Similarities and Differences in the Structure and Interpretation of Empowerment and Job Satisfaction between Minority and Majority Faculty Members

Faculty empowerment is a more important topic today than ever before, as faculty roles have become increasingly complex. Moreover, an increase in minority faculty has presented universities with the need to understand the complex interactions between demographics and empowerment to better promote employees’ well-being. Past research has found that racial majority and minority faculty perceive their experiences as faculty differently. In this study, we used an empowerment framework and structural equation modeling to investigate similarities and differences in workplace empowerment for a sample of 720 racial majority and minority faculty members. Empowerment was largely similar for majority and minority faculty members, but the construct of self-determination had different meanings for minority faculty members, and it was more strongly related to trust in their institutions and the personal consequences of their work. Moreover, minority faculty members’ beliefs about their capabilities, the specialness of their work, and their ability to make decisions about their work were more important for efficacy, meaning, and self-determination than they were for majority faculty members. Résumé De nos jours, l’autonomisation du corps professoral est un sujet plus important que jamais, dans un contexte où les rôles qu’il est appelé à jouer deviennent de plus en plus complexes. D’autre part, vu le nombre croissant d’enseignants issus de minorités, l’université a besoin de mieux comprendre les rapports complexes entre démographie et autonomisation afin de mieux assurer le bien-être de ses employés. Certaines études ont déjà observé que les majorités perçoivent leur vécu en milieu universitaire de manière différente que les minorités visibles. Dans l’étude actuelle, nous utilisons un cadre d’autonomisation et la modélisation d’équations structurelles afin d’enquêter sur les ressemblances et différences relatives à l’autonomisation au travail dans un échantillon de 720 universitaires de majorités et de minorités visibles. En gros, le niveau d’autonomisation est semblable pour les universitaires majoritaires et minoritaires, mais l’autodétermination a un sens différent pour les minoritaires, celle-ci étant étroitement liée à la confiance qu’ils ont dans leurs institutions et aux conséquences personnelles de leur travail. En outre, comparée à celle des majoritaires, l’attitude des universitaires minoritaires envers leurs propres capacités, le caractère unique de leur travail et leur liberté de prendre des décisions sur leur travail a un plus grand effet sur leur efficacité, le sens qu’ils prêtent à leur travail et leur autodétermination. Keywords / Mots clés : academia, critical race theory, empowerment, faculty, structural equation modeling / milieu universitaire, théorie critique de la race, autonomisation, corps professoral, modélisation d’équations structurelle

Crafting the Message: The Complex Process Behind Presidential Communication in Higher Education

University presidents engage in formal and informal communicationthrough multiple modes of communication. While scholars have studied the content and motivations behind presidential communication, this study provides insight into the process that university presidents engage in when crafting public statements. Utilizing interviews with presidents (8) and vice-presidents of communication (4) at U.S. flagship universities, we employ the cognitive process writing theory to develop a process model of presidential communication,while highlighting how presidents describe their experiences crafting communication. Results highlight thepresident’sperception of theirroleas instigator of communication, the involvementof other senior leaders (e.g., legal counsel, chief of staff, etc.), andinsight into thecomplex process of creating presidential communications. Implications include the need for presidents to develop their own formal communication process, the importance of being intentional with who communicates, and the need to develop communication teams to craft messages

Rethinking the Two-Body Problem: Using Grounded Theory to Understand Experiences of Partner Hires

The abundance of dual-career couples in academia has led many universities to implement partner-hiring policies and practices to extend a job offer to a candidate’s/employee’s partner to either recruit or retain the target hire. Most of the existing research in this area has focused on institutional policies and practices, with less attention given to the experiences of couples who have received such accommodations. The present study used a grounded theory method and qualitative interviews to analyze the process and perceptions of target hires and accommodated hires working in U.S. postsecondary institutions. Participants shared barriers they experienced, strategies employed to optimize their experience, and identified ways institutions can improve partner hiring processes

