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Long-Term Part-Time Faculty’s Professional Life at Public Comprehensive Master’s Universities in California

Abstract

In recent decades, due to both contextual (e.g., resource scarcity) and internal organizational conditions (e.g., increased enrollment), universities have increased the number of nontenure-track faculty positions. As part of the nontenure-track faculty population, part-time (PT) faculty are treated as second-class faculty and conceptualized more as employees than as professionals. This view (common in both universities and in the scholarly literature) shows a partial and skewed perception of PT faculty’s work and participation in universities that does not account for this population’s own understandings of their organizational and professional roles.

This qualitative investigation uses a novel approach to a well-examined topic. Based on a non-deficit perspective, and the study of a particular PT faculty subgroup, this investigation explains the ways in which long-term PT faculty understand their work in, contributions to, and relationship with comprehensive Master’s universities and the academic profession. A phenomenological approach and fieldwork methods were employed. Data in this investigation comprise semi-structured in-depth interviews of 29 PT faculty, in three comprehensive Master’s university California, with five or more years employment. Content analysis, coding and categorizing, and document analysis processes were employed to systematize the findings of this investigation.

PT faculty conceptualize themselves as members of multiple on-campus and off-campus groups. Their membership in these groups guides their understanding and construction of their roles in their universities. Long-term PT faculty express attitudes of work engagement (job involvement, organizational commitment, and psychological empowerment) and enact work engagement behaviors (extra-role behaviors) that benefit their university and students. PT faculty’s job involvement plays a central role both in the development of a long-term work relationship with their campus and in PT faculty’s expressions of work engagement. Findings from this investigation suggest that PT faculty self-author their work and develop professional identities that help them cope with reductive and partial views of their role at universities. Findings are used to discuss implications for practice as well as to propose future venues for research.

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