This dissertation focuses on support for faculty teacher professional learning at a research university. This study brings new perspectives and direct data reporting to the field of higher education faculty professionalism. My conceptual perspective offers approaches to developing robust faculty teacher professional learning structures that are first grounded in an understanding of the identity of teaching and faculty teachers. I posit that capturing individual faculty teachers' experiences of teacher identity is a necessary research foundation that has not yet been established and is a productive pathway to affecting institutional mindsets and policies. I conducted an ethnographic study with ten faculty research participants at a large Midwest public research institution, using three targeted methods approaches (field observations, interviews, and artifact collection) in order to explore three principal questions: Within the research university community of practice--(1) How do faculty construct their identity as teachers?; (2) What reflective and dialogic processes do faculty employ to make sense of their identity as teachers?; and (3) How and to what extent do faculty pursue active growth in their teaching practice, and what does this mean to them? Its findings argue for structural, lexical, and cultural changes in higher education to prioritize open dialogue and personal connection in community, both as a research process and as a holistic approach to institutional teaching support, and presents provisional evidence for creating infrastructure around: (1) Authentic professional communities; (2) Personal connections and relational work; and (3) Recognized scholarship in teaching. These infrastructural recommendations draw upon data on how faculty teachers conceive of their professional identity via mentorship and advocacy (Chapter 4), the interactive processes by which faculty make sense of their identity as teachers (Chapter 5), and the affirmation of communities of practice as core to the teaching and learning enterprise of the modern university (Chapter 6). This project ultimately suggests that relating--to the self and to the other--is at the heart of teacher professional learning and an underexplored methodology to crafting better teaching support and teacher learning in higher education. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com.bibliotheek.ehb.be/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]