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…

This article discusses the Faculty Mentoring Cohort (FMC), a pilot program designed to bolster new faculty retention at St. Mary's College of Maryland (SMCM), a teaching-focused, public honors college in the rural southern Chesapeake region. The FMC matches two established faculty members with two newly hired instructors to create between five and…

Academics rarely discuss work/life balance, or our lack thereof. In this symposium article, we confront the normalization of imbalance on the tenure-track that pervades 21st Century institutions. Our autoethnographic approach includes three personal vignettes based on each author's experience, supported by extant research, to highlight the issues…

Previous studies have established particular patterns of inequity, micro, and macro-aggressions that affect faculty of color at U.S. universities. This article provides an autoethnographic perspective on the experiences of women of color in LIS. It focuses specifically on the ways that prioritizing comfort and civility over equity and justice can…

The concept of community engagement as a primary function of higher education and the roots of this movement can be traced back to the 1980s with the founding of the Campus Compact in 1985 (Glass & Fitzgerald, 2010). The concept has been endorsed by several higher education organizations, including the American Association of State Colleges…

The effective recruitment and retention of faculty of color continue to present major challenges to universities, in part, because the normal search process in higher education has been largely unsuccessful at diversifying faculty. Therefore, universities have implemented alternative strategies to recruit and retain scholars of color, including…

Thanks to increasingly meaningful teacher evaluations, the nation knows far more than ever about the effectiveness of teachers in public school classrooms. What should states, districts, and schools do with that knowledge? In policy debates, much of the attention has focused on teachers at the "ineffective" end of the spectrum. With better teacher…

Criteria for retaining or firing a highly qualified faculty in higher education in many cases are vague and unclear. This situation is neither a comfortable, nor a healthy, both for the faculty and the administration. Stakeholders have enough reason to blame each other in the absence of transparent mechanism. This paper proposes a transparent…

This article describes the creation and implementation of a faculty interest group for historically underrepresented faculty at a large, urban community college in the Northeast. Faculty interest groups provide opportunities for faculty across disciplines to meet to explore common interests and share concerns and best practices. The faculty…

Creating smart, coherent education policy is painstaking work; there are technical, budgetary, and political challenges at almost every turn. But it is some of the most important work that state leaders can undertake. As Ohioans prepared to elect a new governor in late 2018, we at the Fordham Institute began rolling out a set of policy proposals…

Fueled in part by the U.S. Department of Education's Race to the Top program, a massive effort to overhaul teacher evaluation is underway in states and districts across the country. The aim is to ensure that evaluations provide a better indication of "teaching effectiveness," or the extent to which teachers can and do contribute to…

Kathleen McEvoy describes her experience after achieving tenure at Washington & Jefferson College (Pennsylvania). She reflects on how she could have better prepared for her post-tenure academic existence and how the teaching profession could do a better job managing the earning of tenure. In retrospect she realizes that she may have been able…

The research is clear: teachers are the most important factor in raising student achievement in schools. If Connecticut is serious about closing our worst-in-the-nation achievement gap and raising academic performance for all students, there must be an excellent teacher in every classroom. Connecticut's budget crisis will likely lead to widespread…

This paper describes an innovative approach to retaining happy and healthy faculty members in a collegial, productive teaching and learning environment. A major portion of the paper shares how the Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning plays a significant role in the faculty interview process, new faculty orientation, and subsequent mentoring of…

The work of colleges and universities is carried out each day by committed, talented faculty members. The faculty's intellectual capital, taken collectively, is every institution's principal asset. Today, as higher-education institutions are faced with new challenges that only seem to grow more difficult the importance of all faculty members in…