Faculty Development
UNDER CONSTRUCTION
Regardless of one's training, a new Assistant Professor is put into a highly
demanding position with modest to no professional development for many of the skills
that it would have been nice to have mastered.
The historical tradition in higher education is to give the impression that successful
Assistant Professors are highly self-reliant and that they "prove" themselves
by denying assistance.
In the past, the established faculty, I believe, did a great deal of work behind
the scenes, including quiet mentorship (or "path-smoothing") that built
this perception of independence in young faculty. I think this degree of intra-departmental
support has diminished over time due to the diminution of the department as a necessary
support mechanism. One source of this diminution, I think, arises from easy long-distance
travel and fast communication, where it is now convenient to be closer to one's 'virtual
department', those colleagues around the country who share your interests, than the
members of your residential department. This is productive for the professional health
of the individual, but not necessarily for the health of the institution. The department
is still a necessary structure within the local university community, and new faculty
need to negotiate issues that arise in the resident institution, including the management
of groups of students, course and curriculum development, and so on.
What sort of structures are needed for new faculty to ease their transition from
graduate and post-doctoral students? This area of CSIE will be devoted to these questions
in the context of scholarly development in education.