Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, faculty members faced numerous challenges related to their teaching and research. Among other challenges, many faculty members encountered reduced access to the resources they needed. This Focus On briefly outlines faculty-reported changes in access to resources and compares those changes across the highest degree…

This qualitative research study explores student perceptions of how they build relationships with faculty, including factors that facilitate or undermine these relationships. Building such relationships is an important part of mentoring. Interviews with students reveal the importance of both innovative institutional supports and faculty…

Office hours are one of the most common support mechanisms found in courses. Despite the prevalence of office hours in life sciences classes, there has been little investigation of how science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) students perceive office hours, particularly at non--research intensive universities or other institutions where a…

In this teaching commentary, we describe a re-positioning of office hours from private faculty offices to public spaces such as student centers and cafes. We argue that this shift promotes faculty-student interaction, lowers barriers to help-seeking behavior, and facilitates collaboration among students. We highlight the power dynamics of private…

Office hours are an essential component of the faculty-student relationship. At present, however, few rigorous studies are available to guide faculty toward best practices in their implementation. In this study, the authors analyze survey results (n = 169) from a calculus course that included required office hours attendance. Results are presented…

Higher education institutions are relying more and more on part-time faculty, and are inclined to hire them instead of full-time tenure track faculty. It is important to retain this group of faculty therefore making it necessary to understand how teaching part-time impacts them. The purpose of this exploratory study is to examine burnout among…

This design case describes the process by which a private office was renovated using the Working Labs model, which engages students, faculty, and staff in hands-on engagement from project conception through completion and beyond into ongoing evaluation of everyday use. The spaces that follow the Working Labs model are intended to provide students…

The objective of the study is to examine the current education system present in private technical education universities in Haryana from the faculty members' perspective. It is a descriptive research. The data has been collected with the help of Questionnaire Based Survey. The sample size is 180 comprising of the faculty respondents. The sample…

Honors administrators spend much of their time explaining and describing what honors is and does. When they talk about what honors looks like nationally, they should have answers to the following important questions: How pervasive is the model of separate honors facilities?; How pervasive are the legendary closets that honors programs have so…

This paper examines the effectiveness of a programme of weekly meetings between sessional staff and the unit coordinator of a large first-year class at an Australian university. Interviews with sessional staff indicate that, in addition to training and targeted professional development initiatives, management initiatives that promote engagement…

The author reports on the reigning economic calculus that helps to drive constant expansion and poor utilization of space on many campuses. The author states that colleges could charge for utilities, which might encourage departments to save energy. Most American colleges do not charge for space--in part because doing so would raise the hackles of…

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…

Undergraduates (N = 459) completed a survey in which they rated the appropriateness of various materials that might be posted on the outside of faculty office doors. Results indicated that students considered school-related items to be the most appropriate for posting on faculty doors; items of personal expression were rated second most…

The semiotics of the stuff faculty stick to their office doors has recently attracted scholarly interest. It has been noted that these office doors represent a blank canvas, a space that a professor can fill with images and texts that furnish clues to his or her beliefs, interests, and philosophy of learning. This present study was inspired by the…

The faculty office is the most familiar of institutional workplaces. In this article the author, having taught in five countries other than the United States describes how faculty offices are configured and outfitted in other countries. How these spaces are organized says much about who teachers are, the work ethic in other countries, and how…