New faculty orientation programs can serve as an important introduction to an academic community. They can create expectations, provide exposure to technical assistance, and welcome faculty members to new communities. The current study explored new faculty orientation programs, cataloging their activities to identify the most common practices in…

Purpose: This study was designed to address the problem of how higher education institutions, as organizations designed to promote learning, responded to the COVID pandemic and the suspension of in-person instruction. The purpose of this paper was specifically to explore how institutions go about learning from the pandemic to better prepare…

The effective use of financial resources is critical for all educational institutions, especially those K-12 schools that rely on public funding for their main operating revenue. As public entities and state governments increasingly struggle to find the revenue necessary to operate prisons, fund Medicaid/Medicare, improve an aging infrastructure,…

Community colleges have a history of being capable of adapting to change, and the current world of competing budget priorities, fast-changing technology, and postsecondary competition challenges these colleges as never before. The result is a need for strong leadership across all levels of administration, especially at the department chair level…

Communities continue to establish, promote, and monitor the educational outcomes of their citizenry through both explicit and implied norms. Community attributes influence the pursuit of education and level of education completed by individual citizens. The influencers within communities can be attributed to common constructs of communities…

Faculty members in higher education institutions frequently have the responsibility of providing service activities to their institutions, professional societies, and external communities. This responsibility, however, generally carries little reward in the workplace and does not play a major role in promotion criteria. For the study we report…

Sabbaticals have been identified as an important tool to help faculty remain current in their responsibilities. By having a dedicated break from traditional responsibilities, faculty members have self-reported rejuvenation and recommitment to their professional work. Institutional policies, however, are largely vague and lack measures to help…

The current study explored the theory of hope as a characteristic of individuals who engage in shared faculty governance, specifically addressing the question: What are the characteristics of faculty governance leaders, specifically their predispositions to have hopeful attitudes about their college campuses and administration? A survey was…

The quality of college faculty members is directly linked to the institutional experience that students encounter, and as such, administrators and leaders are deeply concerned about the productivity, professionalism, and ability of their faculty. One result has been an extreme investment in faculty development and renewal activities, including…

This case study describes the creation of a supportive culture for online teaching at a western university that was transitioning to a new learning management system. The case study highlighted the creation of a faculty learning community as one strategy to address the challenge of faculty working through a change process. The faculty learning…

In the context of increased expectations for accountability and growing controversy surrounding sabbatical leave programs, it is important to address seemingly simple questions of who is or should be awarded a sabbatical and what the rationale is for the award. The study attempted to offer some insight on these issues by examining the factors that…

This chapter describes the various approaches to internal shared governance utilized by community colleges, ranging from approaches that intentionally involve different constituents to those evolved from habit, tradition, and precedence.

Descibes an investigation of 110 faculty who were involved (highly, moderately, or not at all) in governance activities in community colleges. No differences were found in perceptions about ideal governance-process characteristics or faculty involvement in shared governance. However, there was a difference in general perception toward the role of…

Profiles faculty governance senates in two-year colleges. Reports that an exploratory survey was mailed to a purposive national sample of community colleges; responses revealed that governance bodies were less common than previously thought, and that these structures tended to be more informal than their four-year college counterparts. (Contains…

This study examined trends and issues in the involvement of college faculty in institutional governance between 1994 and 1997. The study reviewed 132 issues of "The Chronicle of Higher Education" published during this period to identify any article or news report related to faculty involvement in governance. These topics included faculty…