Faculty as Leaders in the 21st Century University

Increased participation in institutional leadership is one of the most important changes demanded of contemporary faculty. This chapter summarizes findings based on interviews of eight current academic leaders. Interviews employed a qualitative ethnographic approach, strengthened by Flanagan's classic critical incident technique with purposive convenience sampling. Leadership narratives from lived experiences of interviewees illuminate issues, problems, perspectives, and opinions about contemporary academe, including changes in higher education and with today's college students. This chapter discusses administrative leadership tools and provides insider insights about idealistic expectations for administrative leadership styles versus realistic actualizations. This chapter further discusses useful skills in four areas: communication, collaboration, organization, and work-life balance. The rich data from the interviewees provide rare perspectives of how contemporary faculty-turned-leaders can view and influence leadership responses to the changing face of higher education in the United States.

College Faculty as Adult Learners

The author discusses an ongoing study that focuses on one particular construct—personal and professional reflection—as a means toward growth and change for faculty and the institutions in which they serve. To best set the context of why continued growth and change is critical and necessary, it is helpful to provide a concise overview of five pressures that are faced by universities and faculty, in particular, in the current contexts in which they function. The author revisits, at the end of this chapter, a disposition and enhanced capacity to be reflective, individually and collectively, to provide a heightened strength to withstand and mitigate these pressures and to envision a path through this gauntlet that ensures universities and the faculty within them a continued role in societal leadership.

Faculty Using E-Journals in Developing Countries

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) have affected every sphere of human endeavor, including teaching, learning, and research. The evolution of ICTs has brought about the emergence of electronic journals (also known as e-journals). This chapter focuses on electronic journals and their importance in teaching and research. It covers the evolution of e-journals in the education landscape and current trends in the use of e-journals in developing countries. The chapter also examines the challenges of e-journal usage in developing countries and made recommendations.

Redefining the Proxemics of the Mentorship

The sociopolitical controversies on campus that have resulted in “safe spaces” have pressured traditional structures based on proxemics, such as the mentorship, to reinvent themselves or disappear. In the chapter, “proximity” itself is defined not in terms of spatial contiguity but as an attentional structure by which the mentee achieves an intimate understanding at a distance of the objective achievements in teaching and writing that distinguish her mentor and other role models and that provoke acts of creative mimesis and exegesis by the mentee. Inspired by the ancient Stoic practice of the “care of the self” as explicated by Michel Foucault, the crux of the redefined mentored relation is not inculcating knowledge but guiding the growth of the mentee's critical consciousness in preparation for a career and a life well-lived, befitting a noble spirit. Since the focus of the redefined mentored relation privileges distance and objective spirit (via the critical study of works) over personal interaction, the scholarly autonomy of the mentee is a noteworthy learning outcome.

The Inconvenient Truth About Digital Transformation in Higher Education

The proliferation of technology into the teaching and learning process has drawn ire in certain quarters of education. This chapter takes up this train of thought to elucidate on certain aspects of the digital transformation of higher education processes which threaten to suffocate the humanistic aspects of the educative process. Special focuses are placed on the pervasive and invasive encroachment of technology into all aspects of teaching, learning, and assessment in terms of its actual value to the end users—the students. The authors highlight how universities are now reflecting Giroux's neoliberalism and Ritzer's McDonaldization in their management and, consequently, depriving instructors and students of the opportunity to true quality education that should pivot on humanistic values and not the accumulation of grades. Apart from these theoretical bases, the authors present arguments drawn from empirical evidence and their own experience as long-serving academics.

A Study of Novice Faculty Members' Experiences During the Mentoring Process

This chapter suggests a new framework for thinking about the role of informal mentoring in higher education based on the persistently changing role of education. The chapter provides the findings from a qualitative research study that examined how the lived experiences of three novice professors guided their engagement in informal mentoring opportunities. The study offers evidence to capture how engagement in mentoring opportunities improved the quality of teaching. With each mentoring opportunity, these three professors gained knowledge and skills that they integrated into their classrooms to be more effective teachers. The conclusions address the following areas: the importance of previous lived experiences as a catalyst for in engaging in mentoring opportunities; the importance of mentoring having an informal structure, one where they controlled the learning direction; the nature and ramifications of the informal versus formal aspects of this process; and the findings in this study align with Kolb's learning theory.

Converting Traditional Learning to Online Environments

Teaching and learning are transitioning from traditional classroom-based approaches to computer-based learning environments. The demand for technology innovations generate from the new student generation who was born into a technology-driven era termed digital natives. While a large majority of current teachers come from a less technical generation termed digital immigrants. A teacher cannot reap the benefits of online teaching approaches if they are not trained on how to convert traditional methods to online learning and do not understand the available technologies. This chapter covers e-learning paradigms, e-tools, and e-assessments for converting traditional approaches to online environments.

Optimizing Learning Through Activities and Assessments

Developing an effective online learning environment requires course instructors to integrate technology, pedagogy, and content knowledge (TPACK) into teaching. Focusing on a TPACK-based design for a fully online course in qualitative research methods, this chapter provides a detailed description of developing an online course in three stages: (1) planning and designing a course, (2) preparing an effective course syllabus, and (3) developing activities and assessments. Rubrics as assessment tools are used extensively for grading competencies in the core assignments, addressing the issue of how best to evaluate learning outcomes based on the criterion referenced assessment. The chapter describes that learning activities and assessments are so closely intertwined that it is almost impossible to discuss one without discussing the other, as one seeks to optimize online learning. The description thus supports the principle of instructors who not only become facilitators of learning but also motivators for students in online courses.

Reflections on the Pedagogy of International Field Schools in Bali, Indonesia

Over the past 15 years, through the platform of a senior-level undergraduate course at the University of Guam, a team of professors, researchers, and development practitioners have been striving to refine a pedagogic approach that draws on the value of an embedded international field school to Bali, Indonesia. These efforts are designed to help students understand and appreciate the foundational concepts of community development, while also fostering a learning environment and an experiential program that empowers participants to actively engage in social discourses that contribute in positive and transformative ways to their communities. Employing a curriculum that focuses on both classroom work and international field school experience, students and professors as well as many other participants in the field explore such concepts and practices that are proving to be essential to a sound understanding of community development in the modern age.

Reinforcing Responsible Learning

This chapter reviews the common business practice of providing an employee handbook to new employees, which should guide employee behavior. The expectations and responsibilities of employees are accepted and documented using an employee acknowledgement statement. These real-world practices are introduced to the college human resource management classroom through the course syllabus and a document called a “Course Start Contract” or “Acknowledgement of Syllabus and Course Requirements” developed by the authors. The Course Start Contract explains and reinforces the need for college students to accept responsibilities in the classroom in the same way that employees must accept responsibility and comply with organizational requirements in the workplace.