From the Editor—Balancing the Personal and Professional in an Era of Transformed Faculty Roles

From the Editor—Balancing the Personal and Professional in an Era of Transformed Faculty Roles

Some of the realities of academic life are the increasing roles, demands, and expectations that are routinely placed on faculty. As someone who was hired to a tenure earning position as a newly minted PhD in the late 1970s, I was fortunate to enter academia at a time when more traditional roles and expectations prevailed. Although expectations varied somewhat nationally based on the type of educational institution, the specific academic discipline, and the stage of the faculty member's career, the trinity of teaching, scholarship, and service became the norm (Schuster & Finkelstein, 2006). As increasing requirements for research and publication began to emerge in the mid-1980s and early 1990s, there was an explicit understanding that teaching and scholarship held relatively equal weights and that service, while expected, was less valued. In a profession whose mission was to serve clients and client groups, most social work programs historically relied on master's of social work faculty members to educate social work practitioners, and this was still common throughout the 1980s (Harold, 2003). However, with the rapid growth of doctoral programs in social work (Thyer & Arnold, 2003), expectations for scholarship increased, bringing them more in line with those of other academic disciplines.

Even as new standards for hiring, retention, and promotion were adopted, teaching still consisted of meeting with traditional face-to-face classes in a brick-and-mortar setting and, in most cases, scholarship was broadly defined. Expectations for service were quite diverse and typically entailed some combination of serving on department, college, and university committees; student advising; and providing consultation to community agencies or serving as an active member or officer in relevant professional organizations. In these somewhat halcyon days of social work education, choosing a career path as a faculty member seemed ideal for those who had a desire to educate the next generation of social workers and work in an atmosphere known for having a relatively high degree of academic freedom and autonomy. In contrast to agency jobs that were often regimented and stressful, or private practices that required building and maintaining a client base, the opportunity to engage in a wide variety of activities in a collegial workplace made a career in academia appealing.

As numerous scholars have documented (e.g., Alonzo, 2010; Gappa, Austin, & Trice, 2007; Ginsberg, 2011; Hermanowicz, 2011; Kirk, Kil, & Corcoran, 2009; Schuster & Finkelstein, 2006), economic, political, and cultural forces have contributed to the ways in which the nature of faculty work has changed over time. These include financial constraints placed on universities as they are forced to compete for or obtain external financial support, greater expectations for accountability, an increase in full-time administrators and professional administrative staff, the commercialization and commodification of higher education, pressure to attain prestige as measured by national rankings, the changing nature and diversity of students coupled with growing enrollments, a changing faculty profile as seen in the increase of part-time and non-tenure track faculty, and the onset of the Information Age brought about by rapid technological innovation (Gappa et al., 2007; Ginsberg, 2011; Kirk et al., 2009; Schuster & Finkelstein, 2006). These noteworthy developments over the last few decades have resulted in profound changes in the academic workplace and the transformation of faculty roles and careers.

In response to these pressures, faculty roles and responsibilities have become more diverse and complex, and faculty are expected to adapt to these new realities (Gappa et al., 2007; Omara-Otunnu, 2004). These constantly increasing obligations often require new knowledge and skills such as learning innovative pedagogical strategies for teaching online or hybrid classes as well as teaching an increasingly diverse student population, preparing and managing grants and associated budgets, collaborating in interdisciplinary research, tailoring research interests and articles to meet the standards of high impact-factor journals and funding agencies, continually increasing levels of productivity and scholarship, engaging in student advisement and mentorship for service learning and research, and training in sexual harassment, to name a few. Clearly, faculty duties have not only grown but have also become more demanding, and the expectations for newly hired faculty members are now quite different from those in the later stages of their careers (Evans, 2009; Hutchings, Huber, & Golde, 2007).

Despite these increased responsibilities, tenure track faculty members are still required to meet all of the traditional obligations of teaching, scholarship, and service. Concomitantly, non-tenure track and part-time faculty are also faced with additional responsibilities. This has led to a growing concern about the ability for faculty members to achieve balance in their personal and professional lives (Evans, 2009). Clearly, this has long been an issue for women faculty who, typically, also have had the added responsibilities of being mothers and caretakers (Bent-Goodley & Sarnoff, 2008). Today, the digital revolution has further blurred the previous boundaries between the personal and professional. There is a growing mandate that faculty members increase their use of technology and become technologically proficient, and, combined with the prevalence of smartphones, tablets, and computers, this often means that faculty are expected to be available at all times and respond quickly to both colleagues and students, both night and day (Gappa et al., 2007). Not surprisingly, the importance of work–life balance is now surfacing as an important issue for both men and women in the academy (Hutchings et al., 2007). Unfortunately, current policies and practices typically fail to address the shifts that have occurred in faculty roles and careers. Further complicating this is the movement to a managerial and professional administrative culture in the academy, with its primary concerns on productivity, accountability, and efficiency rather than the historical academic emphasis on scholarship, good teaching, collegiality, and shared governance (Ginsberg, 2011; Omara-Otunnu, 2004; Rice, 1996).

Given the need of the academy to attract and retain talented faculty in the quest to further institutional goals, a number of solutions have been suggested to accommodate these changing realities and expectations (Gappa et al., 2007; Hutchings et al., 2007; Rice, 1996). These include, for example, broadening the definition of scholarship and having this clearly reflected in merit reviews for both tenure track and non-tenure track faculty members. It also requires implementing a reward structure that recognizes a fuller range of faculty contributions that may be independent of traditional scholarship. Another important change will involve introducing flexibility into the expectations for promotion and tenure, particularly as this relates to the timing of specific accomplishments over the course of an academic career (Gappa et al., 2007; Hutchings et al., 2007; Rice, 1996).

To accomplish this, it is imperative that institutions implement workplace policies that allow both women and men the flexibility to achieve balance in their growing responsibilities to the academy along with their concurrent family responsibilities for raising children and caring for their aging parents. Clearly, recognizing these needs is an important first step, but it will require faculty members and administrators to work together collaboratively to spearhead these changes (Gappa et al., 2007; Rice, 1996). To reconcile and accommodate the sometimes disparate needs of the institution, concomitant administrative mandates, and the transformed roles of members of the academy, we must recognize that creating a supportive workplace environment and organizational culture is a shared responsibility. And finally, we must collectively be committed to making transformational changes and proactively engage in targeted actions that will achieve these goals.

Susan P. Robbins

University of Houston

Editor-in-Chief