The New Faculty Culture

White-Farnham combines astute observations of the changes in higher education with interview data from 20 college instructors from public universities in Wisconsin. The study illuminates the material, social, and emotional difficulties that instructors face today: student mental health needs; unrelenting cuts to public higher education; an exhausting technocracy. The instructors’ stories inform a revised definition of faculty culture that does not get lost in nostalgia for an exclusive higher education of the past, but respects the context in which instructors teach today. The book provides practical approaches that administrators, chairpersons, and faculty developers can use to provide the support that instructors seek: restoring feelings of community and respect; reclaiming joy in our work lives; and fostering the new faculty culture.
"Studying any culture requires particularistic and contextual lenses. This book embraces this approach to understand Wisconsin’s systemwide faculty culture. White-Farnham complicates and questions, while holding on to an unbreakable thread of hope. What emerges is a new appreciation of CTLs as a constant, essential, and uplifting resource in higher education." - Fay Yokomizo Akindes, Director, Systemwide Professional & Instructional Development (OPID), Universities of Wisconsin
"This book will change how you think about faculty and teaching in higher education. Drawing on interviews with diverse faculty, White-Farnham reframes both faculty culture and Centers for Teaching and Learning – making the book essential reading for everyone invested in the future of faculty, teaching, and CTLs." - Peter Felten, Center for Engaged Learning, Elon University; co-author of The SoTL Guide: (Re)Orienting the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.