The evolution from new faculty to department chair, through tenure and promotion, has been widely studied, yielding ideas for success. The move from department chair back to faculty status is less studied, with fewer insights in the literature. This article offers a brief review of literature related to becoming and stepping down from the role of…

As institutions of higher education evolve and adapt to meet the increasing needs of their communities, faculty are faced with the choice of where and how to employ their time and expertise. To advance and encourage partnerships between institutions and their communities, academic reward structures must be designed in ways that support those who…

In this article, the authors document the educational pedigrees of faculty at the top 96 economics programs in the United States. They use roster data of 96 top U.S. economics departments to provide a comprehensive update and expansion on data regarding the academic origins--both undergraduate and doctoral--of tenure-track faculty. Nearly 60…

At many research-intensive universities in North America, there is a disproportionate loss of minoritized undergraduate students from Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) majors. Efforts to confront this diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) challenge, such as faculty adoption of evidenced-based instructional approaches that…

While interdisciplinarity has been promoted in universities for decades, research suggests that untenured faculty struggle to receive recognition for their interdisciplinary research. Informed by the microfoundations of institutional theory and discursive legitimation, we examine how members of academic departments participate in the legitimation…

Surprisingly, public universities in Virginia have larger diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) bureaucracies than taxpayer-funded universities in any other state. George Mason University, which has a reputation as a right-of-center institution, has 7.4 DEI personnel per 100 tenure-track faculty, which is the highest of any public university in…

Curriculum, and the teaching and learning that stem from it, is at the heart of each higher education institution. Faculty have the responsibility for developing curriculum in higher education contexts, yet little is known about the beliefs faculty hold of curriculum that underpin how they engage in the curriculum development process. Using…

Since their advent as supplemental staff at community colleges four decades ago, part-time instructors, or adjuncts, have since been employed with increasing frequency and in escalating numbers across all institutional types of American higher education. Currently comprising approximately forty percent of all postsecondary faculty, part-time…

Change in higher education is inevitable (Wergin, 2007). One prominent change is related to faculty composition. Studies have shown increased hiring of full-time non-tenure-track faculty compared to tenure-track faculty (AAUP, 2018; National Center on Educational Statistics, 2018). The department chair plays a critical role in the lives of…

Choosing how to recognize community-engaged scholarship in promotion and tenure policies so that it is assessed accurately and fairly remains a relatively new and ongoing challenge for institutions of higher education. This case study examines how one US research university integrated text to recognize community-engaged scholarship across all…

Coauthorship has intensified as a mode of production across the twentieth century and into the twenty-first in a large number of fields. Yet sole authorship remains a publishing mode in some fields. Publishing is not only an individual behavior but is also nestled in organizations. To that end, incentives to sole -- or co-author work may vary…

While faculty trust in administrators has been studied in K-12 schools and four-year higher education institutions (HEIs), we know little about how community college faculty view of trust. Therefore, we examine trust between community college faculty and their administrators using a multicomponent definition to determine which factors of trust are…

Over the last two decades there have been periodic calls for improved teacher training and a growth in scholarship on teaching and learning. Yet, we know little about opportunities and participation in training programs. What kinds of training are political scientists collectively engaging in, especially for tenured and tenure track faculty? Are…

Positive, effective leadership is needed in institutions of higher education. This research study explored the relationships between perceptions of authentic leadership of those in departmental leadership positions, job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and demographic variables among faculty in colleges of agriculture at land-grant…

Over the last three decades, interdisciplinary cluster hiring programs have become popular on research university campuses as an approach to fostering interdisciplinary collaboration. These programs have not yet been rigorously evaluated across multiple institutions and multiple thematic fields. The paper reports the results of a survey of 199…