What Colleges and Universities Want in New Faculty
by Kathrynn A. Adams

What Colleges and Universities Want in New Faculty

• How well do current graduate programs prepare their students
  for academic careers?
• Which aspects of the transition from graduate student to faculty member
  are most difficult for newly hired faculty?
• What changes are needed in graduate programs to address the areas
  new faculty cite as problematic?

Academia is a major employer of new doctorate recipients (Henderson, Clarke, and Reynolds 1996; Henderson, Clarke, and Woods 1998; Sanderson and Dugoni 1999). While the world of academe has changed dramatically over the last two decades, most graduate programs that prepare new faculty for their first academic positions have not. As the number of people earning doctorates has increased, competition for assistant professor positions is keen, and the number of available positions has not kept pace. Those who mentor and educate most graduate students work in the environment of large research universities that are radically different from the environments where most jobs are available, namely, small public and private colleges, public comprehensive universities, and community colleges. In this context, new faculty are well aware of the shortcomings in their training.

Research has clearly documented the impact of the mismatch between graduate training and the multiple academic responsibilities facing new faculty (Austin 2002, Boice1992, Olsen 1993, Olsen and Crawford 1998, Rice1996, Sorcinelli 1992, Tierney 1997, Tierney and Bensimon 1996, Whitt 1991). On the other hand, graduate faculty have been slow to recognize the discrepancy between the academic environment in which they have succeeded and the environments to be faced by the graduate students they have carefully mentored. At the least, they have not modified their programs to address the responsibilities of the next generation of assistant professors.

This essay provides information to graduate faculty members and others responsible for doctoral education about the new realities affecting the academic job market and the working conditions of faculty members.1 The information is drawn from both research studies and the academic practices of diverse institutions. Our hope is that once graduate faculty members understand the new conditions facing professors, they will use it to adapt their doctoral programs so that they better serve those graduate students aspiring to an academic career.

This paper reviews the research on the preparation needed for graduate students who plan a career in academia for their responsibilities as faculty. The research provides the theoretical and empirical bases for practices that achieve the kind of preparation needed in the current educational context. While practices developed in the Preparing Future Faculty programs (PFF) are not specifically referred to in this review, many of the strategies proposed here have been enacted—mostly successfully—at the universities where PFF programs have been in place. A companion piece to this review is Leigh DeNeef's Preparing Future Faculty Program: What Difference Does It Make? (AAC&U 2002), which surveys the alumni of PFF programs as to their effectiveness.

This document is a call for graduate faculty and administrators to revise their doctoral programs to a) enable their students to make an informed decision about choosing an academic career, b) prepare future faculty members to secure positions in the kinds of institutions where they want to work, and c) help their students develop the skills and capacities they need to survive the first few years of an academic appointment and to meet expectations and tenure requirements at different types of institutions.

A review of the literature and of academic practices regarding graduate students and new faculty suggests five areas that need attention: teaching, research, academic life, job search, and academic options.