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Lots of departments want to know what they’re doing right for non-tenure-track faculty members, what they can do better and how that climate affects student learning. But how to measure it? The Delphi Project on the Changing Faculty and Student Success at the University of Southern California, which works with adjuncts and administrators on these issues, fields such questions all the time. So it created a self-assessment tool called Departmental Cultures and Non-Tenure-Track Faculty.
The anonymous survey tool can be used by provosts or administrators, department chairs, non-tenure-track faculty members themselves, or unions to understand departmental climates on campus. It collects information on basic demographics of non-tenure-track faculty members, such as length of service, whether respondents are part-time or full-time, and if they work primarily on campus or online. Questions on departmental culture explore treatment by tenure-track faculty members, participation at faculty meetings, salary and pay, hiring practices, communication, mentoring, and levels of institutional support. There’s a separate subsection for online-only faculty.
Based on non-tenure-track faculty members’ responses, departments fall into one of four “cultures” for adjuncts the Delphi Project has identified elsewhere in its research: destructive, neutral or invisible, inclusive, or “learning” (in which tenure-track colleagues view and treat non-tenure-track faculty members as true peers). The tool includes descriptions of various aspects of departmental culture within each, in part for the benefit of departments looking to improve their climates and therefore improve student learning. For example, departments with learning cultures employ intentional hiring practices and offer professional development that's not limited to campus events, resulting in less turnover and recruitment of quality faculty. Destructive departments, meanwhile, are constantly hiring and offer no professional development.
“The four cultures that the survey is designed to get at are linked to student learning in research,” Adrianna Kezar, professor of higher education and director of the Delphi Project said via email. “We know it can really help campuses, and they have been asking for such an instrument, so we want to get the word out!”
Kezar added, “The destructive cultures are obviously very negative to student outcomes. The invisible one also is fairly problematic. What is surprising is even the inclusive culture does not fully support student learning. I think most people are in the invisible culture and a few moving to inclusive -- but the goal is to reach the learning culture.”
