This study investigated the influence of role expectations, as defined by tenure status, on medical school faculty attitudes toward professional development activities. A total of 226 full-time faculty within a medical school completed a 15-item professional development goals questionnaire. The study found that full-time faculty perceptions of professional goals differed based on their tenure status, and that the teaching goals and research goals scales of the questionnaire predicted tenure status effectively and reliably. It also found that tenure-track faculty placed higher importance on professional development goals for teaching than for research, whereas non-tenure-track faculty placed higher importance on professional development goals for research than for teaching. (Contains 15 references.) (MDM)