disciplinary specialty, their degree of specialization may make it relatively difficult for them to teach beginning undergraduates, and they may not understand or value the service commitments of the university.

3. Mid-career faculty who seek integration in their professional activities may experience serious institutional resistance. When the opportunity to explore a new line of scholarship is desired for the second sabbatical, for example, departmental colleagues and university standards may require that the individual continue to pursue line of research that is the same as, or very closely related to, what has been done in the past.

4. Senior faculty, if they have not been previously encouraged to seek new sources of intellectual stimulation, may simply withdraw from earlier professional disciplinary activities without engaging new ones.

There is an alternate professional model or viewpoint for faculty members, that is probably more appropriate for those who work at land-grant and comprehensive metropolitan universities. It acknowledges that academic careers may be linear, as in traditional research universities, but it also explicitly recognizes that careers may express their scholarly proclivities in a variety of worthwhile ways. From an administrative viewpoint, the important question is how to encourage the desired diversity of expressions of scholarship while at the same time maintaining high standards of quality in all areas.

Faculty Assessment and Career Growth

If we are going to encourage faculty to grow intellectually in a variety of directions, we need to look critically at the way faculty are evaluated. Current evaluation procedures are almost exclusively the prerogative of the department and discipline, and often are biased by undervaluing information about anything but the quantity and quality of scholarly publication in the discipline. If we are to view scholarship as the core of the university enterprise and if we are to maintain high standards for that scholarship in all its magnifications, we need to develop evaluation procedures to mirror our expectations. Suggested changes in evaluation procedures are outlined for consideration.

First, we need to adopt a flexible set of criteria against which to evaluate faculty members. Although it may be completely appropriate for some faculty at certain points in their careers to be evaluated against the most rigorous publication standards of their own discipline, at other times it may not be. Faculty who seek to emphasize teaching or service should also be evaluated stringently, but against other appropriate evaluation criteria.

Second, to avoid chaos and encourage planning, individual faculty decisions to move in a particular direction or to emphasize one aspect of scholarship rather than another need to be negotiated and agreed upon in advance with the department and institutional level, have been successful at a few institutions in creating an atmosphere for diversification and deserve to be used more. For some faculty, an agreement to use an interdisciplinary evaluation process may be appropriate. Periodic individual evaluations that have a developmental rather than simply summative objective are appropriate and can be helpful for tenured as well as untenured faculty.

Third, we need to seek institutional ways to make excellence in all aspects of scholarship visible to the university and to the larger public community. For example, annual awards might be given by each college of the university to honor faculty who exemplify excellence in the scholarly areas of research, teaching, and service. Special awards could also be given for significant interdisciplinary work. An annual series of invited public events might also effectively highlight faculty who exemplify the new spirit and mission of the university.

Fourth, presidents, provosts, and deans should take frequent opportunities to articulate and affirm the underlying scholarly mission of the university in all of its manifestations. Tangible evidence of their commitment to this vision of the metropolitan university could take the form of supporting professional development centers for faculty. These centers would serve to encourage excellent teaching and research, as well as various entrepreneurial and service activities. Establishment of various centers for interdisciplinary and applied scholarship would serve to demonstrate the universities' priorities in these areas.

Implicit in the preceding paragraphs is the view that faculty need to be seen as individuals, and treated accordingly. As we move away from the national research university standard for evaluating all faculty at the land-grant and comprehensive metropolitan universities, so ought we also move away from the unrealistic "super-faculty" model, which asserts that all faculty should always be excellent in, and by implication be able to devote unlimited time to, research, service, and teaching.

Not all techniques for promoting sustained faculty vitality and career growth will be effective for all faculty. Insofar as assessment is concerned, the evaluation process ought to be seen as the process of constructing an individual evaluation template for each faculty member and measuring his or her accomplishments against it. While some techniques for assisting faculty might be most appropriate for certain groups, such as mentoring for junior faculty or curricular and teaching workshops for mid-career and senior professors, it is important not to stereotype even these groups.

We need to develop and keep a long-term perspective on the professional lives of our faculty members. While affirming that scholarship is the glue that holds the university together, we need to encourage faculty members to diversify and grow intellectually in their own ways, share their experiences with one another, and recognize that everyone experiences changes intellectual interests and motivation over time. To enhance all of the scholarly functions of the university and to respond effectively to the challenges that the twenty-first century will surely bring, we must find institutional ways to permit faculty more flexibility in their careers, to assist in sustaining their professional vitality, and to ensure that they are not locked into the same narrow pattern of scholarship for their entire professional lives.