Lucas, Murry Release Second Edition of New Faculty Guidebook
Posted on 10/1/2007
New Faculty: A Practical Guide for Academic Beginners
(New York: Palgrave. 2007.)
The second edition released in September by Christopher J. Lucas and John W. Murry Jr. offers information on a wide variety of topics useful to new faculty members.
- Characteristics that define academic culture
- Questions to ask at a new job in higher education
- Features of good teaching
- Common complaints from students
- Suggestions for classroom methods
- How to design a course syllabus
- Suggestions for creating and delivering good lectures
- How to design multiple choice tests and construct essay questions
- How to deal with bad student behavior
- Guidelines to foster active learning in the classroom
- Questions about professional ethics
- Recommendations for advising graduate students
- Advice about getting published from the editor of a professional journal
- Avoiding common mistakes in the art of grantsmanship
- When to accept or decline a committee assignment
- Ownership and use of intellectual property
- Recommendations to avoid legal hazards
- What materials to collect to document your work
- What you need to know about computer technology
- Time management techniques.
It's commonly believed that someone who was a good graduate student will be a good university professor, an assumption that can hurt the fledgling faculty member's chances at a successful career.
That's a basic premise behind a guidebook for new faculty released this month. It both explains the need to learn about a particular institution's culture and expectations of the new faculty member and offers practical tips for teaching, receiving grants, advising students and performing campus service.
Authors Christopher J. Lucas, professor of higher education and educational foundations, and John W. Murry Jr., associate professor of higher education in the College of Education and Health Professions at the University of Arkansas, drew on their own experiences and discussions with other faculty members over the years to compile the information for New Faculty: A Practical Guide for Academic Beginners.
Lucas joined the University of Arkansas faculty in 1993, serving as a department head until 2001. He is the author of a dozen books over his career, most recently on the history of American higher education and reform of teacher education in America. He has also conducted professional development workshops.
Murry, who joined the faculty in 1994, serves as associate dean for administration in the College of Education and Health Professions and also collaborated with Lucas on the first edition of New Faculty, published in 2002 by Palgrave, a division of St. Martin's Press. As part of his administrative responsibilities, Murry assists in new faculty searches and works closely with new faculty members as they begin to orient themselves to the university environment.
"It's commonly assumed that, if you are someone who is bright and well-versed in your academic discipline, you will know how to do the job and can do it well with minimal direction," Lucas said. "But with the wisdom of hindsight, it's clear that's not true. At first, that's OK but it could be a fatal injury to a career. You won't pass a mid-tenure review, you won't get tenure because nobody told you what you need to know to be a good faculty member.
"We can't assum
e every faculty newcomer will know at the outset how to fulfill their responsibilities and obligations."
Most universities lack a formal orientation procedure for new faculty members, he said, although there are more opportunities now than in the past to take part in professional development offerings.
The public has an interest in the issue, too, Lucas said, with the rising cost of tuition.
"The student ultimately benefits when we make college teachers as effective as they can be," he said.
The pair looked at a number of self-help books before undertaking their project, Murry said, and decided the field was lacking in material with a practical approach.
"We tried to come at it differently with more examples and with a practical focus on the university level, but it's not exclusively geared toward that level," he said. "It could be used at other higher education levels. A lot of information in the book is applicable to faculty members anywhere, although the research grants section may be most useful for people working at four-year institutions."
Regardless of the type of institution, the new faculty member who could be considered an expert at teaching is rare, Lucas said, and likely not proficient in other areas of knowledge required of the professoriate.
"You need to be acutely aware of the need to know about your institution and the powers that be," he said.
The book gives general information about higher education but also stresses that each institution has its own culture, what the authors described in an interview as "the way we do things." Understanding that culture, knowing the professional expectations of a faculty member and what value is placed on teaching, research and service are vital for the new faculty member to succeed, they write.
"Learn what the institution's priorities are," Lucas said. "It will serve you well if you discover what's important to the institution early on. Ask questions of people of equal rank to you."
Formal mentor/mentee programs are rare and not always successful, the authors said, but they advocate developing informal relationships with peers and veteran faculty members to help in the learning process.
"Some people are good at developing networks and making acquaintances, but the nature of the academy is that it draws loners," Murry explained. "If you go your own way, you can get off track quickly."
Professors tend to think of themselves as independent contractors, but that requires strong self-discipline, the authors warn.
"There are a certain number of things faculty members must do and to a point no one cares how they get it done," Murry said. "That's one of the nice things that draws people to teaching on the college level – that degree of independence – but without self-discipline a faculty member may put things off until his or her career is off track. People who are successful develop a network of other people to talk with and work with."
We want to hear from you. Please e-mail comments and feedback to Heidi Stambuck at stambuck@uark.edu.