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Purpose: This conceptual piece applies what we know about student success to introduce a faculty model of success called the Faculty Pathway to Excellence. The model elevates faculty voices in the conversation of student success in community colleges. Method: We collected qualitative data from interviews with faculty at two community colleges and focus groups with faculty from six community colleges to help inform a faculty-focused framework. Proposed model: By changing the conversation to a more comprehensive perspective of faculty success, the model emphasizes the connections, establishment, navigation and leadership, and teaching and learning excellence of faculty members throughout their career trajectories. We define faculty success as faculty retention, faculty satisfaction/sense of belonging, faculty productivity, and ultimately student success (e.g., learning, retention, completion, transfer). Contributions: The development of this Faculty Pathway to Excellence suggests a wider variety of strategies by administration to attract, support, and retain faculty. It also has the potential to help faculty members envision and prepare for the multiple and non-linear pathways in academia. Understanding faculty and their career progression is critical to advance student success conversations. Finding ways to enhance faculty growth and development across all career stages helps students and faculty succeed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Faculty workload inequities have important consequences for faculty diversity and inclusion. On average, women faculty spend more time engaging in service, teaching, and mentoring, while men, on average, spend more time on research, with women of color facing particularly high workload burdens. We explore how faculty members perceive workload in their departments, identifying mechanisms that can help shape their perceptions of greater equity and fairness. White women perceive that their departments have less equitable workloads and are less committed to workload equity than white men. Women of color perceive that their departments are less likely to credit their important work through departmental rewards systems than white men. Workload transparency and clarity, and consistent approaches to assigning classes, advising, and service, can reduce women's perceptions of inequitable and unfair workloads. Our research suggests that departments can identify and put in place a number of key practices around workload that will improve gendered and racialized perceptions of workload. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article describes the critical service-learning in a partnership between the North Carolina State University Higher Education Administration graduate students and the TRIO program. Topics discussed include the aim of the social justice and advocacy course developed by faculty members and graduate students to encourage students to enact social justice values, discovery made by students on college access disparities, and implications of critical service-learning for student affairs programs.

In 2012, North Carolina State University launched a campus-wide linguistic diversity program, “Educating the Educated,” with a goal of engaging the campus community about language as a key element of diversity and increasing general knowledge of language and dialect differences. The program has successfully grown over the past several years since its launch, in large part due to the leadership efforts of the program’s student ambassadors. Student ambassadors are involved in peer education on campus, seek out opportunities to engage the campus and local communities, and develop partnerships on campus with existing organizations to enhance diversity education efforts with the inclusion of language diversity. A majority of these student ambassadors are graduate students in the linguistics Masters program. In this paper, we discuss the importance of the student ambassadors to the success of the program in terms of their contributions and advancement of program objectives. We also highlight the importance of graduate students being engaged on their campus, drawing from higher education research literature on graduate student engagement and the critical role it plays in academic and professional development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mixing political appointments and university operations can prove challenging and, in this case, caused the resignation of three senior officials at State University. Bolman and Deal’s four frames provide a structure for analyzing this complex case. The political frame and issues of power and coalitions offer a particularly useful lens to understand a volatile university situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Audrey J. Jaeger, Stephany Dunstan, Courtney Thornton, Alyssa B. Rockenbach, Joy G. Gayles, and Karen J. Haley argue that applying our theoretical frameworks in everyday decision making will help us to be more efficient and effective-and they provide a user-friendly analogy to guide us in this endeavor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers are beginning to understand that there are some differential effects on students in relation to exposure to part-time faculty; one possible explanation may be differences depending on program area. This study explores whether exposure to part-time faculty differentially affects students’ likelihood of transferring across academic program areas. The findings confirm prior research identifying a negative relationship between students’ instructional time with part-time faculty and their probability of transferring from a community college to a 4-year institution; however, the results indicated no differential effects of exposure to part-time faculty depending on program area. As scholars highlight differences among part-time faculty depending on academic discipline, this research suggests that these differences do not translate into differential effects on students’ likelihood of transferring. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In many cases, state systems of higher education are not only challenged to address decreasing state budgets but are also asked to increase student retention and other measures of student success. The increased use of contingent faculty may help economically, but this trend may have unintended consequences. This research used logistic regression methods to examine six institutions within a public higher education system for the effects of contingent faculty use on first-year student retention. A thorough examination of other traditional variables used in retention studies is also provided. Results are reported by institutional type via Carnegie classification. Most notably, high levels of exposure to part-time faculty in the first year of college are consistently found to negatively affect student retention to the second year. These findings have implications for both policy and practice in the use of contingent faculty across institutional types. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Employment of part-time faculty members by community colleges has become an increasingly common approach to reducing institutional costs, which may have unintended consequences for student outcomes. This study examines the relationship between part-time faculty members and the associate's degree completion of community college students. The authors use hierarchical generalized linear modeling to analyze student- and institution-level data from the California community college system to determine how student exposure to part-time faculty members affected the likelihood of earning an associate's degree. Findings indicate that students experienced a significant yet modest negative effect from exposure to part-time faculty members on the probability of completing an associate's degree. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stories, heroes, and rituals are among the tools in a cultural kit that help institutions develop civically responsible students. The secret is in knowing how to use which tools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Land-grant institutions that are also research extensive may face the unique position of asking faculty to fulfill a historical mission with low consideration of public service in the reward structure. This paradox between mission and reward results in the socialization of many faculty away from participation in public service. This article discusses a study of faculty perception of values regarding public service at a large, land-grant, and research extensive institution. Results from the study support the notion that both tenure and pay rewards may be inaccessible to faculty who perform public service at land-grant institutions with research emphases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents information on a study which compared access to the Internet and use of the Web for instructional purposes between full-time and part-time community college faculty. Results; Discussion; Conclusion.

A basketball player at a National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I and religiously affiliated school cheats in a course and receives an "F." Under the school's academic policy, a failing grade for academic dishonesty should not be expunged from the student's record, but the university's president approves a grade change for the star athlete. This case examines the actions of a university president, Board of Trustees, faculty members, and other administrators in this controversial situation. The case was developed for an organization theory course in a higher education administration program but is also instructive on leadership and governance, accountability, and academic integrity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]