Sustaining a commitment to teaching in a research-intensive university: what we learn from award-winning faculty (original) (raw)

2016, Studies in Higher Education

Within any higher education institution, there are great teachers who recognize the challenges to sustaining a commitment to highly effective teaching. The current paper explores the beliefs and practices of 10 faculty members who won an undergraduate teacher of the year award at a research-intensive institution. The paper explores the challenges faculty face in prioritizing teaching, the strategies they use to meet these challenges, and suggests institutional supports with the potential to facilitate high-quality teaching in higher education. KEYWORDS University teaching; scholarship of teaching; research university; teaching quality; teaching research nexus What does it mean to be a faculty member in higher education today? Influenced by socio-political and demographic shifts, US colleges and universities face demands to educate more students from increasingly diverse backgrounds (Malcolm 2014; NCES 2012). Concurrently, the decline in state support for higher education has made higher education funding contingent on the capacity to (a) demonstrate accountability, productivity, and student outcomes (Conner and Rabovsky 2011; Newman, Couturier, and Scurry 2004; Spellings 2006) and (b) secure external funding through competitive grants or 'academic capitalism' (Brew 2010; Tuchman 2011). Some scholars contend that as colleges and universities adapted to these competing pressures, fundamental dimensions of what it means to be a faculty member were lost (Bowen, Chingos, and McPherson 2009; Brew 2006; Locke 2012). That is, the primary role of faculty has shifted from teaching and mentoring to a focus on research and the generation of funded projects. This shift from a teaching to a research focus has compromised undergraduate faculty-student interactions. However, these interactions that establish rapport, motivation, and rigorous educational experiences for students are still desired outcomes (e.g. student retention, graduation, and the pursuit of higher education or highly skilled professions). The culture of higher education, broadly defined by societal factors, is enacted within colleges, universities, and departments via structures and relationships that are established and maintained both among colleagues, and between faculty and students. Hardré and Kollmann (2012, 724) contend, 'expectations and the way they are communicated can influence the nature of [faculty] motivation, the degree of effort they expend, their goal orientations, their efficacy for success, and the quality and quantity of their performance.' Two prevailing factors that convey expectations are (a) the increasing standardization of the undergraduate student experience and (b) the use of measurable outcomes to evaluate the effectiveness of colleges and universities. Although an intersection of the two cannot be denied, the mechanisms sustaining these forces can be discussed separately.