Public universities have assumed business-minded practices and norms that more closely align with goals and values of corporations than social institutions charged with creating and disseminating knowledge. One pervasive cost-savings strategy is the outsourcing of instruction to a contingent workforce. This case study explores the experiences of…

Plenty of research tells us that culture is the most essential ingredient in a healthy organization, yet there are many colleagues who wonder whether research has a healthy place in their campus cultures. The reflections here - originally offered during a discussion at the CCCU's International Forum in 2022 - offer some suggestions for nurturing…

Non-tenure-track (NTT) faculty--typically contingent faculty hired on fixed-term contracts--know that budgets tightened during the pandemic likely mean fewer jobs, with little or no hope of professional advancement. Cost-conscious administrators often resist extending benefits to such instructors or look to trim those already in place, leaving…

Neoliberal reform of the university sector has resulted in increasing numbers of academics employed on casual or fixed-term contracts. While there is an emergent body of literature on issues of precarity in the academy, relatively little attention has been paid to the roles and responsibilities of those tenured academics who employ and…

Context: As instructional part-time, non-tenure-track faculty (NTTF) come to constitute an increasing proportion of all teaching faculty in the United States, significant research has investigated the experiences and perspectives of these essential higher education workers. In past decades, a subset of this work has sought to typologize this…

The number of PhDs awarded in chemical engineering is disproportionate with the number of tenure track positions available; an overview of the contributions that can be made by teaching-focused faculty is presented. Statistics are provided for the number of chemical engineering faculty in the US by rank, position and gender. Based on literature…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to study employee engagement in higher education by examining full-time non-tenure track faculty members' perceptions at a North East US state public university. Design/methodology/approach: The authors used semi-structured face-to-face personal interviews with 11 non-tenure track full-time university faculty.…

This article delves into student course feedback using publicly available data from the University of North Texas. It examines factors influencing elevated student course evaluation ratings in the Information Technology and Decision Sciences department. The study reveals a positive relationship between higher response rates and better evaluation…

This article explores how researchers adapt to disruptions that cost them access to their field sites, advancing a uniquely sociological perspective on the dynamics of flexibility and adaptation in qualitative methods. Through interviews with 31 ethnographers whose access was preempted or eliminated, I find that adaptation varied systematically…

Securing a first academic job in the United States as a young professional can be a very time consuming and stressful process. Candidates must carefully apply and then typically navigate off- and on-campus interviews. Although there is some literature dedicated to aiding in this process, some areas are not extensively discussed, such as contract…

The goals of higher education--engaging the hearts and minds of our next generation, advancing novel and pragmatic solutions to the most pressing local and global problems--call for great passion and skill. That's not the whole formula, though. Diversity performs its own powerful role. College faculties that represent a diversity of expertise,…

This article centers the counternarratives of four Asian American motherscholar teacher educators presented as letters to our children in which we apply tenets of AsianCrit to parenting and education, with racial realism at the forefront. Using Asian Critical Theory and motherscholar research to frame our analysis, themes within and across the…

Despite institutional claims to value increased racial diversity in higher education, Black women in faculty roles perpetually navigate oppressive cultures across all institutional types. The ability to build and foster mutually beneficial interracial mentoring relationships is vitally important to move beyond performative diversity and build…

The pursuit of tenure in higher education is arguably the dominant focus of tenure track faculty throughout the United States' higher education environment, if not a world-wide phenomenon. By applying Vroom's Expectancy theory of motivation, this study intends to investigate the relationship between research productivity and motivation to conduct…

Continuing growth in immigration in the U.S. and other countries worldwide means an increased number of speakers of languages other than English or other national languages in classrooms, thus raising a need for teachers prepared for linguistically diverse student populations. While recent research in teaching and teacher education has pointed to…