Incentivizing Adjunct Faculty Participation in Professional Development

Without professional development, faculty members may not stay current in their methods and techniques for teaching, which can translate into a less effective learning environment for students. With online education and programs growing in an upward trend, it is imperative that faculty members have access to professional development that support current online teaching methodology and pedagogical/andrological practices. Turning to motivational methods may increase the level of engagement with professional development, where adjunct faculty members feel they are rewarded for their time and participation. This chapter uses motivation theories as a framework to review the existing literature on incentives for online adjunct faculty members who engage in professional development and the best practices for professional development. Colleges and universities can use this information to establish professional development programs and practices that may increase the level of online adjunct faculty members' participation in professional development opportunities.

Creating a Culture of Community Leadership

Many innovative higher education initiatives become ephemeral because they are not adequately integrated into the incentive structures of the academy. When an initiative is simply work, done without alignment to larger learning goals or the inducements faculty follow in seeking tenure and rank promotion, that initiative usually fails. Roughly 20 years into the era of civic skill-building focus in the academy, civic engagement is still at a place where it is ‘finding its way' at universities where it has been implemented. To fully integrate and become a stable, mission-central commitment, civic engagement must become something from which faculty, staff, and students can see the tangible benefits. Three developments in the evolution of civic engagement in the academy are hallmarks of the success intentional incentives have in advancing civic skill-building in college students. The chapter will focus on those three best practices of civic engagement: student civic engagement learning outcomes, incentives for faculty participation, and curricular integration.

Caregiving and Conferencing: Supporting Faculty Participation in Conference Travel

Participation in academic conferences is vital to faculty careers. A statewide program in West Virginia sought to remove travel-related barriers for scholars by reimbursing caregiving costs incurred from traveling. While women were the majority of applicants, faculty of immigrant status and those of color reported more benefits from travel. Family travel funds were requested most often to offset childcare responsibilities for dual career couples. For institutions aiming to implement intersectional, multipronged approaches to institutional change, supporting family travel is vital for the professional development of underrepresented faculty.

Impact of a financial incentive on the completion of educational metrics

Background The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) requires all emergency medicine (EM) training programs to evaluate resident performance and also requires core faculty to attend didactic conference. Assuring faculty participation in these activities can be challenging. Previously, our institution did not have a formal tracking program nor financial incentive for participation in these activities. In 2017, we initiated an educational dashboard which tracked and published all full-time university faculty conference attendance and participation in resident evaluations and other educational activities. Objectives We sought to determine if the implementation of a financially-incentivized educational dashboard would lead to an increase in faculty conference attendance and the number of completed resident evaluations. Methods We conducted a pre- and post-intervention observational study at our EM residency training program between July 2017 and July 2019. Participants were 17 full-time EM attendings at one training site. We compared the number of completed online resident evaluations (MedHub) and number of conference days attended (call-in verification) before and after the introduction of our financial incentive in June 2018. The incentive required 100% completion of resident evaluations and at least 25% attendance at eligible didactic conference days. We calculated pre- and post-intervention averages, and comparisons were made using a chi-square test. Results Prior to implementation of the intervention, the 90-day resident evaluation completion rate was 71.8%. This increased to 100% after implementation (p < 0.001). Conference attendance prior to implementation was 43.8%, which remained unchanged at 41.3% after implementation of the financial incentive (p = 0.920). Conclusions Attaching a financial incentive to a tracked educational dashboard increased faculty participation in resident evaluations but did not change conference attendance. This difference likely reflects the minimum thresholds required to obtain the financial incentive.

The Apex of the Support Structure Pyramid

This chapter investigates the abilities of Christian Worldview law schools and legal training programs to access courts. To capture a more complete picture of this dynamic, it charts the general cartography of Christian Worldview faculty participation in state and federal litigation as both litigators and as amici curiae. This map of Christian Worldview faculty participation in litigation helps identify potential “conduits” through which ideas or intellectual capital can be transmitted or diffused to judicial decision-makers. Additionally, because intellectual capital need not travel through a Christian Worldview conduit to be useful to judicial decision-makers, this analysis also examines court briefs and judicial opinions for citations to Christian Worldview faculty. The chapter finds that with the exception of five exceptionally active and well-connected faculty, the Christian Worldview faculties are not well-represented when it comes to direct litigation.