Rewarding Faculty Professional Service

Scholars of higher education have long recognized that existing reward systems and structures in academic communities do not weight faculty professional service as they do teaching and research. In the past five years, however, many colleges and universities have found innovative ways to define, document, and evaluate faculty professional service in traditional promotion and tenure systems. Other institutions have created or expanded alternate faculty reward systems, including faculty profiles in service, merit pay, and post-tenure reviews emphasizing service. Based on data from a nation-wide sample, this paper discusses innovations in rewarding faculty professional service and offers conclusions and recommendations

Scholarship Unbound: Assessing Service As Scholarship in Promotion and Tenure Decisions

Scholars of higher education have long recognized that existing reward systems and structures in academic communities do not weight faculty professional service as they do teaching and research. This paper examines how four colleges and universities with exemplary programs for assessing service as scholarship implemented these policies within colleges of education. Case studies suggest that policies to assess service as scholarship can increase consistency among an institution’s service mission, faculty workload, and reward system; expand faculty’s views of scholarship; boost faculty satisfaction; and strengthen the quality of an institution’s service culture

Brief 20: Graduate Education and Civic Engagement

Across the country, new attention is being paid to graduate education and civic engagement (Applegate, 2002; Bloomfield, 2006). For decades college campuses have worked diligently to connect undergraduate academic study with public service in order to enhance learning and meet community needs, a connection often referred to as service-learning or civic engagement. Given that over 1,000 institutions have joined Campus Compact, a national organization of college presidents and institutions committed to this work (www.campuscompact.org), the widespread success of the service-learning movement is undeniable. As a further testament, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching now has a classification focused solely on community engagement (www.carnegiefoundation.org/classifications/index). While graduate schools that prepare students for service-oriented professions such as law, medicine, and social work have long traditions of engaging students in clinics and other forms of experiential learning, graduate education overall has not been a major focus of the civic engagement movement (Stanton & Wagner, 2006)

Inside Rankings: Limitations and Possibilities

Americans love ranking systems. Whether we are ranking the hottest celebrities, the top ten singles, the top chef, or the next design star, ranking seems to be built into the American psyche as a symptom of our competitive, aspirational nature, and our desire to quickly understand the value of things. The purpose of this article is to present our critique of the main weaknesses and contributions of dominant ranking systems, to consider some of the positive and/or neutral roles that they are serving, and to offer three examples of purposes and goals of higher education we think they are not fulfilling. This critique is based on an extensive review of over 100 articles on ranking systems as well as notes from class discussions aimed at unpacking their role in higher education

Left Unsaid: The Role of Work Expectations and Psychological Contracts in Faculty Careers and Departure

Faculty leave higher education institutions for many reasons, including higher salaries, more prestigious departments, lack of collegiality, a better geographic location, and to be closer to family (O\u27Meara, Lounder, & Campbell, 2014; Rosser, 2004; Smart, 1990; Xu, 2008). At the same time, research suggests that factors such as a higher salary and a more prestigious department are not really pull factors if faculty members are satisfied and thriving within their institution (Matier, 1990; O\u27Meara, 2014). Rather, faculty become predisposed to leave by virtue of dissatisfaction with certain aspects of their work environment (Daly & Dee, 2006; Johnsrud & Rosser, 2002; Rosser, 2004), which act as a push to either entertain offers or go looking for greener pastures (Daly & Dee, 2006). Embedded within these push and pull factors, and subsequent departure decisions, are expectations and assumptions of what could have been, or should have been possible, in the institutions faculty members leave behind (Lawrence, Celis, & Ott, 2014; Trower, 2012). Important research over the last decade has reinforced the role of work expectations and psychological contracts on advising relationships and faculty work lives (Benzoni, Rousseau, & Li, 2006; Darrah, Hougland, & Prince, 2014; Huston, Norman, & Ambrose, 2007). Early career faculty bring many expectations related to professional relationships, career advancement, and teaching to the door steps of their new academic homes (Lawrence et al., 2014; Trower, 2012). Regardless of whether these expectations are met, they are often left unsaid. Unfortunately, what is left unsaid can be a major factor in faculty departure. This study makes a distinct contribution to the literature by examining the experiences of faculty who have actually left or are about to leave their university. It is rare in studies of faculty departure to have interviews with faculty who actually made the decision to leave, rather than those who simply desire to leave, because of the logistics and politics involved in gaining access to this group. Although intent to leave is a strong predictor of departure, more faculty intend to leave than actually do (Bluedorn, 1982; Daly & Dee, 2006; Rosser & Townshend, 2006; Zhou & Volkwein, 2004); thus understanding the factors that were pivotal in the departure decisions of those who actually left is important to understanding the phenomenon of faculty departure

Service-Learning Is… How Faculty Explain Their Practice

Many researchers have explored faculty engagement in service-learning. However, scholarship rarely considers ways in which the discourses used by faculty to describe service-learning—the stories they tell about what it is they are doing and why—construct images of subject positions, problems, and solutions that inform our beliefs about service-learning and our practice. The purpose of this study was to understand the dominant discourses used by faculty to explain service-learning. The nomination files of 109 exemplary faculty nominated for the Thomas Ehrlich Award were analyzed. Findings indicate that faculty use four dominant discourses regarding the purposes and significance of service-learning: (a) a model of teaching and learning; (b) an expression of personal identity; (c) an expression of institutional context and mission; or (d) or embedded in a specific community partnership. These findings affirm those of previous studies regarding faculty attraction to and motivation for involvement in service-learning, but also point to continuing challenges in institutionalizing service-learning in higher education

Addressing Gender Disparities in Institutional Service Workloads

Unrecognized implicit biases often result in women faculty members performing a disproportionate share of teaching, student mentoring and advising, and departmental and university service. This time-consuming work benefits the institution, yet it goes largely unrewarded. It also can negatively impact women faculty members’ career advancement because the time required to do this work takes time from other pursuits such as scholarship, or other leadership activities, that are more highly valued and rewarded. This presentation addresses these dilemmas and provides concrete solutions. Dr. KerryAnn O\u27Meara is Professor of Higher Education, Director of the ADVANCE Program for Inclusive Excellence, Affiliate Faculty in Women’s Studies and Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs and Graduate Studies in the College of Education at the University of Maryland, College Park. KerryAnn\u27s research examines faculty careers and academic rewards systems with a particular focus on organizational practices that support and limit the full participation of women and URM faculty and the legitimacy of diverse forms of scholarship in the academy. Dr. O’Meara will speak about her work to help faculties become more transparent about workload activities and her experience working with faculties to develop and implement organizational reforms to enhance workload equity