Student Choice and Social Mobility through Institutional Policy: An Examination of Loan Repayment Assistance Programs

The cost of higher education continues to rise, forcing many students to seek financial support to pursue their education. Many countries have utilized national systems of student aid to help mitigate the increasing costs. However, these financial aid systems often lead to significant student debt. Guided by restrained choice theory, this study analyzes innovative institution-level policies in the United States called Loan Repayment Assistance Programs (LRAPs), and provides insight into how these policies affect traditionally disadvantaged students’ choice to enroll in a university. Findings suggest that disadvantaged students, specifically first-generation students, are more cognizant and have a better understanding of innovative financial policies (e.g., LRAPs), and the use of such programs could increase student choice and retention, based on their subsequent enrollment satisfaction

Leading for What, Leading for Who? An International Comparative Analysis of University Presidents’ Leadership Amid COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic presented a unique shared challenge for all HEIs leaders around the world. Besides balancing institutional tasks and ensuring the health and safety of the campus community, university presidents were challenged with promoting equity and showing empathy in their leadership. Framed by Henry Mintzberg’s (1973) theory on managerial roles, this study uses in-depth interviews of 14 university presidents in eight countries, to understand how they enacted different roles in leading their institutions through a global crisis. Despite differences among presidential leadership styles in diverse contexts, findings from the study show that leadership roles shifted from securing their institution’s financial and academic stability to securing the well-being of the people within and outside their organization in the face of crisis

Leading for What, Leading for Who? An International Comparative Analysis of University Presidents’ Leadership Amid COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic presented a unique shared challenge for all HEIs leaders around the world. Besides balancing institutional tasks and ensuring the health and safety of the campus community, university presidents were challenged with promoting equity and showing empathy in their leadership. Framed by Henry Mintzberg’s (1973) theory on managerial roles, this study uses in-depth interviews of 14 university presidents in eight countries, to understand how they enacted different roles in leading their institutions through a global crisis. Despite differences among presidential leadership styles in diverse contexts, findings from the study show that leadership roles shifted from securing their institution’s financial and academic stability to securing the well-being of the people within and outside their organization in the face of crisis

Multiple Paths Forward: Diversifying Mathematics as a Strategy for College Success (Executive Summary)

This executive summary outlines key findings from a report on how colleges are creating math pathways that are aligned with students' programs of study

Assessing the Robustness of the Relationship between Tolerance and Intelligence

Introduction: Individual differences in intelligence have been repeatedly found to be positively related to tolerance towards, and support for, the rights of groups different from one’s own. These findings hold true even when considering groups individuals dislike. This relationship has been explained in terms of both direct effects – whereby more intelligent people form more cognitive and less visceral opinions about other groups – and indirect ones, where the relationship represents the effects of phenomena like education or urban living, that have also been argued to give rise to higher intelligence and greater tolerance for others. Methods: To assess the robustness of this association to a plethora of common alternative explanations, we conducted a Specification Curve Analysis with the data from the U.S.-based General Social Survey (Nspecification max >15000). This method fits all possible configurations of a model that are possible with a set of variables, making it uniquely well-suited for robustness testing. Results: We found that the relationship was almost wholly robust to many alternative explanations, and in those cases where the relationship became null, it was likely the result of small sample sizes for a given specification. Conclusion: Intelligence and tolerance are strongly and consistently related

Proximity to Power: The Challenges and Strategies of Interviewing Elites in Higher Education Research

Presidents, provosts, deans, and other upper-level administrators in higher education fit common definitions of “elites” in the context of qualitative research. Scholarship on methods specific to the field of higher education has not identified or described the unique challenges of interviewing these and other elites. The purpose of this paper is to examine challenges and share strategies for elite interviewing, with specific application to qualitative research in the field of higher education. We provide three examples of empirical studies involving elite interviewing and, using literature from other fields, highlight challenges and strategies. By anticipating challenges and implementing these strategies, researchers can enhance the data collection experience and quality of data