While interdisciplinarity has been promoted in universities for decades, research suggests that untenured faculty struggle to receive recognition for their interdisciplinary research. Informed by the microfoundations of institutional theory and discursive legitimation, we examine how members of academic departments participate in the legitimation…

Using various methods and analytical angles, researchers consistently show that members of non-dominant groups, including women, experience academia as a hostile and marginalizing space. Such work is important, and yet, it is equally important that researchers approach the study of women's academic careers by elevating their intellectual labor. In…

Collegiality, which indicates respect, a voice in decision making, and a commitment to the common good, is central to academic governance and faculty culture. However, as faculty work is increasingly unbundled, little is known about how concepts traditionally applied to tenure-track faculty, such as collegiality and the collegium (to which access…

Since 1990, new types of doctoral degrees--most in professions that never had doctorates before--surged into the higher education scene in the United States and elsewhere. In the United States, new "professional practice doctorates" were created in more than a dozen fields, and programs for these doctorates skyrocketed from near 0 in…

A variety of issues are considered in a discussion of faculty-librarian relationships: traditional training and characteristics of college librarians, faculty involvement in policymaking and library practice, the library needs of scholars, stereotypes and individual personality differences, and faculty status for librarians. (MSE)

An examination of the rewards to full-time, male faculty at American universities in two fields, economics and education, showed that publishers are more highly rewarded than their unpublished colleagues, economists receiving more than those in education. Outstanding teaching is apparently not rewarded but public service and administrative skills…

From this data it would appear that teacher ratings are only partly due to individual differences in teaching abilities but also vary with posi tion within the social structure of the university. Some of the conflicting implications of the research findings for university policy are considered. (Editor/PG)

The general education movement is seen as representing a challenge to the dominant definition of professionalism in higher education. Hampshire College reflects both the possibilities and limits of educational reform. An alternative conception of professionalism and the relationship to curriculum, student-faculty interaction, and academic work are…

Statistical findings show that (1) women faculty publish somewhat less than men; (2) there is no evidence that child rearing is related to the number of publications of academic women; and (3) there is no evidence that child rearing decreases the probability of a woman academic being classified as "outstanding" by her peers. (Author/LBH)

The academic con-man is defined as one who, despite a lack of striking originality or tremendous learning, becomes extraordinary, well-known, and revered in the world of higher education. Advice is offered to young college professors on how they can achieve such status. (Article originally published in 1961.) (AF)

Only if significant changes are made in the formal reward systems is it likely that the benefits of improving instruction will become greater than the cost for faculty in higher education. The rewards of instructional development currently are primarily intrinsic and personal, suggests this study. (Author/LBH)

Research and undergraduate teaching need not be mutually exclusive. Research is tied to a seventeenth-century conception of knowledge that divides the disciplines into disconnected chunks and thereby impedes education. The demands of knowledge are beginning to break down the partitions of the research university, hence interdisciplinary programs.…

A study explored the relative importance of three explanations for gender stratification in college administrative employment by modeling their separate and cumulative effects on increase in status, responsibility, and salary achieved with promotion. Findings indicate gender has a substantial negative impact on women's attainment, and the impact…