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Faculty Development in an Era of Resource Constraints

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 April 2005

Donald C. Baumer
Donald C. Baumer
Affiliation:
Smith College
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Extract

Institutional support for faculty development within higher education has increasedgreatly at many colleges and universities over the last 10–15 years. In the 1970s, andcontinuing through much of the 1980s, the big concern among top administrators about facultyseemed to be that too many were tenured. Heavily tenured departments were seen by many as asource of stagnation and low productivity. Thus, rather than emphasizing programs forfaculty development, many institutions sought ways to insure that faculty would retire. But,as the number of actual and foreseeable faculty retirements ballooned in the 1990s, a newconcern arose: recruiting and retaining high quality faculty members. Faculty developmentbecame trendy. Helping new faculty members be the best they could be made sense toadministrators and trustees.

Information

Type
Profession Symposium
Information
PS: Political Science & Politics , Volume 38 , Issue 1 , January 2005, pp. 108 - 109
Copyright
© 2005 by the American Political Science Association

Institutional support for faculty development within higher education has increased greatly at many colleges and universities over the last 10–15 years. In the 1970s, and continuing through much of the 1980s, the big concern among top administrators about faculty seemed to be that too many were tenured. Heavily tenured departments were seen by many as a source of stagnation and low productivity. Thus, rather than emphasizing programs for faculty development, many institutions sought ways to insure that faculty would retire. But, as the number of actual and foreseeable faculty retirements ballooned in the 1990s, a new concern arose: recruiting and retaining high quality faculty members. Faculty development became trendy. Helping new faculty members be the best they could be made sense to administrators and trustees.

At Smith College, the program of faculty development blossomed during the 1990s from one that provided funding for conference travel, small ($3,000 maximum) internal research grants, and assistance in obtaining external grants, to one that included expanded versions of the aforementioned; plus, various curriculum development grants/incentives, course releases to pursue research and writing projects, and numerous internal workshops and seminars. Several of these new opportunities targeted untenured faculty, but others were directed toward mid-career faculty. One result of the increased availability of course releases was that most untenured faculty members only carried a full teaching load in about half of the years of their probationary period.

Some Examples of New Faculty Development Programs

  • Internal grants (up to $3,000) for computer software and other technological enhancements for the classroom.
  • Internal grants for the development of courses on women, East Asia, multi-culturalism, and globalization.
  • Course releases to collaborate with other colleagues at Smith on interdisciplinary research and writing projects.
  • Internal grants to enable untenured faculty members to host symposia for external scholars working in their area of research.
  • External grants to pursue collaborations with scholars at other selected liberal arts colleges.
  • Workshops dealing with everything from how to teach writing more effectively, to how to get books published, to how to write effective grants proposals.
  • Additional staffing to help faculty members obtain outside grant funding.

Most of these faculty development opportunities are still in place despite a “structural deficit” problem that has resulted in reductions of both staff and faculty at the College in recent years.

Strategic Advantages of Faculty Development Programs

Faculty development programs enjoy several strategic advantages that help them to survive in periods of resource constraints:

  • Presidents and provosts worry about losing their faculty “stars” to other institutions, which is something many trustees sympathize with, even as they insist on downsizing.
  • Presidents, provosts and trustees also want to avoid the perception that the institution is in a state of decline, as cuts in faculty development programs might suggest, because this can affect negatively the recruitment of both students and young faculty.
  • Donors, and some outside institutions/foundations, are often interested in contributing to faculty development; and endowed funds and external grants, once received, often cannot be deployed to other budgetary priorities.

Several of the opportunities listed in the previous paragraph are endowed faculty development programs or opportunities funded by foundations. Thus, despite the temptation among decision-makers to view some aspects of faculty development as non-essential there are off-setting considerations that protect at least some of the funding in this area.

Chairs and senior faculty should keep in mind that workshops, research support, courses releases, and the like are not necessarily the most effective at making young faculty members feel satisfied and productive. There is also the personal element. Does the new faculty member feel at home in the department and/or the college or university? In many institutions faculty mentoring programs have been established to help new faculty learn about the students, the department, and the college/university. Such programs can be helpful, but they should be approached with great care. It is very difficult, if not impossible, to separate mentoring from evaluation. But, some substantial separation should be put into place if the programs are to work well. Separation may take the form of interactions (class observations, etc.) between mentors and untenured faculty not put into writing, and/or having the mentor play an advocacy role in all the formal evaluations of an untenured faculty member conducted by the chair or other senior faculty. There is also the issue of how mentors are chosen; in particular, what role the untenured faculty member plays in the choice of his/her mentor. In general, mentoring relationships that give new faculty members a good deal of choice about who their mentor will be, and what sorts of things they will do together, work best. Mentoring programs should be fluid, flexible, and thus capable of being customized to fit the individual.

Also, chairs and faculty administrators should not forget the informal and social sides of faculty development. What new faculty members often want most is a chance to meet and talk to other faculty in similar circumstances. Social gatherings for untenured faculty members can be very helpful. Informal dinners or even sporting outlets can help new faculty members feel at home. Isolation is usually not conducive to faculty development.