Do Faculty Use a Portion of Their Time Philanthropically?

• In Event: Acknowledging Philanthropy in Faculty Work: A New Approach to Understanding the Professoriate

Abstract

Building from the notion that faculty give the gift of their time and expertise in many situations as a part of their roles at colleges and universities, this portion of the symposium examines the amount of time faculty spend on activities that are charitable or altruistic at least in part. Due to their relative autonomy, faculty members can decide whether to devote time to instructional improvement, social time with students, participating in a co-curricular activity with students, and other types of activities, such as certain kinds of committee service or advisory and educational activities. Moreover, for most faculty, many of their decisions about participating in these activities will take time and effort, but will not influence things like their continued employment or their institutional compensation.

We know enough about the profile, productivity, and work life of the professoriate to know that faculty time is pinched (Gappa et al., 2007; Schuster & Finkelstein, 2006). Interestingly, behind much of the work to date, is a workforce orientation. So, for example, studying the amount of time one spends on research and scholarly activities or teaching is built on the relatively safe assumption that scholarly and research products follow from time spent on those activities. However, that is not the entire story for all of faculty work. Not all research is done to produce a product and some of it (even when there is a product) is done with what we are calling a philanthropic orientation.

This presentation pushes the idea that we can build an greater understanding of the professoriate if we examine a wider range of activities and use different assumptions to explore faculty work. Specifically, using data from the Faculty Survey of Student Engagement and hierarchical linear modeling techniques, this portion of the symposium examines how much time faculty devote to the following activities.

● Reflecting on ways to improve one's teaching
● Working with undergraduates on research
● Supervising internships or other field experiences
● Working with students on activities other than coursework (committees, orientation, student life activities, etc.)
● Other interactions with students outside of the classroom

The orientation here is not about what is produced, but what is being given by faculty members to their students, institutions, and fields. There is some altruism built into all of these activities and most faculty are not "required" to do any of them.

Results suggest that the average faculty member spends 4-5 hours in a typical week reflecting on ways to improve their instruction and 2-3 hours on each of the other activities. There is, however, considerable variability by faculty and institutional characteristics, such as disciplinary area and rank and employment status, though the effects of these characteristics are not consistent across activities. As a part of the symposium, implications of these findings for researchers studying faculty and practitioners hoping to influence the nature and quality of faculty work will be offered and discussed.

Author

• Thomas F. Nelson Laird, Indiana University