Community College Faculty

John S. Levin, Susan T. Kater, and Richard L. Wagoner collectively argue that as community colleges organize themselves to respond to economic needs and employer demands, and as they rely more heavily upon workplace efficiencies such as part-time labor, they turn themselves into businesses or corporations and threaten their social and educational mission.

While teaching occupies the primary role of faculty members in community colleges, the question remains: To what extent are community college faculty members engaged in research and scholarship? This issue focuses on: the types of research and scholarship performed by community college faculty, the forces that foster or impede the engagement of community college faculty members in research and scholarship, specific examples of community college faculty scholarship that demonstrate the value of this work to the institution and to larger society, and policies and practices at the institutional, local, and state level that support engagement in research and scholarship. This is the 171st volume of this Jossey-Bass quarterly report series. Essential to the professional libraries of presidents, vice presidents, deans, and other leaders in today's open-door institutions, New Directions for Community Colleges provides expert guidance in meeting the challenges of their distinctive and expanding educational mission.

The first chapter in this volume presents an overview of the faculty personnel challenges facing community colleges; the next three discuss the socialization and professional development of new faculty. Authors stress the importance of understanding differences among the typs of community colleges and the importance of gender and racial/thnic diversity among the facultry of the institutions who educate the majority of undergraduate females and students of color. The volume concludes with chapters on legal aspects related to the faculty employment and the experiences of presidents and senior instructional administrators, giving valuable guidance to those actively involved in the hiring process. At the heart of this volume is the continued commitment to the community college ideal of providing educational access and, through quality instruction, facilitating student learning and success. Previous research indicated that community college faculty retire at or near the traditional age of sixty-five. With an aging faculty, enrollments that are reaching unprecedented levels, and the federal goverment calling for the community college to take an even greater role in workforce training, community colleges will need to both replace significant portions of their faculty and hire additional faculty lines between now and 2020. This next hiring wave has implications for community colleges, the diverse student populations who attend these institutions, and society in general. This is the 152nd volume of the Jossey-Bass quarterly report series New Directions for Community Colleges. Essential to the professional libraries of presidents, vice presidents, deans, and other leaders in today's open-door institutions, New Directions for Community Colleges provides expert guidance in meeting the challenges of their distinctive and expanding educational mission.

This book introduces community college faculty and faculty developers to the use of faculty learning communities (FLCs) as a means for faculty themselves to investigate and surmount student learning problems they encounter in their classrooms, and as an effective and low-cost strategy for faculty developers working with few resources to stimulate innovative teaching that leads to student persistence and improved learning outcomes. Two-year college instructors face the unique challenge of teaching a mix of learners, from the developmental to high-achievers, that requires using a variety of instructional strategies and techniques. Even the most experienced teachers can find this diversity demanding. Faculty developers at many two-year colleges still rely solely on the one-day workshop model that, while useful, rarely results in sustained student-centered changes in pedagogy or the curriculum, and may not be practicable for the growing cohort of part-time faculty members. By linking work in the classroom with scholarship and reflection, FLCs provide participants with a sense of renewed engagement and stimulate collegial exploration of ways to achieve educational excellence. FLCs are usually faculty-instigated and cross-disciplinary, and comprise groups of six to fifteen faculty that work collaboratively through regular meetings over an extended period of time to promote research and an exchange of experiences, foster community, and develop the scholarship of teaching. FLCs alleviate burnout and isolation, promote the development, testing, and peer review of new classroom strategies or technologies, and lead to the reenergizing and professionalization of teachers. This book introduces the reader to FLCs and to the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, offering examples of application in two-year colleges. Individual chapters describe, among others, an FLC set up to support course redesign; an “Adjunct Connectivity FLC” to integrate part-time faculty within a department and collaborate on the curriculum; a cross-disciplinary FLC to promote student self-regulated learning, and improve academic performance and persistence; a critical thinking FLC that sought to define critical thinking in separate disciplines, examine interdisciplinary cross-over of critical thinking, and measure critical thinking more accurately; an FLC that researched the transfer of learning and developed strategies to promote students’ application of their learning across courses and beyond the classroom. Each chapter describes the formation of its FLC, the processes it engaged in, what worked and did not, and the outcomes achieved. Just as when college faculty fail to remain current in their fields, the failure to engage in continuing development of teaching skills, will equally lead teaching and learning to suffer. When two-year college administrators restrain scholarship and reflection as inappropriate for the real work of the institution they are in fact hindering the professionalization of their teaching force that is essential to institutional mission and student success. When FLCs are supported by leaders and administrators, and faculty learn that collaboration and peer review are valued and even expected as part of being a teaching professional, they become intrinsically motivated and committed to collaboratively solving problems, setting the institution on a path to becoming a learning organization that is proactive and adept at navigating change.

Broad-based, inclusive decision-making is the historical foundation for determining what should and can be taught, how institutions should grow, and who should become a part of the academic community. This text brings together authors to examine faculty governance from a historical perspective, tracing trends and common themes to the present day. It offers real-life strategies for building shared decision-making environments. Chapters deal with how governance is defined and utilized, different aspects of internal governance performance, the relationships between administrators and faculty, the roles that middle managers play, and how faculty leaders arise and communicate with their administrative counterparts.

