Showing items related by title, author, creator and subject.

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  The contradictory faculty: Part-time faculty at community colleges

  Wagoner, Richard Lee (The University of Arizona., 2004)

  Because of community colleges' diverse motivations for hiring part-time faculty, the multiple and at times conflicting missions of various two-year institutions, and the heterogeneity of part-timers themselves, contradictory descriptions of part-time faculty are found in the literature. This study sought to unify contradictory categorizations of part-time faculty in three specific areas: the general demographics of part-time faculty; the existence of a bifurcated or dual faculty labor market in community colleges; and satisfaction of part-time faculty. The study was a quantitative analysis of community college faculty data from both the 1993 and 1999 National Study of Postsecondary Faculty. Given the evidence that community colleges are increasingly globalized institutions, the study sought to discover if part-time faculty could be better conceptualized in terms of temporary labor in the New Economy. Therefore, two-year faculty were disaggregated into seven groups based on college mission and relative employment opportunities outside of academe. It is argued that a gulf exists for temporary labor in the New Economy. Some temporary labor is valued by the institutions that hire them because of the skill and expertise they bring. This group has numerous options outside of the employing institution to capitalize on their skills and expertise. On the other side of the gulf of temporary labor is the group that does not possess rare, highly-valued skills and abilities. These part-timers do not have numerous opportunities in multiple industries. This lack of employment options causes these part-timers to seek, sometimes desperately so, full-time, stable employment with the institution where they are employed. The findings from this study indicate that these two types of part-timers exist simultaneously on community college campuses and they can be distinguished by the disaggregation employed by this study. The study presented evidence that adds nuance to an understanding of part-time faculty in three areas: demographics, particularly in terms of gender and academic training; labor market conditions, including income, professional development opportunities, conceptions of institutional employment, and the status and sector of outside employment; and satisfaction with the demands and rewards of part-time employment.
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  Faculty, Technology, and the Community College: Faculty Culture and Cyber Culture

  Smith-Hawkins, Paula L (The University of Arizona., 2005)

  A qualitative study of faculty work and technology was used to identify four areas of change to community college faculty work structures; specifically, time, work space, classroom teaching and faculty service work. By examining the policies, programs, and technology initiatives as negotiated by faculty members---their work, their interactions with students, other faculty, administrators, and the local community this writer argues that technology has destabilized the nature of faculty work and the structures once associated with faculty responsibilities. This ethnography relies heavily on the theories of Rhoades, Burris, Perlow, and Vallas to examine how technology has changed the daily work of the community college faculty member.Using the ethnographic approach to qualitative research, the data for this study comes from meetings, formal and informal exchanges, writings, and promotional material handed to faculty over a two year periods. The participant/observer approach utilized in this study allows for insight into the complicated relationships between policies and practices, and formal and informal interactions between various campus groups. This particular campus site struggled with the new policies governing informational and educational technology decisions in a setting that promoted a high degree of faculty input and participation. The information gathered in this study points to the destabilizing nature of technology on faculty work.
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  Stress in newly hired, novice faculty: Causes, coping strategies, and interventions for faculty and institutions

  Pugh, Karen Lavinia, 1965- (The University of Arizona., 1996)

  The research questions for this study focus on the stress level reported by new faculty, the causes of stress, and the coping strategies used to deal with stress. Data from the New Faculty Project of the National Center for Postsecondary Teaching, Learning, and Assessment, were analyzed to understand the experiences of newly hired faculty at Research-I, Comprehensive-I, Liberal Arts-I, and Two-Year Institutions. Newly hired non-tenured, and below associate professor rank faculty were selected from the initial sample of 177 newly hired faculty; 136 faculty completed surveys, and 95 faculty completed interviews for each of the first three years of their employment. A moderate level of stress was reported and remained relatively stable over time. The causes of faculty stress were of three types: those innate to the position, those due to being new, and those due to life stressors. Three types of coping strategies were employed: those providing a solution, those allowing faculty to maintain, and those in which faculty "gave up".