Teachers are given preparation time during the school day to complete necessary tasks, however, research shows that teachers continue to work longer hours than their peers in the past. Researchers have identified non-instructional teacher time use, which are the tasks teachers need to complete that are not directly related to instruction, as a…

This mixed-methods research examined the experiences of occupational burnout among Title IX coordinators at higher education institutions in Pennsylvania as measured by the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) and by open-ended interviews with a subset of the Inventory respondents. Statistical analysis (35% response rate) indicated that Title IX…

Teachers are leaving the teaching profession before reaching the age of retirement at increasingly high numbers, many citing increased stress as a factor in their decision to quit, contributing to a national teacher shortage. This qualitative study investigated the stressors experienced by eight K-12 teachers in a rural Pennsylvania school…

Historically, empirical research exploring the roles, responsibilities, and challenges of department chairs has been limited and narrow in scope. In addition, these studies have not kept pace with the rapidly changing nature of higher education. The current study consists of data collected from a survey of current and former chairs at a small,…

The literature suggests that personal information management is a serious challenge for many computer users. Online faculty are especially challenged because of the large number of electronic files necessitated by teaching online. Those who have experience in this environment may offer valuable insights regarding information management challenges…

In higher education's environment of accountability, the development and assessment of student learning outcomes (SLOs) are driven by both external stakeholder requirements for accreditation and internal institutional pressures to demonstrate student learning as the core function of universities and colleges. This paper presents a framework to…

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of electronic mail and other portable and wireless devices on the traditional out of classroom communications which take place between students and professors in colleges and universities. The environment in which higher education instruction occurs has changed dramatically in the last two…

Not long after its introduction into the consumer market in October of 2001, the first iPods began turning up on college campuses nationwide. Today, there are active iPod academic programs on many campuses around the country. And where there are no formal academic programs--yet--there are countless students making their own use of the iPods in…

The Copernican plan can help almost every U.S. high school decrease its average class size, increase its course offerings, substantially reduce teaching load, provide students with regularly scheduled seminars, establish a productive learning environment, and substantially increase learning mastery within present funding levels. Sidebars describe…

Business faculty members teaching at undergraduate campuses of the Pennsylvania State University were surveyed in order to assess their satisfaction with free Web sources and with subscription databases for their professional research. Although satisfaction with the Web's ease of use was higher than that for databases, overall satisfaction for…

An evaluation of the faculty workload in Pennsylvania's state-owned higher education institutions is presented. Tabular and text data show: faculty workload in terms of full-time equivalent (FTE) student/faculty instruction ratio, student credit hours, student-contact hours, and credit-hour cost; relationship of average full credit-hour cost per…

This document analyzes the events and circumstances surrounding the collective negotiations between faculty and administration at the Community College of Beaver County (Pennsylvania) during the summer of 1976; the impasse that resulted concerning the issue of retrenchment; the Board's refusal to accept a faculty offer to continue negotiations…

This guide outlines the key elements of a full time equivalent (FTE) instructional support model, and provides suggestions for its effective implementation. Support teachers in the Instructional Support Team (IST) Program perform a variety of functions, including conducting instructional assessments, classroom observations, data collection,…

Driven by advances in instructional technologies, the processes of teaching and learning have come under new scrutiny in recent years. Some have called for renewed interest among faculty in the "scholarship of teaching", whereby a portion of their time goes to assessing their pedagogical styles and seeking technology-enhanced…

As faculty and other public sector unions become more sophisticated in collective bargaining, they tend to lay a greater variety of demands on the table. This, in turn, forces the employer to ask, Do I really have to bargain about these subjects? As more employers refuse to bargain, more unions charge them with failing to bargain in good faith,…