Rewarding Excellent Support for Non-tenure-track Faculty, Part II
The annual Delphi Award presents a $15,000 cash award to each of two applicants who have worked to support non-tenure-track, contingent and/or adjunct faculty. In the first installment of this article, we examined how California State University, Dominguez Hills, supports its non-tenure-track faculty. We continue with the next institution recognized...
Rewarding Excellent Support for Non-tenure-track Faculty, Part I
For decades, campuses have hired increasing numbers of non-tenure track faculty. The number of adjunct faculty is now more than 52 percent of faculty nationally and full-time non-tenure track make up another 18 percent of the faculty, with all types of non-tenure-track faculty (NTTF) accounting for 70 percent of faculty...
Auditing Diversity: Academic Leadership’s Instrumental Role
In an era of rapid demographic change in the U.S. population coupled with declining demand for higher education, many colleges and universities are grappling with the urgent need to attract and retain diverse student, faculty, and staff populations and provide an inclusive learning, living, and working environment on campus. Such...
Pitfalls of Using Student Comments in the Evaluation of Faculty
The use—or misuse—of student ratings of instruction (SRIs) in faculty evaluation is a frequent topic in higher education news. Unfortunately, popular press articles on the topic often garner more attention than the vast empirical literature. A recent review of the research by Linse (2017) pointed to common misperceptions about SRIs,...
Teaching and Learning Centers as Catalysts for Faculty Diversity Development
Consider the experience of Jordan, a fourth-year political science major, who was told by his professor that many African-American students do not pass her class (Brooms, 2017). This stereotyping can create a self-fulfilling prophecy, or what Claude Steele describes as a “stereotype threat,” which impacts students’ performance by challenging their...
Petty Principles for Leaders in Higher Education
Higher education leaders have an opportunity to make an impact on the education and development of a diverse population of students and help them become contributing citizens in society. However, the job comes with a myriad of challenges that can confound both novice and experienced leaders alike. In this post,...
Emotional, Physical, Financial, and Mental Health Effects of Noncollegial Colleagues
Tracy Ford has just completed her PhD and is searching for a full-time position in a university. She is a much sought-after young academic as she has published six articles and presented at a national conference. Also, she has experience in teaching in an adjunct position, and her evaluations were...
Assessing the Impact of Leadership Development, Part 2: The Holton Model
Elwood F. “Ed” Holton III, former director of the School of Human Resource Education & Workforce Development at Louisiana State University, recognized as early as 1996 that the Kirkpatrick Model of Training Assessment, although so widely adopted that it has become virtually an industry standard, had several serious drawbacks (Holton,...
Assessing the Impact of Leadership Development: Part 1, The Kirkpatrick Model
With all the investments that colleges and universities make in trying to develop their academic leaders—sending them to conferences and workshops, creating their own in-house professional development programs, assigning new leaders to mentors, and so on—institutions want to know whether they’re getting any return on their investment. In short, does...
Why Republicans Distrust Higher Education (and What We Can Do about It)
This is the first year that the Gallup poll has included political affiliation in its survey, so there is less historic data than one might desire. However, taken together, the two surveys point out differences in attitudes that can be either a problem for higher education to confront or an...