Explore an important, yet understudied concept: faculty scholarly learning. Taking a broad view, this volume explains how scholarly learning is defined and conceptualized by scholars. The authors synthesize the recent literature and organize the findings according to Boyers four forms of scholarship (discovery, teaching, engagement, and integration). They then offer a counternarrative to faculty scholarly learning and the ways in which it is enacted and supported. Recommendations for developing, supporting, and evaluating faculty scholarly learning are also presented. This volume answers: What does scholarly learning look like at different types of institutions? What contexts and/or supports hinder or help faculty members scholarly learning at the different institutional types? What challenges are noted in the extant literature on faculty work around further study or better understanding of faculty members scholarly learning across institutional types? This is the second issue of the 43rd volume of the Jossey-Bass series ASHE Higher Education Report. Each monograph is the definitive analysis of a tough higher education issue, based on thorough research of pertinent literature and institutional experiences. Topics are identified by a national survey. Noted practitioners and scholars are then commissioned to write the reports, with experts providing critical reviews of each manuscript before publication.

While there have been several studies of writing programs at larger, baccalaureate institutions, the community college classroom has often been overlooked. Authors Howard Tinberg and Jean-Paul Nadeau fill this gap with The Community College Writer, a systematic and unique case study of first semester writing students at a community college. Drawing on surveys, interviews, and samples of classroom assignments, Tinberg and Nadeau use their research at one community college to reach out to instructors throughout the nation, fostering communication between community college faculty members in the effort to establish full-fledged writing programs geared toward student success. At the heart of the book are the voices of the students themselves, as they discuss both their teachers’ expectations and their own. Through a series of case studies, the authors reveal the challenges students face as budding writers, and their firsthand experiences with writing programs at the community college level. With this informative study, Tinberg and Nadeau seek not only to encourage dialogue between student and teacher or community college instructors, but to expand the conversation about program improvement to include both two- and four-year colleges, bringing composition faculty together in an effort to improve writing programs in all schools. Included in the volume are seven appendices, including surveys and interviews with faculty and students, making The Community College Writer a comprehensive and practical guide to tackling the issues facing writing programs and instructors.

Timely, authoritative and practical material for effective faculty evaluation and professional development within the two-year college systems.

Faculty Development addresses how faculty developers work with changes and challenges in teaching within the community college context. Using a multi-case study design based on semi-structured interviews, document analysis, focus groups and surveys, the book examines faculty development during both the pre-pandemic and pandemic eras.

Few studies address workplace bullying in American higher education. Leah P.Hollis, EdD, author of Bully in the Ivory Tower addressed the issue of workplace bullying in four-year institutions. This volume, The Coercive Community College, replicates the study to reveal that 64% of community college respondents are affected by workplace bullying.

The essays in this monograph address three themes related to the challenge of scholarship at the community college. The first is leadership. Leaders need to change attitudes and institutional values if scholarship is to take its place as an accepted part of community college life. The connection between scholarship and teaching, often denied in the false but widely accepted teaching-versus-research dichotomy, is a second theme. The professional obligations of community college educators constitute a third theme. In forging a larger role for scholarship within the community college culture, leaders can build upon the scholarly drives and interests that already exist among many faculty members and administrators. -- From publisher's description.

"This volume speaks of the multiplicity of data required to tell the community college story. The authors explore and detail how various sources - workforce data, market data, state-level data, federal data, and, of course, institutional data such as transcript files - all have something to say about the life of a community college"--Back cover.

"Memo to Provosts, Deans and Department Chairs of institutions large and small: Buy this book. Baron-Nixon has crafted a book that will be especially helpful for those who struggle to navigate the challenge of how best to handle--in the best interests of students and programs -- the 'part-time/adjunct faculty situation' on campus." --NACADA Journal

The Rise and Decline of Faculty Governance is the first history of shared governance in American higher education. Drawing on archival materials and extensive published sources, Larry G. Gerber shows how the professionalization of college teachers coincided with the rise of the modern university in the late nineteenth century and was the principal justification for granting teachers power in making educational decisions. In the twentieth century, the efforts of these governing faculties were directly responsible for molding American higher education into the finest academic system in the world. In recent decades, however, the growing complexity of “multiversities” and the application of business strategies to manage these institutions threatened the concept of faculty governance. Faculty shifted from being autonomous professionals to being “employees.” The casualization of the academic labor market, Gerber argues, threatens to erode the quality of universities. As more faculty become contingent employees, rather than tenured career professionals enjoying both job security and intellectual autonomy, universities become factories in the knowledge economy. In addition to tracing the evolution of faculty decision making, this historical narrative provides readers with an important perspective on contemporary debates about the best way to manage America’s colleges and universities. Gerber also reflects on whether American colleges and universities will be able to retain their position of global preeminence in an increasingly market-driven environment, given that the system of governance that helped make their success possible has been fundamentally altered.

Peer inside community college campuses to witness unexpected and often unprecedented incivility encountered by community college leaders. Real-life experiences, observations, lessons, and recommendations will help you gain expert knowledge on how to handle crises in your academic environment. Discover successful strategies for maintaining and encouraging an atmosphere of civility under even the most hostile conditions on campus or in the community.